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High-tech armrest: Computer-controlled hand and arm support devise developed for doctors, artistsEngineers developed a computer-controlled, motorized hand and arm support that will let doctors, artists and others precisely control scalpels, brushes and tools over a wider area than otherwise possible, and with less fatigue.Source: ScienceDaily: Latest Science News | 12 Mar 2010 | 12:00 pm Proposed mission would return sample from asteroid 'time capsule'Meet asteroid 1999 RQ36, a chunk of rock and dust about 1,900 feet in diameter that could tell us how the solar system was born, and perhaps, shed light on how life began. It also might hit us someday.Source: ScienceDaily: Latest Science News | 12 Mar 2010 | 12:00 pm Contraceptive pill not associated with increased long-term risk of death, study findsWomen in the UK who have ever used the oral contraceptive pill are less likely to die from any cause, including all cancers and heart disease, compared with never users, according to new research.Source: ScienceDaily: Latest Science News | 12 Mar 2010 | 12:00 pm R-rated movies increase likelihood of underage children trying alcoholR-rated movies portray violence and other behaviors deemed inappropriate for children under 17 year of age. A new study finds one more reason why parents should not let their kids watch those movies: adolescents who watch R-rated movies are more likely to try alcohol at a young age.Source: ScienceDaily: Latest Science News | 12 Mar 2010 | 12:00 pm Scavenging energy waste to turn water into hydrogen fuelMaterials scientists have designed a way to harvest small amounts of waste energy and harness them to turn water into usable hydrogen fuel.Source: ScienceDaily: Latest Science News | 12 Mar 2010 | 12:00 pm Scientists identify microRNA as possible cause of chemotherapy resistanceScientists may have uncovered a mechanism for resistance to paclitaxel in ovarian cancer, microRNA-31, suggesting a possible therapeutic target for overcoming chemotherapy resistance.Source: ScienceDaily: Latest Science News | 12 Mar 2010 | 12:00 pm Cassini data show ice and rock mixture inside Saturn's moon TitanBy precisely tracking NASA's Cassini spacecraft on its low swoops over Saturn's moon Titan, scientists have determined the distribution of materials in the moon's interior. The subtle gravitational tugs they measured suggest the interior has been too cold and sluggish to split completely into separate layers of ice and rock.Source: ScienceDaily: Latest Science News | 12 Mar 2010 | 9:00 am Seaweed extract may hold promise for non-Hodgkin's lymphoma treatmentSeaweed extract may eventually emerge as a lymphoma treatment, according to laboratory research. Seaweeds containing fucoidan, a sulfated polysaccharide similar to heparin in chemical structure, have been reported to have anti-tumor activity in mice and some cell lines.Source: ScienceDaily: Latest Science News | 12 Mar 2010 | 9:00 am Research points to way to improve heart treatmentCurrent drugs used to treat heart failure and irregular heartbeat have limited effectiveness and have side effects. New basic science findings suggest a way that treatments could potentially be refined so that they work better and target only key heart-related mechanisms.Source: ScienceDaily: Latest Science News | 12 Mar 2010 | 9:00 am How electricity moves through cells: Finding has implications for improving energy efficiencyResearchers have created a molecular image of a system that moves electrons between proteins in cells. The achievement is a breakthrough for biology and could provide insights to minimize energy loss in other systems, from nanoscale devices to moving electricity around the country.Source: ScienceDaily: Latest Science News | 12 Mar 2010 | 9:00 am Japan arrests whaling activist for boarding ship (AP)
Source: Yahoo! News: Science News | 12 Mar 2010 | 3:06 am Climate change makes birds shrinkSongbirds on the US east coast are becoming smaller, a trend thought to be driven by the warming temperatures caused by climate change.Source: BBC News | Science & Environment | UK Edition | 12 Mar 2010 | 3:05 am The nation's weather (AP)AP - Wet weather was forecast to persist in the Eastern half of the nation Friday as a large low pressure system hovered over the region.Source: Yahoo! News: Science News | 12 Mar 2010 | 2:58 am Friend: Suspected US al-Qaida member grew radical (AP)
Source: Yahoo! News: Science News | 12 Mar 2010 | 1:14 am Decapitated bodies are VikingsAnalysis of mass grave discovered last year suggests the victims were publicly executed 1,000 years ago Dozens of skeletons, buried in Dorset with their skulls neatly stacked but their bodies tumbled chaotically into a pit, have been identified as the remains of Vikings killed in the area about 1,000 years ago. David Score, project head of the Oxford archaeology unit, which excavated the mass grave, on Ridgeway Hill between Dorchester and Weymouth, said it had been "disposal after a very public execution". Isotope analysis indicated that the men, who have cuts on neck, chest and arm bones, came from a variety of places in Scandinavia. Their killers could have been Saxons, or even settled Danes. Maev Kennedy guardian.co.uk © Guardian News & Media Limited 2010 | Use of this content is subject to our Terms & Conditions | More Feeds Source: Science news, comment and analysis | guardian.co.uk | 12 Mar 2010 | 12:00 am Absent-mindedness is a middle-aged male problemWomen come out best in listening and recollection tests in study by University of London's Institute of Education It's been an endless source of aggravation between the sexes; how can men so easily forget birthdays, anniversaries, and even friends' names? Not, it seems, because they cannot be bothered to remember. Research suggests that, in middle age at least, absent-minded-ness is a particularly male problem. At the age of 50, women's verbal memory outperforms their male counterparts by a significant margin, a report by the Institute of Education, University of London suggests. A survey of more than 9,600 middle-aged British men and women showed that women outscored men in two listening and recollection tests. "Men performed significantly more poorly in the verbal memory tests: particularly on the delayed memory test," the authors, Matthew Brown and Brian Dodgeon, said. "This was quite a surprising result, since women turning 50 tend to do worse: another study has shown that during the menopause women do not do so well." Participants in the first test listened to 10 common words being read out and were then given two minutes to recall as many as possible. The second test required them to list the same 10 words about five minutes later. Women scored almost 5% more than men, on average, in the first test, and nearly 8% more in the second. Women were less accurate in a third test requiring them to cross out as many "Ps" and "Ws" as possible in a page filled with rows of random letters. They had, however, scanned letters faster than men. In a fourth test, naming as many animals as they could in a minute, men and women had identical scores. Each could name 22 animals, on average. The study did not test whether men are better than women at recalling numbers; previous studies have shown that women tend to do better on word recognition tests. Those tested were members of the National Child Development Study who have been tracked since their birth in 1958. They were tested at age 16, and the latest tests will help estimate the impact that exercise, diet, smoking, alcohol and depression have had on mental abilities. Initial analysis shows those who exercised at least once a month did better on all tests, on average, than those who did not. Non-smokers, including ex-smokers, also outscored smokers in the first of the "word recall" tests, even after social background was taken into consideration. "Although measuring gender differences was not the central purpose of tests, the differences between men and women were interesting," the authors said. guardian.co.uk © Guardian News & Media Limited 2010 | Use of this content is subject to our Terms & Conditions | More Feeds Source: Science news, comment and analysis | guardian.co.uk | 12 Mar 2010 | 12:00 am Ocean pollution contaminating China shellfish: report (AFP)
Source: Yahoo! News: Science News | 11 Mar 2010 | 10:57 pm Starving sea lion pups wash up on Calif. beaches (AP)
Source: Yahoo! News: Science News | 11 Mar 2010 | 10:40 pm Scientists Find Stem Cells in Hair That Can Become Skin (HealthDay)HealthDay - THURSDAY, March 11 (HealthDay News) -- Scientists have found a type of stem cell tucked away in hair follicles that is capable of morphing into all three types of skin cells.Source: Yahoo! News: Science News | 11 Mar 2010 | 9:49 pm Medicine's Future Could Lie in Each Patient's Genome (HealthDay)HealthDay - THURSDAY, March 11 (HealthDay News) -- Two separate scientific teams announced this week that they had successfully sequenced individual genomes to pinpoint precise genetic causes of illness -- breakthroughs that open the door to a future of individualized, genomics-based medicine.Source: Yahoo! News: Science News | 11 Mar 2010 | 9:49 pm Fastest (and Most Compact) Stellar Spinner ConfirmedHM Cancri has been confirmed as a binary system of two white dwarfs orbiting one other so close, they complete one orbit every 5.4 minutes. With a year this short, it's little wonder HM Cancri is a record breaker!Source: Discovery News - Top Stories | 11 Mar 2010 | 7:27 pm A Disastrous Year: 2010 Death Toll Already Abnormally High (LiveScience.com)LiveScience.com - Just a few months into 2010, and Mother Nature has delivered a slew of costly and deadly natural disasters. From the catastrophic Haiti and Chilean earthquakes to the U.S. blizzard that descended on Washington, D.C., last month, which was mostly just inconvenient by comparison, 2010 is already above average in terms of natural-disaster casualties.Source: Yahoo! News: Science News | 11 Mar 2010 | 7:17 pm A tale of two Scandinavian citiesResearch funding changes trigger hiring in Lund but firing in Copenhagen.<img src="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~r/news/rss/today/~4/lw05-oq27EE" height="1" width="1"/>Source: NatureNews - All articles published today - nature.com science feeds | 11 Mar 2010 | 7:15 pm The ’70s Photos That Made Us Want to Save Earth<< previous image | next image >>
Two years after Richard Nixon created the Environmental Protection Agency, the new institution sent out 100 photographers to document the nation’s environment writ large. Now, those photos have made it out of the root cellar of the National Archive and onto Flickr Commons, where they are getting a wider viewing than they’ve ever received. The first group of what will become a 15,000-photo set from the Documerica project are now available online to the public. The photographers were charged with three broad goals: “to photograph America’s environmental problems, to document America’s natural and man-made beauty and to photograph the human condition.” The original director of the EPA project, Gifford Hampshire, hoped to recreate the success the Depression-era Farm Security Administration had in calling attention to the plight of the nation’s rural poor. The new target was the environment. The visual evidence of the nation’s various pollution problems would help justify the existence of the EPA. But as it happened, the photographers interpreted their task in different ways. What they captured was not simply a portrait of “nature,” but the environment as people knew it and lived in it. “Documerica’s official mission effectively focused on popular but valid environmental concerns of the early 1970s: water, air and noise pollution; unchecked urbanization; poverty; environmental impact on public health; and youth culture of the day,” wrote archivist C. Jerry Simmons, in a 2009 article on the collection. “But in reaction to the varied pollution, health and social crises, Documerica succeeded also in affirming America’s commitment to solving these problems by capturing positive images of human life and Americans’ reactions, responses and resourcefulness.” Traffic jams, noise pollution from jackhammers and 747s, and graffiti appear alongside photos of caribou and western landscapes. Coal mining and mudslides mingle with swimming, movie theaters and greased-pig chases. It’s a remarkable portrait of the early 1970s, when manufacturing still ruled the economy and environmental laws had just begun to regulate the air and water. The photographs show people, technology and biosphere colliding, producing both devastating consequences and innovative solutions. Holmes Road IncineratorThe Holmes Road Incinerator burned all kinds of trash, including, photographer Marc St. Gil claims, automobile batteries and plastic. It was closed by the Houston mayor’s executive order in January 1974, two years after this photo was taken. It is now the site of a prospective brownfield 10-megawatt solar farm (.pdf). Photo: Marc St. Gil/National Archives and Records Administration
Source: Wired: Wired Science | 11 Mar 2010 | 6:00 pm A Disastrous Year: 2010 Death Toll Already Abnormally HighJust a few months into 2010, and Mother Nature has delivered a slew of costly and deadly natural disasters.Source: Livescience.com | 11 Mar 2010 | 5:09 pm Response: Scientists should stop deceiving usIn holding that the aim of science is truth alone, they misrepresent its real aims George Monbiot is surely right to bemoan the profoundly unsatisfactory state of affairs that exists between science and the public (With complex science, we must take much on trust. The trouble is we can't, 9 March). Many members of the public instinctively and irrationally distrust, even fear, science. Thus, for climate sceptics, "No level of evidence can shake the growing belief that climate science is a giant conspiracy codded up by boffins and governments to tax and control us". And scientists don't help by producing specialised "gobbledegook" so incomprehensible that even scientists "studying neighbouring subjects within the same discipline can no longer understand each other". The situation might be helped if scientists stopped deceiving us, and themselves, about the nature of science itself, and adopted a more truthful view. At present most of them take for granted the view that the intellectual aim of science is to acquire knowledge of truth, the basic method being to assess, impartially, claims to knowledge with respect to evidence – nothing being accepted permanently as a part of scientific knowledge independently of evidence. But this is nonsense. Physics only ever accepts theories that are unified – that attribute the same laws to all the phenomena to which the theory in question applies – even though many empirically more successful disunified rivals can always be concocted. This means that physics persistently accepts a substantial thesis about the universe independent of evidence: there is some kind of underlying unity in nature, to the extent at least that all seriously disunified theories are false. This substantial, influential and highly problematic assumption needs to be acknowledged within science, so that it can be criticised and, we may hope, improved. The aim of science is not truth per se, but rather truth presupposed to be unified, or explanatory. And it goes further. The aim of seeking explanatory truth is a special case of the more general aim of seeking truth that is, in some way or other, important or of value. Values, of one kind or another, are inherent in the aims of science. But values are, if anything, even more problematic than untestable assumptions concerning an underlying unity in nature. Values implicit in the aims of science need to be acknowledged, so that they can be criticised and, we may hope, improved. Finally, knowledge of valuable truth is sought so that it may be used by people, ideally to enhance the quality of human life. There is a humanitarian or political dimension. But this, again, needs to be critically assessed and, we may hope, improved. In short, in holding that the intellectual aim of science is truth alone, scientists seriously misrepresent its real, problematic aims, and thus prevent urgently needed critical assessment by scientists and non-scientists alike. More honesty about the nature of science might improve science, and public attitudes towards it – and might even encourage scientists to produce less gobbledegook. guardian.co.uk © Guardian News & Media Limited 2010 | Use of this content is subject to our Terms & Conditions | More Feeds Source: Science news, comment and analysis | guardian.co.uk | 11 Mar 2010 | 5:05 pm Scientists against proposed ivory auctionResearchers want science to take precedence over politics in decisions on elephants.Source: NatureNews - All articles published today - nature.com science feeds | 11 Mar 2010 | 5:00 pm A direct hit for thalidomideThe drug stunts limb development in zebrafish and chicks by binding to a protein called cereblon.Source: NatureNews - All articles published today - nature.com science feeds | 11 Mar 2010 | 5:00 pm Second Tropical Cyclone Ever Forms in South AtlanticSecond ever tropical cyclone seen in South Atlantic forms.Source: Livescience.com | 11 Mar 2010 | 4:58 pm US lawmakers urge Obama to save NASA moon program (AFP)
Source: Yahoo! News: Science News | 11 Mar 2010 | 4:26 pm Strong quakes torment Chile as president sworn in (AP)
Source: Yahoo! News: Science News | 11 Mar 2010 | 4:26 pm Glenn Close has genes mappedCHICAGO (Reuters) - Archbishop Desmond Tutu has done it. So has genome pioneer Craig Venter.Source: Reuters: Science News | 11 Mar 2010 | 4:20 pm You Are a Tamagotchi: Turning Your Health Into a Game
In the mid 1990s, a craze swept Japan and crested its way onto American shores: Kids were going crazy for the Tamagotchi, an egg-shaped digital pet. Every few hours, users would press a couple buttons to feed their Tamagotchi, play with it, or clean it up. The game was simple, but intensely rewarding. Users cried when their Tamagotchis got sick or died; they were elated when they were able to raise a healthy, happy pet. More than 70 million have been sold.  Thomas Goetz is the executive editor of Wired magazine and author of the new book The Decision Tree: Taking Control of Your Health in the New Era of Personalized Medicine. As part of the reporting for the book, he had his genome scanned, was screened for more than a dozen diseases, and has tracked his sleep, blood pressure, weight, calories and oodles of other metrics. He holds a masters of public health from UC Berkeley.The genius of the device was that it was both simple and rewarding: It took just a few clicks a few times a day to keep your TamagotchisTamagotchi in good health. In other words, it rewarded vigilance over neglect, maintenance over obsessiveness (you could overfeed your Tamagotchi or smother it with too much love). A decade later, there’s a new kind of Tamagotchi out there. And it’s us. New health-monitoring tools let us pay close attention to our state of being, how much exercise we’re getting, how much sleep we’re getting — and they make it easy to set a goal and improve ourselves. In other words, they turn our health into something of a game. And the reward is better health and a better life. These devices are popping up everywhere: The FitBit is a paper-clip sized device that you can clip onto your belt to monitor cadence, calories and sleep. A genius little display shows a flower that grows the more you move, offering a brilliant bit of feedback. The Zeo sleep system uses a rigorous biometric brain analysis to measure overall sleep quality; you can also drill down into the numbers to ascertain how much time you’re spending in light sleep versus deep sleep (the deeper the better). The BodyMedia Fit uses a combination of sensor technology to track cadence and calories, as well as respiration and heartrate. And the Philips DirectLife gizmo turns your data into a personal coaching kit that helps you adjust targets and meet goals.
In the best of these devices, the hardware is simple and unobtrusive, and the software is clean, engaging and easy to navigate through. The key here is the feedback loop — making it possible for users to collect their own data, making it easy to understand, and then building that data into better decision making. Feedback has been recognized as an effective tool for behavior change since the 1960s. But the challenge is that collecting and organizing data has typically taken a lot of effort, making it something that works for only the most diligent of us. But the key to these new tools is they make the gathering of personal data — what’s called “data exhaust” — an automatic process that requires very little effort on our part. With cheaper sensors and better UI, personal data is becoming ubiquitous and malleable, turning this once academic notion of feedback into a business plan. What’s more, sharing this data in social networks increases the utility of the data; it makes it easier for us to turn data into insight into action. This is the premise behind the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation’s Project HealthDesign, which has hit on the idea of “observations of daily life” — or ODLs — as a powerful catalyst for managing our health. And not just preventive health — Project HealthDesign is funding several projects that let people track ODLs to manage diseases from Crohn’s to depression to underweight babies. Another important element is play, the fact that tracking can be rewarding in and of itself, even fun. Clive Thompson has written about how Weight Watchers — which asks its members to turn their diets into a Points system for easier tracking — is in effect a big game. And HopeLab, an innovative medical research group, has used the principle to create Re-Mission, a videogame for teens with cancer where the kids play by engaging with their disease. A 2008 study in Pediatrics showed that Re-Mission significantly improved outcomes in kids who played the game. There are, of course, pioneers in this sort of thing — first and foremost diabetics, who’ve been compelled to rigorously self-monitor their blood glucose and insulin levels for decades. In the past, though, self-monitoring has been seen as a burden for people with diabetes — the tools have been bulky, the interfaces stodgy and medicalized, and the result is lack of engagement. With millions more people being diagnosed with diabetes each year though, there’s a great incentive to create better, smarter and easier tools for self-monitoring — as well as find ways to make diabetics more at ease with the idea of constant self-monitoring. Bayer Healthcare recently worked with Nintendo to develop the Didget meter, a game for children with diabetes that rewards them with points for keeping their blood glucose levels within a personalized target range. The game is designed for kids as young as 5 years old. The key here seems to be the notion of control (or to use the academic term, self-efficacy) — self-monitoring can give us a way to participate in our health. And turning it into something fun, something that we can play with and improve upon — that can give us not only a role but an authority. We can take control of our health. And we can play to win. Image: _jennieMarie/flickr, Alexis Madrigal/Wired.com See Also:
Source: Wired: Wired Science | 11 Mar 2010 | 3:12 pm Climate DenialismWhere's the real conspiracy, and what does climate denialism say about the state of American democracy?Source: Discovery News - Top Stories | 11 Mar 2010 | 1:56 pm Google Adds Bike Trails to Map FeatureI use Google Maps all of the time. Not just to get directions to drive somewhere, but also to find out how far it is to walk somewhere. And there's also a public transit feature, which I don't use because ...Source: Discovery News - Top Stories | 11 Mar 2010 | 1:34 pm Quantum Computing Thrives on Chaos
Embracing chaos just might help physicists build a quantum brain. A new study shows that disorder can enhance the coupling between light and matter in quantum systems, a find that could eventually lead to fast, easy-to-build quantum computers.
The new study, published in the March 12 Science, suggests that anxious physicists should just relax. A group of researchers at the Technical University of Denmark in Lyngby have shown that randomly arranged materials can trap light just as well as ordered ones. “We took a very interesting, different approach: relaxing all these ordered structures and using disorder” as a resource, says study coauthor Peter Lodahl. “Let it play with you instead of playing against you.”
One approach to quantum computing relies on entangling photons and atoms, or binding their quantum states so tightly that they can influence each other even across great distances. Once entangled, a photon can carry any information stored in the atom’s quantum state to other parts of the computer. To get that entangled state, physicists pin light in tiny cavities to increase the likelihood of quantum interaction with neighboring atoms. Lodahl and his colleagues didn’t set out to trap light. They wanted to build a waveguide, a structure designed to send light in a particular direction, by drilling carefully spaced holes in a gallium arsenide crystal. Because the crystal bends light much more strongly than air does, light should have bounced off the holes and traveled down a channel that had been left clear of holes. But in some cases, the light refused to move. It kept getting stuck inside the crystal. “At first we were scratching our heads,” Lodahl says. “Then we realized it was related to imperfections in our structures.” If imperfect materials could trap light, Lodahl thought, then physicists could couple light and matter with much less frustration. To see if disorder could help materials trap light, Lodahl and colleagues built a new waveguide, this time deliberately placing the holes at random intervals. They also embedded quantum dots, tiny semiconductors that can emit a single photon at a time, in the waveguide as a proxy for atoms that could become entangled with the photons.
The quantum dots also emitted photons 15 times faster after a light spot formed around them. “This is the essence of our discovery: We used localized modes not just to trap light but to enhance interaction between light and matter,” Lodahl says. That’s the first mile marker on the road to entanglement, notes Diederik Wiersma, a physicist at the European Laboratory for Non-linear Spectroscopy in Florence, Italy. “It has not been achieved as quantum entanglement yet, but it’s the important step that everyone has to make to get there.” The system produced several separate light traps at once. If the light traps can be entangled with each other, the system could someday lead to a quantum network in a randomly organized crystal. Wiersma thinks of the potential product as a “quantum brain.” Like a human brain, a quantum brain is not a perfectly ordered structure, he says. “Nature doesn’t need a symmetric structure. It just needs your brain to be working.” Images: 1) Artist’ impression of light emission in a disordered photonic crystal waveguide./Soren Stobbe. 2) Light bouncing around a disordered crystal spontaneously arranged itself in bright spots, represented by the tall spikes./Luca Sapienza. See Also:
Source: Wired: Wired Science | 11 Mar 2010 | 1:20 pm Thalidomide effect mystery solvedThe mechanism by which thalidomide causes malformed limbs is revealed by scientists.Source: BBC News | Science & Environment | UK Edition | 11 Mar 2010 | 12:45 pm How Seismographs WorkScientists who weren't in Chile during this morning's aftershocks nevertheless knew the moment the rumbling started, thanks to a global network of quake-detecting instruments called seismographs.Source: Livescience.com | 11 Mar 2010 | 12:32 pm Scientists find "mother" of all skin cellsLONDON (Reuters) - Scientists have found the "mother," or origin, of all skin cells and say their discovery could dramatically improve skin treatments for victims of serious wounds and burns.Source: Reuters: Science News | 11 Mar 2010 | 12:31 pm Brain Scan Can Read Your ThoughtsNew insights into brain activity could explain how memories are formed and how they change over time.Source: Discovery News - Top Stories | 11 Mar 2010 | 12:30 pm Calming Ragged Nerves from Inside the Tsunami Warning CenterThe aftershock in Chile sent anxious residents to their phones to find out whether a tsunami was coming.Source: Livescience.com | 11 Mar 2010 | 12:11 pm Your Chilean Sea Bass Dinner Deprives Killer Whales
A one-of-a-kind killer whale population appears to be threatened by human appetites for Antarctic toothfish, better known to restaurant-goers as Chilean Sea Bass. As fishing fleets patrol their waters, catching what was their primary source of food, the whales are vanishing. It’s not certain whether they’ve only moved on, or are dying out, or both. But something is happening, with potentially dark implications for Earth’s last pristine ecosystem. “There’s been a dramatic disappearance of the whales,” said biologist David Ainley of ecological consulting firm H.T. Harvey and Associates, and co-author of a March Aquatic Mammals article on the whales’ disappearance. “We think they’re having a harder time trying to find food. Whether that leads to population decrease, hopefully we won’t find out. But we will find out, if it continues.”
Antarctic killer whales form two types of populations, known to researchers as ecotype-B and ecotype-C. While the former resemble killer whales found elsewhere, ecotype-C whales are much smaller, with different markings and a tendency to gather in especially large groups. Many researchers now consider them a distinct species. Dubbed Ross Sea killer whales, ecotype-C whales are found only in the Ross Sea, an expanse of water off Antarctica’s southern coast, flanking the France-sized Ross Ice Shelf. Many scientists consider the region to be the last pristine ecosystem on Earth, the only remaining piece of pre-industrial nature. The Ross Sea, however, isn’t what it used to be. About 25 years ago, North American diners discovered the Chilean Sea Bass, the market-friendly name of the Patagonian toothfish. It is a large, codlike Southern Ocean fish that lives for a half century, breeds infrequently and is both tasty and easy to cook, and its populations were soon devastated. Fishing fleets moved into the Ross Sea, searching for its close relative, the Antarctic toothfish. Antarctic toothfish are now called Chilean Sea Bass, too. They’re thought to be the primary food of Ross Sea killer whales, which were described as common by the first Antarctic explorers and subsequent visitors. Just a few years ago, boats headed into the McMurdo research station on Ross Island were “literally surrounded by killer whales out toward the horizon,” write the Aquatic Mammal researchers. Not any more. Though ecotype-B whale sightings have remained steady, Ross Sea killer whale sightings are down by two-thirds in the last five years, and big groups no longer gather. “We don’t know for sure what this means. But we do know that they eat the toothfish, and we know that the toothfish industry has taken off in the last 10 years,” said study co-author Grant Ballard, a Point Reyes Bird Observatory biologist. If the whales have moved elsewhere in search of food, there is no guarantee of success. Other, smaller fish can be harder to catch, making them an inefficient source of nourishment. Even if other food is available, the whales may not eat it. Hunting is a behavioral tradition — even, arguably, a culture — for these highly social animals, and not easily changed. In a possibly analogous situation from the northeast Pacific, a population of historically salmon-eating killer whales appears doomed by the fishes’ decline, though seals and sea lions are an abundant alternative source of prey. After more than a decade of studying penguins, Ballard said he’s yet to see a Ross Sea killer whale eat one. “I was hoping I’d see them eating one, and it never happened. There are plenty of penguins around for them to eat,” he said. “The arrows point at this type of killer whale being a toothfish eater, and not knowing how to change.”
“The fact that these stocks haven’t recovered suggests that some ecological mechanism has been turned off, that the ocean has changed in the meantime, to the extent that the fish can’t recover,” Ainley said. Should Antarctic toothfish and Ross Sea killer whales vanish, the ecological impacts could be profound. Existing at the center of marine food webs, such high-level predators are important to regulating ecosystems. In their absence, food webs take different shapes. That’s what appears to have happened in the western North Atlantic. With cod fished to near-extinction, it’s now dominated by small fishes and crabs. As a stopgap solution, Ainley and Ballard want diners to avoid Chilean Sea Bass, though that strategy did not save the Patagonian toothfish. Despite attempts to educate the public, Chilean Sea Bass remained a popular menu item in upscale American restaurants. Their greater wish is for the Commission for the Conservation of Antarctic Marine Living Resources, the international body charged with protecting the continent, to declare the Ross Sea a protected area, off-limits to all fishing. That’s not just sentimental enviromentalism, but economic practicality, Ainley said. “If you have areas with no fishing, it ensures that there will still be fishes caught around the edges of the reserve. Protecting the Ross Sea could probably ensure the continuation of that fishery. Otherwise, it’s going to go economically extinct,” he said. But Ballard is more idealistic. “We’re talking about the last pristine ecosystem. It’s important to have one of them left,” he said. “Going forward, people won’t have reference points to what we used to have. We’ll get used to a more and more degraded Earth. And I think we’re running into that here. It’s the last stand.” Image: 1) Ross Sea Killer Whale./Jaime Ramos, National Science Foundation. 2) Antarctic Toothfish./Alexander Colhoun, National Science Foundation. See Also:
Citation: “An Apparent Decrease in the Prevalence of “Ross Sea Killer Whales” in the Southern Ross Sea.” By David G. Ainley, Grant Ballard, and Silvia Olmastroni. Aquatic Mammals, Vol. 35 No. 3, March 2010. Brandon Keim’s Twitter stream and reportorial outtakes; Wired Science on Twitter. Brandon is currently working on a book about ecological tipping points. Image: 1. Ross Sea killer whale/Jaime Ramos, National Science Foundation 2. Antarctic toothfish/Alexander Colhoun, National Science Foundation See Also:
Citation: “An Apparent Decrease in the Prevalence of “Ross Sea Killer Whales” in the Southern Ross Sea.” By David G. Ainley, Grant Ballard, and Silvia Olmastroni. Aquatic Mammals, Vol. 35 No. 3, March 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 | 11 Mar 2010 | 11:51 am Obituary: John DavollOur father, John Davoll, who has died aged 85, followed a career as a research chemist with a pioneering role in the conservation movement. Born in Chadderton, Lancashire, to parents who worked in the cotton industry, he developed an early interest in chemistry through reading his father's textbooks. He pursued the subject at school and won a scholarship to Clare College, Cambridge. After completing his degree, he joined Alex Todd's organic chemistry research team in Cambridge. During this time he met Helen Frenkel, and they married in 1947. John gained his PhD and then took a position at the Sloan‑Kettering Institute for cancer research in New York. Returning to England in 1951, John and Helen settled in Shepperton, Surrey. John worked at the Parke-Davis pharmaceutical company, eventually becoming deputy director of research. His colleagues recall his sense of humour and the relaxed atmosphere in the department. John had always read widely on the nature of society and possible futures for humanity. His original view of science as a liberating force changed as he came to appreciate the less benevolent side of technology, and he grew increasingly concerned about limits to resources, the pressure of population and the impact of unchecked economic growth on the planet. In 1966 he became a founder member of the Conservation Society, one of the first British environmental societies, and in 1970 he left chemistry to work full-time as the society's director, continuing until 1987. He was a co‑author of A Blueprint for Survival, the special issue of the Ecologist magazine published in 1972, and in the same year contributed a prescient survey, Resources, to the UN conference on the human environment at Stockholm. Many of his ideas have now become common currency, though effective action still lags behind. In 1991 John and Helen retired to Bookham in Surrey. He was a kind and affectionate husband and father, and a lifetime Guardian reader. Helen survives him, along with our brother, Richard and ourselves. guardian.co.uk © Guardian News & Media Limited 2010 | Use of this content is subject to our Terms & Conditions | More Feeds Source: Science news, comment and analysis | guardian.co.uk | 11 Mar 2010 | 11:33 am Nearly half of Americans believe climate change threat is exaggeratedUS belief in climate science lowest since polling began 13 years ago, with 31% saying the threat is 'definitely' a reality Public belief in climate science has seen a precipitous slide in the US, according to new polling that suggests fewer Americans are concerned about the threat posed by global warming. Nearly half of Americans – 48% – now believe the threat of global warming has been exaggerated, the highest level since polling began 13 years ago, the poll published today by Gallup said. It directly linked the decline in concern to the controversies about media coverage of stolen emails from the University of East Anglia climate research unit and a mistake about the Himalayan glaciers melting by 2035 in the UN's authoritative report on global warming. "These news reports may well have caused some Americans to re-evaluate the scientific consensus on global warming," Gallup said. Half of Americans now believe there is a scientific consensus on climate change. Some 46% believe scientists are unsure about global warming, or that they believe it is not occurring. A UK poll last month showed adults who believe climate change is "definitely" a reality had dropped from 44% to 31% over the past year. "The last two years have marked a general reversal in the trend of Americans' attitudes about global warming," Gallup said. "It may be that the continuing doubts about global warming put forth by conservatives and others are having an effect." The poll feeds into fears among some environmentalists that the furore over the hacked emails has given new fuel to opponents of action on climate change, and stopped short the momentum in Congress for passage of a clean energy law. A troika of Senators trying to draft a compromise climate bill that could get broad support said this week they may not be able to produce a draft until after the Easter recess, further reducing the chances of enacting legislation in 2010. Meanwhile, the Obama administration faces lawsuits from Virginia, Texas, Alabama and a dozen business lobbies challenging its authority to act on greenhouse gas emissions through the Environmental Protection Agency. Tim Wirth, a former Colorado senator who led the campaign against acid rain, told a conference call the science squabbles resembled a re-run of efforts to discredit that earlier effort for an environmental clean-up. He said the scientists who worked on the IPCC report were woefully outmanoeuvred in PR by business groups which have the funds to employ legions of lobbyists and communications experts. "It's not a fair fight," he said. "The IPCC is just a tiny secretariat next to this giant denier machine." A majority of Americans continues to believe that climate change is real, but they are less convinced of its urgency. Only 32% believe they will be directly affected by the consequences of a warming atmosphere, despite a major report by the Obama administration last year that climate change could bring flooding, heat waves, drought and loss of wildlife to the US. guardian.co.uk © Guardian News & Media Limited 2010 | Use of this content is subject to our Terms & Conditions | More Feeds Source: Science news, comment and analysis | guardian.co.uk | 11 Mar 2010 | 11:23 am 'Miracle' Elephant Baby Beats the OddsZookeepers thought that "Mr. Shuffles" had died during labor, but the calf pulled through.Source: Discovery News - Top Stories | 11 Mar 2010 | 11:10 am Scientists Can Read Minds with Brain ScansBy scanning your brain, scientists can tell what memory you are recalling.Source: Livescience.com | 11 Mar 2010 | 11:04 am The Internet Nominated for 2010 Nobel Peace PrizeThe 2010 Nobel Peace Prize could go to the Internet, meaning you would share it.Source: Livescience.com | 11 Mar 2010 | 10:49 am Why the Chile Earthquake Aftershock Was So BigThe 7.2-magnitude aftershock that struck Chile isn't unusually following such a massive original earthquake.Source: Livescience.com | 11 Mar 2010 | 10:48 am Arctic Reindeer Go Off the Circadian Clock
Reindeer adapt to the Arctic’s endless summer light and winter dark by silencing their circadian clock. The adaptation may be a general one that helps Arctic animals make the most of their weird environment. “If you are being driven through a subjective day and night by an internal timer, you may be in ‘night mode’ when the optimal conditions for foraging are present.” said biologist Karl-Arne Stokkan of the University of Tromsø in Norway, co-author of the study appearing Mar. 11 in Current Biology. “So it may be a disadvantage to have such a strong timer in such an environment.” Animals have a circadian clock housed in the brain region called the hypothalamus, and it dictates when to rest and when to be active. In most animals, the clock resets every day on a roughly 24-hour schedule, said University of Massachusetts neurologist William Schwartz, who studies circadian biology, but was not involved in the study. The clock also determines the season, helping wildlife know to migrate in the fall or breed in the spring. Though it’s still a mystery exactly how the circadian clock orchestrates sleep and wakefulness, it works in part by driving periodic surges of melatonin and other hormones. Melatonin levels peak around dusk and drop sharply at sunrise. “The general assumption is that clocks are ubiquitously present and that they are extremely important for the normal functioning of the organism,” Stokkan said.
Stokkan’s team looked at semi-domesticated reindeer native to Tromsø, Norway. Tromsø, which is just north of the Arctic circle, gets about two months of continuous daylight in summer, two months of darkness in winter, and only a few weeks of regular length days around the equinoxes. The researchers bought the reindeer from the indigenous Scandinavian people, called the Saami, who herd reindeer for a living. The team took connective tissue cells from the reindeer and inserted a gene sequence into the reindeer DNA that triggers circadian clock genes. The sequence also included a reporter gene, which lit up every time the clock genes turned on, Stokkan said. In other animals, this process leads cells to send out a burst of light roughly once every 24 hours, indicating that the clock genes turned on about once a day. The pattern persists even if the cells are in complete darkness or complete light. But the clock genes in reindeer cells did not respond with this rhythmic on-off pattern, instead firing irregularly with a very low signal. The results suggest the reindeer have evolved to the weird Arctic environment by somehow turning off these genes. The team also found melatonin levels rose in the darkness and dropped sharply in light, regardless of what the clock genes did. That suggests the animals respond to light cues alone, rather than their circadian clock. Turning off the clock may help the reindeer keep to their non-stop schedule of grazing on grass, leaves and lichen for a few hours, napping for few hours and then grazing some more, even in winter when the sun never rises, Stokkan said “Because of their digestive system — something special to reindeer — they’re not going to do well if they just eat at a certain time of day,” Schwartz said. “They really have to be grazing every couple of hours.” It’s still a mystery how these reindeer know the season without the help of circadian clock genes. Knowing the time of year is crucial for breeding, said University of Manchester biologist Andrew Loudon, co-author of the study. “Otherwise they’d give birth at the wrong time of year, or be trying to lay on fat when there’s no food around.” One possibility is that the reindeer take breeding cues in fall and spring from fluctuations in melatonin, but don’t use this hormonal signal to determine their day-to-day nibbling schedule. Stokkan is studying ptarmigan and other species of reindeer, and early results suggest turning off the clock may be a general pattern in other Arctic wildlife, Stokkan said. Unfortunately, human Arctic dwellers don’t have this adaptation and often have trouble sleeping in summer and get depressed in winter. “To adapt your physiological mechanisms, you will have to go through a several-thousand-year-long exclusion of certain genes,” Stokkan said. “We are pretty tropical animals that have come here very recently,we still carry a pretty strong timer in our genes.” Image: 1) Natalia Robba/flickr. 2) Saami child and reindeer, 1933./ YlvaS/flickr. See Also: Follow us on Twitter @tiaghose and @wiredscience, and on Facebook.
Source: Wired: Wired Science | 11 Mar 2010 | 10:47 am Brain scans eavesdrop on thoughtsBrain scans revealed with reasonable accuracy which short film clip volunteers were thinking about Scientists have used brain scans to delve into people's minds and predict what films they are thinking about from one moment to the next. This is the first time brain imaging has been used to decipher such complex thoughts, which take place in the base of the brain in a region known as the medial temporal lobe. The work follows an earlier study in which neuroscientists at University College London showed they could read a person's thoughts about where they were standing in a virtual reality simulation. "In the previous experiment we were able to predict where someone was in a simple, stark virtual reality environment. What we wanted to know is can we look at 'episodic' memories that are much more naturalistic," said Eleanor Maguire, who led the study at the university's Wellcome Trust Centre for Neuroimaging. "The kinds of memories we form day-to-day are far more complex – they involve people and buildings and all kinds of actions." The scientists recruited six women and four men, with an average age of 21, to watch three film clips, each lasting seven seconds. All three films were similar, and showed an actress performing a particular activity in a street. In one film, for example, a woman drank a coffee before binning the cup, while in another, a different woman posted a letter. After watching the clips, the participants practised recalling the three films as vividly as they could. The scientists then used a technique called functional magnetic resonance imaging to look for memory traces in the participants' brains when they thought about each of the films in turn. At first, they were told which film to recall while the scanning was in progress. Using a computer program, Maguire's team was able to identify consistent and characteristic memory traces for the three films in each participant. In a second series of experiments, the volunteers were asked to remember the movie clips at random while having their brains scanned. The computer program was not good enough to predict which film a person was thinking about every time. With three films to choose from, a blind guess would be right 33% of the time on average. The computer predicted the right film 40-45% of the time. The memory traces associated with each film stayed the same throughout the experiment, suggesting the memories were fixed, at least for the duration of the study. More striking was the finding that the memory traces for each of the three films looked similar in all 10 volunteers. "The patterns of neurons that are able to represent these different movies are certainly in a similar place across the group," Maguire said. The researchers recorded memory traces from three different areas of the medial temporal lobe, including the parahippocampal gyrus, the entorhinal cortex and the hippocampus. Of these, the hippocampus was the most important for recording everyday memories and held the most reliable memory traces. The study appears in the journal Current Biology. The researchers are now trying to understand which aspects of people's memories they were reading. They may be only partial memories, such as the location each movie clip was set in. Previous studies have shown that the neocortex plays a major role in storing the content of memories, while the hippocampus orchestrates the recollection of the memory. "Now that we are developing a clearer picture of how our memories are stored, we hope to examine how they are affected by time, the ageing process and by brain injury," said Maguire. guardian.co.uk © Guardian News & Media Limited 2010 | Use of this content is subject to our Terms & Conditions | More Feeds Source: Science news, comment and analysis | guardian.co.uk | 11 Mar 2010 | 9:59 am Scientists Discover New Way to Generate ElectricityMIT researchers have found a way to produce large amounts of electricity from tiny cylinders of carbon, called carbon nanotubes.Source: Livescience.com | 11 Mar 2010 | 9:52 am Humans Have Sixth Taste for FatPeople with a high sensitivity to the taste of fat tend to eat less fatty foods and are less likely to be overweight.Source: Livescience.com | 11 Mar 2010 | 9:25 am Bridge in the SkyThe Hoover Dam Bypass bridge is almost 2,000 feet long, carries four lanes of traffic and a sidewalk, so tourists can get a good view of the dam.Source: Discovery News - Top Stories | 11 Mar 2010 | 9:22 am Chicken Have Sexual Identity IssuesBirds that appear to be half-hen, half-rooster aren't quite as mixed up on the cellular level.Source: Discovery News - Top Stories | 11 Mar 2010 | 9:01 am Friday News Feedbag for March 5, 2010!If this is your first exposure to the Friday News Feedbag...we're glad to have you in the club. Welcome to Feedbag Nation, which stems from our weekly science news podcast that you can subscribe to here on iTunes and chat ...Source: Discovery News - Top Stories | 11 Mar 2010 | 8:22 am "Personal" study shows gene maps can spot diseaseWASHINGTON (Reuters) - Two studies published on Wednesday show it is possible to sequence the entire gene maps of families with inherited diseases and pinpoint the offending bit of DNA.Source: Reuters: Science News | 11 Mar 2010 | 8:18 am Musk Ox Decline Is Not Our FaultThe decline of the musk ox population that started around 12,000 years ago was likely a result of changing climate, not human hunting, a new study suggests.Source: Livescience.com | 11 Mar 2010 | 7:24 am Libel tourism is a public health riskBritish libel law is being used by corporations from around the world to suppress legitimate reporting of bad science Last year, I had mumps. I blame the libel laws. The recent case of Simon Singh being sued by the British Chiropractic Association (BCA) is one example of the out-of-control libel laws in this country, and how they can stop people telling good information from bad. This week is Libel Reform Week and there is no shortage of cases bringing the health risks of such lawsuits to light. Public discussion – journalism included – involves freely debating topics in the public interest. It is similar to what scientists do in peer-reviewed journals. But because most people don't read those, we depend on trusted sources such as Singh to bring the facts and arguments to us. Libel laws have good reason to exist – to stop irresponsible reporting. However, British laws so favour one side that they can be used to intimidate journalists in other countries: "libel tourism". A US citizen can write for a US paper and be called up before courts here. Hence the likes of the Wall Street Journal considering not selling papers in the UK. Nor is libel simply a concern of big business and Brangelina. The international nature of collaboration and publication makes scientists particularly vulnerable. A British cardiologist, Peter Wilmshurst, is being sued by US company NMT Medical after he had questioned the effectiveness of a heart implant. NMT Medical says he accused the firm of research fraud; yet the company is based in Boston, and it was a report on a US-based website that triggered the libel action, Wilmshurst is being sued in the UK. I can understand his frustration. As an employee of the NHS, research requires a mountain of paperwork. Patient confidentiality must be guaranteed and ethics applications approved. I once spent five months of a year-long project on the paperwork alone. You could be tempted to think if the Trust R&D department eventually green-lights your project, there won't be any further liability problems. You could be wrong. The implications of these cases mirror the MMR scare. While epidemiologists such as myself can read Wakefield's original publication and judge whether his conclusions regarding autism were justified, others rely on what is re-reported elsewhere. It was years before that paper was publicly retracted by the Lancet. Even now, fresh suits threaten the dissemination of knowledge that is widely accepted among scientists. The damage can't be undone. In spite of the retractions, many people still believe a discredited study. This could have a devastating health outcome for a family. Given the option, wouldn't you choose a treatment that works over one that doesn't? But when a face cream can claim to be "inspired by the science of genes" while real scientists are tied up in the courts, it's little wonder many people can't tell the salve from the snake oil. Now, about those mumps: I had a full course of MMR as a child. When I moved to the UK, I had it again. The MMR confers herd immunity – not everyone becomes immune, but the few unlucky people who don't (like me) are protected when most other people are immunised. So when I moved to an area where many parents opted out of jabs, I fell ill. I was, after two courses of MMR, not immune to measles. I had follow-up jabs and am still not immune to rubella. If I become pregnant this could be a great concern. At first, I was angry; and then sad. It costs £100,000 and more to defend libel suits. The sources we trust are being gagged because they can ill afford a case, even if they win. The costs are too high, the process too long, to risk it. Nature abhors a vacuum, as does knowledge. Misinformation reigns. These cases influence what the news tells us. If sources won't report facts established through scientific process, what is left to trust? It leaves a gaping hole that charlatans and manipulators will rush to fill. • The Libel Reform Campaign's libel reform week culminates in the Big Libel Gig on Sunday 14 March 2010 guardian.co.uk © Guardian News & Media Limited 2010 | Use of this content is subject to our Terms & Conditions | More Feeds Source: Science news, comment and analysis | guardian.co.uk | 11 Mar 2010 | 6:35 am 'Memories' of childhood sexual abuse may not be what they seemSociologist Jo Woodiwiss argues that a pervasive self-help culture has led women to look to the past for the causes of their troubles, sometimes inferring childhood sexual abuse from no more than a checklist of symptoms The fierce debate over "recovered memories" of childhood sexual abuse was rekindled last week when an open letter from the scientific advisory board of the British False Memory Society was sent to the Archbishop of Canterbury requesting that the Church of England withdraw support for The Courage to Heal, a self-help book aimed at victims of such abuse. Professor Chris French's follow-up article on the science of memory is interesting, but it would be potentially more productive to explore why and how women (it is largely women) turn to self-help or therapy in an attempt to explain and/or improve their lives, and ultimately come to identify themselves as victims of childhood sexual abuse (CSA). Chris French and the British False Memory Society are right to be concerned about The Courage to Heal and similar texts that encourage readers to identify themselves as victims of CSA. However, these texts do not necessarily help "victims" to uncover memories of sexual abuse (false or otherwise), but rather they redefine memory to include a range of experiences that most of us would not consider to be memories at all. These "alternative" or "recovered" memories can take the form of physical or bodily experiences, feelings such as sadness or anxiety, and a whole range of other events or difficulties experienced in adulthood. They are often displayed in self-help literature as checklists of symptoms that the reader is encouraged to identify in their own lives, and include the following taken from The Courage to Heal:
Such "alternative" memories can be neither proved nor disproved, but rely instead on a leap of faith. We therefore need to move the debate beyond the truth or falsity of memories if we are to understand why readers choose to engage with these ideas about CSA. The writers of The Courage to Heal, Ellen Bass and Laura Davis, have removed from more recent versions the controversial statement: "If you are unable to remember any specific instances ... but still have a feeling that something abusive happened to you, it probably did." But this does little to alter the book's underlying message. Like the writers of many self-help texts aimed at adult victims of CSA, Bass and Davis construct victims as not only "damaged", but damaged for life, unless they are able to undo the effects of their abuse through healing. This is combined with a failure by the authors to recognise the social, economic and material conditions that impinge on women's lives and restrict their opportunities, and fails to acknowledge that many of the symptoms listed in texts like The Courage to Heal are not the result of CSA – whether or not the reader was sexually abused. My own research while at the University of York involved women who identified themselves as having been victims of CSA, based on "continuous", "recovered" or "false" memories. The research demonstrated that the women base their conclusion not on what most of us consider to be memories (ie "concrete" or "recall" memories), but on a correlation of symptoms (redefined as "buried" or "alternative" memories) that they perceive to indicate sexual abuse in childhood. In other words, they identify themselves as victims of sexual abuse not because they uncover a buried memory from childhood but because they believe their adult lives show evidence of such abuse. The study, funded by the Economic and Social Research Council, found that the majority of these women had entered adulthood with no knowledge or concrete memories of CSA, but at some point identified themselves as victims of CSA. Not all had seen a therapist, but the majority had read The Courage to Heal and based their identification on the kinds of "recovered" or "alternative" memories promoted in this text. Among the symptoms on which they based their identifications were a lack of sexual desire, being overweight, and/or stressful family lives – surely experiences with which many (abused and non-abused) women can identify? These victim identities are formed in the context of a pervasive therapeutic/self-help culture that places greater and greater emphasis on looking inward (and increasingly to the past) for the possible cause, and solution, for any troubles. The implication is that those who are unhappy or dissatisfied with at least some aspect of their lives can find solace and the promise of a better, brighter future, if only they can be cured of the effects of their unremembered abuse. Much of the debate around "recovered" versus "false" memories of CSA centres on the nature and aetiology of recovered memories: are they planted in the minds of weak and vulnerable victims, or are they actually the result of sexual abuse in childhood? Within this debate, the role of the women themselves is often missing, or they are constructed as victims of either malicious or misguided therapists, or the ongoing effects of CSA. However, as this and other research has shown, women themselves play an active role in constructing life stories based on CSA. In doing so, they do not simply adopt "ready-made" scripts or victim identities, but engage with a body of literature that helps them to make sense of their lives and plan for the future. That they ultimately construct themselves as victims of CSA tells us more about society, and the lack of alternative, social explanations for unhappiness, than it does about CSA, or indeed the science of memory. Women, whether or not they have been victims of CSA, would be better served if we questioned the basis on which alternative memories are based, and challenged the idea promoted by the writers of The Courage to Heal that victims are "programmed to self destruct". In doing so, we must not dismiss the wrongfulness of CSA, but equally we should not equate unhappiness in adulthood with assumed sexual abuse in childhood. Dr Jo Woodiwiss is senior lecturer in sociology at the University of Huddersfield, and author of Contesting Stories of Childhood Sexual Abuse, which is based on the research described in this article guardian.co.uk © Guardian News & Media Limited 2010 | Use of this content is subject to our Terms & Conditions | More Feeds Source: Science news, comment and analysis | guardian.co.uk | 11 Mar 2010 | 5:45 am Parents Pass on Fewer Bad Genes Than ThoughtThe genetic code of an entire family reveals mutations aren't passed on to children as commonly as thought.Source: Discovery News - Top Stories | 11 Mar 2010 | 5:33 am Interactive: England's lost species by regionFind out which species have become extinct in England by region Source: Science news, comment and analysis | guardian.co.uk | 11 Mar 2010 | 5:23 am Half-cock chicken mystery solvedResearchers in Edinburgh say they have solved the mystery of why some chickens hatch out half-male and half-female.Source: BBC News | Science & Environment | UK Edition | 11 Mar 2010 | 5:08 am In pictures: The beauty of wind powerA collection of images that show the beauty of wind power Source: Science news, comment and analysis | guardian.co.uk | 11 Mar 2010 | 5:00 am English Sets High Hurdles to Learning ABCsGiven the inherent complexity of English, reading to young children is critical to developing their language skills.Source: Discovery News - Top Stories | 11 Mar 2010 | 5:00 am Parched islandPoliticians look away as Cyprus dies of droughtSource: BBC News | Science & Environment | UK Edition | 11 Mar 2010 | 4:22 am Farming futureThe dawning age of the agricultural automatonsSource: BBC News | Science & Environment | UK Edition | 11 Mar 2010 | 4:02 am Japan protest over tuna ban planJapan voices opposition to a proposed ban on international trade in bluefin tuna, after the EU backs the plan.Source: BBC News | Science & Environment | UK Edition | 11 Mar 2010 | 3:46 am In pictures: Bear powerThe European brown bear's love of electricity and telegraph poles is helping scientists gain new insights into its behaviour.Source: BBC News | Science & Environment | UK Edition | 11 Mar 2010 | 2:53 am
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After zapping the quantum dots with a laser to make them emit photons, the researchers found that 94 percent of the photons stayed close to their emitters, creating spots of trapped light in the crystal. That’s about as good as previous results using more precisely ordered materials. Intuitively, physicists expect light to scatter in the face of disorder, but in this case colliding light waves built each other up and collected in the material.
But nobody knew how circadian clocks would work in the Arctic extreme environments where there is no regular day-night cycle.