ODD solution to bomb scares: Optical Dynamic Detection provides better way to detect explosives

The U.S. Department of Homeland Security's Science & Technology Directorate may have a better solution to detecting just what's in that suspicious package.
Source: ScienceDaily: Latest Science News | 11 Apr 2010 | 3:00 pm

NASA sensors providing rapid estimates of Iceland volcano emissions

A NASA research team is using the latest advances in satellite artificial intelligence to speed up estimates of the heat and volume of lava escaping from an erupting volcano in Iceland.
Source: ScienceDaily: Latest Science News | 11 Apr 2010 | 3:00 pm

Source of recurrent yeast infections in autoimmune syndrome pinpointed

Infectious diseases are not always caused by infection. Researchers have revealed that patients who suffer from a rare autoimmune disorder that makes them vulnerable to yeast infections produce antibodies that target and destroy immune-fighting proteins that would otherwise keep yeast in check.
Source: ScienceDaily: Latest Science News | 11 Apr 2010 | 3:00 pm

Social influence plays role in surging autism diagnoses, study finds

Researchers find that children living near a child who has been previously diagnosed with autism have a much higher chance of being diagnosed themselves in the following year. The increased likelihood of being diagnosed is not due to environmental factors or contagious agents, the study found. Rather, it is due mainly to parents learning about autism from other parents who have a child diagnosed with the disorder.
Source: ScienceDaily: Latest Science News | 11 Apr 2010 | 3:00 pm

Exotic quantum spin-liquid simulated: A starting point for superconductivity?

An exotic state of matter that physicists call a "quantum spin-liquid" can be realized by electrons in a honeycomb crystal structure, researchers in Germany report.
Source: ScienceDaily: Latest Science News | 11 Apr 2010 | 3:00 pm

New, inexpensive way to predict Alzheimer's disease

Your brain's capacity for information is a reliable predictor of Alzheimer's disease and can be cheaply and easily tested, according to scientists.
Source: ScienceDaily: Latest Science News | 11 Apr 2010 | 3:00 pm

Hepatitis C infection doubles risk for kidney cancer, study finds

Physicians have found that infection with the hepatitis C virus increases the risk for developing kidney cancer.
Source: ScienceDaily: Latest Science News | 11 Apr 2010 | 9:00 am

Gene that changes the brain’s response to stress identified

Stress can literally warp your brain, reshaping some brain structures that help cope with life's pressures. In the short term, the stress response can be helpful -- i.e., fight or flight -- but over time it leads to a wear and tear that can cause disease in both the brain and other parts of the body. Digging deeper into what underlies these potentially harmful changes, new research has identified a key protein involved in remodeling the brain under stress.
Source: ScienceDaily: Latest Science News | 11 Apr 2010 | 9:00 am

Cancer drug effectiveness substantially advanced: Co-administered peptide directs medicines deep into tumor tissue

Researchers have shown that a peptide (a chain of amino acids) called iRGD helps co-administered drugs penetrate deeply into tumor tissue. The peptide has been shown to substantially increase treatment efficacy against human breast, prostate and pancreatic cancers in mice, achieving the same therapeutic effect as a normal dose with one-third as much of the drug.
Source: ScienceDaily: Latest Science News | 11 Apr 2010 | 9:00 am

Simple test can detect signs of suicidal thoughts in people taking antidepressants

Researchers have developed a non-invasive biomarker, or indicator, using a non-invasive measurement of electrical activity in the brain, to associate a sharp reduction of activity in a specific brain region within 48 hours of beginning pharmaceutical treatment in people who proved susceptible to developing thoughts of suicide.
Source: ScienceDaily: Latest Science News | 11 Apr 2010 | 9:00 am

Astronauts take 2nd spacewalk to replace tank (AP)

AP - Astronauts struggled with stiff bolts while attaching a big new tank full of ammonia coolant to the International Space Station on Sunday, their second spacewalk in three days to accomplish the job.

Source: Yahoo! News: Science News | 11 Apr 2010 | 3:54 am

UN warns as climate talks enter final day in Bonn (AFP)

AFP - Another failure in the quest for a treaty on climate change would cripple trust in the United Nations' ability to tackle global warming, the UN's climate pointman warned as more talks ground into their final day here on Sunday.

Source: Yahoo! News: Science News | 11 Apr 2010 | 3:25 am

Discovery astronauts begin second spacewalk (AFP)

AFP - Two astronauts from the US shuttle Discovery began a second spacewalk early Sunday as part of efforts to replace a depleted ammonia coolant tank outside the International Space Station.

Source: Yahoo! News: Science News | 11 Apr 2010 | 2:30 am

Ship crew charged over reef route

Three people are charged with steering a cargo ship through a protected part of Australia's Great Barrier Reef.
Source: BBC News | Science & Environment | UK Edition | 10 Apr 2010 | 10:54 pm

Pencil Innards and Other Novel Solar Tech

Viable materials for making solar power work can easily sound like Avatar's unobtanium. With cheaper alternatives to silicon on par with platinum for rarity, research into winning solar tech materials is heating up. What if we could use a more ...
Source: Discovery News - Top Stories | 10 Apr 2010 | 10:53 pm

Pollution Speeds Up Snow Melt in Europe, Asia (LiveScience.com)

LiveScience.com - This Behind the Scenes article was provided to LiveScience in partnership with the National Science Foundation.
Source: Yahoo! News: Science News | 10 Apr 2010 | 6:40 pm

Alien Life on Titan Would Stink (SPACE.com)

SPACE.com - If life does exist on Saturn's intriguing moon Titan, it probably stinks.
Source: Yahoo! News: Science News | 10 Apr 2010 | 5:15 pm

Literary critics scan the brain to find out why we love to read

'Neuro lit crit' is the study of how great writing affects the hard wiring inside our heads. But can we decode the artistic impulse?

It is the cutting edge of literary studies, a rapidly expanding field that is blending scientific processes with the study of literature and other forms of fiction. Some have dubbed it "the science of reading" and it is shaking up one of the most esoteric and sometimes impenetrable corners of academia. Forget structuralism or even post-structuralist deconstructionism. "Neuro lit crit" is where it's at.

Later this year a group of 12 students in New England will be given a series of specially designed texts to read. Then they will be loaded into a hospital MRI machine and their brains scanned to map their neurological responses.

The scans produced will measure blood flow to the firing synapses of their brain cells, allowing a united team of scientists and literature professors to study how and why human beings respond to complex fiction such as the works of Marcel Proust, Henry James or Virginia Woolf.

The students are part of a group called the Yale-Haskins Teagle Collegium, which is headed by Yale literature professor Michael Holquist. "We are a group made up of honest-to-God scientists who spend all day in the lab and a group of literary humanists who are deeply devoted to the cause of literature," Holquist said.

His groups have spent months designing their texts, or "vignettes", and they have been specifically created to different levels of complexity based on the assumption that the brain reacts differently to great literature than to a newspaper or a Harry Potter book. The aim, Holquist says, is to provide a scientific basis for schemes to improve the reading skills of college-age students.

Holquist's group, however, is just one area of neuro lit crit. Academics from the arts and science are getting together in cross-disciplinary ways in order to explore the biological processes behind reading, creating and processing fiction. "Reading is a very hard-wired thing in our brains. There are brain cells that respond to reading and we can study them," said Professor Richard Wise, a neuroscientist at Imperial College London.

That might seem a counter-intuitive way to treat the arts. Great literature – and, indeed, not-so-great literature – has long been examined and studied in terms of other fields of the humanities.

People have identified philosophical theories in Shakespeare and analysed his differing moral ways of seeing the world. Famous works of literature have long been interpreted according to Marxist theories or by looking at gender. Or they have been seen as the product of exact historical, social, economic or environmental contexts.

Now, adding to those age-old debates, groups of scientists and literature experts are saying that the biology and chemistry of the brain are equally worthy of study and could provide as much insight. Literature, they say, has its roots in what it does to our brains or even what genes might be involved. Lighting up the right neurones is every bit as important as a keen moral insight or a societal context. Some see that as revolutionary. "It is one of the most exciting developments in intellectual life," said Blakey Vermeule, an English professor at Stanford University.

Vermeule is examining the role of evolution in fiction: some call it "Darwinian literary studies". It looks at how human genetics and evolutionary theory shape and influence literature, or at how literature itself may be an expression of evolution. For instance, the fact that much of human fiction is about the search for a suitable mate should suggest that evolutionary forces are at play. Others agree that fiction can be seen as promoting social cohesion or even giving lessons in sexual selection. "It is hard to interpret fiction without an evolutionary view," said Professor Jonathan Gottschall at Washington and Jefferson College, Pennsylvania.

However, there has also been a backlash against the idea of using scientific methodology as a way of analysing fiction. Some say that the very experience of literature is too individual for scientific study. Or that science might do down the artistic and poetic notions of the humanities. Others protest that the science is simply not advanced enough. "It strikes me as just plain silly. The mind and the brain are two quite separate things, and nobody knows what the relation is between them," said Dr Ian Patterson, a fellow at Queens' College, Cambridge. Dr Nikolaj Zeuthen, of Aarhus University in Denmark, agreed. "The experience of reading something is subjective, something that we have only private access to. And surely there is nothing electrical, chemical about my experience of reading Woolf. So how can you say anything about my experience by looking at brain imaging?" he said.

But the proponents of neuro lit crit say that the critics are missing the point: discovering the scientific rules behind humankind's passion for story-telling does not take anything away from aesthetics. "Knowing the science behind the movement of a comet through space does not degrade the beauty of the night-time sky," said Gottschall.

Source: Science news, comment and analysis | guardian.co.uk | 10 Apr 2010 | 5:07 pm

Up close and phenomenal

Two decades after its launch, the telescope is still delivering stunning views of the heavens, writes Robin McKie

The brilliant tracers pouring from the centre of this image may have a dainty, colourful appearance. Their origins are anything but peaceful, however. These are rolling cauldrons of gas, heated to more than 20,000C, and they are pouring from a dying star five times bigger than our own Sun. The star – which lies within our own galaxy, the Milky Way – has blasted off its outer envelope of gases and is now unleashing a stream of ultraviolet radiation that is causing those gases to glow.

This is astronomical object NGC 6302, although it is better known, simply, as the Butterfly Nebula. Its image was captured recently by the Hubble space telescope, which was launched by the space shuttle 20 years ago, on 24 April 1980.

Although hampered by a lens that had been ground to the wrong shape, the telescope – named after US astronomer Edwin Hubble (1889–1953) – has proved to be one of the most spectacularly successful spacecraft ever built by Nasa. It was repaired in 1993 and thanks to a further four service missions the Hubble has gone on to generate thousands of images of the heavens, ranging from pictures of the universe's remotest galaxies to photographs of planets inside the solar system. These are the mostly widely used and most popular images produced by any space agency.

When Nasa announced it would no longer service the Hubble following the destruction of the shuttle Columbia in 2003, there was a public outcry in the United States. Nasa was forced to reinstate the mission which took place in May 2009 and which is expected to keep the Hubble operational until 2014 when it will replaced by another orbiting telescope, the James Webb.

By that time, the Hubble – which orbits 350 miles above the Earth – will have produced breathtaking photographs of space for almost a quarter of a century, captivating the public while also playing a crucial role in providing astronomers with precise measurements of the heavens.

Indeed, its studies of galaxies billions of light years away have generated a wealth of scientific papers and provided a new window on the early universe as well as a fresh understanding of its age and rate of expansion. We now know the universe is 13.75 billion years old while the Hubble has also revealed that its expansion, far from slowing down as had been expected, is in fact accelerating due to the influence of a mysterious force known simply as dark energy.

It is intriguing stuff. Nevertheless, it will be for its collection of breathtaking photographs, such as this image of the Butterfly Nebula, that will be the telescope's enduring legacy.

Source: Science news, comment and analysis | guardian.co.uk | 10 Apr 2010 | 5:07 pm

Space: the final career frontier

• 'Astronaut' makes first appearance in UK careers handbook
• UK space and satellite industry already supports 19,000 jobs

British careers guides are boldly going where no guides have gone before: with advice to graduates on how to work a job in space. "Astronaut" is one of the job titles listed in the 2010/2011 Jobfile handbook, published by VT Lifeskills.

The authors admit that competition is fierce. The European Space Agency (ESA) recently recruited six astronauts from a pool of 8,400. But for the first time since space exploration began half a century ago, a Briton – helicopter pilot Timothy Peake – was among them.

The UK does not fund any manned space missions but its citizens are now allowed to join European missions. Of the four previous British astronauts, three became US citizens; the other joined a Russian mission with private funding.

The ESA plans to send one European to the international space station which is currently under construction in space every other year up to 2015 and beyond. It then plans exploration missions to the Moon and Mars.

This month the UK Space Agency was set up to co-ordinate funding for the space and satellite industry, which supports 19,000 jobs, with a turnover of £5.8bn.

Careers consultant Heather MacRae of Venture Thinking said: "Realistically, there will not be many jobs as astronauts. But there are plenty of other exciting jobs in the space industry."

Source: Science news, comment and analysis | guardian.co.uk | 10 Apr 2010 | 5:07 pm

'I had no choice but to resign'

The seven resignations from the Advisory Council on the Misuse of Drugs are symptomatic of scientific advisers' anger at being forced to toe an official line

Two more resignations from the Advisory Council on the Misuse of Drugs, the government's key advisory committee on drugs, in just three days – mine and Eric Carlin's. Seven resignations since the summary dismissal of the former chairman, Professor David Nutt, last November.

The troubles of the ACMD are symptomatic of a deeper, less-visible crisis in the process by which the government uses evidence and expert advice.

Eric Carlin and I resigned for what appear to be very different reasons, but we share fundamental concerns. I stood down because the government has failed to guarantee the academic freedom and independence of its science advisers. Eric was frustrated with the way the ACMD has been pushed around by the government in its desire to throw juicy criminalisation to the baying media hounds, and with the lack of political interest in any other approach to prevention and treatment.

David Nutt was fired because he expressed views the government found uncomfortable and because those opinions were reported by the media. Professor Nutt is an internationally respected expert in psychopharmacology – the study of drugs that affect the brain. He presented his own research results, as scientists do, in academic publications and seminars. It began in February 2009 with a research paper in a respected, peer-reviewed scientific journal, making statistical comparison between deaths and illness resulting from taking ecstasy and horse riding. This was intended as a vivid, but factual, way of illustrating how the public perception of risk is coloured by factors other than scientific evidence and that any attempt to explain relative risk often leads to a tabloid storm.

David ended up in a tabloid storm and, instead of being defended by the government, he was ordered by Jacqui Smith to apologise to the parents of children who had died after taking ecstasy (though not, curiously, to the victims of horse-riding accidents).

He subsequently gave an academic lecture, attended and cleared by the Home Office secretariat, describing how the harm from legal and illegal substances might be assessed. When the lecture was published, months later, Alan Johnson sacked him by email.

The conduct of advisory committees is tightly specified by a weighty code of practice, which demands honesty and integrity from advisers, but which specifically protects, indeed facilitates, their right to inform the public about their interpretation of evidence. No breach of the code of practice by David has ever been cited by the government.

Two senior and highly respected scientist members of the council immediately resigned in protest, to be followed by three more at the end of a meeting of the council with the home secretary last November. Several other members, myself included, pledged to wait for the government's response to the proposed Principles for the Treatment of Scientific Advice, drawn up by the scientific community in response to the sacking of David Nutt, and communicated to the prime minister by the president of the Royal Society. I and my colleagues reserved the option to resign if the response to this initiative proved unsatisfactory.

Last week, on budget day, the government published its final version of the principles. It contains an arbitrary requirement, not in the existing code of practice, that advisers must not "undermine trust". The scientific community, including scores of members of government advisory committees, had criticised this clause when it appeared in the government document circulated for consultation. But that objection has been ignored. If implemented, the government's principles will allow advisers to be fired on the grounds that a minister has decided that they are undermining trust! This is unacceptable.

Expert advice is without value unless it is truly independent. It should not be given to ensure the trust of politicians or to fit the mood of the day's press.

I spent last weekend agonising and concluded that I could not continue to serve the government on these terms. While my resignation was nothing to do with the – yet to be given – advice on mephedrone, my concerns were reinforced by accounts of the meeting of the ACMD last Monday. Shorn of half its scientific members, including the chair of the mephedrone working group, Dr Les King, the council considered a report on mephedrone. This was tabled on the day and which was still being considered when the chairman had to leave to tell the home secretary what we had decided in time for, of all things, a press conference.

This was a direct breach of the home secretary's commitment to the ACMD last November that "the ACMD would publish its advice concurrently with its presentation to the home secretary" and that the Home Office "would give appropriate consideration of the advice before issuing its response".

Indeed, it rode roughshod over the commitment in the government's new principles, published just a few days earlier, that "the timing of the government's response to scientific advice should demonstrably allow for proper consideration of that advice".

Such behaviour is not appropriate for any expert committee that is responsible for presenting objective evidence to government, least of all a committee giving advice on matters of public health and the potential criminalisation of hundreds of thousands of young people. The new rules on timing and publication were designed by the government to apply to this situation and yet the government has failed to abide by them.

It is now time for all those scientific advisers who care about the integrity of the science advisory system to think about what they should do. In the absence of even a willingness of the government to look again at this problem, collective action is needed. Perhaps an old-fashioned "work to rule" of science advisers is what is required to save the system.

Everyone agrees that the government has to decide whether to accept the advice it is given. But if it is to command the respect of its advisers, it must have the decency to consider properly the advice it has commissioned and to allow its independent advisers to explain their views to the public.

I am sad to have left the ACMD. Its members work extremely hard and their work is not easy, especially given the sensitivity of the drug issue. They are unpaid, but they give their time and expertise because they are passionately concerned to help the government to make the best possible decisions in this difficult area.

But I had to stand up for my convictions. Good policy depends on good advice. Experts are willing to give their knowledge and their time, but they must not be – or allow themselves to be – treated as the puppets of government.

Source: Science news, comment and analysis | guardian.co.uk | 10 Apr 2010 | 5:06 pm

Showdown over 'sexism' claim among scientific elite

Supporters of the Oxford don who was sacked from her post as Royal Institution director will tomorrow try to dismiss its entire leadership

Several hundred of Britain's most distinguished scientists will gather tomorrow in a modest, steeply banked lecture theatre in London's Mayfair to determine the fate of the world's oldest independent research body, the Royal Institution.

They will debate a motion – described as "unprecedented in legal history" – that would dismiss its current council and replace it with supporters of the institution's former director, Lady Greenfield.

Susan Greenfield was sacked on 8 January following massive cost overruns incurred during a major refurbishment of the institution's headquarters that she had instigated. But now her supporters are mounting a dramatic bid that could lead to her reinstatement.

They say Greenfield is a victim of sexism and want to impose a completely new "transitional council", made up of their own members, on the institution, which is based in Albemarle Street, Mayfair. They claim the move would save the organisation – whose directors have included Michael Faraday and Humphry Davy – from ruin.

One supporter, Professor Lisa Jardine, of St Mary's College, London, said Greenfield was likely to win "anything between £500,000 and £1m" at an industrial tribunal because of her treatment. "That would only exacerbate the institution's financial crisis. However, the present council has boxed itself in over this," she added. "They are funny boxed-in clique and we are trying to free the institution from their influence."

However, opponents say the plan would sabotage efforts to refinance the debt-ridden institution. "A move like that would see the closure of the institution within six months," one member told the Observer. "This is a fight for the life of the Royal Institution."

Greenfield was appointed director in 1998. It was hoped that a charismatic, media-friendly new leader would sweep through the institution and introduce new ways to raise funds and popularise science in a body that was widely recognised as being badly out of date.

The appointment was controversial but necessary, said Jardine. "You either love or hate Susan. No one ever says 'she is quite nice'. However, she is a bloody distinguished neuroscientist."

But Greenfield's attempts to generate funds were unsuccessful and the institution was forced to sell its portfolio of properties in a bid to pay off debts incurred in refurbishing its building. It is now £2.5m in debt, with an annual operating loss of around £1.75m. "Only a major charity can save us, and so far we haven't found one who seems interested in our survival," said one member.

Nor are its problems helped by the furore over tomorrow's vote. "Corporate organisations work on the principle that you have a rotation of members on its council or trustees," said Frank James, professor of history at the institution. "But this motion seeks to replace totally the existing council. The idea is unprecedented in legal history."

It is also a concept that alarms many scientists. "If you replace the whole council, that will bring a great deal of instability," said Dame Nancy Rothwell, the Manchester neuroscientist who presented the institution's 1998 Christmas lectures. "It would disrupt all the RI's efforts to raise cash, which is why the staff have urged against the plan. "

Many, including Rothwell, warn that if tomorrow's vote is in favour of the transitional council the Royal Institution would close within months. The 211-year-old organisation was set up primarily to promote scientific understanding among the public and for much of its history it succeeded spectacularly, with its lectures being regularly sold out in the 19th century, while in the 20th century its Christmas lectures, televised by the BBC, were watched by millions.

But science popularisation has become a highly sophisticated business. Young scientists such as Brian Cox and TV series like The Wonders of the Solar System bring glittering scientific images into homes, while the Science Museum and the Wellcome Trust have proved adept at scientific showmanship, presenting complex issues – including shows on stem cell research, DNA databases and other subjects – in a highly accessible manner. By comparison, the RI has lagged badly behind. "Susan deserves great credit for all she did to pull the RI into the modern era," said Oxford neuroscientist Professor Colin Blakemore. "But it now needs someone else to find a niche for it this century."

For her part, Greenfield insists she is a victim of sexual discrimination. "I was unfairly dismissed," she told the BBC on Friday. "I am female, and it is my contention that a man would not have been treated in the same way."

Greenfield has warned that she will take the matter to an employment tribunal at the same time as her supporters are plotting to replace the council.

It does not bode well for the future, said Blakemore. "Whatever the merits of the various claims, this dispute and the attempt to install an inexperienced council and to reinstate Susan are only going to do further harm to the Royal Institution's chances of survival."

Source: Science news, comment and analysis | guardian.co.uk | 10 Apr 2010 | 5:05 pm

The 10 best mathematicians

Alex Bellos selects the maths geniuses whose revolutionary discoveries changed our world

Pythagoras (circa 570-495BC)

Vegetarian mystical leader and number-obsessive, he owes his standing as the most famous name in maths due to a theorem about right-angled triangles, although it now appears it probably predated him. He lived in a community where numbers were venerated as much for their spiritual qualities as for their mathematical ones. His elevation of numbers as the essence of the world made him the towering primogenitor of Greek mathematics, essentially the beginning of mathematics as we know it now. And, famously, he didn't eat beans.

Hypatia (cAD360-415)

Women are under-represented in mathematics, yet the history of the subject is not exclusively male. Hypatia was a scholar at the library in Alexandria in the 4th century CE. Her most valuable scientific legacy was her edited version of Euclid's The Elements, the most important Greek mathematical text, and one of the standard versions for centuries after her particularly horrific death: she was murdered by a Christian mob who stripped her naked, peeled away her flesh with broken pottery and ripped apart her limbs.

Girolamo Cardano (1501 -1576)

Italian polymath for whom the term Renaissance man could have been invented. A doctor by profession, he was the author of 131 books. He was also a compulsive gambler. It was this last habit that led him to the first scientific analysis of probability. He realised he could win more on the dicing table if he expressed the likelihood of chance events using numbers. This was a revolutionary idea, and it led to probability theory, which in turn led to the birth of statistics, marketing, the insurance industry and the weather forecast.

Leonhard Euler (1707- 1783)

The most prolific mathematician of all time, publishing close to 900 books. When he went blind in his late 50s his productivity in many areas increased. His famous formula eiπ + 1 = 0, where e is the mathematical constant sometimes known as Euler's number and i is the square root of minus one, is widely considered the most beautiful in mathematics. He later took an interest in Latin squares – grids where each row and column contains each member of a set of numbers or objects once. Without this work, we might not have had sudoku.

Carl Friedrich Gauss (1777-1855)

Known as the prince of mathematicians, Gauss made significant contributions to most fields of 19th century mathematics. An obsessive perfectionist, he didn't publish much of his work, preferring to rework and improve theorems first. His revolutionary discovery of non-Euclidean space (that it is mathematically consistent that parallel lines may diverge) was found in his notes after his death. During his analysis of astronomical data, he realised that measurement error produced a bell curve – and that shape is now known as a Gaussian distribution.

Georg Cantor (1845-1918)

Of all the great mathematicians, Cantor most perfectly fulfils the (Hollywood) stereotype that a genius for maths and mental illness are somehow inextricable. Cantor's most brilliant insight was to develop a way to talk about mathematical infinity. His set theory lead to the counter-intuitive discovery that some infinities were larger than others. The result was mind-blowing. Unfortunately he suffered mental breakdowns and was frequently hospitalised. He also became fixated on proving that the works of Shakespeare were in fact written by Francis Bacon.

Paul Erdös (1913-1996)

Erdös lived a nomadic, possession-less life, moving from university to university, from colleague's spare room to conference hotel. He rarely published alone, preferring to collaborate – writing about 1,500 papers, with 511 collaborators, making him the second-most prolific mathematician after Euler. As a humorous tribute, an "Erdös number" is given to mathematicians according to their collaborative proximity to him: No 1 for those who have authored papers with him; No 2 for those who have authored with mathematicians with an Erdös No 1, and so on.

John Horton Conway (b1937)

The Liverpudlian is best known for the serious maths that has come from his analyses of games and puzzles. In 1970, he came up with the rules for the Game of Life, a game in which you see how patterns of cells evolve in a grid. Early computer scientists adored playing Life, earning Conway star status. He has made important contributions to many branches of pure maths, such as group theory, number theory and geometry and, with collaborators, has also come up with wonderful-sounding concepts like surreal numbers, the grand antiprism and monstrous moonshine.

Grigori Perelman (b1966)

Perelman was awarded $1m last month for proving one of the most famous open questions in maths, the Poincaré Conjecture. But the Russian recluse has refused to accept the cash. He had already turned down maths' most prestigious honour, the Fields Medal in 2006. "If the proof is correct then no other recognition is needed," he reportedly said. The Poincaré Conjecture was first stated in 1904 by Henri Poincaré and concerns the behaviour of shapes in three dimensions. Perelman is currently unemployed and lives a frugal life with his mother in St Petersburg.

Terry Tao (b1975)

An Australian of Chinese heritage who lives in the US, Tao also won (and accepted) the Fields Medal in 2006. Together with Ben Green, he proved an amazing result about prime numbers – that you can find sequences of primes of any length in which every number in the sequence is a fixed distance apart. For example, the sequence 3, 7, 11 has three primes spaced 4 apart. The sequence 11, 17, 23, 29 has four primes that are 6 apart. While sequences like this of any length exist, no one has found one of more than 25 primes, since the primes by then are more than 18 digits long.

Alex Bellos is the author of Alex's Adventures in Numberland

Source: Science news, comment and analysis | guardian.co.uk | 10 Apr 2010 | 5:05 pm

Saudi, Vietnam ink energy pacts (AFP)

AFP - Oil giant Saudi Arabia and Vietnam inked pacts late Saturday that will pave the way for increased cooperation in the oil and gas sectors, including possible Saudi investment in Vietnamese refineries.

Source: Yahoo! News: Science News | 10 Apr 2010 | 4:39 pm

Scientists Race to Engineer a New Magnet for Electronics

Magnets for wind turbines and hybrid electric cars may currently depend upon an uncertain rare earth supply, but researchers backed by the U.S. Department of Energy hope to change that in next-gen magnets.
Source: Livescience.com | 10 Apr 2010 | 12:47 pm

Chile's new president to study lessons of Katrina (AP)

AP - Chile's new president is looking to New Orleans and its recovery after Hurricane Katrina for lessons to help him lead the South American nation's own comeback from a devastating earthquake and tsunami.

Source: Yahoo! News: Science News | 10 Apr 2010 | 10:54 am

Bolivia protests US suspension of climate aid (AP)

AP - Bolivia has protested the suspension of U.S. climate aid as "a very bad practice," but says it won't change its policies on global warming.

Source: Yahoo! News: Science News | 10 Apr 2010 | 9:01 am

The nation's weather (AP)

AP - A storm that brought huge downpours to the eastern seaboard in recent days was forecast to move northward away from New England on Saturday, leaving breezy conditions in its wake.
Source: Yahoo! News: Science News | 10 Apr 2010 | 3:28 am

Adolescence is so unfair!

Carole Jahme shines the cold light of evolutionary psychology on readers' problems. This week: Parents

My parents suck

From an anonymous male, age 16
Dear Carole, I'm sorry to have to say this but my parents suck BIG TIME. They want to run every part of my life – how much time I spend online, who I bring home (no girls!!!), smoking, the kind of clubs I go to, when I get up in the morning etc etc etc. The really sad thing is my Mum even thinks she has the right to criticise the clothes I wear and how I choose to have my hair. They are so completely out of touch and treat me as if I was still a child. If I had the money I'd be out the door like a flash, but I'm stuck with them at least until I finish my A levels and get a job. I feel like a prisoner. Is there any way I can persuade them to back off a bit and let me live my life the way I want to live it? I bet chimps never have these kind of problems.

Carole replies:
At 16 you are still developing, which is why your parents remain protective of you. The adolescent period of our development is peculiar to the human ape. At around 10 years of age chimps jump straight from the juvenile stage to young adulthood. They do not experience the respite from societal responsibility that human teenagers like you have been granted.

By your age an intelligent and fit male chimp could have postured, competed, schemed and fought hard to have become his community's Alpha male, fathering many infants along the way. Human teenagers, by contrast, are biological mosaics of physical maturation and psychosocial immaturity.

The maturing of the brain's prefrontal cortex – which is implicated in the development of higher cognitive processes, emotional intelligence, decision-making, troubleshooting, negotiating novelty, resisting temptation and surviving danger – continues beyond adolescence and is completed only in early adulthood. The teenage inclination to experiment with drink and drugs can impact negatively on this crucial period of cognitive development.

As for girls, delaying your first sexual experiences is actually no bad thing in evolutionary terms. You may be saving yourself a whole load of hassle and even physical danger from older, stronger, more experienced rival males.

Even your acne may be conspiring to protect you from this fate, at least according to one evolutionary psychologist. Many teenage lads suffer from spots and this coincides with the development of their prefrontal cortex. Females can be turned off by spots, and your spotty teenage ancestors may have survived to reach physical maturity because of their acne.

Here's how the theory works.

Adolescent males, in spite of their sex drive, have yet to develop their full muscle tone or reach their full height. Males compete over females and adolescent lads are easily beaten or killed by jealous, mature men in a fight. Keeping away from fertile females may have saved the lives of your pimply teenage ancestors, giving them enough time to develop both their prefrontal cortex and their biceps. Those pimples may also have saved females from mating with immature males ill prepared for parenthood and provisioning potential offspring.

So believe it or not, acne may increase your reproductive fitness by keeping you out of trouble while you're still developing.

Goofing about

In the same way your mother has been taking an interest in your behaviour and wants you to learn from example, so chimp mothers teach their offspring cultural and social skills. Studies suggest that mother chimps find their daughters easier to teach then their distracted sons. Juvenile female chimps will sit and learn the intricacies of termite fishing from their mothers whereas their brothers would rather wrestle with other young males and goof around in the trees.

This isn't time wasted. The male-male competitive life of the adult chimp can be a matter of life and death, so this play fighting and male bonding may well prepare male chimps for the real thing.

Perhaps you should take a leaf out of your chimp cousins' book. Why not kick back with the other lads during your teenage years and take up wrestling or a competitive team sport, rather than attempting to be an alcohol-drinking, cigarette-smoking, sexually active adult before your time? You need to hone your ability to troubleshoot and survive danger, not compromise it.

You ask how you can persuade your parents back off and let you live your life how you want to live it. A little subtle appliance of science may do the trick.

The adolescent growth spurt many male teenagers experience happens while you sleep. So you could let your mum know that at weekends you need a good lie-in to grow and develop optimally.

You could also compliment her by letting her know you are aware that because she is an adult ape, she is wiser than you on the subject of cultural mores and social acceptability and is trying to teach you accordingly. You should add that, nonetheless, you want to express your developing personality through your choice of fashion and hairstyles.

Your parents want to protect you so that you survive this vulnerable adolescent period the best way you can. From your description, their protective behaviour, although annoying and stifling, is within the normal range. You and they need to understand the evolutionary programming that is motivating you both, and then try to give each other a break.

Goodall, J (1986) The Chimpanzees of Gombe, Harvard University Press.
Gluckman, PD, Hanson, MA (2006) Evolution, development and timing of puberty. Trends in Endocrinology & Metabolism; 17(1): 7-12.
Bloom, DF (2004) Is acne really a disease?: a theory of acne as an evolutionarily significant, high-order psychoneuroimmune interaction timed to cortical development with a crucial role in mate choice. Medical Hypotheses; 62(3): 462-469.
Lonsdorf, EV et al (2004) Sex differences in learning in chimpanzees. Nature; 428: 715-716.

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Source: Science news, comment and analysis | guardian.co.uk | 10 Apr 2010 | 3:00 am