CT and MRI scans associated with shorter hospital stays and decreased costs

Advanced imaging techniques such as computed tomography scans and magnetic resonance imaging might shorten the length of a person's hospital stay and decrease the high costs associated with hospitalization if used early, according to a new study.
Source: ScienceDaily: Latest Science News | 8 Apr 2010 | 12:00 pm

Astronomers take close-up pictures of mysterious dark object

For the first time, astronomers have directly observed the mysterious dark companion in a binary star system that has puzzled skywatchers since the 19th century.
Source: ScienceDaily: Latest Science News | 8 Apr 2010 | 12:00 pm

Doctor warns against St. John's wort for anxiety

In a broad-based review of studies focused on drugs that treat anxiety, a doctor found no evidence supporting the use of so-called "natural" treatments in combating the effects of anxiety.
Source: ScienceDaily: Latest Science News | 8 Apr 2010 | 12:00 pm

Aquatic ecosystems threatened by the size of non-native fish

Fish introduced into rivers by human intervention over the past 150 years have modified the average body size of fish assemblages in many areas of the world. A new study shows that non-native fish are larger than native species by an average of 12 cm.
Source: ScienceDaily: Latest Science News | 8 Apr 2010 | 12:00 pm

Household detergents, shampoos may form harmful substance in waste water

Scientists are reporting evidence that certain ingredients in shampoo, detergents and other household cleaning agents may be a source of precursor materials for formation of a suspected cancer-causing contaminant in water supplies that receive water from sewage treatment plants. The study sheds new light on possible environmental sources of this poorly understood water contaminant, called NDMA, which is of ongoing concern to health officials.
Source: ScienceDaily: Latest Science News | 8 Apr 2010 | 12:00 pm

Human enzyme that breaks down potentially toxic nanomaterials identified

A new study provides the first identification of a human enzyme that can biodegrade carbon nanotubes -- the superstrong materials found in products from electronics to plastics -- and in laboratory tests offset the potentially damaging health effects of being exposed to the tiny components, according to new findings.
Source: ScienceDaily: Latest Science News | 8 Apr 2010 | 12:00 pm

Controls for animals' color designs revealed

The vivid colors and designs animals use to interact with their environments have awed and inspired since before people learned to draw on the cave wall. But how different creatures in the animal kingdom -- from colorful birds and reef fish to butterflies and snakes -- make and deploy their artful designs is one of nature's deepest secrets. Now, however, a team of researchers has exposed the fine details of how animals make new body ornamentation from scratch.
Source: ScienceDaily: Latest Science News | 8 Apr 2010 | 9:00 am

Walking associated with lower stroke risk in women

Women who walked two or more hours a week or who usually walked at a brisk pace had a significantly lower risk of stroke than women who didn't walk, according to a large, long-term study.
Source: ScienceDaily: Latest Science News | 8 Apr 2010 | 9:00 am

Lab-on-a-chip can carry out complex analyses on the spot

Many illnesses can be reliably diagnosed through laboratory tests, but these in vitro analyses often use up valuable time. A new system, which can carry out complex analyses on the spot, will soon be ready for the market.
Source: ScienceDaily: Latest Science News | 8 Apr 2010 | 9:00 am

Does smoking compound other multiple sclerosis risk factors?

A new study shows that smoking may increase the risk of multiple sclerosis (MS) in people who also have specific established risk factors for MS.
Source: ScienceDaily: Latest Science News | 8 Apr 2010 | 9:00 am

Solar Impulse: The solar-powered aeroplane

The solar-powered aircraft Solar Impulse takes its maiden flight at a military base in Switzerland

Source: Science news, comment and analysis | guardian.co.uk | 8 Apr 2010 | 3:48 am

In pictures: Arctic foxes go the distance

Arctic foxes are able to travel distances similar to the width of Canada, in the first study to track the animals for a whole year.
Source: BBC News | Science & Environment | UK Edition | 8 Apr 2010 | 3:26 am

Barack Obama to sign nuclear treaty with Russia

• US and Russian presidents arrive in Prague for signing
• Arms treaty will slash two countries' nuclear arsenals by a third

The US president, Barack Obama, has arrived in Prague in the Czech Republic to sign an arms treaty with Russia that will slash their respective nuclear arsenals by a third.

The new treaty, to be signed in mid-morning by Obama and the Russian president, Dmitry Medvedev, will cut their strategic nuclear warheads to 1,550 over seven years, about a third less than the 2,200 currently allowed.

Obama is returning to Prague one year after he outlined his vision before an enthusiastic crowd for a world without nuclear weapons. The speech helped him win the Nobel peace prize, but Obama has acknowledged that eliminating nuclear weapons is unlikely to be achieved during his lifetime.

The agreement to reduce nuclear warheads by a third succeeds the 1991 strategic arms reduction treaty (Start), which expired in December. It will have to be ratified by the US Senate – where conservative Republicans can be expected to give it a rough ride – and the Russian parliament.

In addition to the warhead limit, the US and Russia must cut their total land, sea and air-based launchers to 800 each, and no more than 700 actually deployed within seven years. While that will leave plenty of nuclear weapons to destroy the world several times over, it marks a big drop from the total of 19,000 strategic warheads both sides deployed during the cold war.

Obama wants to move for even deeper cuts but faces Russian reluctance because of American plans to build a missile defence system in Europe to counter a possible Iranian threat. Russia argues that antiballistic missile systems could neutralise its smaller arsenal.

Even as Obama pushes for deep cuts in nuclear weapons, the Washington Post reported that the Pentagon is developing a weapon to plug the gap left by nuclear warheads: missiles armed with conventional warheads that could strike anywhere in the world in less than an hour. US military officials say the intercontinental ballistic missiles, known as prompt global strike weapons, are a necessary new form of deterrence against terrorist networks.

Obama will have to balance his desire for deep cuts against the more immediate goal of keeping Russia on side to ratchet up the pressure on Iran and its suspected nuclear weapons programme. The US is seeking another round of sanctions against Tehran and Obama is also courting support from China, which recently signalled its willingness to adopt a tougher line towards Iran.

Obama's trip to Prague is part of an intensive round of nuclear diplomacy. On Tuesday, the US released the results of a comprehensive nuclear strategy review in which the US committed itself for the first time not to use nuclear weapons against non-nuclear states provided that they are party to the nuclear non-proliferation treaty and in compliance with their nuclear non-proliferation obligations – a caveat that leaves North Korea and Iran.

Next week, Obama welcomes to Washington the leaders of 46 countries, including the Chinese president, Hu Jintao, for a summit meeting on nuclear security.

Source: Science news, comment and analysis | guardian.co.uk | 8 Apr 2010 | 3:17 am

The nation's weather (AP)

AP - Wet weather was forecast to move into the eastern third of the nation Thursday as a low pressure system trekked eastward into the Lower Great Lakes.

Source: Yahoo! News: Science News | 8 Apr 2010 | 3:12 am

CryoSat-2 prepares for mission to monitor thickness of polar ice

European Space Agency satellite to launch from Kazakhstan to measure Arctic and Antarctic ice with unprecedented precision

A resurrected satellite, carrying the hopes of climate scientists, will make a second attempt to reach orbit today from the Baikonur cosmodrome in Kazakhstan. The first CryoSat satellite crashed minutes after launch in 2005, ditching - with cruel irony - into the Arctic Ocean it was meant to study.

The €140m (£122m) CryoSat-2 is a replica built by the European Space Agency, but with some additional instruments. If it makes it into orbit, it will be able to measure the thickness of Arctic and Antarctic ice to within a centimetre - an accuracy unmatched until now. Lift-off is being shown live online and is scheduled for 1457 BST.

The melting of sea ice, ice caps and glaciers across the planet is one of the clearest signs of global warming and the UK-led team of scientists will use the data from CryoSat-2 to track how this is affecting ocean currents, sea levels and the overall global climate.

Duncan Wingham, a climate physicist at University College London and the lead scientist for both missions, is hoping this will be second time lucky. "Satellites have transformed our knowledge of what is happening to these distant and uninhabited parts of the planet. CryoSat-2 will help unravel the consequences of the dramatic changes in the poles that we've seen in the past two decades."

Wingham said that, without CryoSat-2, there would be a significant gap in the data needed to track climate change. "The data we do have is patchy because the instrumentation on the earlier generation of satellites was not designed to deal with the ice-sheets," said Wingham.

The first CryoSat mission was launched from the Plesetsk cosmodrome in northern Russia on 8 October 2005, but it crashed into the icy sea shortly afterwards, due to a malfunction in the launch vehicle.

Approval for a successor mission to CryoSat was given by Esa within months of the accident. The new probe was built using improved electronics and batteries, and an extra radar altimeter, a device that will fire microwaves at the Arctic and Antarctic ice to reveal its thickness.

Scientists have already shown that the amount of sea ice in the Arctic is falling, and the latest data confirms the long-term trend. But some data also suggests that the ice that remains is thinning. If the measurements from CryoSat-2 bear out this thinning theory, it would mean the ice is being lost more quickly. Scientists are concerned that the loss of sea ice is leading to a feedback effect where the newly exposed, darker ocean absorbs more sunlight, warming the water yet further. In addition, sea ice can block glaciers on land from falling into the ocean, so its loss could raise sea levels.

"We are altering the Arctic climate far faster than anywhere else on Earth," said Wingham. "We're changing the whole structure of the Arctic Ocean, but we still don't know what the consequences will be. We have to find out what is going on up there. CryoSat-2 will do that."

Another antenna on CryoSat-2 will measure the shape of the ice and tell researchers about slopes and ridges at the edges of the great Antarctic and Greenland ice sheets.

Alan O'Neill, director of the National Centre for Earth Observation at the University of Reading said: "These measurements are absolutely crucial to our understanding of climate variability and climate change. Not only are they early indicators of climate change because of feedbacks in the system. But they're not remote from what affects people's lives and the weather that affects the rest of the planet. The polar regions are connected to the rest of the planet by the atmosphere and the ocean."

Richard Francis of Esa, who led the team that built CryoSat-2, said scientists were holding their breath until launch. "There'll be a lot of relief when we acquire that signal [after launch], I can tell you."

Source: Science news, comment and analysis | guardian.co.uk | 8 Apr 2010 | 2:54 am

Earth Watch

Bonn voyage for the Copenhagen climate bus
Source: BBC News | Science & Environment | UK Edition | 8 Apr 2010 | 2:20 am

Indian space mission advances with satellite plan (AFP)

AFP - India plans to put a satellite into orbit using its indigenously built cryogenic rocket engine, marking another step in the nation's ambitious space programme, officials said.

Source: Yahoo! News: Science News | 8 Apr 2010 | 1:56 am

Sushi may 'transfer genes' to gut

A traditional Japanese diet could transfer the genes of "sushi-specific" digestive enzymes into the human gut, say scientists.
Source: BBC News | Science & Environment | UK Edition | 8 Apr 2010 | 1:49 am

Astronauts hoist cargo carrier onto space station (AP)

AP - The International Space Station has a new walk-in closet.

Source: Yahoo! News: Science News | 8 Apr 2010 | 1:42 am

Astronauts Deliver Moving Van to Space Station (SPACE.com)

SPACE.com - HOUSTON – Astronauts moved a cargo module the size of a mini bus-size the short distance from space shuttle Discovery's payload bay to the International Space Station's (ISS) Harmony node Thursday morning, setting the stage for a carefully choreographed ballet to begin transferring tons of supplies and equipment to and from and the orbiting laboratory.
Source: Yahoo! News: Science News | 8 Apr 2010 | 1:15 am

Fresh mudslide as Brazil death toll tops 145 (AFP)

AFP - Another devastating mudslide crushed dozens of homes in the Rio de Janeiro area as rescuers searched Thursday for survivors of floods and landslides that have claimed the lives of at least 148 people after the worst rains in half a century.

Source: Yahoo! News: Science News | 8 Apr 2010 | 12:58 am

Hacked climate science emails: mischievous requests for information

Original requests for information from the Climatic Research Unit appear to have been genuine, but there are later enquiries that could potentially be seen as aggravating

This is probably the last piece I'll write on the hacked emails saga. Unless the two remaining inquiries throw up something unexpected, there is not a lot more to say. The one remaining, interesting question is this: to what extent were the Freedom of Information (FoI) requests, which Phil Jones and the Climatic Research Unit (CRU) handled so badly, vexatious? Were they genuine enquiries by seekers after truth, or were they designed only to mess the unit around?

The UK Information Commissioner's Office has published five criteria for judging whether or not a request is vexatious:

• Can the request fairly be seen as obsessive?

• Is the request harassing the authority or causing distress to staff?

• Would complying with the request impose a significant burden?

• Is the request designed to cause disruption or annoyance?

• Does the request lack any serious purpose or value?

The hacked emails reveal that the Climatic Research Unit knew that the UK's FoI Act could cause problems even before anyone had used it. In one email, Jones warns that it could prevent him from blocking requests for information:

The two MMs [I think this means Steve McIntyre and Ross McKitrick] have been after the CRU station data for years. If they ever hear there is a Freedom of Information Act now in the UK, I think I'll delete the file rather than send to anyone … We also have a data protection act, which I will hide behind. Tom Wigley has sent me a worried email when he heard about it – thought people could ask him for his model code. He has retired officially from UEA [the University of East Anglia] so he can hide behind that. IPR [intellectual property rights] should be relevant here, but I can see me getting into an argument with someone at UEA who'll say we must adhere to it!

He expands on this argument in another email, which suggests that CRU's main defence – the data couldn't be released because it was covered by other people's intellectual property rights - isn't as pure as the unit makes out:

If FoI Act does ever get used by anyone, there is also IPR to consider as well. Data is covered by all the agreements we sign with people, so I will be hiding behind them.

In a third email, Jones reveals:

I'm getting hassled by a couple of people to release the CRU station temperature data. Don't any of you three tell anybody that the UK has a Freedom of Information Act!

Since I began writing about this issue, I've been assailed by climate scientists and environmentalists, all insisting that Jones did nothing wrong. If these emails meet their standards of professional rectitude I dread to think what else they would find acceptable.

You could argue, as many have, that Jones was responding to a campaign of harassment by climate change deniers. It's true that he was being badgered, and that some of those doing the badgering seemed to be motivated by something other than the unsullied spirit of scientific inquiry. But there was a simple means of getting the hasslers off his back: release the sodding data.

In 2005, Jones made it clear to one of his petitioners that he wasn't going to do that:

Even if WMO [the World Meteorological Organisation] agrees, I will still not pass on the data. We have 25 or so years invested in the work. Why should I make the data available to you, when your aim is to try and find something wrong with it.

This cuts to the heart of the matter. Science must be falsifiable: otherwise it's not science. Those who seek to find something wrong with your data are the first people who should have access to it, not the last. Challenging, refining and improving other people's work is the means by which science proceeds.

Whatever the motivation of the questioners might have been, the original FoI requests appear to have been genuine attempts to obtain information. As the replies sent to one enquirer, Willis Essenbach, show, they were fobbed off in a way guaranteed to make anyone seethe with rage. The letters sent to him by CRU epitomise bureaucratic obfuscation of the kind that anyone who believes in democracy should challenge.

The Canadian mining investor Steve McIntyre, who runs the website Climate Audit, was also fobbed off. In another email, Phil Jones reveals:

Think I've managed to persuade UEA [the University of East Anglia] to ignore all further FOIA requests if the people have anything to do with Climate Audit.

That doesn't seem right either. Just because you don't like someone doesn't mean you can refuse to answer their FoI request.

Now we get to the potentially vexatious requests. Frustrated, reasonably enough, by CRU's blocking tactics, McIntyre made the following proposal on his website:

I suggest that interested readers can participate by choosing 5 countries and sending the following FoI request to david.palmer at ***:

Dear Mr Palmer,
I hereby make a EIR/FOI request in respect to any confidentiality agreements restricting transmission of CRUTEM data to non-academics involving the following countries: [insert five or so countries that are different from ones already requested]
1. the date of any applicable confidentiality agreements;
2. the parties to such confidentiality agreement, including the full name of any organisation;
3. a copy of the section of the confidentiality agreement that 'prevents further transmission to non-academics'.
4. a copy of the entire confidentiality agreement,
I am requesting this information for the purposes of academic research.

The last line is, at best, disingenuous. His readers sent 58 such requests, each with a random selection of countries. Hilariously, one of them forgot to change the wording:

I hereby make a EIR/FOI request in respect to any confidentiality agreements restricting transmission of CRUTEM data to non-academics involving the following countries: [insert five or so countries that are different from ones already requested1]

Hat tip: johntherock.

These enquiries could meet at least the last two of the commissioner's criteria - is the request designed to cause disruption or annoyance, and, does the request lack any serious purpose or value? They could potentially be seen as vexatious.

But this doesn't exonerate the Climatic Research Unit, for the following reasons:

1. These requests were made a year after Jones sent the most damaging of his emails:

Mike, Can you delete any emails you may have had with Keith re AR4? ... Can you also email Gene and get him to do the same? I don't have his new email address. We will be getting Caspar to do likewise.

This appears to refer to material relevant to FoI requests, although Jones says that no deletions occurred in response to the email.

The deputy information commissioner has said that FoI requests were "not dealt with as they should have been under the legislation" but the six-month time limit for prosecutions under the FoI Act has passed. Those who seek to excuse this email by maintaining that Jones was responding to vexatious requests have got the sequence wrong.

2. If the original requests for information had been answered properly, Jones's critics wouldn't have scented blood.

3. If the press officers at the university had even the slightest inkling of how to handle this crisis, they would have made these FoI requests public, to show that not everyone hassling CRU was acting in good faith. But they continue to sit like rabbits in the headlights, waiting for the next truck to run them down.

Yes, some of the requests appear to have been vexatious. No, this doesn't justify the way that CRU has behaved. The solution to both problems is the same: if you want to show that your science is sound and if you don't want to be hunted from pillar to post by baying hounds, your work must be open and transparent. Those of us who rely on good science to guide us must stop excusing secrecy and obfuscation.

monbiot.com

Source: Science news, comment and analysis | guardian.co.uk | 8 Apr 2010 | 12:30 am

Developing test to warn smokers of cancer danger (AP)

AP - Scientists may have found a way to tell which smokers are at highest risk of developing lung cancer: measuring a telltale genetic change inside their windpipes.

Source: Yahoo! News: Science News | 7 Apr 2010 | 10:57 pm

Sibling Conflicts Undermine Trust (LiveScience.com)

LiveScience.com - Sibling rivalry is all about jealousy, competition and fighting between brothers and sisters.
Source: Yahoo! News: Science News | 7 Apr 2010 | 9:31 pm

Shuttle launches on one of last missions

CAPE CANAVERAL, Florida (Reuters) - Space shuttle Discovery and seven astronauts blasted off Monday on one of NASA's final servicing missions to the International Space Station.
Source: Reuters: Science News | 7 Apr 2010 | 7:45 pm

'Ice explorer' ready for lift-off

Europe's Cryosat-2 spacecraft is about to launch on a mission to assess the state of the world's ice cover.
Source: BBC News | Science & Environment | UK Edition | 7 Apr 2010 | 6:50 pm

A genetic gift for sushi-eaters

Seaweed-rich diet leaves its mark on gut microbes.<img src="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~r/news/rss/today/~4/tvgl78-AkvY" height="1" width="1"/>
Source: NatureNews - All articles published today - nature.com science feeds | 7 Apr 2010 | 6:37 pm

Condor egg successfully hatches in California (AP)

AP - For the first time in more than a century, a California condor chick successfully hatched inside a federal park that once was a domain of the endangered species.

Source: Yahoo! News: Science News | 7 Apr 2010 | 6:19 pm

Calif. conservationists, oil company strike deal (AP)

AP - Conservation groups on Wednesday unveiled a new version of an unusual agreement in which they will lobby for an oil company's expansion of drilling off the coast of California in exchange for definite end dates to its local petroleum operations.
Source: Yahoo! News: Science News | 7 Apr 2010 | 5:37 pm

'First image' of star's eclipse

The first close-up image of an eclipse beyond the solar system is captured by scientists using light from four telescopes.
Source: BBC News | Science & Environment | UK Edition | 7 Apr 2010 | 5:32 pm

2 more glaciers gone from Glacier National Park (AP)

AP - Glacier National Park has lost two more of its namesake moving icefields to climate change, which is shrinking the rivers of ice until they grind to a halt, the U.S. Geological Survey said Wednesday.

Source: Yahoo! News: Science News | 7 Apr 2010 | 5:26 pm

Saving Turtles With Better Gear

The latest news about sea turtles makes me want to cry. Too many endangered turtles are still getting caught accidentally in fishing gear. Can environmental activists, engineers, the government, and fishermen work together to turn this around? A nascent fishing ...
Source: Discovery News - Top Stories | 7 Apr 2010 | 5:20 pm

Newtonian mechanics and Shakespeare

Where does George Monbiot get his information from that "we are deprived by our stupid school system of most of the wonders of the world" (Comment, 6 April )? It may have been true of when and where he went to school, but it's not a scenario I recognise. A-level students now choose any weird and wonderful combination of subjects. The best advice that they are given is to choose the subjects that they enjoy and are likely to succeed in. It is now quite rare to find a student to be categorised as arts or humanities.

In my A-level maths class a typical student is studying maths, music and English literature. In the last few weeks he has enthusiastically visited Stratford-on-Avon to see King Lear, to Manchester to see the Hallé Orchestra and to Liverpool to see the RLPO. He will happily debunk the cliche "it's not rocket science" by telling you that "rocket Science is not that difficult as it's just Newtonian mechanics with a variable mass". Maybe the problem is that I teach in a city comprehensive and not many of our bright well-rounded students make it to Oxbridge.

Geoff Poole

Liverpool

• George Monbiot is right that scientists exist in closed communities with little communication with non-scientists, but also with other types of scientist.

However, he is far too sanguine when he writes of "the most effective form of self-regulation: the peer review process". It may have been effective in the past, but under the present pressures to publish or perish there is no encouragement to any scientist to put any serious effort into the peer review process. Can any head of department put his hand on his (or her) heart and say that he has never suggested to a member of his department, a justly indignant critic of some recently published work, that he should not waste his time on this, but just get on with his own research? "After all", he might say, "the referees accepted it."

But there is no doubt that many referees will happily accept a paper that substantiates the prevailing orthodoxy of the particular journal, without subjecting it to a thorough scrutiny, let alone considering whether it adds substantially to the sum of human knowledge. Peer review can have the effect of inhibiting the publication of research which crosses disciplinary boundaries or goes beyond what Foucault described as "the accepted regimes of truth".

Emeritus professor Ailsa Land

Ivybridge, Devon

• Only the English language uses "science" to mean exclusively the natural sciences, or has adopted the 19th-century coinage "scientist", and can speak of "the scientific community". Monbiot is right in deploring the consequent damage to education, not to mention the disastrous and unnatural schism between various fields of knowledge and scholarship all this opens up.

Robin Milner-Gulland

University of Sussex

Source: Science news, comment and analysis | guardian.co.uk | 7 Apr 2010 | 5:05 pm

Beautiful Minds and Celebrity Roast

Tim Dowling is fascinated by a cosmic tale of a keen young astrophysicist, collapsing stars and little green men

I dimly recall once coming across advice to the effect that a half-hour spent in the company of someone who is good at his job is never wasted. I couldn't track down an exact quotation (though you'd be surprised how often, and how rashly, people use the phrase "never wasted"), but it obviously applies to women as well, and in the case of Professor Dame Jocelyn Bell Burnell, we may safely extend the amount of unwasted time to an hour.

Bell Burnell was the focus of the first episode of Beautiful Minds (BBC2), a series that aims to illuminate the mysterious process of scientific discoveries and the people who make them. These days, she's a charming though formidable astrophysicist of international renown, but at Cambridge University in the late 1960s she was, as one contemporary TV report put it, "the girl who started all the fuss about the pulsars". There was footage of her in those days, wearing cat glasses and walking self-consciously, a picture of diffidence. The contrast between the student and the Professor Dame could not have been more striking.

As a student, Bell Burnell was put to work analysing data from a new radio telescope. In the days before computers, this data consisted of a 96ft roll of paper tape with a continuous squiggly line on it, and there was a new roll to pore over every morning. One day, she spotted a series of regular pulses coming from what appeared to be fixed coordinates, but her supervisor dismissed them as nonsense. True astronomical sources don't do that, he said.

"Sometimes in research you can know too much," said Bell Burnell. Her main asset as a researcher was her diligence. She checked again. She examined the source from somebody else's telescope. She sped up the paper tape to get a more detailed view of the squiggly line. In the face of some opposition, she proved her point: there was something in deep space pulsating every 1.3 seconds on a particular frequency. The conclusion was obvious: intelligent beings were trying to contact us. Bell Burnell was displeased. "My money was running out," she said. "I wanted to get my thesis done and get my PhD. And there was some silly lot of little green men choosing my telescope and my frequency to signal to Earth. How dare they!"

She found similar squiggles coming from elsewhere in the universe, which scotched the little green men theory. What she'd actually found was a collapsed star, incredibly dense, neutron-rich, spinning at incomprehensible speed. It was a man from the Daily Telegraph who coined the term pulsar. It was Bell Burnell's PhD supervisor, Anthony Hewish, who won the Nobel prize for the discovery. On this seeming injustice she remains supremely philosophical. When you win a Nobel, she said, "nobody gives you anything after that because they feel they can't match it".

Bell Burnell is utterly without the forced enthusiasm of the modern scientist-presenter, and yet she is remarkably good at explaining her job simply and concisely. I'm not going to pretend I now know what a pulsar is exactly, but anything Bell Burnell can describe, I could probably name.

The "roast" is an odd American phenomenon, a sort of testimonial showbiz party during which the guest of honour is mercilessly insulted by fellow celebrities. The tradition began at the Friars Club in New York and was televised as part of the Dean Martin Show in the 1970s, and more recently on Comedy Central. Now Channel 4 is bringing us a British version, Celebrity Roast, with Bruce Forsyth as last night's inaugural dishonoree. Jimmy Carr, Jonathan Ross, Jon Culshaw and Jack Dee were among his genial tormentors – a "Who's Who of who was available," as Carr said. It looks as if they went through the Js of some publicist's email address book.

There's a problem with insulting Brucie: it's hard to get beyond his age. "When the dinosaurs died out he was taken in for questioning," said someone. "He's seen Halley's comet three times," said someone else. A lot of the jokes overlapped. Variations on "Nice to see you, to see you nice" abounded. Jonathan Ross said "fuck" a couple of times, but the whole thing lacked the sleazy exuberance of the original format (you can watch the Dean Martin ones on YouTube). Only Bruce himself seemed to catch the spirit of the thing. "That was funny," he shouted at Jack Dee. "I knew you'd make me laugh eventually."

Source: Science news, comment and analysis | guardian.co.uk | 7 Apr 2010 | 5:05 pm

Playing with physics

Attempting to recreate gravity, momentum and the other attributes of the real world has always been an integral part of the gaming world

Video games have been interested in mimicking real-life physics since the days of Pong – a tennis simulator in which a 'ball' bounces across a screen. Physics engines, the back-end programming which makes this simulation possible, have become ever more sophisticated. The 2004 game Half Life 2 was widely praised for its realistic physics. There's a genuine pleasure in seeing the movement of physical objects portrayed accurately, and fans created videos to showcase how accurately the game models falling crates or topples fence panels .

But now that games have proved they can reproduce reality so beautifully, a more recent crop have played with physics in fascinating ways. The beautiful, atmospheric game And Yet It Moves takes place within a ripped-paper collage landscape in which the player has to rotate the world in order to navigate it. Up becomes down, left becomes right and the direction of gravity changes. It's similar to the 2008 game Echochrome in which players navigate a world based on MC Escher physics.

A simple, yet incredibly satisfying free online game is Continuity. In the game, the player runs a stick figure from place to place, opening the door to the next level: but each level is arranged over multiple panels which can be shuffled. You may need to jump up into one panel, then shuffle them so that you fall back into a different one. The game's world is both totally impossible and strangely intuitive.

The emergence of these games could be compared to painting's journey from photo-realism to abstract work. Like all art forms, games can reflect reality back to us, but also show us things that could never exist.

Source: Science news, comment and analysis | guardian.co.uk | 7 Apr 2010 | 5:05 pm

Airborne pigeons obey the pecking order

During flight, pigeons in a flock follow the leader.
Source: NatureNews - All articles published today - nature.com science feeds | 7 Apr 2010 | 5:04 pm

TSA: iPad, Netbooks Can Remain in Carry-On

Passengers will be allowed to leave netbooks, e-book readers such as Amazon's Kindle, and other "small gadgets" in their carry-on bags.
Source: Livescience.com | 7 Apr 2010 | 4:16 pm

Self-Driving Cars Could See Like Humans

Robotic car steering is modeled on how real people actually see the road.
Source: Livescience.com | 7 Apr 2010 | 3:59 pm

World's Rarest Animals Identified

The Wildlife Conservation Society has just released a list of critically endangered species dubbed the “Rarest of the Rare” – a group of animals most in danger of extinction, from primates to horses. (Images: WCS, Julie Larsen Maher) The list ...
Source: Discovery News - Top Stories | 7 Apr 2010 | 3:47 pm

Mystery Object Defies Astronomical Classification

A mysterious object discovered near a brown dwarf doesn’t fit into any known astronomical category.

The newly discovered mystery companion forms a binary system with the brown dwarf, located 460 light-years away in the Taurus star-forming system. The object is too light to be another brown dwarf, but it’s too young to have formed by accretion, the way a typical planet does.

“Although this small companion appears to have a mass that is comparable to the mass of planets around stars, we don’t think it formed like a planet,” said astronomer Kevin Luhman of Penn State University, co-author of the study April 5 in The Astrophysical Journal. “This seems to indicate that there are two different ways for nature to make small companions.”

Luhman’s team made the discovery with the Hubble Space Telescope and the Gemini Observatory.

The new object and its companion brown dwarf are orbiting as a binary pair, 15 astronomical units from each other. If they were superimposed on our solar system, the companion would be orbiting midway between Saturn and Uranus. The oddball object’s mass is somewhere between five and 10 Jupiter masses, making it too small to fuse deuterium. The International Astronomical Union currently uses this fusion line, which occurs at about 13 Jupiter masses, as the defining characteristic of a brown dwarf.

But the object appears to be around the same age as its binary partner, which doesn’t fit conventional ideas about planet formation. Traditional theories describe planets forming from the gaseous disk that swirls around the equator of a newly formed star. Particles in the gas and dust cloud collide, and gradually accrete into larger objects, eventually becoming planets. These rocky planets can grow into sizes up to 10 Earth masses before they become gas giants.

And 1 million years is much shorter than the expected time for a planet to be born this way. Planets can form this quickly when there is a gravitational instability in the gaseous disk, but the brown dwarf’s disk probably didn’t have enough material to form a planet larger than a single Jupiter mass.

“It looks like this new system formed by the collapse and fragmentation process that forms binary star systems,” Alan Boss, president of the IAU Commission on Extrasolar Planets said in an e-mail to Wired.com. Boss theorized that these sorts of planet-sized objects exist in a paper published in 2001.

“While people like to use the ‘p-word’ to describe objects with masses below 13 Jupiter masses, given the attention given to exoplanets these days, they should more properly be called ’sub-brown dwarfs,’” Boss said.

Because this strange object seems more likely to have formed the same way as its binary partner, the brown dwarf, Luhman believes it is probably best classified as a very small brown dwarf.

“This object, because it formed like a star, its composition is probably the same throughout,” Luhman said. This homogenous composition is in stark contrast to the innards of gas giants, like Jupiter, which probably have a heavy-element rocky core surrounded by a gaseous shell composed mainly of hydrogen and helium.

The presence of another nearby binary system, of a red star and a brown dwarf, supports Luhman’s theory. It seems to have been formed around the same time as the mystery pair, indicating that all four may have formed the same way, as stars.

“This configuration — two tight pairs that are widely separated from each other — is called a hierarchical configuration and is commonly seen in quadruple star systems,” Luhman said.

Images: 1) NASA, ESA, K. Todorov, K. Luhman, Penn State University.  2) Artist’s rendering from Gemini Observatory/L. Cook.

Source: Wired: Wired Science | 7 Apr 2010 | 3:42 pm

Protein folding: The dark side of proteins

Almost every human protein has segments that can form amyloids, the sticky aggregates known for their role in disease. Yet cells have evolved some elaborate defences, finds Jim Schnabel.
Source: NatureNews - All articles published today - nature.com science feeds | 7 Apr 2010 | 3:00 pm

Telescope arrays give fine view of stars

Optical interferometry is no longer on the fringe of astronomy.
Source: NatureNews - All articles published today - nature.com science feeds | 7 Apr 2010 | 3:00 pm

Correction

Source: NatureNews - All articles published today - nature.com science feeds | 7 Apr 2010 | 3:00 pm

Archaeology: Hidden treasure

The explosion in commercial archaeology has brought a flood of information. The problem now is figuring out how to find and use this unpublished literature, reports Matt Ford.
Source: NatureNews - All articles published today - nature.com science feeds | 7 Apr 2010 | 3:00 pm

Pigeon Flocks Let the Best Bird Lead

Even the bird-brained can follow a leader. When pigeons fly in flocks, each bird falls behind another with better navigational skill, and the savviest among them leads the flock, scientists report in the April 8 Nature.

The research suggests hierarchies can serve peaceful purposes in the animal kingdom, where dominance by brute force is often the rule. “A pecking order tends to be just that — a pecking order,” says Iain Couzin of Princeton University, an expert in collective behavior who was not involved in the research.

The research also suggests that for pigeons, dominance isn’t set in stone. While one bird often emerged as the leader, other birds also stepped up. This flexibility in leadership had previously been seen only in some small groups of fish.

From schools to packs to swarms to flocks, collective behavior is widespread among animals. But in many cases, the important interactions are with nearest neighbors, and control of the group’s movement is distributed among members rather than hierarchical.

Biological physicist Tamás Vicsek of Eötvös Loránd University in Budapest and his colleagues studied flight dynamics in homing pigeons, which fly in flocks but conveniently return to their roosts. The researchers outfitted 13 pigeons with tiny backpacks carrying GPS devices that measured shifts in birds’ flight direction five times per second. Flocks of eight to 10 birds flew with the devices during homing flights (a roughly 14-kilometer trip back to the roost) and spontaneous “free” flights near home. Each bird also flew solo flights of about 15 kilometers each.

Analysis of GPS logs showed that for each excursion, the flock had one leader followed by at least three or four other birds. Each of these followers was in turn followed by other birds in the flock. Comparing the solo flight paths to the group flights showed that the birds with the best navigational skills led the flock.

While flocks have hierarchies, they’re not dictatorships, notes Vicsek. One bird led eight of the 13 flights, while other birds took the lead on the rest of the trips. Vicsek likens the dynamics to a group of peers deciding where to eat dinner. “Maybe someone knows the area restaurants best, or there is a person who’s a gourmand — or maybe they are the most outspoken,” he says. This one person might pick the place to eat for several nights, although another person might chime in now and then. And then there is the person with no say, whom everyone knows has terrible taste in food.

“These pigeons know each other. They know which is the smartest. The fastest bird will even follow the slower one who knows the way home the best,” say Vicsek. Videos of the birds’ positions during flight showed that if the best navigator moves a little to the left, it takes about a third of a second for other birds to do the same. But if the least savvy bird makes a move “the others don’t care,” Vicsek says.

Pigeons’ brains may be wired for follow-the-leader, comments behavioral neuroscientist Lucia Jacobs of the University of California, Berkeley. When the left eye sees something, for example, it sends all the visual information to the right brain hemisphere, and vice versa. This “extreme lateralization” may play a role in organizing flocks, the new work suggests. A pigeon following another was most likely to be flying on its partner’s right, seeing this leader with its left eye. “It’s very cool,” Jacobs says.

Images: Zsuzsa Ákos

See Also:

• Migratory Birds’ New Climate Change Strategy: Stay Home
• Reverse-Engineering the Quantum Compass of Birds
• Feeding Birds Could Create New Species
• Citizen Science Is for the Birds

Source: Wired: Wired Science | 7 Apr 2010 | 2:46 pm

CERN creates 10 million mini-Big Bangs in one week

GENEVA (Reuters) - Physicists at the CERN research center said on Wednesday they had created 10 million mini-Big Bangs in the first week of mega-power operations of their marathon probe into the secrets of the cosmos.
Source: Reuters: Science News | 7 Apr 2010 | 2:45 pm

Pigeons Wear GPS Backpacks for Science

Not much is known about flocking behavior in birds. Why does a group of birds moving in one direction suddenly veer, dive and swoop all together without missing a wing beat? To find out, scientists from Britain and Hungary strapped ...
Source: Discovery News - Top Stories | 7 Apr 2010 | 2:45 pm

First Animals Found That Live Without Oxygen

In the muck of the deep Mediterranean seafloor, scientists have found the first multicellular animals capable of surviving in an entirely oxygen-free environment.

Some types of bacteria and other single-celled organisms can live without oxygen, but nothing as complex had been found as these three species of Loricifera, a group of marine-sediment dwellers who inhabit one of Earth’s most extreme and little-known environments.

“The discovery of these life forms opens new perspectives for the study of metazoan life in habitats lacking molecular oxygen,” wrote researchers led by Roberto Danovaro, a marine biologist at Italy’s Polytechnic University of Marche, in a study published April 6 in BMC Biology.

Like other Loricifera, the new species are sub-millimeter–long, Lovecraftian tangles of tentacle and shell, with their closest taxonomical relatives found among mud dragons and penis worms.

The new species, however, don’t have the mitochondria found in almost every other animal cell, converting oxygen and nutrients into chemical energy.

Even the few parasite species once thought to be mitochondria-free seem to have had them at some point in history, and possess mitochondrial remnants that perform the same essential functions.

Instead the new Loricifera species have structures called hydrogenosomes, which are found in some single-celled organisms and require no oxygen to produce chemical energy.

The evolutionary history of these creatures is not known, but they live in an environment reminiscent of Earth’s oceans some 600 million years ago, before the deep seas were oxygenated and large animals evolved, wrote Comenius University (Slovakia) biochemist Marek Mentel and Düsseldorf University (Germany) biologist William Martin in an accompanying commentary.

These “fascinating animals” provide a “glimpse of what a good part of Earth’s past ecology might have been like,” they wrote.

Image: Roberto Danovaro/BMC Biology.

See Also:

• Deep-Sea Bacteria Form Avatar-Style Electrochemical Networks
• Deep-Sea Robot Roves the Unexplored Ocean Depths
• World’s Freakiest Worm Gets Expanded Family Tree
• Invertebrate Astronauts Make Space History

Citations: “The first metazoa living in permanently anoxic conditions.” By Roberto Danovaro, Antonio Dell’Anno, Antonio Pusceddu, Cristina Gambi, Iben Heiner and Reinhardt Mobjerg Kristensen. BMC Biology, Vol. 8 No. 32, April 6, 2010.

“Anaerobic animals from an ancient, anoxic ecological niche.” By Marek Mentel and William Martin. BMC Biology, Vol. 8 No. 32, April 6, 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 | 7 Apr 2010 | 2:05 pm

Rogue Brown Dwarf Lurks in Our Cosmic Neighborhood

Astronomers have discovered the coolest brown dwarf to date with some peculiar characteristics. Has a new class of brown dwarf been discovered right on our interstellar doorstep?
Source: Discovery News - Top Stories | 7 Apr 2010 | 2:02 pm

News briefing: 8 April 2010

The week in science.
Source: NatureNews - All articles published today - nature.com science feeds | 7 Apr 2010 | 2:00 pm

Glacier National Park Loses Two More Glaciers

Climate change has claimed two more of the moving icefields at this national park, reducing their numbers to 25.
Source: Discovery News - Top Stories | 7 Apr 2010 | 1:25 pm

Rarest of Rare Species Make New Endangered List

The Wildlife Conservation Society released a new list of critically endangered species called "Rarest of the Rare" – a dozen animals most in danger of extinction.
Source: Livescience.com | 7 Apr 2010 | 1:18 pm

Artificial Cells Help Probe Inner Workings of Biology

Artificial cells used to investigate important biological processes.
Source: Livescience.com | 7 Apr 2010 | 1:12 pm

US seeks to make science free for all

Moves to make research funded by the US government available to everyone could mark a turning point in a publishing revolution. Declan Butler reports.
Source: NatureNews - All articles published today - nature.com science feeds | 7 Apr 2010 | 1:00 pm

Animals Living Without Oxygen Discovered for First Time

A multi-cellular animal was found living without oxygen deep in the Mediterranean Sea.
Source: Livescience.com | 7 Apr 2010 | 12:20 pm

Why Do Whales Beach Themselves?

A young humpback whale is clinging to life on an East Hampton beach. Rescuers are debating whether or not to sedate and euthanize it, but bystanders are frustrated that more isn't being done to save the whale, or to end ...
Source: Discovery News - Top Stories | 7 Apr 2010 | 12:16 pm

Nearby Star Has Shady Companion

Astronomers may have finally explained a mysterious eclipse first observed in the 19th century.
Source: Discovery News - Top Stories | 7 Apr 2010 | 12:10 pm

Blind Cave Fish Inspires New Robot Sensory System

Robot subs with sensory systems inspired by blind cave fish could help make the droids more autonomous.
Source: Livescience.com | 7 Apr 2010 | 12:08 pm

Technology Frees You Up to Be Distracted by Technology

The other day, I was driving down the freeway and I noticed that more and more billboards are going digital. They're like giant LCD televisions in the sky, promoting this or that with video, animated graphics and even switching from ...
Source: Discovery News - Top Stories | 7 Apr 2010 | 12:08 pm

Experts to design molecule to shut down fat gene

SINGAPORE (Reuters) - Scientists in China may have discovered how a gene responsible for obesity kicks into action and want to design a molecule to shut it down.
Source: Reuters: Science News | 7 Apr 2010 | 12:06 pm

Human Gut Bacteria Different in Japanese vs. North Americans

Bacteria in the guts of some Japanese individuals are specialized for chowing down on seaweed
Source: Livescience.com | 7 Apr 2010 | 12:03 pm

Study Reveals How Creatures Get Spots vs. Stripes

Scientists have discovered how animals get their colorful coats, from fly dots to zebra stripes and leopard spots.
Source: Livescience.com | 7 Apr 2010 | 12:01 pm

New Giant Lizard Discovered in the Philippines

Scientists couldn’t see the lizard for the trees.

But now they’ve tracked down and named Varanus bitatawa, a skittish reptile that’s hard to spot even though it grows up to 2 meters long and sports bright yellow speckles.

In forests on the Philippine island of Luzon, the newly discovered monitor lizard hauls itself up into trees in search of fruit and melts into the vegetation if humans approach, says herpetologist Rafe Brown of the Biodiversity Institute at the University of Kansas in Lawrence. He and his colleagues describe and name the species in paper published online the week of April 5 in Biology Letters.

The species is “new to us,” Brown clarifies, because the Agta and Ilongot peoples living in forests of the Sierra Madre range know the lizard well — as a delicacy. It mostly eats fruit and reportedly tastes better than a much more common scavenging monitor that’s “attracted to stinky stuff,” Brown says.

A cousin to the giant Komodo dragon, Varanus bitatawa is hard to find but once detected, is pretty hard to ignore. During adulthood, yellow markings differentiate it from a much drabber neighbor — though both species sport colorful patterns as juveniles.

Reptile systematist Michael B. Harvey, who was not part of Brown’s group, has helped name another Varanus lizard from New Guinea and examined specimens from Southeast Asia. “I quickly realized that diversity of these lizards had been greatly underestimated,” says Harvey, of Broward College in Davie, Florida. “I only hope that we don’t lose much of this biodiversity before scientists can study it.”

Deforestation poses a major threat to the biodiversity of the Philippines, which Brown and his colleagues describe in their paper as a “global conservation hot spot.”

Western scientists first glimpsed the big monitor in 2001, Brown says, when biologists exploring the forest happened on hunters carrying a large lizard home for dinner. The biologists were permitted to photograph it, but theirs was the first of several encounters in which hunters showed no interest in giving up the centerpiece of a big family meal.

Herpetologist Arvin Diesmos of the National Museum of the Philippines in Manila and other researchers persisted in collecting photographs, local intelligence and the occasional juvenile, but they could not secure a full-grown adult specimen.

Then, in the summer of 2009, a team led by Brown and his graduate student Luke Welton got its hands on an adult lizard. They documented identifying anatomical characteristics such as the distinctive little horns on the ends of the lizards’ double-barreled male reproductive organs. Which, by the way, are far from unusual in and of themselves: “All snakes and lizards have a paired copulatory organ,” Brown says.

DNA tests were even more important, confirming that the species differs from a previously identified fruit-eating monitor living in a different part of the island.

Brown actually learned of the adult specimen’s existence via text message. After he and his students spent weeks in the mountains surveying other vertebrates and hoping for an adult Varanus bitatawa, Brown had to return home early to start the fall semester. But he received a message from his students in the expedition’s final hours announcing their success — and letting him know that they were having a hard time finding a way to get from their camp to the airport.

See Also:

• Pink Iguana That Darwin Missed Holds Evolutionary Surprise
• Fossil Turtle Had Extra-Thick Shell to Fend Off World’s Largest Snake
• Tropical Turtle Fossil Discovered in the High Arctic
• Video: Tortoises Learn From Each Other
• Extinct Galapagos Tortoise Could Rise Again
• Shark-Bitten Crocodile Poop Fossils Found (No, Really)
• 67-Million-Year-Old Snake Fossil Found Eating Baby Dinosaurs

Source: Wired: Wired Science | 7 Apr 2010 | 11:29 am

'Where Da Higgs At?': Fermilab's Particle Rap

So not to feel left out, scientists at Fermilab have released their own rap video, but will it top the famous European nerdcore "LHC Rap"?
Source: Discovery News - Top Stories | 7 Apr 2010 | 11:26 am

Gut Bacteria Give Super Seaweed-Digestion Power to Japanese

The old adage, “You are what you eat,” has a bacterial component.

In a neat confluence of human history, stomach bacteria and food, researchers have found that the intestinal microbes of Japanese people may be souped up for eating seaweed.

“In a marine bacteria, we identified an enzyme that is very specialized for degrading algal cell walls,” said Mirjam Czjzek, a biologist at France’s Station Biologique de Roscoff. “The only other place we find this enzyme is in the human-gut bacteria of Japanese individuals.”

The discovery, described April 7 in Nature, started with Roscoff biologist Jan-Hendrik Hehemann’s analysis of Zobellia galactanivorans, a common marine bacteria. In it, he found an enzyme that breaks down porphyran, a carbohydrate found in the cell walls of red algae.

The gene that codes for the enzyme has been found in one other place: the genome of Bacteroides plebeius, a microbe found in human intestines. However, not all B. plebeius strains produce the algae-crunching enzyme. It has only been found in Japanese people.

According to the researchers, the enzyme helps Z. galactanivorans eat red algae, which westerners know best as the nori seaweed wrapping around sushi rolls. At some unknown points and in some unknown stomachs in the Japanese past, the enzyme-coding gene passed from Z. galactanivorans and into B. plebeius. That lucky microbe would have benefited from a new-found ability to process red algae, spreading through its stomach environment and eventually through the human population, which in turn derived more nutrients from an algae-rich diet.

Humans are known to benefit from digestive enzymes produced by the trillions of microbes in each person’s intestines, but “I don’t think anyone’s ever shown an ethnic difference like this,” said Andrew Gewirtz, an Emory University immunologist who studies the role of gut bacteria in obesity. “It’s perfectly logical, and fits with ideas that scientists have kicked around.”

How much the new gene helps people digest seaweed hasn’t yet been quantified. The microbes’ fate in people with seaweed-free diets is uncertain.

The researchers also don’t know when the gene jumped from marine to human microbes, though Czjzek suspects it happened long ago. As for whether other people have seaweed-processing strains, the study isn’t absolutely conclusive. It looked only at the gut microbes of 18 westerners — enough to suggest a pattern, but not a final word, though the chances are probably low.

“Often the question comes, ‘I’ve been eating sushi for two years now. Do I have this enzyme?’ The answer is, these are very rare events,” said Czjzek. “In the early days, seaweed wasn’t sterilized. Nowadays, it’s cooked, roasted and prepared. The chance to have this type of transfer is much lower.”

That’s likely the case with most types of food, said Gewirtz. As for whether “that’s a good or a bad thing, it’s hard to say,” he said. But Justin Sonnenburg, a Stanford University microbiologist who wrote a commentary accompanying the findings, is concerned.

“Consumption of hyper-hygienic, mass-produced, highly-processed and calorie-dense foods is testing how rapidly the microbiota of individuals in industrialized countries can adapt while being deprived of the environmental reservoirs of microbial genes,” he wrote.

However, globalized diets do give people a chance to eat foods they wouldn’t have found before. “The next time you take a bite of an unfamiliar food, think about the microbial inhabitants you may also be ingesting, and the possibility that you will be providing one of your 10 trillion closest friends with a new set of utensils,” wrote Sonnenburg.

Image: Javier Lastras/Flickr.

See Also:

• Hacking Your Body’s Bacteria for Better Health
• Gut Bacteria Affect Almost Everything You Do
• Gut Bacteria Cause Overeating in Mice
• You’re Leaving a Bacterial Fingerprint on Your Keyboard

Citations: “Transfer of carbohydrate-active enzymes from marine bacteria to Japanese gut microbiota.” By Jan-Hendrik Hehemann, Gaelle Correc, Tristan Barbeyron, William Helbert, Mirjam Czjzek, & Gurvan Michel. Nature, Vol. 464 No. 7290, April 8, 2010.

“Genetic pot luck.” By Justin L. Sonnenburg. Nature, Vol. 464 No. 7290, April 8, 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 | 7 Apr 2010 | 11:00 am

What's in a name? Fly world is abuzz

Proposed reorganization of fruitfly genus might throw out its most celebrated member.
Source: NatureNews - All articles published today - nature.com science feeds | 7 Apr 2010 | 11:00 am

Sushi-munching bacteria found in the guts of Japanese people

Japanese gut bacteria have picked up genes that help their hosts digest the seaweed used to wrap sushi

The next time you order sushi in a Japanese restaurant, raise a glass of sake to the countless marine microbes that might be clinging to it.

Bugs that live on the seaweed used to wrap sushi have given some of their genes to bacteria that live in the human gut, and in doing so, help them to digest the food.

Scientists stumbled on the discovery after sequencing the genetic make-up of marine bacteria that live on Porphyra seaweed and searching DNA databases for matches.

Eleven genes used by the bugs to break down carbohydrates in seaweed also showed up in bacteria isolated from the intestines of Japanese people, but were absent from the gut microbes of North Americans.

Writing in the journal Nature, the scientists describe how a long tradition of seaweed eating in Japan that dates back at least to the 8th century had caused their gut bacteria to adapt to the national diet. Marine microbes probably swap their genes with bacteria in the gut, giving some the ability to digest seaweed.

The human intestine is home to trillions of bacteria, of which there are an estimated 500 different species. Many benefit their hosts by helping to break down food that would otherwise be impossible to digest.

"This gives us a hint at how the diversity of bacteria we have in our guts arises and evolves," said Mirjam Czjzek at the University of Pierre and Marie Curie in Paris. "What we eat and how we prepare it can have an influence on our microflora."

Czjzek's team analysed the genes of the marine bacterium Zobellia galactanivorans, which lives on Porphyra algae, and found several that help the microbes digest seaweed. Further searches found the same genes had been incoporated into a common gut microbe called Bacteroides plebeius.

The scientists have yet to work out whether Japanese people benefit from bacteria in their gut that carry the genes, or if the only advantage is for the bacteria themselves.

In an accompanying article, Justin Sonnenburg at Stanford University School of Medicine writes: "The next time you take a bite of an unfamilar food, think about the microbial inhabitants you may also be ingesting, and the possibility that you will be providing one of your 10 trillion closest friends with a new set of utensils."

Source: Science news, comment and analysis | guardian.co.uk | 7 Apr 2010 | 11:00 am

Russia, Poland Honor Soviet Massacre Victims

The Soviets had long laid the blame for the 22,000 murders on Nazi Germany -- a lie told for decades to the Russian people.
Source: Discovery News - Top Stories | 7 Apr 2010 | 10:50 am

India eyes cryogenic space launch

India will soon launch a communication satellite powered for the first time by a home grown cryogenic engine.
Source: BBC News | Science & Environment | UK Edition | 7 Apr 2010 | 10:42 am

Perplexing Panda Pseudo-Pregnancy Pondered

Female giant pandas often undergo pseudo-pregnancies, which mimic the real thing, sans the panda cub.
Source: Livescience.com | 7 Apr 2010 | 10:25 am

Fewer Babies Born During Recession

Birth rates in the United States started to decline in 2008, and the decrease appears to be linked to the recent recession.
Source: Livescience.com | 7 Apr 2010 | 10:24 am

Egypt hosts antiquities meeting

Global culture officials meet in Cairo to discuss how to recover ancient treasures which they say have been looted.
Source: BBC News | Science & Environment | UK Edition | 7 Apr 2010 | 9:06 am

Susan Greenfield launches legal action

Solicitors for its former director Baroness Susan Greenfield have initiated legal proceedings against the Royal Institution over her dismissal in January

The Royal Insitution is preparing to defend itself against legal action brought by its former director, Baroness Greenfield, in a continuing battle over leadership of one of Britain's oldest scientific establishments.

Lady Greenfield vowed to bring a case for sexual discrimination when she was made redundant in January after 12 years as director of the 211-year-old institution.

Legal papers were issued to the Royal Institution by Greenfield's solicitors yesterday, a week before members of the RI vote on the future of the organisation at a special general meeting in London.

Lady Greenfield's supporters hope to gain enough support from members at the 12 April meeting to oust the entire governing body of the RI and replace it with a transitional council that could reinstate the baroness as director.

In a statement last night, the RI said: "We can confirm that Notice of an Employment Tribunal Claim issued by the former Director Baroness Greenfield has been received by the Royal Institution of Great Britain. Baroness Greenfield's claims, which we consider to be unfounded, will be vigorously defended.

The RI, which is facing severe financial difficulties after selling off property to fund a £22m refurbishment of its Mayfair premises, refused to elaborate on the specific claims made against it. Lady Greenfield did not return calls on the matter.

The move by rebel members to vote out the existing management has been countered by RI staff who have written to all 2,400 members of the organisation urging them not to support the coup.

Signatories of a supplementary document, including Peter Day, a former director of the RI, and Richard Catlow, a former director of the Davy Faraday Research Laboratory, warned that radical changes to the organisation's governance would cause further harm to the institution.

Source: Science news, comment and analysis | guardian.co.uk | 7 Apr 2010 | 8:15 am

Delicate exhibit

Museum launches living butterfly attraction
Source: BBC News | Science & Environment | UK Edition | 7 Apr 2010 | 7:35 am

Pharma seeks genetic clues to healthy aging

LONDON (Reuters) - They may be a little wrinkly, and there may not be many of them, but centenarians are the fastest growing demographic in the developed world.
Source: Reuters: Science News | 7 Apr 2010 | 6:58 am

Australia to remove Reef ship oil

Australia prepares to pump tonnes of heavy fuel from a Chinese coal ship grounded on the Great Barrier Reef.
Source: BBC News | Science & Environment | UK Edition | 7 Apr 2010 | 5:41 am

Solar plane in first test flight

A solar-powered plane prototype takes to the air for the first time in its first step towards a round-the-world journey.
Source: BBC News | Science & Environment | UK Edition | 7 Apr 2010 | 5:28 am

Philippines dragon-sized lizard is a new species

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - A dragon-sized, fruit-eating lizard that lives in the trees on the northern Philippines island of Luzon has been confirmed as a new species, scientists reported on Tuesday.
Source: Reuters: Science News | 7 Apr 2010 | 4:56 am

Fruit and veg do little to prevent cancer

Research points to weak link between five a day and protection against cancer

Eating a lot of fruit and vegetables has only "a very modest" effect on protecting against cancer, according to a study.

Researchers suggest that the "five portions a day" health mantra has strong validity only when it comes to preventing the disease in heavy drinkers. Even then the benefits may apply only to cancers caused by alcohol and smoking, such as those in the gut, throat and mouth.

The verdict is based on a study of almost 500,000 people in 10 European countries and suggests that even the small overall association of fruit and vegetable consumption with prevention of cancer may be linked to other factors.

Fruit and vegetable intake was compared with cancer data covering nine years up to 2000 for the research published in the Journal of the National Cancer Institute.

Researchers adjusted the results for other factors likely to influence the results, such as smoking, alcohol intake, obesity, consumption of meat and processed meat, exercise and whether women had taken the contraceptive pill or hormone replacement therapy.

The results showed that eating an extra 200g of fruit and vegetables a day reduced the overall risk of cancer by 3%. The link between eating a large amount of vegetables and reduced cancer risk applied only to women.

The study, led by Paolo Boffetta from the Tisch Cancer Institute at Mount Sinai School of Medicine in New York, suggested a "weak" association between high fruit and vegetable intake and reduced cancer risk.

An accompanying editorial by Walter Willett of the Harvard School of Public Health said efforts to increase fruit and vegetable consumption were still worthwhile because accumulating evidence showed that they helped protect against cardiovascular disease and "a small benefit for cancer remains possible". Research now should focus more sharply on specific fruits and vegetables – including lycopene in tomatoes which, studies suggest, helps protect against prostate cancer – and on reducing smoking and obesity.

NHS advice in Britain is careful to say that eating five portions a day can help reduce the risk of "some cancers", including bowel cancer, and heart disease, type 2 diabetes, strokes and obesity.

Source: Science news, comment and analysis | guardian.co.uk | 7 Apr 2010 | 4:40 am