MRI: Non-invasive diagnostic tool for diagnosing testicular cancer

Researchers have found that non-invasive magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) is a good diagnostic tool for the evaluation and staging of testicular cancer and may improve patient care by sparing some men unnecessary surgery.
Source: ScienceDaily: Latest Science News | 2 Mar 2010 | 12:00 pm

Glue, fly, glue: Caddisflies' underwater silk adhesive might suture wounds

Like silkworm moths, butterflies and spiders, caddisfly larvae spin silk, but they do so underwater instead on dry land. Now, researchers have discovered why the fly's silk is sticky when wet and how that may make it valuable as an adhesive tape during surgery.
Source: ScienceDaily: Latest Science News | 2 Mar 2010 | 12:00 pm

Some parents weigh 'hastening death' for children in extreme pain with terminal cancer

A survey of parents who had a child die of cancer found one in eight considered hastening their child's death, a deliberation influenced by the amount of pain the child experienced during the last month of life, researchers report. The study suggests that many parents worry that their children will suffer from uncontrollable pain. The researchers say the findings underscore the importance of managing patients' suffering and communicating with parents about pain management options.
Source: ScienceDaily: Latest Science News | 2 Mar 2010 | 12:00 pm

El Niño and a pathogen, not global warming, killed Costa Rican toad

Scientists broadly agree that global warming may threaten the survival of many plant and animal species; but global warming did not kill the Monteverde golden toad, an often cited example of climate-triggered extinction, says a new study.
Source: ScienceDaily: Latest Science News | 2 Mar 2010 | 12:00 pm

Antifreeze proteins can stop ice melt, new study finds

The same antifreeze proteins that keep organisms from freezing in cold environments also can prevent ice from melting at warmer temperatures, according to a new study.
Source: ScienceDaily: Latest Science News | 2 Mar 2010 | 12:00 pm

Mosquitoes -- not birds -- may have carried West Nile virus across U.S.

Mosquitoes -- not birds as suspected-- -- may have a played a primary role in spreading West Nile virus westward across the United States, according to new research. The study is among the first to examine the role of mosquitoes in the dispersion of West Nile virus across the U.S.
Source: ScienceDaily: Latest Science News | 2 Mar 2010 | 12:00 pm

Age-associated defects in schizophrenia: Gene network-based analysis reveals unexpected results

The underlying causes of the debilitating psychiatric disorder schizophrenia remain poorly understood. In a new study, however, scientists report that a powerful gene network analysis has revealed surprising new insights into how gene regulation and age play a role in schizophrenia.
Source: ScienceDaily: Latest Science News | 2 Mar 2010 | 9:00 am

Pandemic flu, like seasonal H1N1, shows signs of resisting Tamiflu

If the behavior of the seasonal form of the H1N1 influenza virus is any indication, scientists say that chances are good that most strains of the pandemic H1N1 flu virus will become resistant to Tamiflu, the main drug stockpiled for use against it. Researchers have traced the evolutionary history of the seasonal H1N1 influenza virus, which first infected humans during the 1918 pandemic. It is one of three seasonal influenza A viruses that commonly infect humans. The others are H1N2 and H3N2.
Source: ScienceDaily: Latest Science News | 2 Mar 2010 | 9:00 am

'Anaconda' meets 'Jurassic Park': Fossil snake from India fed on hatchling dinosaurs

Sixty-seven million years ago, when dinosaur hatchlings first scrambled out of their eggs, their first -- and last -- glimpse of the world might have been the open jaws of a 3.5-meter-long snake named Sanajeh indicus, based on the discovery in India of a nearly complete fossilized skeleton of a primitive snake coiled inside a dinosaur nest.
Source: ScienceDaily: Latest Science News | 2 Mar 2010 | 9:00 am

Kidney damage in 12 percent of Chinese children exposed to melamine-contaminated dairy products

While the majority of children who were affected by consuming toxic melamine-contaminated products in China recovered, kidney abnormalities remained in 12 percent of the affected children, according to a new article.
Source: ScienceDaily: Latest Science News | 2 Mar 2010 | 9:00 am

Supercharged swifts fly fastest

A common swift has taken the title as the fasted bird recorded in level flight, say scientists.
Source: BBC News | Science & Environment | UK Edition | 2 Mar 2010 | 2:22 am

Scientists urge rethink on "narrow" health goals

LONDON (Reuters) - Families in some poor nations are trapped in cycles of illness and poverty as authorities fail to tackle chronic health problems or meet goals on child health and tuberculosis, scientists said on Tuesday.
Source: Reuters: Science News | 2 Mar 2010 | 2:16 am

Indonesian-Australian carbon project in Sumatra (AFP)

AFP - Indonesia and Australia announced on Tuesday a multi-million dollar initiative to reduce greenhouse gas emissions from deforestation and forest degradation on the Indonesian island of Sumatra.

Source: Yahoo! News: Science News | 2 Mar 2010 | 1:52 am

Japan pushes to scrap commercial whaling ban (AFP)

AFP - Japan pushed Tuesday to lift a 24-year-old ban on commercial whaling, setting up a clash at talks in Florida with implacable foes opposed to its pursuit of the giant mammals.

Source: Yahoo! News: Science News | 2 Mar 2010 | 1:42 am

Fossil of dinosaur-eating snake found

Prehistoric snake discovered in India was three metres long and preyed on baby sauropods

Even dinosaurs may have been afraid of snakes, a discovery suggests. Scientists have unearthed the almost complete fossil skeleton of a prehistoric snake that preyed on baby dinosaurs. The creature, which was three metres long, was "caught in the act" of pursuing a meal 67m years ago.

Its body was found in a dinosaur nest coiled around a hatched and crushed egg, and next to it was a 50cm fossil hatchling titanosaur – a small version of a plant-eating giant that as an adult weighed up to 100 tonnes. The remains of two other snakes were also found paired with eggs at the same site in Gujarat, western India.

The snake, named Sanajeh indicus, lacked the wide-open jaws of modern snakes such as pythons and boa constrictors and would not have been able to swallow a whole dinosaur egg. But baby dinosaurs would have been just the right size, according to researchers.

Dr Jason Head, from the University of Toronto in Canada, who led a study of the snake reported today in the online journal PLoS One, said: "Living primitive snakes are small animals whose diet is limited by their jaw size, but the evolution of a large body size in Sanajeh would have allowed it to eat a wide range of prey, including dinosaur hatchlings.

"This is the first direct evidence of feeding behaviour in a fossil primitive snake, and shows us that the ecology and early evolutionary history of snakes were much more complex than we would think just by looking at modern snakes today."

The fossils were uncovered in 1987 by dinosaur egg expert Dr Dhananjay Mohabey, of the Geological Survey of India. At first they were identified as the remains of a hatchling dinosaur. It was not until 2001 that palaeontologist Dr Jeff Wilson, from the University of Michigan, spotted the bone patterns of a snake.

"I saw the characteristic vertebrae of a snake beside the dinosaur eggshell and larger bones, and I knew it was an extraordinary specimen, even if I couldn't put the whole story together at that point," said Wilson. More experts were brought in, and years of further research and field trips followed.

The titanosaur eggs were laid in loose sand. Scientists believe the hatchling had just emerged from its egg when the snake struck, attracted by its movements. Predator and prey are believed to have been rapidly buried and preserved in sand and mud, possibly as a result of a storm.

Titanosaurs were among the last surviving members of a group of four-footed, long-necked plant eaters known as sauropods, which included the biggest land animals that ever lived. Like other dinosaurs, they are thought to have grown to a large size quickly after hatching. Until then, they would have been highly vulnerable to predators such as Sanajeh indicus.

"It would have been a smorgasbord," said Head. "Hundreds or thousands of defenceless baby sauropods could have supported an ecosystem of predators during the hatching season."

Source: Science news, comment and analysis | guardian.co.uk | 2 Mar 2010 | 1:36 am

The nation's weather (AP)

AP - Wet weather was forecast to persist in the South on Tuesday, while snow was expected to diminish over the Northeast.

Source: Yahoo! News: Science News | 2 Mar 2010 | 1:24 am

Get it off your chest

Who'd have thought it? New research shows there is a link between being politically active and wellbeing

Marching in the drizzle against wars in far-off countries, writing letters protesting the government's latest reactionary policy, sitting through interminable meetings that keep sprouting Any Other Business. It may be noble, but political activism is hardly a barrel of laughs. And yet it makes you happier.

So find two university psychologists in new research that looks for the first time at the link between political activity and wellbeing. Malte Klar and Tim Kasser started by interviewing two sets of around 350 college students, both about their degree of political engagement and their levels of happiness and optimism. Both times, they found that those most inclined to go on a demo were also the cheeriest.

So there's a link – but can politics actually make a person happier? In the third study, the academics took a bunch of students and divided them up into groups. The first were encouraged to write to the management of the college cafeteria asking for tastier food. The next lot wrote asking the cafe to source local or Fairtrade products. They were then tested on their wellbeing, and the group who had involved themselves in the political debate were far and away the strongest on the "vitality" scale: they felt more alive and enriched than those who merely complained about the menu.

There are many fascinating aspects to this . First, the activist-students didn't necessarily care about food ethics, but just taking action made them feel better. Second, sending a memo is hardly the most engaging political action – and yet it had a big impact on those taking it. Third, the study flies in the face of the popular wisdom that happiness resides in creature comforts and relative affluence. Perhaps activism gives people a sense of purpose, or of agency or just a chance to hang out with other people. Most likely it does all of the above.

"I will fight for what I believe in until I drop dead," Barbara Castle told this paper in 1998. "And that's what keeps you alive." Maybe the Red Queen was on to something.

Source: Science news, comment and analysis | guardian.co.uk | 2 Mar 2010 | 1:00 am

British scientist in climate row admits 'awful' emails (AFP)

AFP - A British climate researcher at the centre of a row over global warming science has admitted he wrote some "pretty awful" emails to sceptics when he was refusing their requests for data.

Source: Yahoo! News: Science News | 2 Mar 2010 | 12:21 am

Scientists say tsunami models should be tested (AP)

AP - In the coming months and years, scientists will pore over reams of data from what turned out to be the minuscule tsunami that reached Hawaii on Saturday.

Source: Yahoo! News: Science News | 1 Mar 2010 | 11:49 pm

Chile struggles to keep order in quake-hit city (Reuters)

Reuters - Chilean authorities extended a curfew in the country's second-biggest city on Tuesday as troops struggled to contain worsening looting and crime in the wake of a devastating earthquake.

Source: Yahoo! News: Science News | 1 Mar 2010 | 11:03 pm

Soil bacteria could yield drug to treat roundworm

The natural insecticide Bt treats infections in mice.<img src="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~r/news/rss/today/~4/ishhiEcgOoM" height="1" width="1"/>
Source: NatureNews - All articles published today - nature.com science feeds | 1 Mar 2010 | 11:00 pm

Ice deposits found at Moon's pole

A radar experiment aboard India's Chandrayaan-1 lunar spacecraft detects large deposits of water ice near the Moon's north pole.
Source: BBC News | Science & Environment | UK Edition | 1 Mar 2010 | 10:10 pm

Giant Snake Ate Baby Dinosaurs (LiveScience.com)

LiveScience.com - The last thing hatchling dinosaurs might have seen were giant snakes, researchers say.
Source: Yahoo! News: Science News | 1 Mar 2010 | 8:40 pm

Ancient polar-bear fossil yields genome

Oldest mammalian DNA sequence reveals link to brown bears.
Source: NatureNews - All articles published today - nature.com science feeds | 1 Mar 2010 | 7:23 pm

What lies beneath?

The waters off southwestern Australia are home to some of the most astounding biodiversity on the planet. But less than 1 percent are protected.
Source: Discovery News - Top Stories | 1 Mar 2010 | 7:09 pm

NASA radar finds ice on moon's north pole (AFP)

AFP - A US radar launched into space aboard an Indian spacecraft has detected craters filled with ice on the moon's north pole, NASA scientists said Monday.

Source: Yahoo! News: Science News | 1 Mar 2010 | 6:26 pm

Millions of Tons of Water Ice Found at Moon’s North Pole

A moon probe has found millions of tons of water on the moon’s north pole, NASA reported Monday. The vast source of water could one day be used to generate oxygen or sustain a moon base.

A NASA radar aboard India’s Chandrayaan-I lunar orbiter found 40 craters, ranging in size from 1 to 9 miles across, with pockets of ice. Scientists estimate at least 600 million tons of ice could be entombed in these craters.

The radar, called the Mini-SAR, sends pulses of left-polarized radio waves out to measure the surface roughness of the moon. While smooth surfaces send back a reversed, right-polarized wave, rough areas return left-polarized waves.

Ice, which is transparent to radio waves, also sends back left-polarized waves. The Mini-SAR measures the ratio of left to right circular polarized power sent back, or the circular polarized ratio (CPR). However, a high CPR alone can’t distinguish between rough patches and regions with ice.

The north pole craters had a high CPR on the inside, with a low CPR on the edges. That suggests a material enclosed in the craters, rather than surface roughness, caused the high CPR signal. According to NASA, the ice would have to be relatively pure ice and at least several feet thick to give this signature.

In November, NASA crashed a probe into the Cabeus crater near the moon’s south pole and also found evidence of water.

Image: ISRO/NASA/JHUAPL/LP

See Also:

• Crash Into the Moon With LCROSS Friday Morning
• Lunar Impactor Finds Clear Evidence of Water Ice on Moon
• Moon Mission Accidentally Burns Up Fuel Reserves
• Scrappy Post-Apollo Lunar Science Sets Stage for New Missions …

Follow us on Twitter @tiaghose and @wiredscience, and on Facebook.

Source: Wired: Wired Science | 1 Mar 2010 | 6:24 pm

The labours of Fotis Kafatos

Launching the European Research Council was a Herculean effort, says its outgoing president.
Source: NatureNews - All articles published today - nature.com science feeds | 1 Mar 2010 | 6:21 pm

Dog DNA Diversity Helps Show How Genes Work (LiveScience.com)

LiveScience.com - Dogs are possibly the most varied-looking mammal species on the planet. It's this diversity of looks that make man's best friend the perfect laboratory for connecting sets of genes to particular traits and understanding the molecular mechanisms that govern variation in dogs as well as humans and other mammals.

Source: Yahoo! News: Science News | 1 Mar 2010 | 6:05 pm

Dog DNA Diversity Helps Show How Genes Work

Dog genome studies connect traits to genes, could shed light on human diseases.
Source: Livescience.com | 1 Mar 2010 | 6:01 pm

Giant Snake Ate Baby Dinosaurs

Giant ancient snake fossil is found coiled around a crushed dinosaur egg.
Source: Livescience.com | 1 Mar 2010 | 6:01 pm

67 Million-Year-Old Snake Fossil Found Eating Baby Dinosaurs

Scientists have found a 67 million-year-old fossil of a snake coiled around dinosaur eggs and a hatchling. This is the first evidence of snakes eating dinosaurs.

“It’s a stunning, once-in-a-lifetime find,” said paleontologist Paul Sereno of the University of Chicago, who was not involved in the study. “We’ve caught one of the rarest moments in the fossil record, which is prey and predator, together.”

Geologist Dhanajay Mohabey of the Indian Geological Survey first unearthed the fossil 26 years ago in a rocky, limestone outcropping in the northwestern Indian village of Dholi Dungri. He thought all the bones at the site were those of dinosaur hatchlings.

But in 2001, University of Michigan paleontologist Jeff Wilson, took a second look at the fossils. The team then recognized they had actually found a snake coiled around a broken egg, with a hatchling and two other eggs nearby. The findings appeared Mar. 1 in Public Library of Science Biology.

The newly discovered species of snake, Sanajeh indicus, measures about 11.5 feet long. The hatchlings, part of a group called titanosaurs, measured about a foot and a half long. Titanosaurs were the largest animal to ever walk on land, with adults that could reach up to 100 feet long.

Unlike modern snakes, S. indicus lacked jaw joints that allowed it to open its mouth incredibly wide, so it relied on its large overall body size to prey on the fledgling dinosaurs. Luckily for the snake, the titanosaur hatchlings had soft skeletons that “may have been somewhat collapsible, so you can fold their ribs up a bit and get them in your mouth,” Wilson said.

It’s likely a slow-rising flood or a storm caused adult titanosaurs to flee, abandoning their nests. The snake then slithered into the nest.

Once the babies start hatching, they begin to “pop their leg or arm out. There will be some kind of activity, and the snake is attracted to that. It will coil itself around the egg,” he said. “As soon as it came out of the egg, there’s a snake waiting for it.”

Unluckily for the snake, that moment was frozen in time because a landslide buried the site right then, Wilson said.

The team has found three or four other spots at Dholi Dungri where snake fossils were uncovered near dinosaur eggs, Wilson said.

The findings may offer insight into the origin of snakes. The reptiles first appear in the fossil record around 98 million years ago, Wilson said. But finding such a complete snake fossil is rare, with only a half-dozen well-preserved specimen from this period. “A lot of their early origins are uncertain. More fossils from an early time help put together a picture of snake evolution,” said Wilson.

The fossil find shows some modern animal behavior has very old roots, Sereno said. “Snakes have been at this eating egg-thing for a hundred million years. Before birds fell prey to these things, their ancestors did.”

Images: 1) Reconstruction of scene, Sculpture by Tyler Keillor and original photography by Ximena Erickson (image modified by Bonnie Miljour). 2) Fossil from the site, Wilson et al. 2010, PLoS Biology 3. Schematic, Wilson et al. 2010, PLoS Biology.

Citation: “Predation upon Hatchling Dinosaurs by a New Snake from the Late Cretaceous of India,”/Jeffrey A. Wilson, Dhananjay M. Mohabey, Shanan E. Peters, Jason J. Head/Public Library of Science Biology, Mar. 2010, Vol. 8, Issue 3.

See Also:

• Dinosaur Fossil Reveals True Feather Colors
• Cute New Chameleon Discovered While Being Eaten by Snake
• Stunningly Preserved 165-Million-Year-Old Spider Fossil Found
• Four-Winged Fossil Bridges Bird-Dinosaur Gap

Follow us on Twitter @tiaghose and @wiredscience, and on Facebook.

Source: Wired: Wired Science | 1 Mar 2010 | 6:00 pm

Giant Snake Preyed on Baby Dinosaurs

The huge, Cretaceous Era beast was found coiled inside a dinosaur nest, providing a rare glimpse into the feeding behavior of primitive snakes.
Source: Discovery News - Top Stories | 1 Mar 2010 | 6:00 pm

New scan could nose out criminals

Noses could be an even better method of identification than iris and fingerprint scanning, says a UK study.
Source: BBC News | Science & Environment | UK Edition | 1 Mar 2010 | 5:22 pm

Letters: Paying for the energy of the future

Energy regulator Ofgem has taken action on the issue the National Housing Federation and others raise (Letters, 24 February) about overcharging of pre-payment meter customers. Suppliers face different costs for the range of tariffs and payment methods they offer. But last September Ofgem introduced new rules, meaning any differences have to be reflected by costs. The rules also outlaw any undue price discrimination.

As a result pre-pay meter customers are getting a better deal. On average, they are paying less than customers on quarterly payment (before any discounts for prompt payment). The new rules also make for fairer pricing on the difference in what an electricity supplier charges in areas where it was the former monopoly compared with in the regions where it is competing against others.

The rules are one of the reforms brought in by Ofgem to protect customers following our energy retail market probe. Now the package is in place, we are closely monitoring its progress. If we believe current arrangements and our proposed reforms are insufficient, we will not hesitate to bring forward further measures to protect consumers.

Andrew Wright

Senior partner, Markets, Ofgem

• Like Henry Malt (Letters, 25 February), I too think the best method of obtaining hydrogen for taxis and other vehicles would by electrolysing water. However, the obvious energy source has to be wind turbines, not nuclear. Hydrogen generation does not need to be carried out constantly, but reserves could be built up when wind conditions are right, to be drawn on when they are not.

Barry Marsden

Burnham, Buckinghamshire

• £20,000 covering your roof with PV-panels and a small electrolysis plant should supply enough hydrogen, with some left over to run the central heating.

Bill Kembery

Blackburn, Lancashire

Source: Science news, comment and analysis | guardian.co.uk | 1 Mar 2010 | 5:05 pm

Tons of Water Ice Found on the Moon's North Pole (SPACE.com)

SPACE.com - Vast pockets of water ice numbering in the millions of tons have been discovered at the north pole of the moon, opening up another region of the lunar surface for potential exploration by astronauts and unmanned probes, NASA announced Monday.
Source: Yahoo! News: Science News | 1 Mar 2010 | 5:00 pm

Titanic, Lusitania Survival Just a Matter of Time

Are women and children really first? Depends on how quickly the ship is going down.
Source: Discovery News - Top Stories | 1 Mar 2010 | 4:26 pm

Sustainable Energy bets on Ontario solar market

VANCOUVER (Reuters) - Sustainable Energy Technologies Ltd, a solar equipment maker that recently relocated to Toronto from Calgary, may soon land its first large-scale orders in its new home province, the world's newest "go-to" region for solar power.
Source: Reuters: Science News | 1 Mar 2010 | 3:23 pm

Air Pollution Slows Down Women Marathoners

Dirty air could hinder the performance of women in marathons.
Source: Livescience.com | 1 Mar 2010 | 3:06 pm

Stone Age Engravings Found on Ostrich Shells

Long before human communication evolved into incessant tapping on computer keys, people scratched on eggshells.

Don’t laugh—researchers say a cache of ostrich eggshells engraved with geometric designs demonstrates the existence of a symbolic communication system around 60,000 years ago among African hunter-gatherers.

The unusually large sample of 270 engraved eggshell fragments, mostly excavated over the past several years at Diepkloof Rock Shelter in South Africa, displays two standard design patterns, according to a team led by archaeologist Pierre-Jean Texier of the University of Bordeaux 1 in Talence, France. Each pattern enjoyed its own heyday between approximately 65,000 and 55,000 years ago, the investigators report in a paper to be published this week in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.

Researchers already knew that the Howiesons Poort culture, which engraved the eggshells, engaged in other symbolic practices, such as engraving designs into pieces of pigment, that were considered to have been crucial advances in human behavioral evolution. But the Diepkloof finds represent the first archaeological sample large enough to demonstrate that Stone Age people created design traditions, at least in their engravings, Texier says.

Evidence of intentionally produced holes in several Diepkloof eggshells indicates that ancient people made what amounted to canteens out of them, a practice that researchers have documented among modern hunter-gatherers in southern Africa.

The engraved patterns probably identified the eggshells as the property of certain groups or communities, Texier proposes.

“The Diepkloof engravings were clearly made for visual display and recognized as such by a large audience comprising members of a community, and probably members of related communities,” comments University of Bordeaux 1 archaeologist Francesco d’Errico, who was not involved in the new study.

D’Errico participated in the recent unearthing of 13 pieces of engraved pigment at South Africa’s Blombos Cave dating to between 100,000 and 75,000 years ago. Along with perforated sea shells and other personal ornaments previously excavated in Africa and the Middle East, these discoveries show that items holding symbolic meaning were made more than 60,000 years ago by both modern humans and Neandertals.

Even more exciting, according to archaeologist Curtis Marean of Arizona State University in Tempe, is the presence of drinking spouts in the South African eggshells. Water containers opened a new world of travel across arid regions for ancient people, he notes.

“The ability to carry and store water is a breakthrough technological advance, and here we have excellent evidence for it very early,” Marean says. “Wow!”

Eggshell fragments from the oldest sediment layers at Diepkloof display a hatched-band motif. These engravings consist of two long, parallel lines intersected by varying numbers of short lines. Some specimens contain one hatched band, while others display remnants of two or three. Engravers always fashioned parallel lines first and then inserted regularly spaced intersecting lines, Texier says.

Eggshells from younger soil layers at Diepkloof contain patterns consisting of deeply engraved, parallel lines that sometimes converge or intersect. One eggshell fragment from these layers exhibits a different pattern—slightly curved horizontal lines that cross a central, vertical line.

Of the many Howiesons Poort sites in southern Africa that have yielded ostrich eggshells, only Diepkloof shows evidence of stylistic engraving traditions, Texier says.

Image: Pierre-Jean Texier, Diepkloof project.

See Also:

• Evidence of Modern Smarts in Stone Age Superglue
• Hominids Went Out of Africa on Rafts
• Altruism’s Bloody Roots
• Saharan Snapshot of Stone Age Life

Source: Wired: Wired Science | 1 Mar 2010 | 2:37 pm

Stalking the Terrible Xynthia

With winds up to 100 miles an hour in places, Xynthia, the weekend storm that drowned scores of western Europeans in their houses, must have felt like a hurricane on the ground. In the air aloft, what satellite imagery shows ...
Source: Discovery News - Top Stories | 1 Mar 2010 | 2:28 pm

TV Takes Toll on Parent-Teen Relationships

Teens who spend too much time watching TV are more likely to have poor quality relationships with their parents and friends, a new study says.
Source: Livescience.com | 1 Mar 2010 | 2:04 pm

New Class of Variable Star Discovered

Harvard-Smithsonian astronomers who are currently digitizing and analyzing 100 years of photographic plates of the night's sky have made their first discovery: a new class of extreme variable star.
Source: Discovery News - Top Stories | 1 Mar 2010 | 1:59 pm

Backpack Hydroelectric Plant Gives You 500 Watts on the Move

A human-portable hydroelectric generator that weighs about 30 pounds and generates 500 watts of power may soon be a new option for off-grid power.

Developed by Bourne Energy of Mailbu, California, the Backpack Power Plant can create clean, quiet power from any stream deeper than 4 feet.

The company showed off its more-rugged, militarized version of the Backpack Power Plant at the Cleantech Forum in San Francisco last week. Bourne Energy CEO Chris Catlin estimates the system will cost $3,000 after it goes into production.

“The BPP-2, which operates silently with no heat or exhaust emissions, is 40 percent less visible during operation and can also be bottom mounted to be totally invisible,” the company maintains.

Off-grid solar cells are also quiet, but they don’t make much power relative to the mini-turbine. For example, one commercially available foldable solar panel measures about 12 square feet and produces 62 watts of peak power. You’d need 60 square feet of panels to get the same peak power as the BPP-2, and the panels would only generate electricity while the sun was shining.

To install the civilian BPP, you would dig two trenches on opposite sides of a river and insert a lightweight anchor into each. Then, you’d run a synthetic rope between the anchors and the BPP. Catlin said his company designed the system to work like the high-tension mooring systems that hold up floating oil rigs.

The military version of the BPP has been designed to work with a variety of flow rates. The civilian version was designed to function best in streams moving at 2.3 meters (7.5 feet) per second.

The civilian market for a $3,000 mini hydro system might not be huge in the industrialized world, but Catlin hopes the plant will find willing customers in developing nations and the military.

“This can bring a cheap, highly portable energy technology to remote areas and remote villages,” Catlin told Wired.com.

Bourne is currently looking for $4 million in venture capital to take the BPP from prototype to production.

Photo courtesy Bourne Energy

See Also:

• Nation’s First ‘Underwater Wind Turbine’ Installed in Old Man River
• Tapping the Vortex for Green Energy
• 5 Huge Green-Tech Projects in the Developing World

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

Source: Wired: Wired Science | 1 Mar 2010 | 1:57 pm

Common weedkiller turns male frogs into females

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Atrazine, one of the most commonly used and controversial weedkillers, can turn male frogs into females, researchers reported on Monday.
Source: Reuters: Science News | 1 Mar 2010 | 1:43 pm

Why was the Chilean Tsunami so Small?

For the people of the Juan Fernandez Islands and the coastal town of Talcahuano in Chile, Saturday morning's tsunami certainly didn't feel small. On the heels of a titanic magnitude 8.8 earthquake, surges of ocean water over 7 feet high ...
Source: Discovery News - Top Stories | 1 Mar 2010 | 1:24 pm

Online News More Popular Than Newspaper

The Internet has turned daily news into a social experience and has become a more popular way for Americans to get news than the local newspaper or news radio.
Source: Livescience.com | 1 Mar 2010 | 1:07 pm

Pesticide Turns Male Frogs into Females

The pesticide atrazine can turn male frogs into females that are able to mate and successfully reproduce
Source: Livescience.com | 1 Mar 2010 | 1:04 pm

Titanic vs. Lusitania: Time Determined Who Survived

Examining the Titanic and the Lusitania shipwrecks, researchers found the longer passengers had to react, the more likely they were to follow social mores. The less time, the more selfishly passengers behaved.
Source: Livescience.com | 1 Mar 2010 | 1:02 pm

MPs quiz 'climategate' scientist

The climate scientist at the centre of the row over stolen e-mails faces his first public questioning.
Source: BBC News | Science & Environment | UK Edition | 1 Mar 2010 | 12:31 pm

Coping With Climate Science Haters

If you are a regular reader of Discovery News' Earth page, you have probably seen some of the ugly exchanges that take place in the comments sections of blog posts or news story that attempt to cover the facts of ...
Source: Discovery News - Top Stories | 1 Mar 2010 | 12:29 pm

DNA Analysis Shows Polar Bears Have Adapted Quickly in the Past

Genetic analysis of an ancient polar bear fossil has formally dated the species’ birth to 150,000 years ago, shortly before an Ice Age thaw produced a climate comparable to what’s expected in a globally warmed future.

“They’ve certainly experienced climate changes before,” said Charlotte Lindqvist, a biologist at the State University of New York at Buffalo and co-author of the analysis, published March 1 in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. “The big question is whether they’re going to be able to survive in the future.”

Polar bears have become an icon of climate change concerns, with environmentalists and many researchers predicting their imminent doom. The bears spend their summers hunting seals on fast-dwindling Arctic sea ice. As the ice melts, the bears starve.

According to a 2007 United States Geological Survey review, two-thirds of all polar bears will likely vanish [pdf] by the mid-21st century. An international consortium of arctic researchers has said that “the survival of polar bears as a species is difficult to envisage” [pdf] if summer sea ice is lost. That may happen within several decades.

However, critics of those conclusions say polar bears may prove more adaptable than expected.

In 2007, University of Iceland geologist Ólafur Ingólfsson, co-author on the new study, found a fossilized polar bear jawbone on the Arctic Ocean island of Svalbard. He estimated its age at between 110,000 and 130,000 years. Until then, the species was thought to be about 90,000 years old. The new estimate meant they’d survived the Eemian, a period of globally high temperatures that started 130,000 years ago, ending the next-to-last Ice Age, and lasted for 15,000 years until the last Ice Age began. Earth scientists consider the Eemian a preview of climate changes expected in the next few centuries.

In the recent study, Ingólfsson and Lindqvist compared DNA extracted from the fossil’s mitochondria — cell structures that float outside the nucleus and have their own genetic material — with mitochondrial DNA from modern polar bears and brown bears, their closest relative. They used the amount of genetic change that occurred over the last 130,000 years to calculate the genetic mutation rate and then extrapolated the same rate back in time. The result suggests the two species split around 150,000 years ago.

Structural evidence and dietary mineral traces from the jawbone show that 20,000 years after the split, the animal was already as big as a modern polar bear, ate a similar diet rich in marine mammals, and lived in similar regions. The new findings imply these adaptations took place in a relatively short time.

If the species changed so dramatically once, perhaps it might change so dramatically again. But Lindqvist warned against drawing premature conclusions.

“In evolutionary terms, they adapted in a short period of time to the specialized species they are today. But I’m talking tens of thousands of years, not decades,” she said.

Rather than physically changing, she expects polar bears to gather in the last few hospitable places on Earth. Such regions likely provided refuge during the Eemian, said Lindqvist.

Image:Steve Hillenbrand/USFWS

See Also:

• Melting Arctic Prompts Calls for ‘National Park’ on Ice
• Welcome to Svalbard, Here’s Your Bird-Defense Stick
• March of Penguins Turning Into Trail of Tears
• Last-Ditch Resort: Move Polar Bears to Antarctica?

Citation: “Complete mitochondrial genome of a Pleistocene jawbone unveils the origin of polar bear,” by Charlotte Lindqvist, Stephan Schuster, Yazhou Sun, Sandra Talbot, Ji Qi, Aakrosh Ratan, Lynn Tomsho, Lindsay Kasson, Eve Zeyl, Jon Aars, Webb Miller, Ólafur Ingólfsson, Lutz Bachmann, and Øystein Wiigd. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, Vol. 107 No. 9, March 1, 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 | 1 Mar 2010 | 12:17 pm

Phil Jones survives grilling from MPs

Commons committee tiptoed round embattled scientist and sidestepped crucial questions

Parliamentary climate emails inquiry - as it happened

Gaunt and nervous, but with his ever-smiling University of East Anglia vice-chancellor beside him, Phil Jones survived his grilling by MPs – probably profoundly grateful that he did not have to face questioning from an earlier witness, the equally gaunt but far from nervous climate sceptic, Lord Lawson.

Jones did his best to persuade the Commons science and technology committee that all was well in the house of climate science. If they didn't quite believe him, they didn't have the heart to press the point. The man has had three months of hell, after all.

Jones's general defence was that anything people didn't like – the strong-arm tactics to silence critics, the cold-shouldering of freedom of information requests, the economy with data sharing – were all "standard practice" among climate scientists. "Maybe it should be, but it's not."

And he seemed to be right. The most startling observation came when he was asked how often scientists reviewing his papers for probity before publication asked to see details of his raw data, methodology and computer codes. "They've never asked," he said.

He gave a little ground, and it was the only time the smile left the face of the vice-chancellor, Edward Acton: "I've written some awful emails," Jones admitted. Nobody asked if, as claimed by British climate sceptic Doug Keenan, he had for two decades suppressed evidence of the unreliability of key temperature data from China.

But for the first time he did concede publicly that when he tried to repeat the 1990 study in 2008, he came up with radically different findings. Or, as he put it, "a slightly different conclusion". Fully 40% of warming there in the past 60 years was due to urban influences. "It's something we need to consider," he said.

Nor did the MPs probe how conflicts of interest have become routine in Jones's world of analysing and reconstructing past temperatures. How, as the emails reveal, Jones found himself intemperately reviewing papers that sought to criticise his own work. And then, should the papers somehow get into print, judging what place they should have in the reports of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), where he and his fellow emails held senior positions.

But the committee will be hard pressed to ignore the issue after the intervention of no less a body than the Institute of Physics. In 13 coruscating paragraphs of written evidence to MPs, it spoke of "prima facie evidence of determined and coordinated refusals to comply with honourable scientific traditions and freedom of information law", "manipulation of the publication and peer review system", and "intolerance to challenge ... which is vital to the integrity of the scientific process." Ouch.

Jones's most tenacious adversaries were largely absent from the hearings, however. No sign of Canadian rottweiler mathematician Steve McIntyre, the arch-villain of dozens of the Climatic Research Unit-crew's emails. Or of Keenan, who accused Jones of fraud in a peer-reviewed journal.

And the MPs let Jones have the last word. "I don't think there is anything [in the emails] that supports the view I've been trying to pervert the peer-review process in any way." With that, he was gone.

Fred Pearce is environment consultant for New Scientist

Source: Science news, comment and analysis | guardian.co.uk | 1 Mar 2010 | 12:07 pm

Why Chile fared better than Haiti

Building codes and earthquake origins help explain levels of destruction.
Source: NatureNews - All articles published today - nature.com science feeds | 1 Mar 2010 | 12:02 pm

Polar Bears Survived Previous Warming

New genetic evidence shows polar bears withstood a very warm interglacial period 44,000 years ago. So can they survive current warming?
Source: Discovery News - Top Stories | 1 Mar 2010 | 11:45 am

Polar Bears Evolved Just 150,000 Years Ago

DNA from a recently discovered polar bear jawbone revealed that the Arctic species first originated about 150,000 years ago.
Source: Livescience.com | 1 Mar 2010 | 11:40 am

Shark Attacks, Resulting Human Deaths on the Rise

Shark attacks worldwide edged up a notch from 60 in 2008 to 61 in 2009, according to a new report from the University of Florida that also documented 5 human deaths last year due to these attacks instead of 4 ...
Source: Discovery News - Top Stories | 1 Mar 2010 | 11:32 am

Climate scientist admits sending 'awful emails' but denies perverting peer review

In his first public appearance since the beginning of the emails row Phil Jones tells MPs he will be cleared of accusations

Read our live coverage from the hearing

The scientist at the centre of a media storm over global warming research admitted today he had sent "awful emails" but said he expected to be cleared of accusations that he tried to pervert the scientific process.

Phil Jones, head of the Climatic Research Unit at the University of East Anglia, told a parliamentary inquiry that there was nothing in the hundreds of emails released on to the internet last year that supported the claims.

"I was just commenting that those papers weren't very good," Jones said. "There is nothing that [shows] that me or the CRU were trying to pervert the peer review process in any way."

In his first public appearance since the emails were released in November, Jones faced repeated questions about the way the CRU failed to make publicly available the raw data and computer codes needed to reproduce its work. "It is not standard practice to provide codes and methods," he said. "Perhaps it should be."

He said much of the raw data were available from other sources, such as Nasa, and that there was nothing to stop somebody repeating his calculations and constructing their own temperature records. "There is nothing rocket science in them," he said of his academic publications.

Asked about emails in which Jones refused to share his data with critics, he said: "I've obviously written some really awful emails." But he insisted that the collection of emails made public were "a tenth of one per cent" of his correspondence over the period.

The controversy over the emails, dubbed "climategate" by some, has prompted allegations of scientific misconduct and attempts to keep dissenting findings from scientific journals. It has also raised questions about the validity of the global temperature record used to demonstrate global warming, based on email that scientists used a "trick" to "hide the decline".

Under questions from the committee, prominent climate sceptics Nigel Lawson and Benny Peiser, who represented the Global Warming Policy Foundation, conceded that the use of the word "trick" was innocuous. Lawson said the issue was that the scientists had not disclosed the way they blended several separate data sets into single graph, which he called a "fudge". Jones said this was not true, and the technique was widely discussed in scientific papers.

Lawson and Peiser said they did not think the release of the emails questioned the underlying science of climate change. "This is nothing to do with the basic science, that's not the issue," Lawson said. Peiser said the emails had "tarnished the image of British science around the world".

Jones said some issues raised by the emails, such as an apparent reluctance to comply with Freedom of Information requests, were because the CRU did not have permission to release requested data, which had been supplied by foreign weather services. Several countries, including Sweden, Canada and Poland had refused to allow their information to be supplied, he said.

Former information commissioner Richard Thomas told the committee he could not comment on whether the university had broken the rules, as a recent statement from the information office suggested. But he suggested that there was a stronger case for public disclosure when data had been used to influence public policy, such as in climate science.

Edward Acton, vice-chancellor of the University of East Anglia, told the committee he hoped to announce the chair of a new inquiry, into the scientific findings of the CRU, later this week. The university has already set up a panel to assess the behaviour of Jones and colleagues, which is headed by Sir Muir Russell.

Acton said the university was "longing to publish" the restricted data and had worked with the Met Office to release details. He said he was "puzzled" by the statement from the information office, because no breach of the rules had been established.

In a highly critical written submission to the committee, the Institute of Physics said the emails raised "worrying implications... for the integrity of scientific research in this field and for the credibility of the scientific method".

The institute said: "The emails reveal doubts as to the reliability of some of the [temperature] reconstructions and raise questions as to the way in which they have been represented."

It added: "There is also reason for concern at the intolerance to challenge displayed in the emails. This impedes the process of scientific 'self correction', which is vital to the integrity of the scientific process as a whole, and not just to the research itself."

John Beddington, the government's chief scientiific adviser, told the committee the institute's view was "premature" and that they should wait until the Russell inquiry publishes its findings in the spring.

Bob Watson, chief scientist at the environment department Defra said the media have portrayed the email affair as a crisis, but there are no adverse conclusions on the science of global warming. He said it was beyond debate that the climate has changed markedly over the last century.

Source: Science news, comment and analysis | guardian.co.uk | 1 Mar 2010 | 11:27 am

UK science 'must meet challenge'

The UK government's top scientific advisory body urges ministers to maintain science spending to compete with other nations' research.
Source: BBC News | Science & Environment | UK Edition | 1 Mar 2010 | 11:02 am

Darkness Begets Dishonesty, Study Finds

Darkness can make us think our identities are hidden, triggering dishonesty.
Source: Livescience.com | 1 Mar 2010 | 10:23 am

Inhofe accused of turning climate row into 'McCarthyite witch-hunt'

James Inhofe calls for criminal investigation of climate scientists as senators prepare proposal that would ditch cap and trade

The US Congress's most ardent global warming sceptic is being accused of turning the row over climate science into a McCarthyite witch-hunt by calling for a criminal investigation of scientists.

Climate scientists say Senator James Inhofe's call for a criminal investigation into American as well as British scientists who worked on the UN climate body's report or had communications with East Anglia's climate research unit represents an attempt to silence debate on the eve of new proposals for a climate change law.

Inhofe's document ends by naming 17 "key players" in the controversy about CRU's stolen emails, including the Britons Phil Jones and Keith Briffa.

"I think this is like a drag net, just to try and catch everyone whose name happens to be on this list. It's guilt by association and I thought those days were over 50 years ago," said Michael Oppenheimer, of Princeton University, who is on the list of 17 scientists. "It looks like a McCarthyite tactic: pull in anyone who had anything to do with anyone because they happened to converse with some by email, and threaten them with criminal activity."

Inhofe is also accused of further fuelling a spike in hate mail and politically motivated freedom of information requests in the three months since the emails of climate scientists were stolen from the University of East Anglia's Climatic Research Unit.

Rick Piltz, a former official in the US government climate science programme who now runs the Climate Science Watch website, said Inhofe and others were getting in the way of scientific work. "Scientists who are working in federal labs are being subjected to inquisitions coming from Congress," he said. "There is no question that this is an orchestrated campaign to intimidate scientists."

Michael Mann, a scientist at Penn State University who is on Inhofe's list of 17, said that he had seen a sharp rise in hostile email since November.

"Some of the emails make thinly veiled threats of violence against me and even my family, and law enforcement authorities have been made aware of the matter," he told the Guardian.

He said the attacks appeared to be a co-ordinated effort. "Some of them look cut-and-paste."

A university investigation largely cleared Mann of misconduct for his connection to the East Anglia controversy. However, a rightwing group in Pennsylvania are demanding further action.

Gavin Schmidt, a climate scientist at Nasa's Goddard Institute who is also on the list of 17, said he had seen an increase in freedom of information act requests. "In my previous six years I dealt with one FoIA request. In the last three months, we have had to deal with I think eight," he said. "These FoIAs are fishing expeditions for potentially embarrassing content but they are not FoIA requests for scientific information."

He said Inhofe's call for a criminal investigation created an atmosphere of intimidation. "The idea very clearly is to let it be known that should you be a scientist who speaks out in public then you will be intimidated, you will be harassed, and you will be threatened," he said. "The idea very clearly is to put a chilling effect on scientists speaking out in public and to tell others to keep their heads down. That kind of intimidation is very reminiscent of other periods in US history where people abused their position."

Other scientists on Inhofe's list of 17 admitted they were disturbed by the threat of criminal prosecution.

"I am worried about it, I have to say," said Raymond Bradley, director of the climate science research centre at the University of Massachusetts Amherst, who is also on the list of 17. "You can understand that this powerful person is using the power of his office to intimidate people and to harass people and you wonder whether you should have legal counsel. It is a very intimidating thing and that is the point."

Inhofe, an Oklahoma Republican on the Senate's environment and public works committee, released a document last week suggesting scientists be investigated for breaking three laws and four government regulations.

The document, produced by members of Inhofe's staff, recycles now familiar sceptic arguments about the stolen emails from East Anglia and the mistakes in the IPCC report.

But climate scientists say the report takes the campaign to a new level by threatening criminal prosecution. The report calls for the inspector generals of all US government agencies touching on the environment to investigate the scientists as a first step to possible prosecution.

"The minority staff of the Senate committee on environment and public works believe the scientists involved violated fundamental ethical principles governing taxpayer-funded research and, in some cases, may have violated federal laws," the report says.

A spokesman for Inhofe rejected the charges of a witch-hunt. But he said a criminal investigation was warranted and that it should not necessarily be limited to the 17 "key players".

"We are not saying that there are 17 scientists we should be calling criminals," said Matt Dempsey, a spokesman for Inhofe. "I'm not putting a number on 17."

He added: "The bottom line though is that there was manipulation of data and it appears that they violated a law." "In terms of what these email demonstrate, there are possible criminal violations here with FoIA and other laws."

Senate leaders are expected to release new proposals for action on climate change as early as this week. Environmentalists fear the proposal, crafted by a troika of Democratic, Republican, and Independent senators, would weaken a climate change bill passed by the house last June.

The Washington Post reported at the weekend that the senators could scrap a cap-and-trade bill that was the core of the house bill and bring in more limited measures.

Source: Science news, comment and analysis | guardian.co.uk | 1 Mar 2010 | 10:14 am

How Bad Is Second-Hand Smoke?

Nonsmokers exposed to secondhand smoke absorb the same compounds suspected to cause cancer.
Source: Livescience.com | 1 Mar 2010 | 9:35 am

Surf the Web at the Speed of Light

A new laser developed by scientists at MIT could make light-speed computing a reality.
Source: Discovery News - Top Stories | 1 Mar 2010 | 9:35 am

Backlash from Singh libel case puts chiropractors on ropes

One in four chiropractors in Britain are under investigation as a result of campaign by Singh supporters, reveals Martin Robbins

As the British Chiropractic Association's battle with Simon Singh continues to work its way through the legal system, chiropractors are counting the financial costs of a major backlash resulting from a libel action that has left the Lord Chief Justice "baffled". What was originally a dispute between the BCA and one science writer over free speech has become a brutally effective campaign to reform an entire industry.

A staggering one in four chiropractors in Britain are now under investigation for allegedly making misleading claims in advertisements, according to figures from the General Chiropractic Council.

The council, which is responsible for regulating the profession and has 2,400 chiropractors on its books, informs me that it has had to recruit six new members of staff to deal with a fifteenfold increase in complaints against its members – from 40 a year to 600. While it declined to comment directly on the costs inflicted by the reaction to the BCA's actions, it is clear that a six-figure sum will be involved for the extra staffing costs alone, to which will have to be added the considerable costs of any misconduct hearings.

The complaints all stem from a regulatory quirk exposed by blogger Alan Henness, who noticed that the council's rules demand that chiropractors do not make claims that conflict with past rulings by the Advertising Standards Authority. The advertising watchdog had previously criticised a number of chiropractors for making claims that their procedures can treat a variety of conditions, ranging from learning difficulties to arthritis.

The policy was exploited by numerous campaigners, who collectively worked their way through the BCA's membership list, Googling each member, and cross-referencing any claims on their website against previous rulings by the advertising watchdog. In a matter of weeks, complaints against more than 600 chiropractors had been lodged.

To the likely embarrassment of the BCA, those being investigated include its own officers.

While professional associations are remaining silent on the issue, at least in public, leaked e-mails reveal the scale of the panic the campaign has caused within the industry. Last June, the McTimoney Chiropractic Association issued an extraordinary plea to its 800 members, responding to, "what we consider to be a witch hunt against chiropractors":

"If you have a website, take it down NOW.

"REMOVE all the blue MCA [McTimoney Chiropractic Association] patient information leaflets, or any patient information leaflets of your own that state you treat whiplash, colic or other childhood problems in your clinic or at any other site where they might be displayed with your contact details on them. DO NOT USE them until further notice."

Privately, a number of chiropractors have expressed unhappiness at the way the BCA, General Chiropractic Council and other professional associations have carried themselves over the past year, and lay the blame for the crisis firmly at their doors. In communications with me they have said the organisations' attempts to "medicalise" a form of alternative medicine have backfired. One remarked: "I am sure when the dust settles the BCA will lose a lot of members [...] Suing Simon was worse than any Streisand effect and chiropractors know it and can do nothing about it."

Further criticism has been focused on the BCA's presentation of supporting data, in particular its claim that a "plethora" of evidence backs the effectiveness of chiropractic in treating various childhood illnesses. Last year, facing demands that the BCA engage in scientific debate over its position, the association released its "plethora" to the public.

The statement, supported by just 29 citations, was ripped apart by bloggers within 24 hours of publication, before being subjected to a further shredding in the British Medical Journal. It emerged that 10 of the papers cited had nothing to do with chiropractic treatment, and several weren't even studies. The remainder consisted of a small collection of poor-quality trials.

More seriously, the BCA misled the public with a misrepresentation of one paper, a Cochrane review looking at the effectiveness of various treatments for bed-wetting, claiming that the authors had simply concluded that, "there was weak evidence to support the use of [chiropractic]."

In fact the quote in full reads as follows:

"There was weak evidence to support the use of hypnosis, psychotherapy, acupuncture and chiropractic but it was provided in each case by single small trials, some of dubious methodological rigour."

Now even the General Chiropractic Council has disowned the claims of the BCA – the same claims that lie at the centre of its libel action against Simon Singh.

In a new report, it has attempted to clarify the assertions that chiropractors can and cannot make, backed up by a systematic review of the evidence. Notably, the report concludes that the evidence does not support claims that chiropractic treatment is effective for childhood colic, bed-wetting, ear infections or asthma, the very claims that Singh was sued for describing as "bogus".

Whatever the eventual outcome of the BCA's legal action against Singh – and I would urge you to support science writers like Simon by signing the online petition for libel reform – one thing is clear. In pursuing a popular writer through the courts, it has inflicted a huge financial burden not just on its own coffers, but on those of the entire industry.

It is a lesson that other professional associations would do well to learn from in the future.

Martin Robbins writes for The Lay Scientist

Source: Science news, comment and analysis | guardian.co.uk | 1 Mar 2010 | 9:32 am

Mephedrone: classifying 'legal highs' | David Nutt

Until we know the real harm of legal recreational drugs such as mephedrone, they should be put into a holding 'class D'

Last month at a Lancaster nightclub, seven people were arrested for possession of a drug, even though the policeman leading the arrest team made it clear that the drug was not illegal. This was not the first time the police had exhibited such behaviour in relation to this drug, so what is leading to this apparently irrational police behaviour? The drug in question is mephedrone [not to be confused with the opioid substitute treatment methadone], a synthetic stimulant drug that is relatively new on the UK drug scene although it has been popular in Israel for a number of years.

Mephedrone is one of a number of so-called "legal highs" – these are drugs that users find pleasurable but which are not yet illegal, and indeed may never be. Mephedrone goes under various trade names such as "meow meow", "plant food" and "bubbles", terms derived from its chemical structure, commercial uses and subjective effects respectively. It is readily available from "head shops" and is popular with university students and other groups of clubbers. Its pharmacology is hardly studied but it is chemically related to the amphetamines. Users describe effects that suggest its actions are between those of amphetamine (speed) and MDMA (ecstasy); it activates, energises and makes them feel good but is relatively short-lasting.

There are several reasons for its current popularity. Mephedrone is sold as the pure substance, so users know what they are getting. This contrasts with current street supplies of ecstasy and speed, which are often very low quality after being cut with inactive agents and may even contain some other, more dangerous, drugs such as methylamphetamine. Another reason for its popularity is that it is legal, so can be purchased without having to make contact with drug dealers who may pressure buyers towards other drugs, and currently there is no risk of a criminal record from being caught with it. In contrast, being caught in possession of MDMA and other class A drugs means one risks up to seven years in prison, and for amphetamines [class B], five years. Users see benefits in avoiding the limitations to their careers that a prosecution for drug possession would bring. Prior to the rise of mephedrone, another stimulant known as BZP was popular, but the government has recently made this a class C drug, which may have displaced users to mephedrone.

Is mephedrone harmful? Because its use is so recent there is relatively little evidence on this point, but from its pharmacology we could not make the assumption that it would be completely safe, especially at high doses. Users report effects such as a faster heart rate as one would expect from a stimulant. In the UK, there have been scare stories of mephedrone deaths, but so far none has been proven, though mephedrone was involved in the death of a Swedish teenager in 2008. The Israel experience was that it could lead to repetitive use and stereotyped behaviours in some users consistent with the likely release of the neurotransmitter dopamine in the brain.

The European Monitoring Centre on Drugs and Drug Abuse (EMCDDA) is currently gathering Europe-wide evidence of use and harms to decide if mephedrone should be made illegal by the EU. The government would be advised to wait until this report is published, rather than rushing now to make changes to the classification system.

Last year, the Advisory Council on the Misuse of Drugs (ACMD) suggested that new drugs of uncertain harm might be put into a holding class – such as the "class D" approach adopted by New Zealand several years ago to deal with BZP with some success. Drugs in class D are allowed to be sold in limited quantities to adults, with appropriate warnings of health risks and advice on safe use. Manufacturers are licensed, provided they comply with quality control of manufacture and report sales on a regular basis. This allows an accurate knowledge of the use of the drug against which harms such as hospital presentations can be compared so that a good estimate of harm/use ratio can be obtained; an informed decision can then be made whether to make the drug illegal or not. Mephedrone would seem an ideal candidate for instigating such a holding class in the UK.

Source: Science news, comment and analysis | guardian.co.uk | 1 Mar 2010 | 7:34 am

Climate science emails: witnesses and terms of reference

Who are the scientists and sceptics and what will they be asked by MPs on the science and technology committee today?

Follow our live coverage from 3pm

I'll say right now that nothing in the emails undermines the case for man-made global warming. Instead it's all about how the scientists and the climate sceptics behaved.

The running order of witnesses is below, but first let's see what's on the agenda.

Committee's terms of reference

1. What are the implications of the disclosures for the integrity of scientific research?
This will tackle the allegations of misconduct made by critics on the basis of the leaked emails (there's an archive of them here). Probably the most important here is whether the scientists and university did or did not comply with Freedom of Information (FOI) requests. The Information Commissioner's Office thinks not, saying FOI requests were "not dealt with as they should have been under the legislation". The UEA thinks it did.

Today's hearing should also cover allegations that:
• Scientists used a "trick" to "hide a decline" in temperature data derived from tree rings - this should be scotched as there is a perfectly good explanation
• Scientists tried to prevent the publication of papers that attacked their work - but were those papers too poor for publication anyway?
• Scientists based work on data from Chinese weather stations, but could not produce location data for those stations. Jones told the journal Nature last month that this was "not acceptable".

2. Are the terms of reference and scope of the independent review announced on 3 December 2009 by UEA adequate?
The UEA's inquiry is headed by Sir Muir Russell, who is appearing today. It will:
• Examine whether any "manipulation or suppression of data" took place, and whether this affected the scientific conclusions;
• Review how the UEA's Climatic Research Unit (CRU) deals with data and research results and their dissemination;
• Review CRU's compliance with the FOI laws;
• Review the security of the CRU holds - ie how did all those emails leak?
The UEA has also asked the Royal Society, Britain's premier scientific academy, to help reappraise the scientific conclusions of the CRU. The police are also investigating the leak of the emails.

3. How independent are the other two international data sets?
This is the one term of reference that the committee has set itself that touches directly on the science, and sticks out a bit to me. The CRU produces one of the three main global temperature records for the Earth. If there was something awry with this - which I think is unlikely - then the independence of the other two becomes important. They are produced by Nasa and the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA).

Witnesses

3.00pm. Lord Lawson, chairman, and Dr Benny Peiser, director of the Global Warming Policy Foundation
First up are the sceptics, presumably called in the interests of "balance", though neither are scientists. Lawson, a former chancellor of the exchequer, argues the cost of climate change action is prohibitive, and has described the 2006 Stern report, which concluded action now was actually cheaper, as "the shoddiest pseudo-scientific and pseudo-economic document any British government has ever produced". Peiser, a social anthropologist, said recently: "The scientific community is haemorr­haging integrity and authority at an unprecedented speed and scale."
3.30pm Richard Thomas. He was the Information Commissioner from December 2002 until June 2009, the period in which many of the FOI requests in question were lodged.
4.00pm Professor Phil Jones, director of the CRU and Professor Edward Acton, vice-chancellor, University of East Anglia
The key witnesses. Jones, who has stood down while the investigations take place, has said the affair has so traumatised him he had considered suicide. It's sure to be a difficult session for him, though he will be supported by the head of UEA.
4.40pm Sir Muir Russell, head of the independent climate change emails review
Russell's task will be to convince the committee that his inquiry is sufficiently robust.
5.00pm Professor John Beddington, the UK government chief scientific adviser, Professor Julia Slingo OBE, Met Office chief scientist, and Professor Bob Watson, chief scientist, Defra
The sessions ends with a triumvirate of scientific big beasts. Beddington has called on climate researchers to be more open when dealing with critics and transparent when they make errors. Slingo represents the Met Office, which has had some bad press of its own. Watson is the former chair of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), which has also suffered negative headlines.

Source: Science news, comment and analysis | guardian.co.uk | 1 Mar 2010 | 6:11 am

'Church must accept reality of false memories of sexual abuse'

The notion that therapists can help people to 'recover' memories of sexual abuse causes serious harm to patients and their families, writes psychologist Chris French

Last April, I wrote a column on the topic of false memories of childhood sexual abuse and the misery that such memories, typically "recovered" during therapy, can cause.

On Friday, in my role as a member of the scientific and professional advisory board of the British False Memory Society (BFMS), I was more than happy to be a signatory to a letter to the archbishop of Canterbury concerning the views expressed by the Rev Pearl Luxon, safeguarding adviser to the Church of England, who is responsible for child protection issues. Luxon apparently accepts her advisers' assertion that "there is no such thing as 'false memory'" and that, "It is quite common when people have suffered severe trauma for memory to be patchy and disjointed."

These are dangerous and uninformed views for someone in such an influential position.

The letter to the Rowan Williams, which I would urge you to read in full for a more informed perspective on the subject of false memories and the truth about memory for traumatic events, concludes by asking how Luxon might have come to adopt such views in the first place.

The sad truth is that such views about the nature of memory are still surprisingly common among people in all walks of life, despite well over a century of scientific research into the way memory works. Luxon asserts that "there is no such thing as 'false memory'. It is either a memory or it is not."

I can only assume that such a view must be based upon the erroneous notion that memory in some sense works like a tape recorder or a video camera, accurately recording all that happens around us. According to this view, 'real' memories would always be 100% accurate replays of previous events as we originally experienced them. Anything that is not 100% accurate is therefore not really a memory at all, and therefore false memories cannot exist.

A survey last year of more than 600 undergraduates at a Midwestern university in the USA revealed that about 27% believed that memory does indeed operate like a tape recorder. Other surveys show that 36% of us believe that our brains retain perfect records of everything we've ever experienced, a mistaken view that, worryingly, is shared by some psychotherapists.

The truth is that memory is always a reconstructive process, not a reproductive one. What we think we recall about events, with degrees of confidence ranging from uncertainty to absolute conviction, is actually a construction based upon a mixture of accurate recollections and gaps filled in upon the basis of our general knowledge and beliefs about what is plausible, our expectations, fragments of recollections of other similar events, and even input from dreams, fantasies and imagination.

Importantly, our confidence in the memory is not a reliable guide to its accuracy.

Let me illustrate this point with a couple of everyday examples. We've all seen clocks and watches with Roman numerals on them, probably many thousands of times across our lifespan. So you will know how the number four is represented on such timepieces. Is it "IV" – or is it "IIII"?

I know from using this example in countless classroom demonstrations that most people reading this article will be confident that it is "IV". You are wrong. On the vast majority of clocks and watches, the four is represented as "IIII" and not in the more usual form of "IV". (Note to pedants: I know that the clock upon what is commonly referred to as Big Ben is an exception to this rule. I also know that strictly speaking the clock is not Big Ben, the bell is!)

When I asked you to recall an image from memory of a timepiece bearing Roman numerals, most of you will have conjured up an image of what you think you must have seen when you usually look at such objects rather than what you actually have seen. Memory is a reconstructive process.

Now think back to a recent holiday. Think of a specific incident – a memorable meal or a walk on the beach – and try to conjure up a detailed and accurate mental image of that scene. Can you see yourself in the image? Many people (not all) report that they can – in which case, this clearly is not a replay of what was experienced at the time, as it is being "seen" from a different perspective. Once again, memory is shown to be a reconstructive process.

It follows that not only can memories of events that we actually did witness become distorted but the mind is even capable of generating apparent memories for entire episodes that never took place at all. These are what is referred to in the scientific literature as "false memories". Such memories can range from everyday, harmless examples (Did I lock the back door or just think about locking the back door?) through to extremely damaging examples of "recovered" memories of childhood abuse or even ritualised Satanic abuse, taking in along the way bizarre false memories of alien abduction and past lives.

Why are such mistaken notions of how memory works - clearly shared by Luxon - dangerous? A belief that everything we ever experience is accurately recorded somewhere within our brains leads inevitably to the idea that it might be possible to recover memories of everything we have ever experienced if only the right techniques are employed.

Many psychotherapists are convinced that severe trauma, such as childhood sexual abuse, can lead to repression. Repression is the psychoanalytic notion that under such overwhelming emotional circumstances the mind automatically and involuntarily banishes the resulting memories to the unconscious regions of the mind, from where they have a toxic effect upon psychological well-being, despite being inaccessible to consciousness.

Therapists also claim that the only way to become psychologically healthy is to "recover" these memories and work through them with a psychotherapist, using techniques such as hypnotic regression and guided imagery. Because there is no 'buried memory' to recover, the search for repressed memories can itself lead to the mental construction of completely false scenarios.

Indeed, none of the claims upon which this therapeutic approach is based is supported by any convincing scientific evidence. Yet the damage that can be done to patients and their families by such psychotherapists is well documented.

For most people, a little reflection on their own personal experiences of memory is enough to convince them that memory does not work like a tape recorder and that false memories do occur. Research into memory, and in particular the processes underlying the formation of false memories, has proved this beyond all reasonable doubt.

The fact that the Church of England official responsible for child protection appears not to have familiarised herself with the evidence on a topic that is central to her role is deeply worrying.

Chris French is a professor of psychology at Goldsmiths where he heads the Anomalistic Psychology Research Unit. He edits The Skeptic

Source: Science news, comment and analysis | guardian.co.uk | 1 Mar 2010 | 5:39 am

Super food

Does eating oily fish really help concentration?
Source: BBC News | Science & Environment | UK Edition | 1 Mar 2010 | 5:27 am

Insect Character Recognition: Computers See Bees Like We Can’t

Studying animal behavior used to mean traveling into the wild and making detailed notes about gorillas. Now, biologist-coders are figuring out how to use computer vision techniques to convert the myriad motions of creatures large and small into crunchable data.

Researchers are figuring out how track the movements of insects such as Drosophila, the fruit fly, in order to answer the question: How do we define behavior?

“A fundamental problem that we haven’t done that much work on in biology is quantifying behavior,” said Kristin Branson, a fellow at Howard Hughes Medical Institute’s Janelia Farm Research Campus. “We have a much better handle on the very low-level things, molecular, genetic, and neural than we do at the global, large-scale level of behavior.”

We know what behavior is: It’s what animals do. But quantifying it isn’t easy, even for tiny creatures with equally tiny brains. Big data came to branches of science like particle physics many years ago, but some realms of biology have remained resistant to the computational techniques that mark so many other disciplines. The data for a lot of behavioral biology remains simple human observations — or results from ingenious Rube Goldbergian experimental apparatus. Either way, it’s hard to do what Branson calls high-throughput behavioral experiments.

So, while researchers mapped the fruit fly’s genome in 2000 and know its genetics better than almost any other creature, the relationship between its genes, its brain, and its behavior is still hard to understand.

At Janelia, Branson’s lab head, Gerry Rubin, is mapping out the circuits in the fruit fly brain. His team has created thousands of transgenic flies that allow them to test the individual circuits. But while we know what we’ve done, it’s hard to tell what it makes the the flies do.

Let’s say some genetic change is made to the fruit flies and they chase one another around 20 percent more often than an unaltered specimen. If you’re the fly, that’s an important change, but how could a human researcher ever detect that 20 percent? It’s not like counting how many times a monkey mother nurses.

“How do we say in a quantitative way how the behavior has changed?” Branson said. “You wouldn’t notice that if you were just watching.”

To solve that problem, Branson and collaborators in Michael Dickinson’s lab at Caltech, where she was a postdoc, built the Caltech Multiple Fly Tracker. It’s a piece of software that converts infrared video of up to 50 flies inside a special arena into movement data. The flies become small triangles in space and their behavior is plotted and recorded.

Another Dickinson lab postdoc, Andrew Straw, has even designed a 10-camera system he calls Flydra to track free moving, flying insects.

Some of what they’ve found is odd and unexpected. After recording male and female flies at Caltech, they mined the data for interesting differences between them.

“And if you looked at how often the fly turned, you could tell the gender of the fly with better than 90 percent accuracy,” Branson said.

It’s unclear why such a behavioral difference exists, but it does, and likely always has, hidden within the masses of data that our eyes receive when we watch a bunch of flies moving around.

All sorts of other behaviors emerge from the data, if you just watch for long enough.

“Fruit flies may not be as interesting as gorillas on the surface to humans. They just seem like little gnat sized things,” said Serge Belongie, a computer vision specialist at the University of California San Diego, who was Branson’s Ph.D. advisor. “But you run this tracker long enough and there is some pretty interesting courtship competitiveness behavior. It’s basically reality TV for fruit flies with some interesting stuff happening.”

“We’re finding subtle differences between individual flies now,” Branson agreed. “If you’re being not very technical about things, you can say that these flies have different personalities. In biology we try not to do it, but it’s a fun way to think of it.”

While computer vision is more familiar to people as the technology behind Optical Character Recognition or social media applications, it may work better with animal tracking than it does in some other settings. That’s because researchers can design experiments that make acquiring clean data easier.

By designing the algorithms and the image acquisition apparatus together, it makes the most difficult computer vision problems disappear.

“If you think about people-tracking, you can solve it at the 80 percent solved level because you don’t have complete control of your environment,” Branson said. “I want things to work at 99 or 100 percent. I feel like we can really solve the problem well enough that people will use these programs, and it will be a very clean solution.”

While Branson’s work qualifies as basic science, computer vision insect monitoring could have more immediate implications. Take beekeeping, which has been plagued by colony collapse disorder. Intel researcher Lily Mummert, a backyard apiarist, built a tracking tool that could identify bees coming and going from her own hive. Counting the number of bees coming into and out of it, and perhaps some other data, could yield important insights about the life and times of a beehive, she said.

Ideally, all the equipment could be miniaturized and stuck into a little unit that would beam data up.

“I’d like to see a little unit, a camera, full-on board processor, and a little wireless transmitter so you could just mule off the count,” Mummert said. “That thing could be a really versatile platform for all kinds of environmental monitoring. You could apply it to bees, you could apply it to anything.”

All kinds of insect- and animal-monitoring experts got together for a workshop in late 2008, and they plan to do it again this year in Istanbul during the International Conference on Pattern Recognition.

With video cameras and computational ability getting cheaper and better, quantifying animal behavior will undoubtedly improve. It’s possible that before too long, there will be a new encyclopedia of knowledge on the biology block: the behaviorome.

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

Source: Wired: Wired Science | 1 Mar 2010 | 4:00 am

Ants navigate with 'stereo smell'

Desert ants in Tunisia are the first animals known to navigate with stereo smell, creating an "odour map".
Source: BBC News | Science & Environment | UK Edition | 1 Mar 2010 | 3:45 am

Insect-icide: Cold weather could dent Scotland's midge population

Freezing winter temperatures should mean a few less Scottish midges, an expert on the biting insects says.
Source: BBC News | Science & Environment | UK Edition | 1 Mar 2010 | 3:16 am