Single-dose HIV DNA vaccine induces long-lasting immune response in monkeys

For the first time researchers from the U.S. and abroad have shown a single-dose HIV DNA vaccine can induce a long-lasting HIV-specific immune response in nonhuman primates, a discovery that could prove significant in the development of HIV vaccines.
Source: ScienceDaily: Latest Science News | 26 Feb 2010 | 12:00 pm

Quantum physics breakthrough: Scientists find an equation for materials innovation

Engineers have made a breakthrough in an 80-year-old quandary in quantum physics, paving the way for the development of new materials that could make electronic devices smaller and cars more energy efficient.
Source: ScienceDaily: Latest Science News | 26 Feb 2010 | 12:00 pm

The mathematics behind a good night's sleep

A mathematics professor is using math to develop a new computer model that can be easily manipulated by other scientists and doctors to predict how different environmental, medical, or physical changes to a person's body will affect their sleep. Their model will also provide clues to the most basic dynamics of the sleep-wake cycle.
Source: ScienceDaily: Latest Science News | 26 Feb 2010 | 12:00 pm

Ancient DNA reveals caribou history linked to volcanic eruption

DNA recovered from ancient caribou bones reveals a possible link between several small unique caribou herds and a massive volcanic eruption that blanketed much of the Alaskan Yukon territory in a thick layer of ash 1,000 years ago, researchers report.
Source: ScienceDaily: Latest Science News | 26 Feb 2010 | 12:00 pm

Near-frictionless diamond material created using nanotechnology

Mechanical engineers have fabricated an ultra sharp, diamond-like carbon tip possessing such high strength that it is 3,000 times more wear-resistant at the nanoscale than silicon. The end result is a diamond-like carbon material mass-produced at the nanoscale that doesn't wear.
Source: ScienceDaily: Latest Science News | 26 Feb 2010 | 12:00 pm

Exploiting the body's own ability to fight a heart attack

Scientists trying to find a way to better help patients protect themselves against harm from a heart attack are taking their cues from cardiac patients. The work on "ischemic preconditioning" mirrors a perplexing curiosity that physicians have long observed in their patients: When faced with a heart attack, people who have had a previous one oftentimes fare better than patients who have never had one.
Source: ScienceDaily: Latest Science News | 26 Feb 2010 | 12:00 pm

Stellar, metal-free way to make carbon nanotubes

Space apparently has its own recipe for making carbon nanotubes, one of the most intriguing contributions of nanotechnology here on Earth, and metals are conspicuously missing from the list of ingredients.
Source: ScienceDaily: Latest Science News | 26 Feb 2010 | 9:00 am

Does promiscuity prevent extinction?

Promiscuous females may be the key to a species' survival, according to new research. The study could solve the mystery of why females of most species have multiple mates, despite this being more risky for the individual.
Source: ScienceDaily: Latest Science News | 26 Feb 2010 | 9:00 am

Single-dose H5N1 vaccine safe and effective in adults and elderly

Researchers from Hungary and the UK have developed a single-dose H5N1 influenza vaccine that induces a protective level of immunity against infection in healthy adult and elderly volunteers. The vaccine is the first single-dose regimen to be tested in elderly subjects and it fulfills all European Union and U.S. licensing criteria offering a promising influenza A virus vaccine candidate.
Source: ScienceDaily: Latest Science News | 26 Feb 2010 | 9:00 am

Vitamin B3 shows early promise in treatment of stroke

An early study suggests that vitamin B3 or niacin, a common water-soluble vitamin, may help improve neurological function after stroke. When rats with ischemic stroke were given niacin, their brains showed growth of new blood vessels, and sprouting of nerve cells which greatly improved neurological outcome. Now research is underway to investigate the effects of an extended-release form of niacin on stroke patients.
Source: ScienceDaily: Latest Science News | 26 Feb 2010 | 9:00 am

The nation's weather (AP)

AP - Another snowy day was expected in the Northeast on Friday, while rain was anticipated in the Pacific Northwest.

Source: Yahoo! News: Science News | 26 Feb 2010 | 2:39 am

UN to review controversial climate panel (AFP)

AFP - The United Nations will review its Nobel prize-winning climate panel, whose credibility has been tarnished by errors in a key report on global warming, a spokesman said on Friday.

Source: Yahoo! News: Science News | 26 Feb 2010 | 2:35 am

Pieces of rare biblical manuscript reunited (AP)

AP - Two parts of an ancient biblical manuscript separated for centuries are going on display together for the first time.
Source: Yahoo! News: Science News | 26 Feb 2010 | 1:46 am

German wind power firm to withdraw from Taiwan (AFP)

AFP - Germany-based InfraVest, the largest private wind power company in Taiwan, said Friday it will withdraw from the island because it does not have confidence in the government's energy policies.

Source: Yahoo! News: Science News | 26 Feb 2010 | 12:45 am

U.N. says will create science panel to review IPCC

NUSA DUA, Indonesia (Reuters) - An independent board of scientists will be appointed to review the world's top climate science panel, which has been accused of sloppy work, a U.N. climate spokesman said on Friday.
Source: Reuters: Science News | 26 Feb 2010 | 12:24 am

Australia warns Japan over whaling (AFP)

AFP - Australia Friday warned Japan that "diplomacy comes to an end this year" on whaling, after presenting a bold plan to phase out the controversial hunts in the Southern Ocean.

Source: Yahoo! News: Science News | 26 Feb 2010 | 12:15 am

African origin of Roman York's rich lady with the ivory bangle

Re-examination of skeletons shows greater population mix than expected

One of the richest inhabitants of fourth century Roman York, buried in a stone sarcophagus with luxury imports including jewellery made of elephant ivory, a mirror and a blue glass perfume jar, was a woman of black African ancestry, a re-examination of her skeleton has shown.

Now, 16 centuries after her death, her skeleton is helping prove the startling diversity of the society in which she lived.

"We're looking at a population mix which is much closer to contemporary Britain than previous historians had suspected," Hella Eckhardt, senior lecturer at the department of archaeology at Reading University, said. "In the case of York, the Roman population may have had more diverse origins than the city has now."

Eckhardt's work with a team of scientists and archaeologists, funded by the Arts and Humanities Research Council and published today in Antiquity magazine, involved re-examining skeletons excavated over a century ago.

Isotope evidence suggests that up to 20% were probably long distance migrants. Some were African or had African ancestors, including the woman dubbed "the ivory bangle lady", whose bone analysis shows she was brought up in a warmer climate, and whose skull shape suggests mixed ancestry including black features.

The authors point out that Roman North Africa was noted for its mixed populations, with Phoenician, Berber and Mediterranean influences.

"This skull is particularly interesting, because the stone sarcophagus she was buried in, and the richness of the grave goods, means she was a very wealthy woman, absolutely from the top end of York society," Eckhardt said.

"We can't tell if she was independently wealthy, or the wife or daughter of a wealthy man — but the bones show that she was young, between 18 and 23, and healthy with no obvious sign of disease or cause of death."

The ivory bangle lady came from a group of graves excavated in 1901, on what would have been the approaches to the Roman city of Eboracum, modern York. The burials were dated to the second half of the fourth century AD, and many had rich grave goods.

One of the richest was the woman's, buried with her treasures including the jewellery and glass, and a piece of bone carved with an inscription translated as "Hail sister, may you live in God" — suggesting she may have been a Christian.

The most poignant symbol of multi-cultural Britain was her bracelets, one of African ivory, one of Yorkshire jet which probably came from Whitby.

The authors comment: "The case of the 'ivory bangle lady' contradicts assumptions that may derive from more recent historical experience, namely that immigrants are low status and male, and that African invdividuals are likely to have been slaves. Instead, it is clear that both women and children moved across the Empire, often associated with the military."

The skull and her possessions will go on display in a new exhibition at the Yorkshire Museum, opening next summer.

Source: Science news, comment and analysis | guardian.co.uk | 26 Feb 2010 | 12:00 am

Trial by ice – what it takes to be an Arctic explorer

The Catlin Arctic Survey team is off to the north pole. They face exhaustion, numbing cold – and hungry polar bears

• Catlin Arctic team brave polar bears to monitor acid oceans

Six am on a sub-zero morning in Devon. A five-mile run in the dark, ending in a couple of hill sprints. Breakfast. Circuit training in the barn; beyond any pain threshold to physical exhaustion. Lunch. Ninety minutes dragging weighted tyres up and down a 1:6 hill. The only upside is that the mud has frozen over. It's mindless, repetitive, punishing effort, not improved by an ex-marine shouting in your ear. Tea. A three-mile run, followed by more circuits. Die.

One day of this – well, most of it. OK then, half, and I'm shattered. For Ann Daniels, Martin Hartley and Charlie Paton, the three members of the second Catlin Arctic Survey into the effects of climate change, whose latest trip to the north pole was announced yesterday, it's day six of a week-long bootcamp. I'm just thankful to have avoided the 15-mile run across Dartmoor that entailed wading waist-deep through ice-cold rivers.

You can't pull a 120kg (265lb) sled over pressure ridges for 12 hours a day for 60 days if you're not fit. And if the three weren't polar fit when they started this camp, they certainly will be by the end. Yet fitness is just a small part of the package. Anyone – even me – could probably get fit enough if we were prepared to put the hours in, but few of us would last a day out on the ice.

Daniels is one of the world's leading polar explorers, the first woman – along with teammate Caroline Hamilton – to reach both the north and south poles as part of all-women teams, and she readily admits there are many people out there who are a great deal fitter than her – "I'm 45 now, for God's sake." Yet when it comes to endurance and sheer willpower, she's in a league of her own.

"You can train all you like," she says, "but nothing prepares you for the cold. On a good day it can be minus 15, on a bad day minus 45; factor in the wind chill and it can feel more like minus 70. The cold penetrates your bones and never leaves. Even when you're in your tent at night there's no respite. It's with you the whole time; you just have to try and shut it out. You can't always do it, especially towards the end of an expedition when you're exhausted."

It's the cold Hartley and Paton fear most too. They are also polar veterans and know exactly what's coming. "I'd done a lot of climbing in the Himalayas and I thought I knew all about cold," says Hartley, the expedition photographer. "But I was hopelessly unprepared the first time I went to Resolute [the settlement in the north of Canada that is the start point for Arctic exploration]. My equipment was totally inadequate and I would have died if someone hadn't lent me some warmer clothes.

"The first few weeks are bearable but once you start to get frostbite, the cold can start to affect your judgment, especially when you're living in such close proximity to other people."

British polar exploration is sometimes seen as the stamping ground of the upper-class adventurer, an image perpetuated in recent years by the successes of Sir Ranulph Fiennes and Pen Hadow, the director of the Catlin Arctic Survey. Daniels, Hartley and Paton don't fit the stereotype.

Daniels was a bank manager's assistant until 1996 when she heard a radio advert asking for ordinary women wanting to go to the north pole; Hartley spent seven years as a studio special effects photographer before going freelance; after joining some polar trips with the marines, Paton worked out that serving in Afghanistan was a great deal riskier than a melting ice-cap. For all of them – Fiennes and Hadow included – it is a full-time, professional career.

"It's not the type of job you get told about at school," Hartley says. "I started by funding myself to join expeditions to the Himalayas and the Pamirs and selling the pictures. Pen Hadow approached me at a talk I was giving and said, 'You must come north with me one day.' I thought he was trying to pull me and invite me to his country home. Since then I've been on 22 assignments to the Arctic and Antarctic.

"You do have to be quite selfish to do this kind of work. The expedition comes first and I forget about home life and relationships for its duration. Basically, you need to be not nearly as nice as you would like to be."

Unless you're lucky enough to have the clout to attract the sponsorship money and fix up your own gigs, your average explorer has to take the jobs that are going. You might be joining a team on a new route; you might be guiding amateurs who fork out £20,000 to be airlifted 60 miles from the pole and escorted in on foot. Or you could, like the Catlin team, become scientists for the trip – something that is more controversial than it sounds.

There's a long tradition of science in the polar regions. It's the ideal environment for everything from ocean-ography, astrophysics, meteorology and glaciolology to all things climate change and the Amundsen-Scott South Pole Station has been a base for scientists for more than 50 years. But the demarcation lines have always been firmly engraved in the ice. Scientists do science: explorers explore.

Hadow crossed the divide with the first Catlin Arctic Survey last year, when his team became the first to measure ice-thickness en route to the pole – a more critical determinant than surface area of the speed at which the ice-cap is melting. Some scientists and climate change sceptics went to great lengths to rubbish their findings that the ice-cap was melting faster than previous projections had suggested, pointing to weaknesses in methodology and ridiculing equipment failures. But the survey is back again this year to continue where they left off.

It sounds as if it should be a no-brainer. If you're doing science, take a scientist. It is, until you consider the conditions up north. The south pole is on a flat, frozen land mass. You can fly in directly, snuggle down in the warmth of the base and get on with your experiments. The Arctic is rather different. It is an unmappable ocean of ice that is constantly on the move, breaking up, melting and re-forming. You can't go anywhere and expect to stay in one place. Sometimes you can only go backwards. The ice is often crushed into giant pressure ridges that take hours to cross when pulling a heavy sled and a day's hard labour can see you further away from your goal than when you started if the ice flow is against you.

It's not the sort of environment in which scientists operate. If you're measuring ice thickness and water samples, you really want to be able to go back to the same place year after year; you can't do that if the ice is constantly on the move.

"The alternative is doing nothing," says Daniels. "And that's not an option where climate change is concerned. So the expedition's goal is to take samples every day on the trek towards the pole. Charlie will be drilling through the ice to take two water samples – one at the surface and one at a depth of 10m. Some samples will be filtered for microbes, and some will be frozen to have its CO2 content analysed. It will be back-breaking work after lugging a sled for 12 hours."

Hartley will be there to record every-thing; the landscape, the water, the science. "We have a responsibility to document the Arctic ocean in summer," he says. "I've been there many times over the last few years and the ice is melting. It's a fact. It could even disappear completely in my lifetime."

The expedition comes with its own health warning. Ice floes calve, people get injured and rescue isn't always possible if a plane can't land. And then there are the polar bears.

Back at the bootcamp, two marines give us a demonstration in unarmed combat. It's all quite handy for a night out in Streatham, but not much use if a polar bear is heading your way. Even if it doesn't have a knife. So what do you do if a bear comes sneaking up on you from behind a pressure ridge?

For the first and only time, the explorers look nervous. They can see the story. Climate change explorers shoot polar bear. "Um, you would fire the gun above its head to scare it off," says Daniels eventually. And if that doesn't work? "Look," Hartley laughs. "There's no such thing as a small polar bear." Fine. So the bear gets it.

Source: Science news, comment and analysis | guardian.co.uk | 26 Feb 2010 | 12:00 am

Vast iceberg 'a threat to oceans'

A huge iceberg which broke off the Antarctic could disrupt the world's ocean currents and weather, scientists warn.
Source: BBC News | Science & Environment | UK Edition | 25 Feb 2010 | 11:51 pm

Whaling 'worsens carbon release'

A century of whaling may have released more than 100 million tonnes of carbon into the atmosphere, scientists say.
Source: BBC News | Science & Environment | UK Edition | 25 Feb 2010 | 11:15 pm

Why Is Climate Change Denial So Seductive?

Gentle reader: The roots of all witch hunts, as we learned centuries ago, are buried in human psychology. Sadly, the current crescendo in the witch hunt against climate scientists is no different. Happily, however, there are people who study these ...
Source: Discovery News - Top Stories | 25 Feb 2010 | 9:43 pm

Phoenix is Still Dead

NASA's Mars Lander Phoenix as spotted by the HiRISE camera aboard NASA's Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter recently. The surrounding solid carbon dioxide is gradually subliming into the atmosphere as the sun's energy becomes more sustained (NASA/HiRISE). Despite its best efforts, NASA's ...
Source: Discovery News - Top Stories | 25 Feb 2010 | 7:59 pm

Carnivorous Plants Could Yield Life-Saving Drugs

If you came across a plant in the wilds of India that trapped and ate insects by dissolving them in a broth of treacly nectar and bacteria, your first reaction probably would not be to drink it. But some locals ...
Source: Discovery News - Top Stories | 25 Feb 2010 | 7:45 pm

Summary Box: Costs obstacle to nuclear renaissance (AP)

AP - THE COMEBACK: The Vermont Senate's decision to block a license renewal for a nuclear plant shows that the rebirth of nuclear power in the U.S. will encounter some bumps along the way.
Source: Yahoo! News: Science News | 25 Feb 2010 | 4:50 pm

Whaling Deal Redux: Australia Makes Counter Proposal

The Small Working Group of the International Whaling Commission meets in Florida next week, to discuss the controversial draft "deal" that would permit commercial whaling, at reduced levels, for the next ten years. One member has already signaled that it ...
Source: Discovery News - Top Stories | 25 Feb 2010 | 4:47 pm

Did 'unsafe' natural gas release lead to power plant explosion? (The Christian Science Monitor)

The Christian Science Monitor - Just prior to an explosion that killed six workers and injured 27 at a Kleen Energy power plant in Middletown, Conn., earlier this month, a huge amount of natural gas was vented out of doors, but into a “congested area” between buildings.
Source: Yahoo! News: Science News | 25 Feb 2010 | 3:51 pm

Nouns and Verbs Learned in Different Brain Regions (LiveScience.com)

LiveScience.com - Nouns and verbs may go hand and hand in a sentence, but they are learned in different regions of our brains, a new study suggests.
Source: Yahoo! News: Science News | 25 Feb 2010 | 3:30 pm

Haiti earthquake produced deadly tsunami

Waves up to three metres high hit sections of the nation's coastline.<img src="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~r/news/rss/today/~4/CpCTgvwYg3w" height="1" width="1"/>
Source: NatureNews - All articles published today - nature.com science feeds | 25 Feb 2010 | 3:27 pm

Nouns and Verbs Learned in Different Brain Regions

Humans learn nouns and verbs in different regions of their brains, a new study says.
Source: Livescience.com | 25 Feb 2010 | 3:21 pm

Fish See Their Enemies’ Faces in Ultraviolet

Seen in the right light, yellow reef fish become spotty pains in the tail fin.

Members of one damselfish species use facial patterns of speckles and swooshes to identify the fish species they regularly attack, researchers report in an upcoming issue of Current Biology. These markings show up only in ultraviolet light, says visual ecologist Ulrike Siebeck of the University of Queensland in Brisbane, Australia.

In tests, Siebeck and her colleagues found that male Ambon damselfish could tell their own species from another just by seeing the ultraviolet markings. When UV light was blocked by filters, confused males picked fights with the wrong rivals.

The UV freckles could work as a secret, or at least pretty discreet, communications channel, Siebeck proposes. Animals need to send clear signals to important compatriots, such as possible rivals or mates. Yet signals that get too clear can attract the wrong kind of attention from hungry predators. As Siebeck puts it, “How can you be colorful and not colorful at the same time?”

Both Ambon and lemon damselfish can see UV light. But plenty of their major predators, such as wrasses and cod, typically can’t, Siebeck says. So she argues that damselfish could use their spots to send a covert message.

This encrypted messaging sounds plausible for another reason, says Innes Cuthill of Bristol University in England. Short UV wavelengths scatter more readily when they hit small particles than do the longer wavelengths that people call visible light. So plankton and other bits floating in seawater make UV markings harder to detect from a distance than visible-light color patterns. “For a predator, even if it can see in the UV, the patterns will be a blur,” Cuthill says.

The lens in the human eye blocks UV wavelengths, but plenty of fish, birds and insects carry and can see some kind of UV marking. “It’s secret to us,” says, visual ecologist Sönke Johnsen of Duke University in Durham, N.C., but “it’s not super magical.”

Before calling UV freckles private lines of communication Johnsen wants to know more, such as which other species on the damselfishes’ reef can see UV. What the damselfish experiments have demonstrated clearly, he says, is that these fish can use UV to distinguish species.

Siebeck made that discovery thanks to the scrappiness of territorial Ambon males. She first tested 28 of them to see whether they would fight a member of their own species or a lemon damselfish if she presented both. Most made more attacks on their own kind, though six, for unknown reasons, preferred to attack the other species.

Once she knew their fighting preferences, Siebeck changed the experiment by placing some of the potential rivals in UV-filtering plastic tubes to hide their freckles. The males who saw these fish attacked randomly, apparently because they could not detect the UV patterns.

Siebeck says these damselfish may have “the most intricate UV patterns found so far on animals.” To see whether the fish can resolve such elaborate patterns, Siebeck trained fish to nudge a card marked with a UV spot pattern based on a real fish face. When she offered a choice of cards based on both species, trained fish mostly nudged the pattern they had learned to recognize.

Image: The images on the right show the invisible-to-humans UV designs for the two species of damselfish on the left. Credit: U. Siebeck et al./Current Biology 2010

See Also:

• Electric Fish Turn Down Charge for Energy Efficiency
• Rising Ocean Acidity Could Disorient Fish
• Rising Ocean Acidity Could Disorient Fish
• New Giant Prehistoric Fish Species Found Gathering Dust in Museums

Source: Wired: Wired Science | 25 Feb 2010 | 3:18 pm

New View of Comet Formation Forged in Study of Tiny Particle (SPACE.com)

SPACE.com - Comets have a reputation of being outer solar system natives that were long thought to be made up of pristine remnants of the building blocks of our sun's planets and moons.
Source: Yahoo! News: Science News | 25 Feb 2010 | 3:15 pm

Utah company conducts final test on shuttle rocket (AP)

AP - With the U.S. space shuttle program fading, a Utah company that makes powerful booster rockets for space travel conducted its final ground test Thursday.
Source: Yahoo! News: Science News | 25 Feb 2010 | 2:53 pm

Wired’s Biometric Super Bowl Ad Winner Is a Geeky Surprise

The results are in from the Wired Biometric Super Bowl Party, and 25 of our readers’ autonomic nervous systems have selected their top 10 advertisements.

The Google ad that had everyone talking after the game got the attention of our party goers as well, but the real winner was a surprise. It turns out our readers are even geekier than we thought.

The study, conducted by Boston-based research firm Innerscope, was held at Wired HQ in San Francisco with participants from across the state and as far away as Sweden. These guinea pigs had their skin conductance, heart rate and movements measured to see how they responded physiologically to the motley assortment of Super Bowl ads.

The company’s algorithms translate those measurements into a single metric they call “engagement.” While the researchers are obviously looking for spikes in people’s excitement — heart rate increases, etc — the best ads also generate consistent body movements and attention to the ad. (Read more about the science in “How Your Biometrics Can Make Super Bowl Ads Better.”)

What’s fun about this technology is that you can see people’s reactions in real time, which you couldn’t with traditional advertising scoring techniques. The downside is it takes some time to crunch the data, which is why you’re reading this now instead of the day after the game. But as the old aphorism goes, slow and data-rich wins the race.

In the videos below, engagement is charted on the graphs, so you can see it moving up and down as the ads roll. On the Innerscope scale, getting up near 90 is impressive. The peak moment they measured was (of course) Tracy Porter’s fourth-quarter interception of Peyton Manning and the long return for a touchdown that followed. It hit over 122 on the engagement scale.

“It may be the highest-ever score for Innerscope and there are some obvious reasons why that might be,” said Carl Marci, a social psychiatrist at Massachusetts General Hospital and Innerscope co-founder.

One funny quirk about this year’s Super Bowl ads: none of them beat the two NBC promotional spots for The Late Show With David Letterman and How I Met Your Mother. If we included them on the commercial list, they would have ranked one and two. Go figure. Maybe all that Conan O’Brien/Jay Leno controversy was good for the late-night talk-show-host business.

In a surprise, the Electronic Arts ad for the upcoming game Dante’s Inferno topped the list. If you needed more evidence that Wired readers are geeky, take the fact that they liked an ad for a videogame better than any of the beer commercials.

There aren’t a lot of noticeable peaks and valleys for this ad, unlike some of the others. People most just stayed tuned in and watched the whole thing.

“Like a movie trailer, the ad is the product,” Marci explained.

But why this ad and why this game, which at least to this writer, seem kind of mediocre?

“With the Dante’s Inferno ad, people probably weren’t thinking ‘This is going to be the greatest game of all time,’ but it would have been very hard for them to ignore,” said Innerscope senior scientist, Caleb Siefert. “Definitely people in that audience are going to have an opinion of the game.”

Coming in at number five, we see Google’s first Super Bowl ad. When it came on, a hush fell over the room as people watched to see how their search engine would make a commercial.

“We didn’t rate Google as the number one ad, but when you look at the trace, it’s absolutely amazing,” Siefert said.

Throughout the commercial, we stay at one time scale quickly progressing through a cute love story between some American dude and a Parisian lady. Then, right at the end, the ad’s time scale speeds up and soon the searcher is looking for information on how to assemble a crib.

“What I loved about the Google ad, it was one of the best stories told,” Marci said. “It’s so tight and hangs together so well and then reminds you of the product that delivered this story so effectively.”

Then, Google’s “branding moment” hits as the words “Search on” come on the screen. People loved it.

“I’m blown away by the slope of the line in the branding moment, how sharply it goes up,” Siefert said.

And finally, we get to the ad in which a Doritos samurai with Doritos nunchuks attacks some unsuspecting faux hipsters who are for some reason eating Doritos in the gym. What you see in the numbers here is a classic joke that works. It starts off kind of fun, lulls you for a minute as the action plays out, and then bam — the punchline.

Image: Jon Snyder/Wired.com. Videos: Innerscope.

See Also:

• Come to Wired.com’s Biometric Super Bowl Party
• How Your Biometrics Can Make Super Bowl Ads Better
• A Peek at Wired’s Ultra-Geeky Super Bowl Party

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

Source: Wired: Wired Science | 25 Feb 2010 | 2:34 pm

How to Capitalize on Carbon - Pt. 1: Balancing Earth

How much carbon is in the air? Where does it come from? How does Earth naturally keep carbon balanced? Why should Humanity capture industrial carbon?
Source: Livescience.com | 25 Feb 2010 | 2:08 pm

Of Termites and Climate Change

Termite damage costs Americans about $7 billion each year in damage and treatment costs, making them one of the most expensive insects in the country. According to a recent piece in EARTH magazine, that could be about to get worse. ...
Source: Discovery News - Top Stories | 25 Feb 2010 | 1:22 pm

Pompeii to Offer Live Excavation Experience

Visitors to Pompeii will be able to experience a live dig next month in the ancient Roman town that was buried in Mount Vesuvius' catastrophic eruption in 79 A.D. The site of the open-door excavation is the so-called House of ...
Source: Discovery News - Top Stories | 25 Feb 2010 | 1:12 pm

Biodiversity Explained by Ignoring the Forest for the Trees

A painstaking, multidecade study of 33,000 individual trees may finally have uncovered the roots of biodiversity.

That biodiversity’s origin needs uncovering is surprising because the word seems to be everywhere. But scientists still don’t quite understand why one place has more species than another, or fewer.

The traditional explanation — every organism has its niche, competing not with other species but its own — sounds nice, but has holes. According to the tree study, that’s because ecologists haven’t looked for the right niches.

“We take this very complex, high-dimensional thing called the environment, and average out all the variation that organisms really require,” said Jim Clark, a Duke University biologist and author of the study, published Feb. 25 in Science. “Biodiversity is very much a niche response, but it’s just not evident at the species level.”

The central tenet of biodiversity science is that animals compete against their own kind, not against other species. Computer models of inter-species competition soon collapse, with rich diversity inevitably replaced by a few dominant species.

In the real world, that’s not what happens. Species seem to be sharing. So ecologists have developed a theory of niches: Every species has a particular specialty, a set of conditions for which it’s best suited. Some plants do well in shade, others in rocky soil, and so on.

This is true. However, it still doesn’t seem to explain biodiversity. Some ecosystems that are very poor in resources, and consequently don’t seem to have many niches, can still have a high species diversity.

“When you have thousands of species, it’s difficult to come up with ways to partition a limited set of resources or conditions,” said John Silander, a University of Connecticut ecologist who studies South Africa’s Cape Floristic region, a rocky scrubland with as much biodiversity as the Amazon rainforest. “People looking at niche differences always seem to come up short.”

Clark may have found the answer. He has spent the last 18 years studying trees in the southeastern United States and has assembled 22,000 detailed individual accounts, spanning 11 forests and three regions. For each tree, Clark has recorded its precise, on-the-ground (and in-the-ground and above-the-ground) exposure to moisture and nutrients and light, its response, and its proximity to other plants.

Ecologists usually aggregate this information, turning it into average. By going tree-by-tree, Clark found that there are, in fact, enough niches to go around. They’re filled when competition in a species drives individuals to fill them. Biodiversity — or, from another perspective, configurations of organisms that don’t need to compete against each other — is the result of this fierce race for resources.

The niches could only be seen at a fine-grained level, not in the coarse analyses typically used by ecologists. “We take environmental variation and project it down to a very small set of indices. Light becomes average light per year. Moisture becomes average moisture per year. It’s not just light and water and nitrogen — it’s variations of each of those things, in different dimensions,” said Clark.

“The approach he’s taken is marvelous. Nobody has looked at biodiversity in this fashion,” said Silander, who was not involved in the study. “He has the data needed to address the different hypotheses.”

Silander said the approach will likely be extended beyond the world of trees. Understanding the essential dynamics of biodiversity could improve ecosystem management, in applications from conservation to farming.

“It’s hard to find a place on Earth that doesn’t have some level of management going on,” said Silander. “We have to understand how species interact.”

“Ecologists spent a lot of time in the 20th century trying to find ways to reduce the complexity of natural systems so that we could understand them,” said Miles Silman, a Wake Forest University ecologist who was not involved in the study. “Clark has shown that the complexity that we were trying to reduce is very likely essential to understanding” biodiversity.

Image: Tambako the Jaguar/Flickr

See Also:

• To Save the Earth, Start With Data
• A Listening Party for Nature
• Mapping a Redwood Forest with LIDAR

Citation: “Individuals and the Variation Needed for High Species Diversity in Forest Trees.” By James S. Clark. Science, Vol. 327 No. 5969, February 26, 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 | 25 Feb 2010 | 12:29 pm

Killer Whale's Fate Decided

In the blog for SeaWorld today, the following statement was posted about Tilikum, the orca that fatally injured trainer Dawn Brancheau yesterday: "Many people are asking about the future care of Tilikum, the whale involved in the incident. We have ...
Source: Discovery News - Top Stories | 25 Feb 2010 | 12:18 pm

The Poetry of Science

Need some inspiration, or just a breather? Check out this video "The Poetry of Reality." It's lovely.
Source: Discovery News - Top Stories | 25 Feb 2010 | 12:08 pm

Hack This Car Please

Designer Yves Behar, perhaps best known for his involvement in the One Laptop Per Child project, unveiled a curious hackable car concept at the Greener Gadgets Conference in New York this morning. Behar, citing the brief for the original Deux ...
Source: Discovery News - Top Stories | 25 Feb 2010 | 12:07 pm

Simon Singh and the silencing of the scientists

The science writer Simon Singh is fighting to defend his right to freedom of speech. And he's far from alone as companies from around the world are increasingly trying to use England's libel laws to quash academic critics

Earlier this week, a mild-mannered freelance science writer stood on the steps of London's imposing Royal Courts of Justice and declared his determination, come what may, to stand up for free speech against what he and an ever-swelling contingent of scientists, public figures and celebrities believe is the oppressive burden of the UK's libel laws.

Simon Singh, science writer and co-author of a book about alternative medicine, provoked a libel suit from the British Chiropractic Association (BCA) ­after a piece was published in the Guardian's comment pages. He may now make history.

In the venerable stone building, three of England's most senior judges listened to his case and are now deliberating over its merits. The line-up of Lord Chief Justice Lord Judge, Master of the Rolls Lord Neuberger and Lord Justice Sedley has led some commentators to believe the issues around ­science writing and libel are suddenly being taken very seriously indeed in ­legal circles. Many hope that the judges' ruling, when it comes, will loosen what they argue are draconian restrictions on freedom of speech.

Singh is still in the early stages of the libel suit, fighting over the meaning of the words he used about the BCA, whom he accused of supporting "bogus" treatments for children. Mr Justice Eady, in a preliminary ruling that ­provoked a storm of protest, ruled that what Singh wrote was fact, not comment, and that to justify it, he would have to prove the association's members were dishonest. Singh says he never ­intended that ­interpretation. The big guns in the court of appeal must now decide whether Eady's interpretation should stand.

Amid all the outrage over the use of superinjunctions by companies such as Trafigura to try to prevent media and even parliamentary discussion of ­attempted legal gags, attention has turned to attempts to silence ­scientists. Singh is by no means waging a lone battle.

In October 2007 in Washington DC, a heart expert from Shropshire had an earnest conversation with a reporter from the little-known US medical website Heartwire. The reporter, Shelley Wood, could see that if what Dr Peter Wilmshurst was saying was true, she had an important story on her hands. Wilmshurst had designed a trial for a Delaware-based company called NMT Medical, to find out whether closing small holes in the heart using their ­device would stop people suffering from migraine headaches. But the UK trial, christened Mist 1, was a failure: the migraines did not go away – and Wilmshurst, who was strongly critical of the conduct of the research, had a theory as to why.

He suggested that the problem might be not with the concept but the device itself. Although it had been ­implanted in tens of thousands of ­people, it was possibly not as effective in closing holes as had been thought. Two years later, he is facing a libel ­action in the English courts brought by the device manufacturer, NMT Medical, that could lose him his home.

Wilmshurst, who has a history of whistle-blowing, is the sort of doctor who will never back down. He says he believes NMT has "got themselves in out of their depth. I don't have any money. I have got half a house and no other money." The campaigning group Healthwatch has started a fund to pay his legal costs. "It is an important issue," Wilmshurst says. "The English high court is being used to silence people. I gave a lecture in America that was picked up by a medical journalist there, and she put something on a website. Yet the website and the journalist are not being sued."

NMT Medical denies it is sueing in England because of the tough UK libel laws: "This case is not about libel ­tourism at all," says its chief operating officer, Rick Davis. "Our suit was not brought in any way because of any ­scientific views that Dr Wilmshurst holds. He has accused NMT of research fraud, and we believe he did that maliciously."

For Wilmshurst, this is not just a question of freedom of speech, but public access to information. He is ­angry that he and a colleague working with him at the Royal Shrewsbury ­hospital were not allowed to see the detailed "line" data (as opposed to summaries) to work out why the trial failed to alleviate migraine. "These things are important; we learn from what we publish. Someone else may come along and design a study that is flawed because they haven't been given the full information from other studies, and it may put patients at risk."

Many of the scientific libel cases are in the medical field – probably because of the strong passions the needs of ­patients evoke, and the big money to be made from new treatments. And while Wilmshurst went beyond the normal academic cut-and-thrust of weighing and debating evidence with other scientists, the Liberal Democrat MP Evan Harris says libel blight is now threatening even scientists who merely publish the results of their investigations in respected (and peer-reviewed) ­scientific journals.

These journals offer rights of reply, discussion columns and have corrections policies. They have high standards of proof and are held in high regard within the scientific and academic world. And yet, say many of their editors, they too feel direct or insidious pressure from corporations and groups with vested interests not to publish papers that might prove damaging. "It is what is not published or has to be omitted ­because of a lawyer's letter," Harris says. "I support Peter Wilmshurst and the many other cases currently being fought, but the biggest problem has ­always been the stuff that doesn't even get published because of the fear."

Harris says peer-reviewed journals should have an automatic public interest defence if they are accused of libel, or should enjoy some sort of qualified privilege. After all, scientists have ­always played a critical role in the monitoring of complex technological and medical advances. Fifty years ago, it was a whistle-blowing scientist, Frances Kelsey, who stood up to ­pressure from the manufacturer of Thalidomide and ­refused to approve a licence for the drug in the US. She wanted more proof that it would not harm the foetus, and was proved horribly right in her suspicions when hundreds of ­deformed babies began to be born in Europe. Today's embattled scientist may be tomorrow's hero.

Another case currently arousing concern involves Swedish linguistic and phonetics experts ­Francisco ­Lacerda and Anders Erikkson, who in 2007 wrote a paper criticising the ­technology used in lie detectors. ­Published in the UK by the highly ­specialised, peer-reviewed International Journal of Speech, Language and the Law (IJSLL), they alleged that, ­scientifically, the "layered voice ­analysis" technology in lie detectors currently being trialled by UK local ­authorities trying to catch benefit cheats is "at the astrology end of the spectrum".

Lacerda and Erikkson are not being sued by the Israeli manufacturer, Nemesysco. Swedish law would not ­allow them to be sued in Sweden, but the British publishers of the paper, Equinox, withdrew it ­under the threat of a libel suit in the English courts. Janet Joyce, managing ­director of the IJSLL, preferred not to talk about the crisis, saying she had "decided not to revisit that dreadful experience again". But Lacerda was a lot more forthcoming. "We thought it was in our mission as scientists to ­disclose this type of thing – to explain why it can't work," he said.

They included a direct ­attack on the company and the ­credentials of the ­inventor of the ­technology, Amir ­Liberman. Lacerda admits it was "a little bit on the edge for a scientific paper", which had the take-no-prisoners title, Charlatanry in Speech Science: A Problem to Be Taken Seriously. Nonetheless, support for Lacerda and Erikkson has been vocal, particularly in Sweden where the law is more liberal than in the UK. In May, the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences stated: "Incidents of this kind are a threat to research freedom and, by extension, to the free dissemination of information in society. Threats to sue must not be used to restrict scientific discussion."

Liberman, the device's inventor, takes a different view. He tells me he would not have resorted to law if ­Lacerda and Erikkson had stuck to ­science. "Now," he says bitterly, "if you research my name on the internet, after the first few items you find I'm a charlatan. What a great legacy for my kids."

Ironically, his legal action has brought the Swedish paper far more attention than if he had never threatened to sue. But Liberman assures me that, according to the English legal ­system, there is a clear case of defamation. "We can certainly press charges. Scientists should be more ­concerned about the way they treat others: their word is taken at more than face value because they are scientists."

This is precisely why libel reform campaigners such as Index on Censorship and the Libel Reform Campaign – which counts writers, artists and entertainers among its supporters, from Jonathan Ross to novelist Monica Ali to comedians Stephen Fry and Shazia Mirza – wish to take up the cases of ­scientists. And the publicity the cause has been attracting may already be forcing companies to think twice.

Last week, GE Healthcare dropped its libel suit against Henrik Thomsen, a Danish radiologist at Copenhagen University who had publicly linked one of its drugs to a chronically disabling condition, saying that it did not mean to stifle academic debate.

Thomsen had given a presentation to a small group of doctors and scientists at the Randolph hotel in Oxford in 2007. He was anxious to warn them of the potential dangers of a drug called Omniscan, given routinely to kidney patients to enhance MRI scans and make them easier to read. Twenty ­patients at his university hospital had developed nephrogenic systemic ­fibrosis (NSF), a condition in which the skin swells and tightens. Some ended up in wheelchairs as a result, and one died. Thomsen and his colleagues ­believed the drug, which contained a toxic metal called gadolinium, was directly linked to the incapacitating ­illness of their patients.

In an agreed statement last week, he reiterated his view that Omniscan was to blame. "I stand by my publicly ­expressed opinion, based on my ­experience and research on published papers, that there is an association ­between the chemical formulation of gadolinium-based contrast agents and NSF," he said. But Thomsen added he had never intended to suggest GE Healthcare had marketed the drug knowing it might cause NSF. This, said the company, was the reason for the ­libel suit. "GE Healthcare objected to statements made by Professor Thomsen which it interpreted as suggesting it had known from the outset that ­Omniscan caused NSF," the company said, while welcoming "a principled debate" over safety issues.

Thomsen will be much relieved. The cost and the time libel actions take make them prohibitive for most people. Singh has already spent well over £100,000 on his own defence, and the bestselling science writer and broadcaster admits he is better able to afford it than most people.

The costs of libel cases regularly reach hundreds of thousands of pounds – often far exceeding the payouts. "A libel ­tribunal would be one solution," Singh suggests. "And that goes for both sides. If the BCA lose this case, it is going to be horrific for them. If people want to sue for libel, that's fine, but it shouldn't be so traumatic or expensive."

Padraig Reidy, of Index on Censorship, agrees there is a need for defamation laws: "Special pleading for medical and science writing is neither desirable nor implementable," he says. But in his view, medical and science writers would be sufficiently protected if the UK was to introduce a stronger public interest defence – one strand of a 10-point strategy that Index and other libel reform groups are proposing.

"The case of Peter Wilmshurst presents a perfect storm of the problems with England's libel laws," Reidy says. Wilmshurst is "a man being sued for a quote published on a website that should be outside English jurisdiction, by a company very few people had ever heard of, who now says he could be ruined for speaking out in the public interest as he saw it".

The Libel Reform Campaign appears to be making headway. Its leaders are in discussions with the Ministry of ­Justice (Jack Straw has set up a working party), and the House of Commons ­culture, media and sport select ­committee has just proposed measures to limit libel tourism, boost the public-interest defence, cut costs and require corporations that sue individuals to prove actual damage to business.

Any changes will come too late for Singh, Wilmshurst and others with cases already lumbering along – but ­scientists of the future may find it a ­little easier to speak their minds.

Source: Science news, comment and analysis | guardian.co.uk | 25 Feb 2010 | 12:00 pm

Oceans' Tiniest Bubbles Detected

These microscopic bubbles could help researchers unravel some of the biggest mysteries in oceanography.
Source: Discovery News - Top Stories | 25 Feb 2010 | 11:50 am

Solar Panel Productivity Boosted by Origami

Solar panels nowadays are flat, but folding them in origami-like ways could help dramatically boost the amount of power they could generate.
Source: Livescience.com | 25 Feb 2010 | 10:36 am

Wild killer whales rarely attack humans

Sailors coined name of largest dolphin species after seeing them prey on whales

KIller whales, one of which killed its trainer in Florida yesterday, are the largest species of the dolphin family. There are up to five types of killer whale, which range across the world's oceans.

Their fearsome name is thought to have been coined by sailors who witnessed them hunting other whales. Depending on type, killer whales can prey on fish, squid, birds and marine mammals such as seals.

They have also attacked swimming deer and moose. In 1997, a boatload of tourists west of San Francisco saw a killer whale defeat a great white shark.

Up to eight metres long and weighing more than six tonnes, killer whales can swim at 30mph – and often kill prey by butting them at speed. Although equipped with fearsome teeth, they prefer to stun before they kill and can throw seals into the air and lash them with their tails.

Killer whales in Pacific coastal waters, uniquely among mammals, never leave their mother's side. Females can live for 90 years in the wild, and some family groups comprise four generations.

Attacks on humans by wild killer whales are rare and are usually blamed on the animals mistaking people for prey. Attacks on wild killer whales by humans were, until recently, far more common and governments encouraged their shooting because of the competition for fish.

Killer whales in captivity seem more of a threat, and there have been a reported two dozen or so attacks on handlers or pool intruders since the 1970s.

Source: Science news, comment and analysis | guardian.co.uk | 25 Feb 2010 | 10:15 am

Solar Panel Productivity Boosted by Origami

Solar panels nowadays are flat, but folding them in origami-like ways could help dramatically boost the amount of power they could generate.
Source: Livescience.com | 25 Feb 2010 | 10:11 am

Fish Use UV Light to Distinguish Faces

Some fish can distinguish between different species using UV patterns on their faces.
Source: Livescience.com | 25 Feb 2010 | 10:08 am

Promiscuous Female Flies Save Their Population

Promiscuous female files may help save their populations from extinction, a new study suggests.
Source: Livescience.com | 25 Feb 2010 | 10:03 am

Tip-of-the-Tongue Moments Explained

Have you ever had a 'tip of the tongue' memory lapse? Scientists are studying what causes this momentary forgetfulness.
Source: Livescience.com | 25 Feb 2010 | 9:45 am

Travel Light and Stay Connected

Technology can keep you entertained, connected even when on the road.
Source: Livescience.com | 25 Feb 2010 | 8:59 am

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 | 25 Feb 2010 | 8:22 am

The mutiny at RichardDawkins.Net | Andrew Brown

You need a rhino's hide to deal with with the angry atheists on Richard Dawkins' site

Oh dear: prayers are asked for the Richard Dawkins web site, which has become the focus of an extraordinary outpouring of bile, not from Christians, but from disaffected atheists. An adjustment to the software that runs the discussion site provoked such frenzied hostility among some users that all new comments have now been stopped until the new system is in place and some of the most hostile have had their accounts removed.

Dawkins himself posted on the front page of his site a defence of the site manager responsible:

"Imagine that you, as a greatly liked and respected person, found yourself overnight subjected to personal vilification on an unprecedented scale, from anonymous commenters on a website. Suppose you found yourself described as an "utter twat" a "suppurating rectum. A suppurating rat's rectum. A suppurating rat's rectum inside a dead skunk that's been shoved up a week-old dead rhino's twat.

Surely there has to be something wrong with people who can resort to such over-the-top language, over-reacting so spectacularly to something so trivial. Even some of those with more temperate language are responding to the proposed changes in a way that is little short of hysterical. Was there ever such conservatism, such reactionary aversion to change, such vicious language in defence of a comfortable status quo? What is the underlying agenda of these people? How can anybody feel that strongly about something so small? Have we stumbled on some dark, territorial atavism? Have private fiefdoms been unwittingly trampled?

Be that as it may, what this remarkable bile suggests to me is that there is something rotten in the Internet culture that can vent it."

The most hysterical stuff has been removed from the Dawkins site, along with all the postings of the most serious offenders, but there is a flavour of it can be found in the long despairing ululations here: although almost all the posters find it impossible to believe that Dawkins himself would approve of a measure that they find distasteful. They blame his underlings for the decision to downgrade the discussion forums and channel all discussion through the front page.

To anyone who has been on the receiving end of this kind of abuse, which is sometimes directed at people who do not work for Richard Dawkins, this conversion of the professor's comes as wonderful news. Hallelujah, brother. You have seen the light!

UPDATE:

The case against Dawkins, from his users, is being put in comments here. The real anger came from the summary dismissal of the (unpaid) moderators in an email from the site administrator who was later the subject of the abuse quoted above:

"We ask that you don't add to our work by causing trouble.

We will not be migrating moderator roles to the new discussion site. Again, we're sure this might come as a shock, and we hope you don't take it personally. We can't thank you enough for your contributions to the old forum."

As one of the former users wrote:

"imagine that you spent dozens of hours and millions of words on a project, for free, because you cared about it, and then you are abruptly and insensitively told that you're services are unnecessary, that input from you is equally unwanted and that you're just going to have to shut it and put up with it? Tell me then, would you still support such a project? I don't know about you, but neither I nor the moderators would."

Source: Science news, comment and analysis | guardian.co.uk | 25 Feb 2010 | 8:19 am

How Baby Turtles Get Around

Upon hatching, loggerhead sea turtles must race hundreds of feet to the ocean before they're eaten. Turns out their flippers are adept at moving on loose sand.
Source: Livescience.com | 25 Feb 2010 | 8:18 am

Captive orcas

Why do they kill, and should they be released?
Source: BBC News | Science & Environment | UK Edition | 25 Feb 2010 | 7:00 am

What to do with captive orcas?

Attacks by orcas are rare, but they highlight the tensions between these large marine predators and people.
Source: BBC News | Science & Environment | UK Edition | 25 Feb 2010 | 6:47 am

'People must learn from Haiti tsunami'

The tsunami following January's deadly quake in Haiti was little reported but has implications for future tremor response in the region, say scientists.
Source: BBC News | Science & Environment | UK Edition | 25 Feb 2010 | 6:19 am

Microbes Leave Gold on Corpses, May Complicate Forensics

Bacteria that deposit gold onto the hair of corpses could complicate forensics.
Source: Livescience.com | 25 Feb 2010 | 6:04 am

When animals turn on their trainers

A trainer was killed by a whale yesterday at the SeaWorld theme park in Florida in the latest in a long line of attacks by animals on their trainers

Source: Science news, comment and analysis | guardian.co.uk | 25 Feb 2010 | 5:41 am

University of East Anglia rejects lost climate data claims

Submission ahead of next week's parliamentary inquiry 'strongly rejects' accusations university lost or manipulated climate data

The university at the centre of the row over emails sent by climate scientists today rejected accusations that it had lost or manipulated scientific research.

The University of East Anglia's Climatic Research Unit (CRU) has been under fire since hacked emails, which sceptics claimed showed scientists manipulating climate data, were leaked online last year.

In a submission to parliament's science and technology committee, which is investigating the disclosure of climate data from the unit, the university said it "strongly rejected" accusations that it had manipulated or selected figures to exaggerate global warming.

The university also denied suggestions that it had breached Freedom of Information rules by refusing to release raw data.

And it insisted the CRU had not lost any primary data gathered from monitoring stations around the world.

According to the submission, allegations that scientists hid flaws and research findings were the result of misunderstandings of technical jargon or statistical analysis.

And it said the often-cited email which refers to a "trick" to "hide the decline" in a discussion of temperature measurements had been "richly misinterpreted and quoted out of context".

The submission sets out science-based responses to a number of allegations that researchers attempted to mislead, misrepresent or did not effectively manage the data held at the CRU.

And it said leaked emails expressing doubts about the scientific rigour of research papers by climate sceptics "appear to have been justified" in their concerns.

The University of East Anglia has launched two independent investigations into the controversy. Onewill look at the key allegations prompted by the leaking of the emails and a second review of the climate science produced by the unit.

UEA's vice-chancellor, Professor Edward Acton, said the university was looking forward to the results of the two reviews.

In the submission, he said: "Given that the stakes for humanity are so high in correctly interpreting the evidence of global warming, we would meanwhile urge scientists, academics, journalists and public servants to resist the distortions of hearsay evidence or orchestrated campaigns of misinformation, and instead to encourage open, intelligent debate."

A number of witnesses, including the head of the CRU, Professor Phil Jones, will appear before the committee on Monday.

Source: Science news, comment and analysis | guardian.co.uk | 25 Feb 2010 | 4:53 am

Was ambidexterity the key to Jimi Hendrix's genius?

Guitar hero's 'mixed-handedness' was secret to his genius, argues American psychologist

Was Jimi Hendrix's ambidexterity the secret to his talent? This is the question explored in a new paper by psychologist Stephen Christman (via TwentyFourBit), who argues that Hendrix's versatility informed not just his guitar-playing – but his lyrics too.

According to Christman, who is based at the University of Toledo, Hendrix was not strictly left-handed. Although he played his right-handed guitar upside down, and used his left hand to throw, comb his hair and hold cigarettes, Hendrix wrote, ate and held the telephone with his right hand. He was, Christman argues, "mixed-right-handed". And this "mixed"-ness, signaling better interaction between the left and right hemispheres of the guitarist's brain, suffused every part of his music.

Hendrix's special ability, Christman wrote, "enabled him to integrate the actions of his left and right hands while playing guitar, to integrate the lyrics and melodies of his songs, and perhaps even to integrate the older blues and R&B traditions with the emerging folk, rock, and psychedelic sounds of the 60s". Certainly the guitarist's technical virtuosity is clear. Christman points to Hendrix's technique on songs like Still Raining, Still Dreaming, "where Hendrix uses his right hand to play an intricate series of bends and slides, while his left hand, in between plucking the strings, uses the pickup selector to switch back and forth between the treble and bass pickups".

Many guitarists are left-handed, including Paul McCartney, Mark Knopfler and Kurt Cobain, and Christman argues that great guitarists tend to be relatively ambidextrous. Conversely, many piano and keyboard players are strongly right- or left-handed: they rely on the independence of their two hands, playing separate lines.

Hendrix's mixed-handedness may have affected his songwriting too, bringing together lyrics and melody. "[Because] language and rhythm processing are lateralised to the left side of brain while the processing of melody and harmony is lateralised to the right side, the possibility is raised that mixed-handers may have an advantage in integrating the lyrics and melody in song writing," Christman suggested. "Mixed-handers may be better able to put the 'right' words with the 'right' melody such that the syntactic and emotional aspects of the lyrics are tightly integrated with the phrasing and contour of the melody line." Hendrix's speak-singing vocal style may also be tied to his inter-hemispheral quirk: whereas talking is governed by the left brain, singing is linked to the right.

From there, things get even more fanciful. Mixed-handed people are "magical thinkers," Christman argues, keen on mysticism and psychedelia. They apparently have "an increased tolerance of ambiguity", demonstrated in Hendrix's androgyny, his mixture of flamboyance and gravitas. And even Hendrix's favourite chord reflects his neural set-up: Dominant 7#9 is neither clearly major nor clearly minor. It is, one might say, even-handed.

Then again, if mixed-handedness were the cause of Hendrix's talent – and not, as Christman writes, just one contributing factor – the world would be a more virtuosic place. Half of humankind is reportedly mixed-handed, and most of us have never written a song as good as Voodoo Chile.

Source: Science news, comment and analysis | guardian.co.uk | 25 Feb 2010 | 4:33 am

Flaming hot

What does the fastest driver on Earth wear?
Source: BBC News | Science & Environment | UK Edition | 25 Feb 2010 | 3:59 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