1918 and 2009 pandemic influenza viruses lack a sugar topping

Although they emerged more than 90 years apart, the influenza viruses responsible for the pandemics of 1918 and 2009 share a structural detail that makes both susceptible to neutralization by the same antibodies.
Source: ScienceDaily: Latest Science News | 26 Mar 2010 | 9:00 am

First ever southern tyrannosaur dinosaur discovered

Scientists have found the first ever evidence that tyrannosaur dinosaurs existed in the southern continents. They identified a hip bone found at Dinosaur Cove in Victoria, Australia, as belonging to an ancestor of Tyrannosaurus rex.
Source: ScienceDaily: Latest Science News | 26 Mar 2010 | 9:00 am

Exposure to fast food can make us impatient

Fast food has become an industry that has widespread influence on what and how we eat. The original idea behind fast food is to increase efficiency, allowing people to quickly finish a meal so they can move on to other matters. Researchers, however, have found that the mere exposure to fast food and related symbols can make people impatient, increasing preference for time saving products, and reducing willingness to save.
Source: ScienceDaily: Latest Science News | 26 Mar 2010 | 9:00 am

Words influence infants' cognition from first months of life

Researchers have found that even before infants begin to speak, words play an important role in their cognition. For 3-month-old infants, words influence performance in a cognitive task in a way that goes beyond the influence of other kinds of sounds, including musical tones.
Source: ScienceDaily: Latest Science News | 26 Mar 2010 | 9:00 am

World oil reserves at 'tipping point'

The world's capacity to meet projected future oil demand is at a tipping point, according to new research.
Source: ScienceDaily: Latest Science News | 26 Mar 2010 | 9:00 am

Potential new target for treating rheumatoid arthritis

By enhancing the activity of immune cells that protect against runaway inflammation, researchers may have found a novel therapy for rheumatoid arthritis and other autoimmune diseases. Researchers now reveal how treating these immune cells with an investigational drug wards off inflammation by holding a particular enzyme at bay.
Source: ScienceDaily: Latest Science News | 26 Mar 2010 | 9:00 am

After growth spurt, supermassive black holes spend half their lives veiled in dust

Supermassive black holes found at the centers of distant galaxies undergo huge growth spurts as a result of galactic collisions, according to a new study.
Source: ScienceDaily: Latest Science News | 26 Mar 2010 | 6:00 am

Researchers discover fundamental step in immune-system development

Researchers have discovered a fundamental step in the development of the immune system, one that allows B cells to mature and fight disease by producing effective antibodies. Immunologists have demonstrated that immature B cells in the bone marrow must receive a positive signal, mediated by the Erk protein, before they can migrate to the spleen where they mature and are activated.
Source: ScienceDaily: Latest Science News | 26 Mar 2010 | 6:00 am

Novel Parkinson's treatment strategy involves cell transplantation

Scientists have used a novel cell-based strategy to treat motor symptoms in rats with a disease designed to mimic Parkinson's disease. The strategy suggests a promising approach, the scientists say, for treating symptoms of Parkinson's disease and other neurodegenerative diseases and disorders, including epilepsy.
Source: ScienceDaily: Latest Science News | 26 Mar 2010 | 6:00 am

Blueprint for 'artificial leaf' mimics Mother Nature

Scientists have presented a design strategy to produce the long-sought artificial leaf, which could harness Mother Nature's ability to produce energy from sunlight and water in the process called photosynthesis. The new recipe, based on the chemistry and biology of natural leaves, could lead to working prototypes of an artificial leaf that capture solar energy and use it efficiently to change water into hydrogen fuel, they stated.
Source: ScienceDaily: Latest Science News | 26 Mar 2010 | 6:00 am

Pregnancy 'safe for breast cancer survivors'

Trials contradicts orthodoxy that pregnancy increases the risk of relapse in women treated for breast cancer

Women who survive breast cancer do not appear to face greater risks of the disease recurring if they become pregnant, according to a study which contradicts previous orthodoxy.

Doctors have long been concerned that pregnancy might spark hormonal changes in breast cancer survivors that could spur the disease's return, and many breast cancer patients are counselled against getting pregnant after they recover.

In research presented at a European breast cancer conference in Barcelona, experts said pregnancy in women who have been treated for breast cancer is safe and does not seem to be linked with the disease's recurrence.

Among the wider population, those who have early and multiple pregnancies have a lower risk of getting breast cancer than women who do not.

Dr Hatem Azim of the Institut Jules Bordet in Belgium and colleagues analysed results from 14 trials that followed more than 1,400 pregnant women with a history of breast cancer, and compared them with more than 18,000 women treated for breast cancer who were not pregnant.

"I hope this changes what doctors tell their patients," Dr Azim said. "There's no reason to tell women who survive breast cancer not to get pregnant."

The researchers said that the women who got pregnant had a 42% lower risk of dying compared with breast cancer survivors who did not get pregnant. He said part of that benefit might be due to the fact that women who were naturally healthier were those that later had children.

"For many years, pregnancy was considered a risk for women who had had breast cancer," said Maria Leadbeater, of Breast Cancer Care. "But this study seems to show the risk is not an issue once you've been treated," she said.

Leadbeater said the advice for patients might depend on the type of breast cancer they have had and how they responded to treatment. Women who need hormone therapy for breast cancer typically need to be on it for five years, during which time doctors recommend against getting pregnant.

Leadbeater and others said women should try to wait until two years after their diagnosis to try for a baby, since that is thought to be the riskiest time for a relapse.

Source: Science news, comment and analysis | guardian.co.uk | 26 Mar 2010 | 3:35 am

The nation's weather (AP)

AP - Wet weather was expected to dissipate in the Eastern US on Friday as a strong low pressure system moves offshore.
Source: Yahoo! News: Science News | 26 Mar 2010 | 3:05 am

China steams ahead on clean energy

China overtook the US during 2009 as the leading investor in clean energy, researchers say - with the UK in third place.
Source: BBC News | Science & Environment | UK Edition | 26 Mar 2010 | 1:49 am

Is this a new species of human being?

Scientists have extracted DNA from a bone discovered in Siberia that almost certainly belongs to a new kind of human – one that may have lived as recently as 30,000 years ago. Will this transform our views of human evolution?

From nothing more than a piece of bone from a child's little finger, the human family tree has gained another member, one who lived alongside modern humans perhaps as recently as 30,000 years ago.

Yesterday's revelation, that scientists in Germany had discovered – to their amazement – that the bone recovered from a cave in the mountains of southern Siberia almost certainly belonged to a new species of human, has sent ripples of excitement through academic circles. For the first time, the analysis of ancient DNA has rewritten the human story. Some 30,000 years ago, human life was far richer than we could have imagined.

Until recently, palaeontologists' view of human evolution was desperately lacking. Ask them to paint a picture of human existence 40,000 years ago, say, and they would mention modern humans, Homo sapiens, occupying vast territories. The only other hominid (a human or close relative) in existence back then, Homo neanderthalis, was eking out a life alongside us modern humans, but its populations were in terminal decline. Then the Neanderthals became extinct around 25,000 years ago. That much was agreed upon.

Things changed in 2003. Field researchers working in caves on the Indonesian island of Flores uncovered remains of a diminutive human relative that lived at least 13,000 years ago. The Flores "hobbits" grew to be a metre tall as adults and could be traced back to Homo erectus, the forerunner of modern humans that left Africa 1.9m years ago. The hobbits' size is thought to be a direct result of their isolation.

Then there is the latest discovery, with which the number of early human species, or hominids, living 30,000 years ago has risen to four. In the space of a decade, the size of the human family has doubled.

And it's not just the cast list of the human evolution story that has had to be revised. Excavations of fossilised human remains have now led scientists to talk of three great migrations out of Africa. The first footprints leading off the continent were left by Homo erectus (the ancestor we share with the Neanderthals, with those hobbits, and with this new species of human). The next migration, around 450,000 years ago, was the Neanderthals. Then, perhaps as recently as 60,000 years ago, the first modern humans left to populate Eurasia and beyond – the humans from whom all of us alive on earth today are descended. The new species of human appears to fit in with none of these migrations out of Africa, and instead points to yet another great exodus, one that happened around 1m years ago.

To some scientists, even this fairly complicated picture is beginning to feel over-simplistic. "I don't think we can be absolutely certain about anything now," says Professor Terry Brown, an expert in ancient DNA at Manchester University.

What we do know is that the story starts in Africa, but that early humans then decided to leave. "There's no reason why a hominid should remain in Africa if the population increases," says Brown. "The natural thing for it to do is to move." The march out of the cradle of humanity may have been more of an ongoing wander, with early humans moving farther afield as and when they needed.

What's also known is that with the exception of the hobbits of Flores, every human species is thought to have evolved before making its way out of Africa. How we ended up with a number of different hominids is probably down to geography: species can split into two when groups of individuals become isolated from one another. When they stop interbreeding, the genetic makeup of each group drifts and diverges. They adapt differently to their habitats. Eventually, the differences became so large they cannot reproduce even if they tried.

In Africa – a very big place – small groups of thousands likely occupied disparate territories, and many splits may have occurred. Eventually, as the evolutionary clock ticked by, some Homo erectus embarked on a route that culminated in the Neanderthals. Others went down the route that led to modern humans. Still others, scientists now believe, became the new human species that left its little finger in a Siberian cave.

The most intriguing thing, perhaps, about this new discovery is its location. The bone was uncovered in an area where the remains of humans and Neanderthals have all been found from around the same period in history. Together, the evidence points to a time, between 30,000 and 40,000 years ago, when all three species were there. Did they ever meet? Did they make out? Did they fight? And why was Homo sapiens the last human standing? Do we owe not only the Neanderthals but this new species a big apology?

"It could have been that there was a period of occupation, where as one species moved out, another moved in. Ten thousand years is a long, long time and it is possible they never actually met," says Brown. "The alternative is that they may have been having parties every Saturday night, all three of them, getting together and talking about the Neanderthals down the road."

If they did live alongside one another, they needn't have been in constant conflict. Related species of other animals – big cats for example – share territories, yet show their neighbours nothing but cool indifference. Conflict is only likely when there is competition for the food, mates or shelter. That said, the three human species probably all hunted large mammals, including woolly mammoths and woolly rhinos, the remains of which have been unearthed in the area.

So what is the fourth human to be called? In lieu of a formal name for the new species, Svante Pääbo and Johannes Krause at the Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology in Leipzig – who extracted and analysed the DNA from the finger bone – gave our latest ancient relative the nickname "X-woman". From the size of the finger bone, they suspect it belonged to a child aged between five and seven years old, but whether it was a boy or girl is unknown. The nickname is a nod to the laboratory tests they used to identify the creature as something new to science: they examined DNA locked up in tiny organelles called mitochondria, which are passed down the maternal line only.

What genetic material the scientists have analysed so far points to an early human that shared a common ancestor with modern humans and the Neanderthals 1m years ago. (Modern humans and Neanderthals split from their own common ancestor 500,000 years ago.)

The work at the Leipzig lab is ongoing, however. In the next few months, the team expects to have sequenced the creature's full genome, a step that will do more than confirm whether it is a new species or not. One of the perennial questions in human origins research – and one genetics is uniquely well-placed to answer – is whether co-existing human species mated with each other. Detailed studies of several Neanderthal genomes by the same laboratory have found no compelling evidence that interbreeding happened between modern humans and Neanderthals. But only further work will rule it out, or in, completely.

There is good reason to suspect, however, that, even if our ancient ancestors never got up close and personal with each other, we played a role in their demise. The Neanderthals died out in Europe soon after the arrival of modern humans. A coincidence? Some scientists put the blame on climate change, and suggest the Neanderthals – who were probably not so different from us, using tools, possibly talking to each other – were poorly equipped for the upheaval that ensued. But the Neanderthals were hardy creatures and died during the middle of the last ice age, not during the major period of transition at the end. More likely, say some scientists, was that Homo sapiens out-competed the Neanderthals for food and other crucial resources.

The discovery of this new human species, one that lived at the same time as modern humans and the Neanderthals, does nothing to make this uncertain picture any clearer. Now there are two human species that died out, if not in our presence, then certainly in our proximity. "That makes the whole argument more interesting and it is going to be the debate that is had over the next 10 years," says Brown.

Casting an eye over the last 6m years of human evolution, from the moment we split from a common ancestor with modern apes, to the rise of Homo sapiens, it is hard not to notice that scores of other early human species have come and gone: evolutionary experiments that failed. And yet we prevailed. Why should Homo sapiens be any different? Could we die out too at some point? Or are we destined to be just another branch on the tree, one that paves the way for the next, more evolved version of a human being?

As for dying out, we are safer, perhaps, in being able to control our environment – to some extent at least. As to us evolving into something different, some biologists believe that Homo sapiens has to all intents and purposes stopped evolving, or at least that the pace of our evolution has slowed. That could leave us more vulnerable to new diseases or wild changes in the environment. It could also be turned on its head by a moment by an event of global proportions that we don't even know is coming: the sort of event that may have done for the dinosaurs.

"If a global disaster wiped out much of the human race, leaving only a population of few hundred thousand, they would probably evolve into something very different to us," says Brown. A passing asteroid might thump into the planet and leave only isolated pockets of Homo sapiens, living in a habitat unrecognisable to the world today. Some groups would inevitably die out, but those that survived would eventually carry on the human line under a new name.

But then there are no certainties here, and indeed the history of our understanding of human evolution shows us that whatever we believe now could be turned on its head within a matter of decades. It used to be believed, assumed rather, that Neanderthals were our ancestors – the cave men that came before us. Of course that turned out not to be true: they lived alongside us. And now it turned out that these others, the fourth humans, did too.

The really good news is that against the backdrop of this more academic debate, against all this uncertainty, there now lies a realm of new opportunity and new understanding thanks to the potential of DNA analysis. The discovery of X-woman marks a first in using genetics alone to identify what many palaeontologists believe must be a new human species. But this is also one of the earliest attempts to look at ancient DNA from human remains.

The fossil record we have for humans is patchy and incomplete, but tiny fragments that have been labelled, over the course of many decades, as Homo sapiens, or Homo neanderthalis, or Homo erectus, sit in museums and laboratories all over the world.

Are there fragments of bone from other unknown humans among them? "It could be that there is a whole load of human ancestors out there that we don't know about yet, and I mean five, six, or seven types of human," says Brown. "Everything is wide open now."

Source: Science news, comment and analysis | guardian.co.uk | 26 Mar 2010 | 1:00 am

US to ban wild-harvest shrimp imports from Mexico (AP)

AP - Mexico is losing its certification to export wild-harvest shrimp to the United States because its trawls lack required protections for endangered sea turtles, the State Department said.

Source: Yahoo! News: Science News | 25 Mar 2010 | 9:05 pm

T.Rex stalked Australia, albeit a mini-me version (Reuters)

Reuters - Australia scientists have found evidence that Tyrannosaur dinosaurs stalked southern hemisphere continents, with the discovery of a hip bone fossil of a small T.Rex in the south of the country.
Source: Yahoo! News: Science News | 25 Mar 2010 | 8:17 pm

T.Rex stalked Australia, albeit a mini-me version

SYDNEY (Reuters) - Australia scientists have found evidence that Tyrannosaur dinosaurs stalked southern hemisphere continents, with the discovery of a hip bone fossil of a small T.Rex in the south of the country.
Source: Reuters: Science News | 25 Mar 2010 | 8:17 pm

Big Oil seeks natural gas deal in U.S. climate bill (Reuters)

Reuters - Major oil companies were calling on three U.S. senators struggling over a compromise climate bill to provide new breaks for natural gas drilling as the lawmakers said the legislation might not be unveiled until at least the end of April.

Source: Yahoo! News: Science News | 25 Mar 2010 | 6:39 pm

Letters: Science funding cuts will not help us into the future and beyond

The Royal Society of Chemistry welcomes Peter Mandelson's comments that "the root of advanced manufacturing is a strong science base in this country" and that continued investment in science is vital to maintaining the future economic success and prosperity on which we depend. Yet his defence of industry is at odds with his government's decision to cut £600m from the higher education and science and research budgets by 2012-13. MPs on the science and technology committee warned on Tuesday that the proposed cuts will threaten the economic recovery and are inconsistent with the government's ambition of growth in the sector and undermine Labour's previous good record in this area.

Maintaining, if not increasing, current levels of science funding is pivotal for the UK's future. However, university science departments are already cutting budgets to prepare for uncertain times ahead, whatever party forms the next government. At a debate hosted by the society at Westminster this month, science minister Paul Drayson said he would continue to battle Treasury officials for a better deal. We can only implore Peter Mandelson to join Drayson in those discussions and fight to ringfence the crucial funding for science, thereby maintaining the strength of our knowledge-based economy, which he is clearly committed to.

Dr Neville Reed

Royal Society of Chemistry  

• This week's launch of the UK Space Agency (5, 4, 3, 2, 1 ... lift-off, 24 March) is welcomed by the Institution of Engineering and Technology. Space is the UK's hidden jewel, with an annual growth of around 9% a year, making it one of our fastest-growing sectors. Substantial investment in research and development is crucial to the future, but benefits will not be realised for five or more years. It is disappointing, but not a huge surprise given current economic conditions, that the government has failed to commit to a substantial increase in the UK spend on European space programmes. We need a longer-term strategic approach to space technology development.

Nigel Fine

Institution of Engineering and Technology

• Parties that form governments need to be able to demonstrate they have a mandate from the electorate to do what they say must be done. Regrettably, when to cut public spending is at the moment in the lap of the gods of the market (Budget 2010, 25 March). What to cut is the key issue. Trident or pensions? ID cards or the dole? Taxes or Sure Start? Transport infrastructure or the surface fleet? Apprenticeships or PFI projects? Inheritance tax or co-operation within Europe? If the election doesn't allow the people to decide on these choices, it won't enable the winners to govern.

Geoffrey Key

Preston, Lancashire

Source: Science news, comment and analysis | guardian.co.uk | 25 Mar 2010 | 6:05 pm

Space Shuttles Will Keep Flying Through Early 2011, Report Says (SPACE.com)

SPACE.com - NASA has made steady progress toward the planned retirement of its three aging space shuttles this September, but will likely not complete the fleet's current flight schedule until February 2011, a new report has found.
Source: Yahoo! News: Science News | 25 Mar 2010 | 6:03 pm

Space firms relaunch commercial rocket program

CAPE CANAVERAL, Florida (Reuters) - Lockheed Martin and Alliant Techsystems Inc said on Thursday they were teaming up to build and sell a booster rocket known as Athena, hoping to tap into a growing market for small satellites.
Source: Reuters: Science News | 25 Mar 2010 | 5:46 pm

Asian Monsoons Spread Pollutants (LiveScience.com)

LiveScience.com - The economic growth in Asia in recent years has meant more pollution coming from the continent, and, according to a new study, that pollution is being wafted up into higher layers of the atmosphere during the Asian monsoons, which makes it longer-lived in the air.
Source: Yahoo! News: Science News | 25 Mar 2010 | 5:03 pm

'Amistad' Replica Sails into Havana Bay

The 19th-century slave ship became an icon of the abolitionist movement.
Source: Discovery News - Top Stories | 25 Mar 2010 | 4:55 pm

James Cameron Says 3-D Coming to Mobile Devices Sans Glasses

3-D will come to mobile faster than anyone has anticipated says director James Cameron.
Source: Livescience.com | 25 Mar 2010 | 4:40 pm

NY regulators reject Entergy nuclear spinoff (AP)

AP - New York utility regulators on Thursday rejected Entergy Corp.'s plan to spin off its six nuclear power stations into a separate company.
Source: Yahoo! News: Science News | 25 Mar 2010 | 4:23 pm

Toyota sets Canadian tests for plug-in Prius hybrids (Reuters)

Reuters - The controversy surrounding safety issues at Toyota Motor Corp has not changed the way it is market testing the new plug-in version of its Prius Hybrid, the director of Toyota Canada said on Thursday.
Source: Yahoo! News: Science News | 25 Mar 2010 | 4:06 pm

Southern 'cousin' of T. rex found

Scientists find the first evidence that tyrannosaurs - relatives of the famous T. rex - existed in the southern hemisphere.
Source: BBC News | Science & Environment | UK Edition | 25 Mar 2010 | 4:03 pm

Cheaper catalyst cleans diesel-car fumes

Platinum-free material means fuel-efficient engines at lower cost.<img src="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~r/news/rss/today/~4/SiHP_7NZzuQ" height="1" width="1"/>
Source: NatureNews - All articles published today - nature.com science feeds | 25 Mar 2010 | 4:01 pm

Trade beats conservation at U.N. wildlife talks

DOHA (Reuters) - Trade interests trumped conservation at a U.N. wildlife conference at which proposals to step up protection for polar bears, bluefin tuna, coral and sharks all fell flat, delegates said.
Source: Reuters: Science News | 25 Mar 2010 | 2:47 pm

NASA Overspends on Bagels, Soda at Conferences (SPACE.com)

SPACE.com - NASA is spending more than it should to cater conferences for space agency events – at one point spending $66 a day for each person to make sure attendees have enough sodas, bagels and other snacks, according to a new report.
Source: Yahoo! News: Science News | 25 Mar 2010 | 2:33 pm

Nobelists defend actions of sacked dean

Grant committee deny dean had any influence on grant decisions.
Source: NatureNews - All articles published today - nature.com science feeds | 25 Mar 2010 | 2:18 pm

Asian Monsoons Spread Pollutants

Monsoon circulations pull pollutants into upper layer of atmosphere where longer-lived, travel globally.
Source: Livescience.com | 25 Mar 2010 | 1:36 pm

Tyrannosaurs Roamed Southern Hemisphere, Too

The king of the dinosaurs may have had a larger domain than once thought.
Source: Discovery News - Top Stories | 25 Mar 2010 | 1:29 pm

Tiny Tyrannosaur Came from the Land Down Under

Scientists have identified the first evidence that tyrannosaurs lived in the southern hemisphere, a new study says.
Source: Livescience.com | 25 Mar 2010 | 1:01 pm

Robots Do the Work of Multiple Solar Labs

The National Renewable Energy Lab, which is funded by the U.S. Department of Energy, has some new deputies in its push to develop cheaper, more efficient solar cells. Meet the NREL bots. In the shiny Process Development and Integration Laboratory ...
Source: Discovery News - Top Stories | 25 Mar 2010 | 1:00 pm

Laser Guidance Adds Power to Wind Turbines

The wind industry may soon be dependent on a different kind of environmental awareness that has more to do with lasers than ecology.

A new laser system that can be mounted on wind turbines allows them to prepare for the wind rushing toward their blades.

The lasers act like sonar for the wind, bouncing off microscopically small particulates and back to a fiber optic detector. That data is fed to an on-board processor that generates a three-dimensional view of the wind speed and direction. Subtle adjustments in the turbine blade’s angle to the window allows it to capture more energy and protect itself in case of strong gusts.

The startup company that developed the Vindicator system, Catch the Wind, recently deployed a wind unit on a Nebraska Public Power District turbine. It increased the production of the unit (.pdf) by more than 10 percent, according to the company’s white paper. If those numbers held across the nations’ 35 gigawatts of installed wind capacity, the LIDAR (Light Detection and Ranging) sensors could add more than 3.5 gigawatts of wind capacity without adding a single additional turbine.

“This is what they call disruptive technology,” said William Fetzer, vice president of business development for Catch the Wind. “There are roughly 80,000 to 90,000 wind turbines out in the world, and they don’t have this technology.”

Wind farms are only as good as their data. There have been revolutions in assessing wind resources over long time-scales, but the short-term gustiness of the wind has remained a problem.

Current wind turbines rely on wind-measuring instruments known as anemometers that are mounted to the back of the turbine’s gear-housing unit, called a nacelle. The data from the wind is fed to a computer that optimizes the blades’ configuration to capture the most energy from the wind.

In many cases, cup anemometers, which took their current form in the 1930s, are still used. They work well enough, but have to be positioned behind the blades, which subjects them to turbulence. And, importantly, they can only tell you how fast the wind was blowing after it passed. That doesn’t help you with a freak gust of wind or any of the odd behavior that renewable energy developers have caught the wind exhibiting.

Fort Felker, director of the National Renewable Energy Laboratory’s National Wind Technology Center, said he saw great potential in LIDAR and similar sound-wave-based systems generally.

“Once you have a detailed knowledge of the coming wind, there are a lot of opportunities,” said Felker told Wired.com.

While he estimates the amount of energy that could be captured is below Catch the Wind’s 10 percent, he said the systems could really help reduce the wear-and-tear on machines caused by strong winds hitting improperly positioned blades.

“Researchers have already demonstrated that substantial reduction of loads is certainly possible,” Felker said.

LIDAR, despite first being demonstrated for wind measurement in the 1970s, has been slow to catch on. The systems have been too expensive.

“Widespread deployment of the technique has so far been hampered by the expense and complexity of LIDAR systems,” (.pdf) a 2005 NREL research report found. “However, the recent development of LIDAR systems based on optical fiber and components from the telecommunications industry promises large improvements in cost, compactness, and reliability so that it becomes viable to consider the deployment of such systems on large wind turbines.”

Now, even the most venerable R&D testing group in the world, the Danish National Laboratory for Sustainable Energy’s Risøe wind outfit, is working on a turbine-mounted LIDAR system, though they only claim a 5 percent increase in electricity production.

Catch the Wind grew out of a small-business grant that the company’s predecessor, Optical Air Data Systems, received from the U.S. military. They developed a LIDAR system for helicopters working in the dusty Iraq and Afghanistan terrain. The company developed their rugged and relatively lightweight LIDAR systems by marrying aerospace knowledge with emerging telecommunications tech like better fiber optic cables and laser diodes.

Still, Catch the Wind may have a tough road ahead. The energy industry is notoriously risk averse. Besides, wind electricity in many places is already cheaper than wholesale electricity prices.

Erin Edholm, a representative for National Wind, a wind-farm developer that’s put in more than 4,000 megawatts of turbines, said that the company’s wind resource assessment team “has not used [LIDAR] or considered using it to date.”

But that doesn’t dim the hopes of Catch the Wind’s Fetzer for the company’s ultimate success.

“When you do disruptive technologies, it takes time,” Fetzer said. “People don’t believe that things are as bad as they are until they can see what we can do.”

It helps that they don’t need the wind turbine manufacturers to incorporate their technology to jump start their business. They’ve got what’s known as a “bolt-on” solution, meaning it can be attached to existing turbines. They don’t need manufacturers to incorporate their product to sell it to wind farms.

Still, some wind farmers may worry that the warranties they have on their turbines would be voided by adding a LIDAR system. Fetzer said Catch the Wind is working out the warranty issues.

General Electric, which is the largest wind turbine manufacturer in the United States, is not using or developing LIDAR specifically, either. Catch the Wind did recently sell one of their machines to a large, unnamed turbine manufacturer.

Though Catch the Wind is not discussing pricing for their products, Fetzer maintains that their customers will make their money back in the three-to-five year range that he says wind developers are looking for. The 2005 NREL report calculated a preliminary cost for a generic LIDAR system of less than $95,000, once production was up and running.

The development of controls for capturing the most energy from the wind has been a constant theme in wind energy research. But it’s not always the company that develops the technology that reaps the rewards from its commercialization. Wind turbines in the 1980s struggled mightily to convert the wind’s gusty capriciousness into steady rotary power.

At the time, the turbine’s rotor had to turn at a constant rate. Researchers realized that their machines could operate over a larger range of speeds if the rotor could speed up or slow down in response to the wind, but they would need power electronics to translate the power into electricity suitable for the grid.

A multimillion dollar R&D program launched by U.S. Windpower and the Electric Power Research Institute to commercialize a variable-speed rotor resulted in a mostly defective turbine design that helped push U.S. Windpower out of business. The variable-speed rotor went on to become a standard part of wind turbine designs.

Catch the Wind obviously is hoping not to suffer the same fate. They are exploring a variety of business models including sharing the revenue from the extra power they say their systems can generate. If they don’t generate any more electricity, the wind turbine owner doesn’t pay anything. If they do, Catch the Wind gets half the take.

“It’s a good value proposition,” Fetzer concluded.

Images: 1. A Vindicator installed in Nebraska/Catch the Wind. 2. American Memory Collection.

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

Source: Wired: Wired Science | 25 Mar 2010 | 12:45 pm

First tyrannosaur fossil from Southern Hemisphere (AP)

AP - A foot-long piece of bone unearthed in Australia is the first evidence that ancestors of the mighty T. rex once lived in the Southern Hemisphere.
Source: Yahoo! News: Science News | 25 Mar 2010 | 12:00 pm

Chemical Fingerprints Could Finger Weapons Makers

SAN FRANCISCO — Finding out whodunit in chemical warfare cases may be aided by scientists focused on the howdunit.

Researchers have developed a technique to ascertain the chemical fingerprint of compounds such as mustard gas, rat poison and nerve agents such as VX. Figuring out the details of how these compounds were created in the first place could provide vital clues to law enforcement agencies aiming to catch chemical warfare criminals and help guide first responders as they gather evidence.

Chemical forensics typically focuses on identifying the compound in question, but chemist Audrey Martin and her colleagues at Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory in California wanted to take these analyses a step further. “If we already know this was a chemical attack using mustard gas, now we want to know who made it,” said Martin, who presented the research March 22 in a poster session at a meeting of the American Chemical Society held in San Francisco. “We’re looking at the next step — where did this come from?”

The technique relies on the fact that there are often many routes to the same chemical — for example there are 12 different ways of making sulfur mustard gas. Depending on the route and the ingredients, there are various chemical by-products, impurities and unreacted ingredients in the final product. The presence and proportions of these molecules can provide clues to how the compound was made, said Martin. In some cases, such as with the rat poison tetramine, one synthetic route might be ruled out entirely by the presence of a particular ingredient. Signatures of the reaction conditions, such as temperature and pressure, may also be hidden in the final product.

So far, the Lawrence Livermore team has determined these various chemical signatures for a handful of compounds, including Sarin gas and the toxic nerve agent VX. The team is also documenting how these chemicals evolve over time, so scientists can tell if something has been sitting around for five minutes, 20 minutes or a week.

Martin has developed a computer application that she can feed these signatures into, minimizing time spent manually comparing chemical profiles. The researchers are also investigating how such agents interact with food and surfaces such as tile, plastic and metal. This information could help guide first responders charged with sampling a contaminated area, said Martin.

“It’s not a smoking gun,” she cautions. But if a suspect was seen purchasing a particular ingredient, or has a telltale residue on a shirtsleeve, the method might help clinch a case.

Image: ORNL

Source: Wired: Wired Science | 25 Mar 2010 | 11:47 am

Swine flu virus not so new, study finds

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - The H1N1 swine flu virus may have been new to humanity in many ways but in one key feature its closest relative was the 1918 pandemic virus, researchers reported on Wednesday.
Source: Reuters: Science News | 25 Mar 2010 | 11:19 am

As Temperature Rises, Earth Breathes Faster — and Maybe Harder

As planetary temperatures rise, Earth’s soils release steadily larger amounts of carbon dioxide, according to massive data crunching from hundreds of soil respiration studies published since 1989.

The critical question is whether soils release more CO2 because faster-growing plants pump more in, or if soils release CO2 that would have stayed in the ground at lower temperatures.

If the latter, the fresh influx of CO2 could produce a self-reinforcing cycle, producing higher temperatures that cause even more CO2 to be released.

“That’s the $50,000 question: Is there a feedback effect?” said Ben Bond-Lamberty, a University of Maryland, College Park biogeochemist and co-author of the review, in the March 24 Nature. “The data we have implies a feedback. It doesn’t prove it, but it’s consistent with the possibility.”

Carbon dioxide enters the soil through the roots of living plants and from the decaying bodies of dead plants, and is processed by microbes, fungi and insects. Over time, some of that CO2 releases back into the atmosphere. At any given time, there’s about twice as much CO2 in Earth’s soils as in its atmosphere.

Because more heat means more energy and faster chemical reactions, Earth scientists have suspected that rising global temperatures would increase the rate of soil respiration. The last review of soil respiration studies (.pdf) took place in 1992, however, and though it found a link between temperature and respiration rates, data was relatively sparse.

In the Nature paper, Bond-Lamberty and fellow UMCP geoscientist Allison Thomson combed the scientific literature for every controlled study of soil respiration published since 1960. They found 439 studies altogether, three-quarters of which were published after the 1992 review. When they analyzed the cumulative data, Bond-Lamberty and Thomson found that soil respiration increased by about 0.1 percent every year since 1989, and was tightly tied to temperature.

“The global soil-respiration flux is changing,” said Bond-Lamberty.

“The results of the analysis are consistent with previous estimations, but are more empirically based,” said James Raich, an Iowa State ecologist and co-author of the 1992 review.

The data did contain an anomaly. While respiration tracked with temperature in temperate and tropical regions, there was a negative correlation in the Arctic, where sensitivity to warming is thought to be especially pronounced.

According to Bond-Lamberty, researchers might have a flawed understanding of how carbon cycling works in Arctic soil. Those studies might also have been technically flawed. Because there were many fewer studies conducted in the Arctic than elsewhere, the results may be prone to statistical aberrations.

Whatever the anomaly’s explanation, that data was still included when global soil-respiration rates were calculated and the rise identified.

What’s not clear from the analysis is whether soil-respiration rates have increased without actually affecting atmospheric balances of CO2, or if CO2 that would have remained earthbound is now being released.

Both possibilities may be true, wrote University of Aberdeen biologist Pete Smith and Fudan University ecologist Changming Fang in a commentary accompanying the analysis.

“Assessing the balance between increased soil carbon inputs through greater plant growth due to climate warming, and increased carbon losses through higher decomposition rates, should be a research priority,” they wrote.

A small subset of studies in the review did try to answer that question by experimentally manipulating how much carbon entered test plots of soil. “That dataset is more tentative, but it does imply a feedback,” said Bond-Lamberty.

The database used in the study is described in a paper published in February in Biogeosciences. All the data is publicly available.

Images: 1) Nicholas_T/Flickr. 2) Annual global soil respiration, total petagrams/Nature.

See Also:

• Carbon Burial Research Grows as Huge Experiment Begins
• Q&A: Geoengineering Is ‘A Bad Idea Whose Time Has Come’
• Methane May Be Building Under Antarctic Ice
• How to Slow Climate Change for Just $15 Billion

Citations: “Temperature-associated increases in the global soil respiration record.” By Ben Bond-Lamberty & Allison Thomson. Nature, Vol. 464, No. 7288, March 25, 2010.

“A warm response by soils.” By Pete Smith and Changming Fang. Nature, Vol. 464, No. 7288, March 25, 2010.

Brandon Keim’s Twitter stream and reportorial outtakes; Wired Science on Twitter. Brandon is currently working on a book about ecological tipping points.

Source: Wired: Wired Science | 25 Mar 2010 | 11:18 am

Wider Smile, Longer Life?

Could a smile a day keep the doctor away?
Source: Discovery News - Top Stories | 25 Mar 2010 | 11:15 am

The Planet That Ate My Super-Earth!

Neptune and Uranus may possibly be hiding 4-billion year old clues to interplanetary homicide.
Source: Discovery News - Top Stories | 25 Mar 2010 | 11:09 am

Female Chimpanzees Drive the Culture

Chimpanzee culture is driven by its females, suggests a new analysis of six long-term chimp studies.

The number of cultural traits in each colony is linked to the number of females. How many males there are makes no difference.

“Our results suggest that females are the carriers of chimpanzee culture,” wrote study co-authors Johan Lind and Patrik Lindenfors, both evolutionary biologists at Stockholm University’s Center for the Study of Cultural Evolution.

Lind and Lindenfors’ paper, published March 24 in Public Library of Science ONE, was prompted by two sets of observations. First, as becomes more evident with each passing month, chimpanzees possess complex learned behaviors that vary between colony and region. They have culture.

Second, the culture resides in the females. They use tools more frequently than males, and spend more time teaching tricks to their young. And while male chimpanzees tend to stay in the same colony, females will sometimes transfer. Culture would travel with them.

From this, Lind and Lindenfors reasoned that the driving force behind chimpanzee culture ought to be females. They pulled together data from six decades-long studies of chimpanzee colonies in the jungles of Central and West Africa. The data supported their hypothesis.

“The reported number of cultural traits in chimpanzee communities correlates with the number of females in chimpanzee communities, but not with the number of males,” they wrote.

That’s a different dynamic of cultural transmission than appears to have existed in early humans, where computer models suggest that population density was key. Once there were enough people, cultural evolution accelerated rapidly. After a 2 million-year-long Stone Age, civilization flourished in a comparative handful of millennia.

When trying to understand how chimpanzee culture works, “Some of the general theory behind human cultural evolution cannot strictly be applied to chimpanzees,” said Lind. Neither should chimpanzee dynamics be seen as an automatic window into our own past.

“The variation in sociality in now-living apes is phenomenal. We have monogamous gibbons, and then gorillas who live in harems. We have two species of chimpanzees, and their social structures are completely different,” said Lind. “According to the best data, we’re just as closely related to the bonobo. We could look at them and ask, why don’t we have sex rather than kissing on the cheek? There’s nothing default about chimpanzees.”

An open question is how cumulative chimpanzee culture is, said Lind. Whereas human cultural innovations are “stacked,” with innovations building on each other to produce ever-more-complex tools and behaviors, that doesn’t seem to be the case with chimpanzees, at least not to a comparable degree way.

Maybe chimpanzees aren’t capable of that, or haven’t reached their own cultural tipping point, said Lind. Or perhaps we’ve started to study them too late, with human development having left only isolated pockets of chimpanzee culture.

“When we watch chimpanzees, we look at some scattered remains from previous, much larger populations,” said Lind. “I just hope that those remaining spots where chimps can live today will remain.”

Images: 1) Mark Fosh/Flickr. 2) Graph of female group size and cultural traits observed in six chimpanzee studies/PLoS ONE

See Also:

• Chimps: Not Human, But Are They People?
• Human-Chimp Gene Comparison Hints at Roots of Language
• Human Laughter Echoes Chimp Chuckles
• Chimps Follow the Golden Rule
• Free-Range Research Could Save Chimps — and Our Conscience

Citation: “The Number of Cultural Traits Is Correlated with Female Group Size but Not with Male Group Size in Chimpanzee Communities.” By Johan Lind and Patrik Lindenfors. PLoS ONE, Vol. 5 No. 3, March 24, 2010.

Brandon Keim’s Twitter stream and reportorial outtakes; Wired Science on Twitter. Brandon is currently working on a book about ecological tipping points.

Source: Wired: Wired Science | 25 Mar 2010 | 10:32 am

Teen Blogging a Good Thing, Study Suggests

Teens use blogs to build relationships with peers, a new study suggests.
Source: Livescience.com | 25 Mar 2010 | 10:06 am

Former priest wins £1m Templeton prize

Critics angry that award ceremony, hosted by the US National Academy of Sciences, lends scientific respectability to foundation

A former head of the world's largest general science society has been awarded a controversial £1m prize that honours work of a spiritual nature.

Francisco Ayala, a molecular biologist and former president of the American Association for the Advancement of Science, was announced as the winner of the Templeton prize at a ceremony held at the US National Academy of Sciences (NAS) in Washington today.

The annual prize is given to individuals deemed to have made "an exceptional contribution to affirming life's spiritual dimension".

The award has angered some scientists who object to the NAS hosting the award, citing concerns that the John Templeton Foundation may gain scientific respectability by associating with scientists and their institutions.

The controversy has been exacerbated by news that Ayala was nominated for the award Ralph Cicerone, president of the National Academy of Sciences. The NAS said it agreed to host the event when Ayala, a member of the academy, requested a room for the ceremony.

Sir Harry Kroto, a British scientist who won the Nobel prize for chemistry in 1996 and later joined Florida State University, wrote to Cicerone yesterday expressing his dismay that the NAS was involved with the award ceremony.

"I am very disturbed, as are some other scientists, by the Templeton Foundation and the involvement of the NAS with it," he wrote.

Previous winners of the award include the US evangelist Billy Graham, Mother Teresa and several leading scientists, including Freeman Dyson and Cambridge University physicist John Barrow. Ayala is a former Dominican priest.

Ayala told the Guardian he had no reservations about accepting the award, adding that he intended to give much of the prize money to charities and other organisations including the National Academy of Sciences.

He worked as a scientific adviser to Bill Clinton in the 1990s and served as an expert witness in a trial that culminated in overturning an Arkansas law that gave teachers the right to teach creationism alongside evolution in science classes.

Cicerone said Ayala was a worthy winner of the prize. "His publications show the power of science as a way of knowing the significance and purpose of the world and human life, as well as matters concerning moral or religious values that transcend science."

Source: Science news, comment and analysis | guardian.co.uk | 25 Mar 2010 | 9:17 am

Quarter of Republicans Think Obama May Be the Anti-Christ

Americans have extreme views of Obama, believing the president may be the anti-Christ, a socialist, racist and even resembling Hitler in his ways, according to a new Harris Poll.
Source: Livescience.com | 25 Mar 2010 | 9:09 am

Green Tires Could Slash Oil Needs

Goodyear and biochemical company Genencor collaborate to create tires without oil.
Source: Livescience.com | 25 Mar 2010 | 8:45 am

Asian Pollution Rides the Monsoon

Like a great smokestack, Asia's summer monsoon is blowing high into the atmosphere a climate-altering cocktail of industrial pollutants generated by the burgeoning economies of China, India and Indonesia, scientists report. For years now, sensors at ground-based monitoring stations have ...
Source: Discovery News - Top Stories | 25 Mar 2010 | 7:41 am

Baby Talk Matters

Even before infants begin to speak, words play an important role in their cognition, a new study finds.
Source: Livescience.com | 25 Mar 2010 | 7:09 am

Boys Need Close Relationship with Mom

Boys insecurely attached to their mothers in the early years have more behavior problems later in childhood.
Source: Livescience.com | 25 Mar 2010 | 7:07 am

Jurassic ban for fossil diggers

Rogue fossil hunters are banned from Dorset's Jurassic Coastline after two court injunctions are granted.
Source: BBC News | Science & Environment | UK Edition | 25 Mar 2010 | 7:07 am

Optimism Boosts Immune System

Feelings of optimism boost the immune system, according to a new study of first-year law students.
Source: Livescience.com | 25 Mar 2010 | 7:05 am

Tetris and trauma

What if scientists could erase your bad memories?
Source: BBC News | Science & Environment | UK Edition | 25 Mar 2010 | 7:04 am

Birds Fuel Up on Super Foods Before Migrating

Birds that normally eat insects switch to antioxidant-rich berries just before starting their long journey south for winter.
Source: Discovery News - Top Stories | 25 Mar 2010 | 6:43 am

Cuts cast doubt on asteroid plan

Funding cuts could hit a plan by astronomers to more precisely plot the orbit of a potentially hazardous asteroid.
Source: BBC News | Science & Environment | UK Edition | 25 Mar 2010 | 6:37 am

In pictures: Super-predators

Super-predation, where predators hunt one another, plays a widespread and under-appreciated role in nature, say researchers.
Source: BBC News | Science & Environment | UK Edition | 25 Mar 2010 | 6:30 am

Forest loss slows as China plants

The speed of forest loss across the world has slowed markedly over the last decade, reports the UN.
Source: BBC News | Science & Environment | UK Edition | 25 Mar 2010 | 5:21 am

Taking Showers Could Contaminate Drinking Water

Keeping yourself clean may pollute the environment.
Source: Discovery News - Top Stories | 25 Mar 2010 | 5:00 am

Food push urged to avoid hunger

Big investments in agriculture are needed if the world is to feed its swelling population, a major report warns.
Source: BBC News | Science & Environment | UK Edition | 25 Mar 2010 | 4:07 am

DNA from finger bone identifies new member of human family

Scientists identify a previously unknown type of ancient human by analysing DNA from a finger bone.
Source: BBC News | Science & Environment | UK Edition | 25 Mar 2010 | 3:53 am

Mother of Pearls Mass-Produced

Nacre, or mother of pearl, is one of the toughest and most beautiful natural materials on Earth. Now scientists can make it -- cheaply.
Source: Discovery News - Top Stories | 25 Mar 2010 | 3:11 am