Sleep deprivation influences drug use in teens' social networks, study finds

Recent studies have shown that behaviors such as happiness, obesity, smoking and altruism are "contagious" within adult social networks. In other words, your behavior not only influences your friends, but also their friends and so on. Researchers have taken this a step farther and found that the spread of one behavior in social networks influences the spread of another behavior -- adolescent drug use.
Source: ScienceDaily: Latest Science News | 20 Mar 2010 | 3:00 pm

Evidence indicates humans' early tree-dwelling ancestors were also bipedal

Experiments by anthropologists show that fossil footprints made 3.6 million years ago are the earliest direct evidence of early hominids using the kind of efficient, upright posture and gait now seen in modern humans.
Source: ScienceDaily: Latest Science News | 20 Mar 2010 | 3:00 pm

Machinery of immune protection against inflammatory diseases like colitis detailed

Scientists report a protein made by a gene already associated with a handful of human inflammatory immune diseases plays a pivotal role in protecting the intestinal tract from colitis.
Source: ScienceDaily: Latest Science News | 20 Mar 2010 | 3:00 pm

Imaging fat layer around heart can help predict disease

Imaging epicardial adipose tissue, or the layer of fat around the heart, can provide extra information compared with standard diagnostic techniques such as coronary artery calcium scoring. The size of the layer of fat around the heart can be measured by X-ray imaging techniques such as CT or MRI.
Source: ScienceDaily: Latest Science News | 20 Mar 2010 | 3:00 pm

Breakthrough for the quantum simulator: When ultra-cold atoms can be anything

For the first time, physicists have succeeded in describing a quantum simulator realizable with current technology. The scientists have shown that the level of control needed for such a simulator can be achieved using ultra-cold atoms in a highly excited Rydberg states.
Source: ScienceDaily: Latest Science News | 20 Mar 2010 | 3:00 pm

Microbe detective seeks out germs

Microorganisms are everywhere and most of them are harmless, but they can do a lot of damage in the manufacture of pharmaceuticals or in tissue transplants. With the aid of a new device, germs can be detected in artificial cartilage within a few hours.
Source: ScienceDaily: Latest Science News | 20 Mar 2010 | 3:00 pm

Freezing out breast cancer

Interventional radiologists have opened the door to an encouraging potential future treatment for the nearly 200,000 women who are diagnosed with breast cancer in the United States each year: image-guided, multiprobe cryotherapy. In the first reported study, researchers were able to successfully freeze breast cancer in patients who refused surgery; the women did not have to undergo surgery after treatment to ensure that tumors had been killed.
Source: ScienceDaily: Latest Science News | 20 Mar 2010 | 9:00 am

Silver proves its mettle for nanotech applications

Scientists have introduced a new method to deterministically and precisely position silver nanoparticles onto self-assembling DNA scaffolds.
Source: ScienceDaily: Latest Science News | 20 Mar 2010 | 9:00 am

Vitamin D levels have different effects on atherosclerosis in blacks and whites, study finds

Vitamin D is quickly becoming the "go-to" remedy for treating a wide range of illnesses, from osteoporosis to atherosclerosis. However, new evidence suggests that supplementing vitamin D in those with low levels may have different effects based on patient race and, in black individuals, the supplement could actually do harm.
Source: ScienceDaily: Latest Science News | 20 Mar 2010 | 9:00 am

Acne drug prevents HIV breakout

Scientists have found that a safe and inexpensive antibiotic in use since the 1970s for treating acne effectively targets infected immune cells in which HIV, the virus that causes AIDS, lies dormant and prevents them from reactivating and replicating.
Source: ScienceDaily: Latest Science News | 20 Mar 2010 | 9:00 am

The nation's weather (AP)

AP - A major storm was expected to strengthen over the South on Saturday, pulling in moisture from the Gulf of Mexico and contributing to a system that could drop 2 to 5 inches of snow on Oklahoma and northern Texas.

Source: Yahoo! News: Science News | 20 Mar 2010 | 3:09 am

The origins of morality do not matter | Razib Khan

Mothers will makes sacrifices for their children, whether they believe in God, karma, or a mindless evolutionary process

The question: What can Darwin teach us about morality?

Is morality meaningless when its natural foundations are exposed? No, unlike the naked emperor there is a clear substance to the genius of human ethical intuitions. Ancient man believed that this vigour must have been imparted by the gods, but modern man has attempted to trace back its origins to our animal past.

Evolutionary theory is the framework which can expose the ultimate causes behind our moral intuitions. In the 1960s WD Hamilton, John Maynard Smith, and George Price elucidated an evolutionary algebra of morals which showed exactly how a gene-centered wold-view could give rise to altruism. To the question of "why", these thinkers responded with "genes." Goodness as we understand it is conditioned not upon a deep truth of what is good, but upon the utility of goodness in fostering the replication of particular genes. George Price produced the most general algebra of this genetic morality with his eponymous equation, but this brilliant flash of insight opened the door to the mechanical dissection of altruism which drove him to madness. Price looked to Christianity for the moral foundations which he believed had been torn down by his scientific analysis. His tortured decline and ultimate suicide in 1975 suggests that the answers Price found in religion were not sufficient.

What can this teach us? Not much. George Price was a passionate and mercurial individual before he stumbled upon the evolutionary explanations of altruism; and so he remained to his dying day. Will evolutionary theory be the universal acid, to borrow Daniel Dennett's metaphor, which eats away at the rational foundations of our morality? There is quite a bit of variation in the belief in evolution across countries. In Denmark most everyone accepts evolution, while in Turkey only a minority do. Are the Danes tortured souls, as opposed to the Turks, who are assured as to the divine roots of their morals? Despite the picture painted by Lars von Trier's body of work the Danes are by some measures the happiest people in the world, so I would say no.

The origins of morality do not matter. The Danes believe in evolution, yes, but they understand it only marginally better than the Turks. Fewer still could define inclusive fitness. Turks believe in Islam, but most know Islamic theology or jurisprudence as well as a Dane. Sons cherish their mothers, and mothers will sacrifice for their children, whether they believe in a living God above, an eternal karmic cycle, or a mindless evolutionary process across the eons.

The ethos of the age does not rest upon the ratiocinations of the philosopher, it emerges from the consensus of the plain people, informed and constrained by our evolved intuitions. This may cause distress among intellectuals with a zeal for systematic coherency, but the hearts of most men are unmoved by a failure of logic. Human nature is biologically rooted no matter where the canopy sways. The puritans believed with great sincerity that all was predestined by God, yet their daily decisions seemed untroubled by the existential anxieties in their literature. A devout Christian believes that this life is just the beginning, but with a gun to his head he may feel as much fear as an atheist. This may not be coherent, but it is all too human. Our moral consensus is a river whose course shifts across the plain, constrained by the hills thrust upward by biology. Only history knows where the river will flow next, though evolution can hint at the range of possibilities.

Source: Science news, comment and analysis | guardian.co.uk | 20 Mar 2010 | 3:00 am

Massive sandstorm turns Beijing's streets yellow (Reuters)

Reuters - Tons of sand from deserts in China's interior blew into Beijing Saturday, shrouding China's capital in a yellow-orange haze that authorities warned made the air quality "hazardous."

Source: Yahoo! News: Science News | 20 Mar 2010 | 1:17 am

British boy receives pioneering stem cell surgery (AFP)

AFP - British and Italian doctors have carried out groundbreaking surgery to rebuild the windpipe of a 10-year-old British boy using stem cells developed within his own body, they said.

Source: Yahoo! News: Science News | 19 Mar 2010 | 10:36 pm

Arizona state employee fired over jaguar capture (AP)

AP - The Arizona Game and Fish Department has fired an employee based on results of an internal investigation into the capture and death of what was the only known wild jaguar in the U.S.
Source: Yahoo! News: Science News | 19 Mar 2010 | 8:36 pm

Nevada wild-horse roundup death toll rises (AP)

AP - Activists in Nevada are questioning the rising death toll from a government roundup of wild horses from the range north of Reno.
Source: Yahoo! News: Science News | 19 Mar 2010 | 8:35 pm

F-35 fighter fleet's price may be double forecast

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - The estimated total cost of Lockheed Martin Corp's F-35 fighter jets being bought by the Pentagon may be nearly twice as high as originally forecast, the Defense Department said Friday.
Source: Reuters: Science News | 19 Mar 2010 | 6:17 pm

What I'm really thinking: The defence barrister

'How can you defend someone if you know they're guilty? The answer is, you never know'

People imagine being a criminal defence barrister involves dealing with the devious, dishonest and depraved, that every day is a moral rollercoaster. That's why we're always asked: "How can you defend someone if you know they're guilty?"

The answer is, you never know. In most cases the rights and wrongs are hard to call. Of course I've represented people guilty of dishonesty, violence, drugs and sex offences. It would be ridiculous to assume every client told me the truth. But there have been very few I haven't got on with. I've met lots of interesting and genuine people, and lots of lonely, desperate and misguided people. I rarely have to challenge my own ethics. I just get on with the job.

Most barristers have a similar attitude: you don't get personally involved. It's normal to meet your opponent and talk frankly about the case, making disparaging remarks about defendants, witnesses or police. I almost always get on with my opponent – only last week I was prosecuted by a close friend. It does not affect my ability to do the job. But police officers almost always take a case personally. They can be desperate to see a defendant convicted.

The perception that criminal barristers make a mint is wrong: I'm self-employed and most of my work is legal aid. It's poorly paid, and the quality of advocacy is getting worse because the prosecution increasingly uses inexperienced in-house lawyers. The public might get a shock if they sat in their local crown court for a day.

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

Source: Science news, comment and analysis | guardian.co.uk | 19 Mar 2010 | 6:12 pm

Antibiotics don't cure colds, so why do patients think they do?

Doctors who cave into patient pressure create demand

Last month the government proposed allowing pharmacists to substitute prescriptions for branded medicines with generic alternatives. A letter of protest appeared in the Times, signed by various patient groups and experts, with positive coverage in the broadsheets. "Plan to switch to cheaper medicines will harm patients, say experts," reported the Times. They even had a case study: "Patient given Seroxat substitute felt unwell within two days."

But Margaret McCartney GP, writing in the British Medical Journal, has been digging: in fact the letter was coordinated and written by the PR company Burson-Marsteller, paid by the drug company Norgine. Norgine's chief operating officer, Peter Martin, , despite being the major influence behind the campaign, did not sign the letter himself. Asked why not, he said: "There was no conspiracy. The frank truth, the honest truth, is that I thought that having a pharmaceutical company in there would sully the message somewhat."

Meanwhile the "stay at home" campaign, covered in the Times, Telegraph, Mail, and BBC, encourages people not to go to their GP with mild self-limiting conditions. This campaign was organised by the Proprietary Association of Great Britain, which represents the manufacturers of over-the-counter medicines and food supplements in the United Kingdom. I think we're unhealthily obsessed with pills of all varieties, but the association did at least have the courtesy to sign its own letter, and its case is stronger. But its report missed one of the most fun trials ever published: a randomised controlled trial of the social phenomena of medicalisation.

Doctors commonly prescribe treatments, even when they know they're not effective, in the face of assertive patients. But does this really reduce their workload?

Most sore throats are caused by viruses. Doctors usually avoid antibiotics, with provide only marginal benefits. Explaining the evidence, prescribing "watch and wait", and being told the average duration is five days can provide reassurance. But measuring the benefits of that empowerment requires imagination.

Paul Little and colleagues took 716 patients, who consented to a "study looking at how quickly sore throats settle." Patients were given antibiotics, advice to watch and wait, or a delayed prescription which they could use if things hadn't settled in a few days.

Each group got better at much the same rate. But more of the patients given antibiotics came away with the view that antibiotics were effective (87% vs 55%).

So while prescribing antibiotics had marginal benefits at best, it hugely enhanced belief in antibiotics, and intention to go back to the GP. Researchers returned to the same patients one year later and found that the patients who had been prescribed antibiotics originally were 39% more likely to go back to the GP when they had a sore throat.

The evidence-based medicine journal Bandolier (available online, and highly readable) summed this up by translating the figures from both studies into what would happen in a real surgery, after doctors' behaviour changed. "If a GP prescribed antibiotics to 100 fewer patients with throat infection in a year, 33 fewer would believe antibiotics were effective, 25 fewer would intend to consult with the problem in the future and 10 fewer would come back within the next year." Sometimes the most helpful consultations involve no pill at all.

Source: Science news, comment and analysis | guardian.co.uk | 19 Mar 2010 | 6:06 pm

Media Too Optimistic about Cancer, Scientists Say (LiveScience.com)

LiveScience.com - The news media paints an overly optimistic picture of cancer. That's according to one of a series of papers being published in the March 17 issue of the Journal of the American Medical Association and in six of JAMA's sister journals this month, as well as at presentations at a two-hour media briefing today at the National Press Club in Washington, D.C.
Source: Yahoo! News: Science News | 19 Mar 2010 | 5:50 pm

Bio Breakthrough Signals Future Sensors

A piece of research news went practically unnoticed recently, except to the scientists in the field who saw it for what it is: an exciting development that could lead to sci-fi-like biosensors and ultra-efficient microelectronics.

 Researchers at the University of ...
Source: Discovery News - Top Stories | 19 Mar 2010 | 5:28 pm

Science justifies California water limits

LOS ANGELES (Reuters) - Federal limits on water that can be pumped out of a major river delta for California farmers are scientifically justified, a much-anticipated report said on Friday, a finding hailed by environmentalists in the state's epic water wars.
Source: Reuters: Science News | 19 Mar 2010 | 5:09 pm

Behind the Scenes at the Largest U.S. Atom Smasher

Take a visual tour of the biggest atom smasher in the U.S.
Source: Livescience.com | 19 Mar 2010 | 3:45 pm

Chileans' quake knowledge saved thousands of lives

SANTIAGO (Reuters) - Chileans' knowledge of earthquakes, combined with the abnormally long time it took for the February 27 quake to reach its crescendo, saved thousands of lives, a leading geophysicist said on Thursday.
Source: Reuters: Science News | 19 Mar 2010 | 3:18 pm

Experts design elastic iron for surgeries, buildings

HONG KONG (Reuters) - Researchers in Japan have designed a super-elastic iron alloy which they hope can be used in sophisticated heart and brain surgeries and even buildings in earthquake zones.
Source: Reuters: Science News | 19 Mar 2010 | 3:17 pm

Whale sedation aids conservation

Marine biologists look for better ways to save whales tangled in fishing gear.<img src="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~r/news/rss/today/~4/57FcLsOUg_U" height="1" width="1"/>
Source: NatureNews - All articles published today - nature.com science feeds | 19 Mar 2010 | 2:35 pm

Many tools but no guarantees in forecasting floods (AP)

AP - A year ago, weather forecasters changed their estimate late in the game of just how high the Red River would rise, stoking an 11th-hour sandbagging flurry in Fargo that proved unnecessary in the end because the new prediction was wrong.

Source: Yahoo! News: Science News | 19 Mar 2010 | 2:35 pm

Onions Made Pre-Human Ancestors Cry Too, Study Suggests

A chemical sensor in the body that makes you cry when you cut onions has been around for 500 million years, a new study finds.
Source: Livescience.com | 19 Mar 2010 | 2:31 pm

Crippled Mars Rover is Chilled, But Still Alive (SPACE.com)

SPACE.com - NASA's crippled Spirit Mars rover is still awake as it prepares for the oncoming Martian winter, which has already left it colder than ever before.
Source: Yahoo! News: Science News | 19 Mar 2010 | 2:31 pm

Saturn at its Best for 2010 (SPACE.com)

SPACE.com - While the planet Venus is now gaining in prominence low in western evening sky and Mars continues to slowly fade as it recedes from Earth, another bright naked eye planet, Saturn, is now enjoying its finest month in 2010. The great ringed beauty arrives at opposition to the sun on the American evening of Sunday, March 21, putting on an all-night performance.
Source: Yahoo! News: Science News | 19 Mar 2010 | 2:31 pm

Shark-Bitten Crocodile Poop Fossils Found (No, Really)

Paleontologists have stumbled across a scientific first that’s sure to inspire both fascination and disgust: coprolites, or fossilized fecal matter, bearing the distinct impressions of a creature’s teeth.

The coprolites — one chunk of rock is fist-sized, the other is about 30 percent larger — were discovered on a beach along the western shore of Chesapeake Bay, says Stephen Godfrey, a paleontologist at the Calvert Marine Museum in Solomons, Md.

The impressions in the coprolites are as much as 6.5 millimeters (just over a quarter of an inch) deep, Godfrey and a colleague report online March 9 in Naturwissenschaften. A silicone rubber mold of the tooth marks indicates that the biter was most likely a close relative of today’s tiger shark.

This fossilized poop doesn’t include visible bits of bone, feather or fish scales like similar coprolites unearthed from 15-million-year-old rocks in the nearby cliffs. But the hunks do have a phosphate-rich composition that hints the fecal matter came from a creature that had fed on bony prey. This, along with the size of the coprolites, suggests they came from a large animal, possibly a crocodilian, Godfrey says.

Although sharks are known to taste-test possible prey, Godfrey thinks it’s unlikely that the shark just took a nip of poop floating by to test its palatability. For one thing, he says, the tooth impressions are much deeper on one side of each coprolite than on the other — a scenario that’s unlikely if the delicate fecal matter had been free-floating.

Instead, the researchers contend, the disparity in the depth of the impressions probably resulted because the fecal matter was still inside the shark’s prey, or constrained within disemboweled intestines, when bitten.

Images: Stephen Godfrey.

Source: Wired: Wired Science | 19 Mar 2010 | 1:22 pm

Large Hadron Collider Triples Its Own Record

The Large Hadron Collider set a new record for the creation of energetic particle beams this morning. The particle accelerator, which surpassed Fermilab’s Tevatron in December as the baddest atom smasher of them all, smashed its own record, charging particles to 3.48 trillion electron volts.

That’s three times the energy of any beam ever created by human beings and just a shade under half the LHC’s proposed maximum capabilities.

After a series of mishaps and repairs over the last year and a half, CERN’s Director for Accelerators and Technology Steve Myers sounded a triumphant note.

“Getting the beams to 3.5 TeV is testimony to the soundness of the LHC’s overall design, and the improvements we’ve made since the breakdown in September 2008,” Myers said in a press release. “And it’s a great credit to the patience and dedication of the LHC team.”

The LHC could allow scientists to better understand the nature of mass, dark matter and the origins of the universe. But many of them hope that instead of confirming the current set of theoretical models we have all come to know — string theory, dark energy, the Higgs-Boson, etc. — something entirely unexpected will emerge from the CERN-run experiment.

Next up for the massive experiment is to collide those beams together to create a spectacular tiny explosion that could confirm or challenge decades of theoretical predictions. By sorting through the wreckage, physicists may find particular subatomic particles that will only exist under certain theoretical scenarios. For example, the detection of certain types of supersymmetric particles, aka sparticles, could be seen as what physicist Michio Kaku calls, “signals from the 11th dimension.”

While the LHC’s beam energies are certainly impressive, raw power is just one component of the quality of the data that a particle accelerator can produce. Understanding the incredible, almost unfathomable amounts of information that result from the collisions of beams requires iterative fine-tuning and learning by doing.

So, while the Tevatron, the last great American particle accelerator, may be chugging along at just under a trillion electron-volts, it’s still got an outside shot at finding the Higgs-Boson particle before the LHC can find or exclude it. And that could be a fitting final act before the high-energy physics torch passes wholly from Batavia, Illinois, to Geneva.

Photo: A piece of the Compact Muon Solenoid/CERN

See Also:

• Complete Wired Science coverage of the Large Hadron Collider

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

Source: Wired: Wired Science | 19 Mar 2010 | 12:54 pm

Ivory Wars: Is it Time for Another Round?

The international ban on trading ivory could soon be lifted, if a new proposal goes through.
Source: Discovery News - Top Stories | 19 Mar 2010 | 12:45 pm

Octopus Fooled by HDTV

When shown HD videos (bottom left), the so-called gloomy octopus (shown from above) reacts as if the scenes were real, trying to snag the crab, then swimming away from one of its own since the animals are solitary.
Source: Livescience.com | 19 Mar 2010 | 12:39 pm

Boy's windpipe replaced in pioneering stem cell operation

Ten-year-old undergoes surgery which could herald revolution in transplant techniques

A 10-year-old boy has undergone an operation to replace his windpipe using his own stem cells, which could herald a revolution in transplant surgery.

The boy, who is convalescing at Great Ormond Street children's hospital, in London, has not been identified.

He was born with a windpipe that was 1mm across – too narrow for him to be able to breathe unaided.

The boy was given a denuded donated windpipe which was coated just a few hours before the operation with his own stem cells, chemically "programmed" to turn into the appropriate tissues while inside his body.

Professor Martin Birchall, the head of translational regenerative medicine at University College London, said: "It is the first time a child has received stem cell organ treatment, and it's the longest airway that has ever been replaced.

"We need to conduct more clinical trials to demonstrate that this concept works. We'd like to move to other organs as well, particularly the larynx and oesophagus. We need to think about how to make regenerative medicine a part of healthcare."

The stem cell pioneer Professor Paolo Macchiarini, of Careggi University hospital, in Florence, who led the Italian, British and Spanish team behind Castillo's transplant, , tried the new procedure for the first time on a 53-year-old Italian woman last year. She had part of her trachea replaced. The boy's doctors contacted Macchiarini after they ran out of options. They had tried to patch up his trachea and hold it open with supporting "stents". But eventually the stents eroded, damaging the aorta, the main artery taking blood out of the heart. A decision was taken to go ahead speedily after the boy's condition deteriorated last November.

In February this year, Prof Macchiarini's team selected a dead donor from a shortlist of three - a 30-year-old Italian woman. Her trachea was removed, and stripped of its cells using digestive enzymes. All that was left was inert collagen and the "basal membrane" which provided the foundation for cell growth.

Macchiarini joined his British colleagues at Great Ormond Street during the operation, where he took charge of "seeding" the trachea with the stem cells and applying the correct "growth factor" chemicals.Using the new "bionic" technique, the boy's trachea was ready to be implanted in just four hours.

"The idea is to use the reactions of the body to make the structure living,” said Macchiarini."We told the cells to differentiate and transform naturally into the layers that make up the airway. This is something that makes tissue regeneration very simple and accessible to everyone." He said the implications for future treatments went beyond replacing whole organs. Damaged organs such as lungs, hearts or livers could be repaired by patching them with stem cells.

"We need to change our philosophy," said Macchiarini, speaking at University College London. "The question is do we really need to transplant the entire organ and put the patient on immunosuppression, or can we stimulate stem cells to make it function again?"

The boy is said to be recovering, although at this stage his new windpipe is still having to be artificially supported. Cardiothoracic surgeon Professor Martin Elliott, director of tracheal services at Great Ormond Street, who led the boy's operation, said: "The child is extremely well. He's breathing completely for himself and speaking, and he says it's easier for him to breathe than it has been for many years."

Source: Science news, comment and analysis | guardian.co.uk | 19 Mar 2010 | 12:18 pm

A Windy Link Between Hurricane Basins

The eastern North Pacific and North Atlantic Oceans set up a see-saw of weather conditions that affect how hurricanes form in both regions.
Source: Discovery News - Top Stories | 19 Mar 2010 | 12:06 pm

The Most Influential Video Games of the Last 50 Years

Electronic games have had a global impact on society and culture, changing how people play, learn and connect with each other.
Source: Livescience.com | 19 Mar 2010 | 12:01 pm

Men Take More Risks When Pretty Women Are Around

Young men took more risks in front of attractive woman than in front of man.
Source: Livescience.com | 19 Mar 2010 | 11:34 am

Weed invasion

The creeper that is smothering an ecosystem
Source: BBC News | Science & Environment | UK Edition | 19 Mar 2010 | 11:22 am

Whales May Change Color with Age, Stress

Can whales change color due to age, illness and/or stress? Marine biologist and noted whale expert Carrie Newell suspects they might. Since 1992, Newell has been documenting the comings and goings of gray whales at Depoe Bay, Oregon. A small ...
Source: Discovery News - Top Stories | 19 Mar 2010 | 11:00 am

Science in fiction and fact

Two dispatches from the far frontiers of science send our panellists into orbit around such issues as "how many years will it be before we all carry our personal genomes around with us, alongside our mobiles and our wallets?" and "why hasn't ET phoned earth yet?"

We hear astrophysicist Paul Davies's views on what the discovery of extra-terrestrial life would do to the religions of the world. And we consult a new book by Barack Obama's medical supremo, Francis Collins, to discover whether genomic medicine will be the saving of us, or our damnation.

We also interview the poet and memoirist John Burnside about the problems that plagued his early adulthood, from alcoholism to the neurological condition of apophenia – the experience of perceiving patterns and connections in random objects.

Reading list:

The Language of Life: DNA and the Revolution in Personalised Medicine, by Francis Collins (Profile)
The Eerie Silence: Are we alone in the Universe? By Paul Davies (Allen Lane)
Take Off Your Party Dress: When Life's Too Busy for Breast Cancer, by Dina Rabinovitch (Pocket Books)
Waking Up In Toytown, by John Burnside (Jonathan Cape)

Elsewhere: Tim Radford's latest science book club choice is Professor Stewart's Cabinet of Mathematical Curiosities, by Ian Stewart.

Source: Science news, comment and analysis | guardian.co.uk | 19 Mar 2010 | 10:56 am

Amidst Earthquake in Haiti, Ecologist Puts Down Roots

Doctoral student in ecology survives earthquake in Haiti to continue her work promoting sustainable tree farming
Source: Livescience.com | 19 Mar 2010 | 10:44 am

Activists urge Australia to charge Japanese whalers (AFP)

AFP - Anti-whaling activists have lodged a legal complaint against the captain and crew of a Japanese trawler which hit and sank their hi-tech speedboat, a politician said Friday.

Source: Yahoo! News: Science News | 19 Mar 2010 | 10:12 am

Geneva Atom Smasher Sets Record for Beam Energy

The world's largest atom smasher has just broken its own record, and it's just getting started.
Source: Discovery News - Top Stories | 19 Mar 2010 | 10:00 am

Happiness Is … Making More Money Than the Next Guy

Money doesn't buy happiness unless you have more money than your peers.
Source: Livescience.com | 19 Mar 2010 | 9:57 am

3 Best Smartphones You Can Buy

These 3 phones currently sit at the top of the smartphone market.
Source: Livescience.com | 19 Mar 2010 | 9:53 am

Spring about to 'explode' in Britain

Experts believe release of pent-up energy after such a long, hard winter could produce the most spectacular spring in years

Up in the plane and ash trees, all London's wildlife appeared hard at spring yesterday. Tail feathers were shaking along the Regent's canal, the first buds were bursting on brambles and honeysuckle and carpets of crocuses were delighting crowds in the grand royal parks.

But in the more egalitarian Camley Street natural park, just 100 yards from St Pancras station, there was still precious little sight or sound of a new season. A heron was spotted last week, a few tits were investigating the bat boxes but the grasses were dead, the hedgehog boxes empty and the newts absent.

It's been the longest, hardest winter the UK has known for 30 years, with twice as many frosty nights as usual, says the Met Office. Wales has barely seen a daffodil and vast swaths of countryside that should be green by now are still dull and grey after months under snow. But – shout it! - tomorrow is the vernal equinox, the official first day of spring in the northern hemisphere, when night and day are the same length.The release of pent-up energy could spur the most spectacular spring for years, but there have been losers as well as winners.

For more than a decade, ever milder winters have led to ever earlier springs, with daffodils and frogspawn found at Christmas and confused insects and small mammals stirring in January. But this year, says Matthew Oakes, conservation adviser to the National Trust, harks back to older times when British life, to all natural intents, began near the end of March. "The trend is to earlier seasons, but this is a slow, late, old fashioned spring," he said.

Oakes, who keeps meticulous records of nature's first sightings, says wildlife in London is well ahead of the rest of the country because of the "heat island" effect of 12 million people driving cars and heating their homes. "Outside London, everything appears incredibly late this year. It's the first year since 1996 that there have been no bumblebees in January. In the woods very little has been happening. The bluebells and wild garlic are putting up their first spikes and the primroses are just starting. There a little bit of green from honeysuckle and rose but the woods are really leafless.

"Rooks are only building their nests now. The bluebells this year will be very late, perhaps not in full flower until mid-May," he adds.

Oates's predictions were echoed by Steve Marsh, a conservationist with the Woodland Trust, which has up to 40,000 people recording the arrival of the seasons and posting sightings on the web. He said: "This has been an exceptional season. We've only had one blackthorn in blossom so far, yet usually we would have 1,000 or more sightings by now. There have been only 10 recordings of coltsfoot when we would have expected hundreds. And it's the same with celandines. Normally we would see them now right across the UK, but this year there has been sparse coverage in the south and midlands and almost none reported in northern England and Scotland". But he adds that even this year's "late" spring is early compared to 1970s. "

Among those celebrating, say conservationists, are galanthophiles - snowdrop lovers - and those cherishing bats, who can expect a bumper year because the baby mammals thrive in a hard winter with its deep, refreshing hibernation. Equally, Jack Frost may have stopped some pests in their tracks, including the parasitical sturmia bella fly which has nearly wiped out tortoiseshell butterflies and the midge that can spread the bluetongue virus among livestock.

But pity the very small birds, says Paul Stancliffe, of the British Trust for Ornithology. "We don't know for certain yet what effect this winter has had on bird populations, but other bad winters, like in the 1940s and 1960s, really hit small ones like the goldcrest and the wren very hard. This winter will almost certainly have had an [adverse] effect on them. Frozen water and plummeting temperatures may have also severely reduced populations of birds like the kingfisher and heron, who have had less water open water to feed from."

But the growing British habit of feeding garden birds will certainly have helped, he says. "We spend £200m-300m a year on bird food. That will have seen many birds through the harshest months."

On the wing, there are further signs of winter easing its grip. Scientists in Ghana this week reported great flocks of swifts heading north and the first swallows and wheatears have just arrived in southern England from equatorial Africa after one of nature's greatest annual journeys.

"The migration is well under way," says Stancliffe, whose records suggest we can expect great numbers of swallows, swifts, willow warblers, ring ouzel and housemartins to arrive in the next few weeks.

"The early birds are taking a gamble. If we have had an early spring they get the best choice of nest sites and mates. But in a bad winter, like this, they could be in trouble. Next week we should get a rush of migrants. If this milder weather persists then they will have timed it right. All they need now is a rush of insects."

"It's all about to explode," says Oakes. "It could come with a bang and be one of the most spectacular springs in years. We've all – humans and wildlife – suffered a lot. We all need the sunshine now".

Spring 2010

What's thriving

• Snowdrops

• Crocuses

• Bats

What's not

• Daffodils

• Bluebells

• Bumblebees

• Kingfishers

Source: Science news, comment and analysis | guardian.co.uk | 19 Mar 2010 | 9:39 am

Celebrate science every week

Until Britain values science and maths like it values literacy, we're going to be stuck with our anti-scientific society

This week is National Science and Engineering Week – a good a time to reflect on what science means to us all.

I became a scientist because from a young age I was curious about the world around me. I would question why vegetables didn't feel pain, and what made fireworks go bang. It is a bit of an exaggeration to say that science affects everything that surrounds us, but it's not far off. The moment you wake up in the morning the triumphs of science are in plain sight, from the cereal you eat for breakfast to the GPS unit in your car.

But if science is so important, why have the numbers of science students generally declined in the developed world, and why do so many adults view science with suspicion, if not downright hostility? If all children have an innate curiosity, why do so many of us lose it along the way?

The 2007 Trends in International Mathematics and Science survey found that at the ages of 10 and 14, children in England ranked 7th and 5th respectively in the world for attainment in science. There is, however, a gap between this achievement and the number of pupils who will go on to pursue a career in science. Some are lured away from the world of science into the far more lucrative financial sector, where science education almost certainly has a part to play. And while watching your chemistry teacher attempt to blow up the lab using nothing more than a piece of sodium and a beaker of water is fun, memorising trends down the periodic table isn't.

Science teachers work extremely hard to make learning science as engaging as possible, and the revamp of the GCSE science curriculum, which includes the introduction of the controversial "how science works" component, seems to have helped. The number of students taking science and maths A levels increased in 2009, although the number of GCSE students taking separate science is still very low, with over half of schools in the UK failing to offer separate science GCSEs.

But education alone is not responsible for developing either a love or distrust in science. Children also take social cues from the adults around them: a lack of curiosity about science in adults will be passed on. It is socially acceptable to be bad at both science and mathematics. Few people are willing to admit that they're illiterate, but many otherwise well-educated people are proud of the fact they can't do maths. It is strange that society views the ability not to be able to tell when you are being ripped off as something to be proud of.

Science is more highly regarded in developing countries, where ability in science is seen as a way for both the country and individuals to become richer. Developed countries on the other hand seem to place a higher value on actors and footballers, rather than the people whose research may one day save your life.

I also believe that the media doesn't help with the public perception of science. Journalists love to seize on catastrophic worst-case-scenario predictions as they make great headlines – remember the "65,000 could die" headlines for swine flu, or how the world would end when the Large Hadron Collider was switched on? Then when the catastrophe fails to occur scientists get the blame. Science often doesn't deal in certainties, but in shades of grey; in a world where both politicians and the public want precise numbers, it's no wonder science can seldom do right in the public eye.

So if science is in need of a little help with its public perception, what can be done about it? The most obvious answer is to employ more science graduates as journalists – most of the adult population receives their information about science through the media, so it is essential that journalists have the skills to accurately and concisely explain complex topics to a wider audience. Scientists also have a role to play: they need to be more aware of how their data is likely to be interpreted by the public, and make every effort to ensure that it is not sensationalised.

As we are celebrating science this week, it might be the ideal time to buy a science book, visit a science museum or even go for a walk in the park and try to recapture that innate curiosity about the world around us. Go on – this scientist wants you to.

• This article was commissioned after the author suggested it in a You tell us thread

Source: Science news, comment and analysis | guardian.co.uk | 19 Mar 2010 | 8:30 am

Consortium wins big weather prize

A Franco-German consortium will enter into negotiations for a 1.3bn-euro contract to build Europe's next weather satellites.
Source: BBC News | Science & Environment | UK Edition | 19 Mar 2010 | 8:09 am

LHC smashes energy record again

The Large Hadron Collider has smashed the record for highest-energy particle beams again in its quest to uncover new physics.
Source: BBC News | Science & Environment | UK Edition | 19 Mar 2010 | 7:33 am

Students Discover Clawed Dinosaur in China

A clawed dinosaur discovered in Mongolia was likely an agile predator some 75 million years ago.
Source: Livescience.com | 19 Mar 2010 | 7:13 am

Earliest Signature of Renaissance Artist Raphael Found in Painting

Art experts find what they believe is the earliest signature of the master Raphael, hidden within a painting's arabesque decorations.
Source: Discovery News - Top Stories | 19 Mar 2010 | 6:18 am

What vampire bats can teach us

The Darwinian view of morality only takes us so far down the road in understanding human nature

The question: What Can Darwin teach us about morality?

It's tough being a vampire bat. Contrary to what is often supposed, your prey – large mammals such as South American cattle – are quite good at detecting you and sometime you go an entire night without feeding. Then you are in trouble. Two nights without food and you are dead.

Vampire bats, in a manner that would I am sure have delighted Charles Darwin had he known of it, have developed an ingenious way round this problem. They hang around (sorry!) in groups but form reciprocal relationships with particular individuals. Suppose you and I are such a pair and you go a night without food while I have been more successful. I typically regurgitate a meal of blood for you. When next I go a night without getting a meal of my own you reciprocate by regurgitating a meal for me.

Evolutionary biologists call this reciprocal altruism. You scratch my back and I'll scratch yours. Now, reciprocal altruism isn't restricted to vampire bats. It is found in a number of long-lived species where individuals can recognise one another as individuals. Supremely, of course, it is found in humans.

Darwin didn't think up the idea of reciprocal altruism but he did think up the idea of "family selection" which is nowadays termed "kin selection". This is the notion that the apparently obvious phenomenon in which individuals are usually more likely to help relatives than non-relatives – and this is true even in vampire bats – is because by helping relatives we are, in a vicarious sense, helping ourselves.

Because we are genetically related to our relatives, in helping them to survive and reproduce we are, in a way, helping ourselves to survive and reproduce. To be a bit more precise, the genes that we have, and which play a role in our helping behaviours, are more likely to be found in our relatives than in our non-relatives. This is why the British geneticist of the early 20th century, JBS Haldane, once famously remarked that he was prepared to lay down his life for two of his brothers or eight of his cousins.

So is this Darwinian view of altruism all there is of human morality? Of course not. But what I think is the case is that the roots of human morality are to be found in a Darwinian understanding of helping behaviours. Ever since WD Hamilton, as a young doctoral student in the early 1960s, uncovered the mathematics that explains the genetics of helping behaviours, evolutionary biologists have explored the extent to which such rules explain morality in humans.

There is much still to be discovered but I think a fruitful way of understanding what is going on is to see the evolution of morality as analogous to the evolution of language. In both cases something begins for routine Darwinian reasons. In other words, the phenomenon is due to the standard workings of natural selection. But there comes a point where the process begins to run ahead of itself.

Just as Darwin's theory of natural selection, while necessary for an understanding of the origins of human language, is incomplete, in itself, to appreciate The Divine Comedy or Middlemarch, so WD Hamilton's equations, while necessary for an understanding of the origins of human helping behaviour, are insufficient to explain not only the occasional rare and truly selfless individuals there are but the thousand small, routine acts of kindness that enable every society to run reasonably smoothly.

This is not to collapse into a woolly liberal espousal of communitarian goodness. One of the things I find most helpful about Darwinian reasoning is how it helps to strip away my tendency to be too generous in my self-analysis. The truth is that we each have a great capacity not only for deception but for self deception. The actor is most convincing who believes that their performance is for real.

Many of the acts of kindness for which I am tempted to congratulate myself are either self-serving (reciprocal altruism and kin selection again) or of very little cost (the odd £20 to a charity appeal). In the conditions in which we evolved, when our behaviour was under far greater scrutiny than it is today, any individual who did not show occasional acts of kindness would soon be seen by others as self-centred and self-serving, and so to be shunned or treated with suspicion.

Source: Science news, comment and analysis | guardian.co.uk | 19 Mar 2010 | 5:40 am

Cat Fur Puts Criminals Behind Bars

Cat fur could be effectively used as forensic evidence to solve criminal cases.
Source: Discovery News - Top Stories | 19 Mar 2010 | 5:00 am

Flat-headed cat is now endangered

Habitat loss and deforestation are now endangering the survival of Asia's flat-headed cat, a diminutive and little studied feline species.
Source: BBC News | Science & Environment | UK Edition | 19 Mar 2010 | 4:27 am

Spaceman

Riding the strangest rocket in the world
Source: BBC News | Science & Environment | UK Edition | 19 Mar 2010 | 3:31 am

Turbulence Tamed in Water Pipes

A technique to keep turbulence down in pipes could save money and could even be used to make vessels more fuel efficient and keep arteries clear.
Source: Discovery News - Top Stories | 19 Mar 2010 | 3:22 am

Is There Water On The Moon? Bucketloads.

A huge quantity of water has been discovered in craters at the north lunar pole, enough water to supply a large US city for three years. Also, there also appears to be evidence for a lunar "hydrosphere".
Source: Discovery News - Top Stories | 19 Mar 2010 | 3:20 am

Ice mission given lift-off date

Europe's Cryosat spacecraft is set to launch on 8 April on a mission to map the world's ice fields.
Source: BBC News | Science & Environment | UK Edition | 19 Mar 2010 | 2:54 am

Pay attention, Radford!

Tim Radford discovers an effervescent enthusiasm and humour in Ian Stewart's mathematical curiosities and treasures that was absent from the morose maths lessons of his schooldays

Professor Stewart's Cabinet of Mathematical Curiosities, and Professor Stewart's Hoard of Mathematical Treasures

In his quiet way, Ian Stewart may have done more for his subject in these two books than he or his colleagues have done in perhaps the previous 10 or 15 books about mathematics I have read. One has to allow for that warmth towards a book just finished, but I might still feel the same a week or a fortnight from now.

There is no story in these books, no moral, no parable, no implied rebuke for my failure to master the calculus or to remember the difference between a prime and a Mersenne prime. There is only delight and amazement, and of course a tiny bit of entirely self-induced guilt at my own sluggard response to mathematical challenge.

For those who haven't yet looked at them, they are ragbags: almost random jottings of little puzzles, jokes, oddities, anecdotes, commonplaces and calculator curiosities collected over a lifetime. Did I read every word? Probably not. Dippers like me do tend to miss the occasional treasure. And no, I didn't try to solve all the puzzles, but yes, I did get some of them right.

I kept dipping into these books when I was supposed to be reading Jared Diamond's Guns, Germs and Steel. I dare say I shall still be picking them up when I get around to finishing Gibbon's Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire. The entries are short, comprehensible, delightfully distracting and deceptively frivolous.

When I first opened Professor Stewart's Cabinet of Mathematical Curiosities, the first thing I saw was the story about how the Indiana state legislature had passed a law fixing the value of pi. Why not? My school had in effect implemented a law fixing it at 22/7 or perhaps 3.14 (actually I think the first value was at primary school, the other at secondary school, as we went from fractions to decimals). Given that at some point you have to tell an examiner the area of a circle, you need to settle on a value.

But as Stewart points out, firstly it's a myth – also told about Iowa and Idaho – and secondly, the consequences of a "legal truth" (a legal limit on pi) that isn't in fact a "true truth" would be judicially absurd (turn to Cabinet page 25 for the consequences in theorem form).

Stewart can say this with conviction because, as his entertainments confirm, mathematics exposes the reality beneath the semblance of reality that most of us are happy with. There are hundreds of these confections and all of them are presented with an effervescent enthusiasm and good humour missing from the morose maths lessons of my own schooldays.

Some of the charm comes from the telling. I don't know why those recurring postulants the Great Whodunni and Grumpelina are more palatable starting points than A and B; and why Farmer Hogswill and Pigasus, his prize pig on a rope (Cabinet, page 143) seem more easy to manipulate than a blackboard theorem involving an equilateral triangle, but they are.

The other enticing thing about these books is that they are not just an alternative to the cryptic crossword or sudoku. They contain, in snack-sized servings, nourishing bits of intellectual history: Fibonacci series, Fermat's last theorem, chaos theory, the four colour problem, what Byron wrote about Newton, Euler's conjecture, public key cryptography, the inventor of the equals sign, Zeno's paradox, how the Babylonians handled number, the probability theory of monkeys and typewriters, the square root of minus one, celestial resonance and how the Egyptians did fractions with hieroglyphs (not a problem that I'd ever thought about before).

The entries are not all brief: Stewart's discussion of global warming (Hoard, page 164) goes on for pages, just after what Stewart claims is the shortest mathematical joke ever (but you might quarrel with the word "joke").

And how nice to be in a world where e is a Napierian exponent and not a recreational drug, where sliced bread comes in perfectly spherical loaves, and where proverbs become "tautoverbs". Example: If pigs had wings, they'd have wings; they still wouldn't be able to fly, because aerodynamics has laws to stop that sort of thing, but since this is Ian Stewart, the non-flying pig has to become an "unfeasible porcithopter".

My argument (am I the only one to think this?) is that while a little learning may be a dangerous thing, bite-sized ingestion might help some of us chew gratefully on such provocations. Instead of making a three-course meal of one theme in mathematics, Stewart has served up the instructive equivalent of a Michelin-starred tasting menu, or perhaps a smorgasbord of appetisers. And of course, appetisers are designed to give you an appetite for more.

Sometimes the most arcane dish is spiced with even more arcane flavours: a preposterous anecdote from Snorri Sturluson's Heimskringla (Hoard, page 223) is accompanied by two footnotes on the identities of Olaf, Olof the Treasurer, and Sigrid the Haughty.

I had, of course, come across Fibonacci and Fermat and quite a few other mathematical stars before, often in Stewart's earlier books, but these bits of semi-detached instruction seem a lot more reader-friendly when surrounded by unexpected titbits and not-so-silly jokes. For instance, in Hoard page 139 – between a short history of the square root symbol and a description of the ham sandwich theorem – is a tiny little squib headed "Please bear with me.

Q. What's a polar bear?

A. A Cartesian bear after a change of co-ordinates."

Yes, I'm still thinking about that one.

This is a book club and the February choice was suggested by a member with the cyber-identity EndPseudoscience, and a terrific choice it was too. More suggestions, please.

Some general rules: how about we agree on science, not pseudoscience, science fact rather than science fiction, still in print, available both sides of the Atlantic, ideally in paperback. Of course it should also meet somebody's criteria for a good read.

And in the meantime, since it ticks all these boxes, The Blind Watchmaker by Richard Dawkins (left) will be our book for April.

Source: Science news, comment and analysis | guardian.co.uk | 19 Mar 2010 | 2:30 am