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Beetles stand out using 'Avatar' techJewel scarab beetles find each other -- and hide from their enemies -- using the same technology that creates the 3-D effects for the blockbuster movie, "Avatar," research suggests.Source: ScienceDaily: Latest Science News | 20 Apr 2010 | 12:00 pm Plastic chips monitor body functions, research suggestsA small blood lab that fits into the pocket of a jacket can quickly analyze the risk of blood clots in legs prior to a long distance flight; a sensor wristband for measuring electric smog can warn pacemaker patients of life-threatening exposure: "smart plastics" can turn such tools into reality.Source: ScienceDaily: Latest Science News | 20 Apr 2010 | 12:00 pm Tobacco company's new, dissolvable nicotine products could lead to accidental poisoningA tobacco company's new, dissolvable nicotine pellet -- which is being sold as a tobacco product, but which in some cases resembles popular candies -- could lead to accidental nicotine poisoning in children, researchers warn.Source: ScienceDaily: Latest Science News | 20 Apr 2010 | 12:00 pm Secondhand smoke exposure associated with chronic sinus diseaseIndividuals who are exposed to more secondhand smoke in private and public settings appear more likely to have chronic rhinosinusitis, according to a new article.Source: ScienceDaily: Latest Science News | 20 Apr 2010 | 12:00 pm Rare gene variants linked to high risk of broad range of seizure disordersScientists have uncovered evidence suggesting that people missing large chunks of DNA on chromosome 16 are much more likely than others to develop a chronic seizure disorder during their lifetime.Source: ScienceDaily: Latest Science News | 20 Apr 2010 | 12:00 pm Bees see super color at super speedBees see the world almost five times faster than humans, according to new research. This gives bumblebees the fastest color vision of all animals, allowing them to easily navigate shady bushes to find food.Source: ScienceDaily: Latest Science News | 20 Apr 2010 | 12:00 pm Routine lifting may not be as bad for your back as thought, research suggestsA new study disputes advice that routine lifting is bad for your back. Researchers found that physical loading, the pressure put on the spine that comes with, for example, frequent lifting, may in fact slightly delay disc degeneration.Source: ScienceDaily: Latest Science News | 20 Apr 2010 | 9:00 am Metformin may prevent lung cancer in smokers, early research suggestsMetformin, a mainstay of treatment for patients with type 2 diabetes, may soon play a role in lung cancer prevention if early laboratory research is confirmed in clinical trials.Source: ScienceDaily: Latest Science News | 20 Apr 2010 | 9:00 am New bony-skulled dinosaur species discovered in TexasPaleontologists have discovered a new species of dinosaur with a softball-sized lump of solid bone on top of its skull. The species, which the researchers named Texacephale langstoni, was a plant-eating dinosaur about as big as a medium-sized dog that lived 70-80 million years ago. The team discovered skull fragments in Big Bend National Park and found that they represent a new genus of pachycephalosaur that is different from its northern neighbors.Source: ScienceDaily: Latest Science News | 20 Apr 2010 | 9:00 am Meat, especially if it's well done, may increase risk of bladder cancerPeople who eat meat frequently, especially meat that is well done or cooked at high temperatures, may have a higher chance of developing bladder cancer, according to a large study. This risk appears to increase in people with certain genetic variants.Source: ScienceDaily: Latest Science News | 20 Apr 2010 | 9:00 am Teens Prefer Texting vs. Calling ... Except to ParentsA new Pew Research center report shows teens are texting more than ever to keep in touch with friends but tend to use traditional phone calling from their mobile devices to communicate with their parents.Source: Livescience.com | 20 Apr 2010 | 5:05 am Teens Prefer Texting vs. Calling ... Except to Parents (LiveScience.com)LiveScience.com - For teenagers, texting on mobile phones has dethroned actual voice calls when it comes to connecting with their friends, according to a new report released today by the Pew Research Center.Source: Yahoo! News: Science News | 20 Apr 2010 | 4:11 am Space shuttle Discovery aims for Florida landing (AP)
Source: Yahoo! News: Science News | 20 Apr 2010 | 3:43 am Review: 'The Edge of Physics' by Anil AnanthaswamyA review of a new physics book with a difference: It's an adventure of global proportions, it explains complex physics in a non-threatening way, and there's humor thrown in for good measure.Source: Discovery News - Top Stories | 20 Apr 2010 | 3:10 am A glance at flight disruptions due to volcanic ash (AP)
Source: Yahoo! News: Science News | 20 Apr 2010 | 2:54 am BC-US--Weatherpage-Weather (AP)
Source: Yahoo! News: Science News | 20 Apr 2010 | 2:45 am Weather fair for shuttle returnNasa says the weather in the Florida area looks much better for a Tuesday return of the space shuttle Discovery.Source: BBC News | Science & Environment | UK Edition | 20 Apr 2010 | 2:32 am Bolivia hosts 'people's' climate change event (AFP)
Source: Yahoo! News: Science News | 20 Apr 2010 | 1:46 am To fly through ash or not? That's no easy question (AP)AP - To fly, or not? There's no right answer about when it's safe to fly through a cloud of volcanic ash. But it'll be all too obvious if there's a wrong answer, experts say.Source: Yahoo! News: Science News | 20 Apr 2010 | 1:35 am Cutting climateWhy the EU can and must cut emissions fasterSource: BBC News | Science & Environment | UK Edition | 20 Apr 2010 | 1:21 am Clear skies aheadA cloud expert writes on life without the contrails It was just before the second world war that "contrails" — condensation trails from aeroplanes, which are also known as vapour trails — started to appear in our skies. Contrails couldn't be more different in their appearance from natural clouds. They are long, straight, and often have abrupt angles where the plane's flight path takes a diversion. They can hang in the sky for some time when there's enough moisture up at cruising altitude. Aesthetically, I don't see contrails as worthy of our appreciation as much as the natural clouds. It's the formless, chaotic beauty that clouds bring to our skies that make them something to appreciate. Contrails are orderly lines of progress. They can be beautiful at times when several crisscross each other and hang around, and spread out in the high winds, like a tartan, but most of the time I see them as being in opposition to natural clouds. However, they can be useful for predicting changes in the weather. You may have a blue sky, with no clouds visible, but you may notice that the contrails are hanging around; this usually means there is a change in the weather coming – that in 24 hours or less, it might start to cloud over and you might start to have some gradual rain. After 9/11, when flights were grounded for a number of days over north America, scientists seized the opportunity of these contrail-free skies to do a study of ground temperatures. One effect contrails have is that they can act as a catalyst leading to the development of high clouds — cirrostratus. And high clouds tend to behave like greenhouse gases, in a temporary sense – they trap the heat in, like a blanket. The scientists compared temperatures on days with no flights with the equivalent days some 40 years before. It wasn't straightforwardly cooler when there weren't contrails around, but they did find a significant difference in temperatures between night and day. Gavin Pretor-Pinney is the founder of the Cloud Appreciation Society, cloudappreciationsociety.org. His next book The Wavewatcher's Companion will be published by Bloomsbury in June. guardian.co.uk © Guardian News & Media Limited 2010 | Use of this content is subject to our Terms & Conditions | More Feeds Source: Science news, comment and analysis | guardian.co.uk | 20 Apr 2010 | 1:00 am The secret of Clegg's successThe rise of the Lib Dems is obvious if you think about it in economic terms. Most people tend to go for a compromise Before Thursday night, Nick Clegg wasn't so much the third man of British politics as the fourth: he was the young guy forever hovering at Vince Cable's shoulder, the most anonymous of the main-party leaders. After Thursday night's TV debate, polls show that the Liberal Democrats' leader is almost as popular as Churchill; others describe him as the British Obama. Not bad for an hour and a half's work. Ever since, politicians and commentators have struggled to account for Clegg's transformation. It was the way he looked directly into the camera, we are told. The informality with which he used audience members' forenames. Or a straightforward revulsion with the old politics and its shopsoiled politicians. Well, maybe. But there is another explanation for Cleggmania. This one doesn't try to turn a run-of-the-mill politician into Cicero in a yellow tie. And it comes not from Westminster but from economics. In 1989, an American researcher called Itamar Simonson reshaped the way economists thought about how consumers make choices. He did a simple study: taking a bunch of university students, he offered them rental on one of two flats. The first was smarter than any previously known to undergraduate-kind – but it was 11km from campus. The second wasn't as luxurious but only 6km away. Once they'd chosen, Simonson did the same test again, only this time he threw in an extra option: a third flat that was pokey – yet only 10 minutes' walk from university. The results were striking. Given only two alternatives, 50% of students plumped for the medium-quality apartment a middling distance from college. But given a third option, they didn't split three ways. No, 66% of them now wanted the middle flat. The students were unsure whether living conditions was a more important consideration than distance, and flat number two was a way of combining both. Simonson named it the "compromise effect". He and other academics tried the same test with calculators, cameras, computers, mouthwashes, stereo speakers – even ponchos. Across all cases, the compromise effect was apparent. As long as a choice was presented as a middling alternative, Simonson found, it gained an average of 17.5% in popularity. Business people know about the power of compromise too. If you've ever picked the second-cheapest bottle from a wine menu, that's probably just what the restaurant predicted you'd do. When Williams-Sonoma brought out a "bread-bakery" machine for $275 a few years ago, amid much marketing hullabaloo, it flopped. In desperation, the US firm brought out a luxury version costing nearly $400 – and found that the original model began to fly off the shelves. Customers who previously didn't want a bread-maker evidently thought that if they had to get one, they would go for the compromise. Which brings us back to day five of Cleggmania. Lib Dems will doubtless bristle at their party being described as a middle option. But every time their leader stood back from his lectern on Thursday night and said of Gordon Brown and David Cameron that "the more they attack each other, the more they sound exactly the same", he was presenting them as the extremes – and himself as the moderate. Brown's adoption of an I-agree-with-Nick strategy also turned Clegg into the fulcrum of the debate. Had Brown and Cameron factored in the compromise effect, they might have thought twice before allowing Clegg such prominence in the debates. But now they are trying to keep a lid on his popularity, Simonson's work does suggest one strategy Labour and the Tories might follow: Clegg has to be robbed of his compromise status. Rather than do as Cameron did in this paper yesterday and write off the Lib Dems as nice guys with no hope of power, he and Brown should more logically treat Clegg and co as eccentrics. The Lib Dems look like nice moderates, the anti-compromise strategy would run, but really they are way outside the policy mainstream. There is one more option. Revisiting Simonson's work recently, a researcher called Dilip Soman found that customers who were presented with choices that were very different couldn't gauge the compromise candidate and so plumped for the extremes. The lesson here is that instead of having political parties clustered around an arbitrary centre, they could come up with genuinely alternative platforms. But what are the chances of that happening? Iceland's volcano ash has forced us to rethink self-sufficiencyTwo myths are usually peddled about globalisation. The first is that it has never happened before; the second is that it will never stop. The past few days, with planes grounded for fear of volcanic ash and foreign imports disrupted, has given us a peek into a world where full-blown globalisation cannot be taken for granted. Kenyan roses wither, beans rot in African warehouses. Even ancient cities imported food. As urban historian Carolyn Steel points out, imperial Rome shipped in oysters from London. But trains and lorries stretched the ties between food producer and consumer ever further. Government ministers saw nothing wrong with this. Until just a couple of years ago, the department for environment's official position was that "in an increasingly globalised world, the pursuit of self-sufficiency [in food] is no longer necessary or desirable". Iceland's volcano ash hasn't damaged any planes but it probably dented such optimism. guardian.co.uk © Guardian News & Media Limited 2010 | Use of this content is subject to our Terms & Conditions | More Feeds Source: Science news, comment and analysis | guardian.co.uk | 20 Apr 2010 | 12:00 am 'Greatest Nature Photographs of All Time' Featured in Earth Day AuctionThe "top 40 nature photographs of all time," as selected by the International League of Conservation Photographers (ILCP), will be auctioned by Christie's International on April 22 in honor of Earth Day.Source: Discovery News - Top Stories | 19 Apr 2010 | 10:53 pm Genetics, Psychology May Trigger ADHD (HealthDay)HealthDay - MONDAY, April 19 (HealthDay News) -- An interaction of genetics and psychology may be the cause of attention-deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD), say U.S. researchers.Source: Yahoo! News: Science News | 19 Apr 2010 | 9:49 pm Lung Cancer Increase in Women Tied to Genes, Estrogen (HealthDay)HealthDay - MONDAY, April 19 (HealthDay News) -- Researchers working with mice report they've gained insight into why lung cancer rates are going up in women, including those who don't smoke.Source: Yahoo! News: Science News | 19 Apr 2010 | 9:49 pm Earth-bound space shuttle in third landing attempt (AFP)
Source: Yahoo! News: Science News | 19 Apr 2010 | 8:44 pm Air Force Delays Launch of Mystery X-37B Space Plane (SPACE.com)SPACE.com - This week's planned launch of a secretive U.S. Air Force space plane prototype has been delayed one day to allow NASA's shuttle Discovery a clear shot at returning to Earth Tuesday morning.Source: Yahoo! News: Science News | 19 Apr 2010 | 8:01 pm Earth Day Celebration - NASA Village Ribbon Cutting_flickrScienceAtNASA posted a video:
The NASA village ribbon cutting ceremony from first day of the 2010 Earth Day Celebration - April 17, 2010 Source: Uploads from ScienceAtNASA | 19 Apr 2010 | 6:30 pm Volcano Can't Match GeoengineeringOne of the top geoengineering schemes to address global warming calls for injecting aerosols into the stratosphere, similar to a ginormous volcano eruption. And look--there's a ginormous volcano erupting right now in Iceland! In an ironic twist, scientists are reporting ...Source: Discovery News - Top Stories | 19 Apr 2010 | 5:55 pm 'Poisoning' threat to red kitesRed kites in Scotland are being severely threatened by suspected poisoning, a new RSPB Scotland study suggests.Source: BBC News | Science & Environment | UK Edition | 19 Apr 2010 | 5:46 pm Measuring risk: As the dust settlesWe remain in a state of confusion over the threat posed by volcanic ash Has aviation been grounded and tourism tripped up just as the holiday season is starting by European bureaucrats whose governing principle is to ban anything even remotely risky in case they should get blamed later on? Has the nanny state, in other words, been responsible for the fact that your nan has been stuck in Las Palmas? With an end to the ban in prospect because the eruption is subsiding, this is what some airline executives and a number of grumpy commentators have come close to saying. The truth lies elsewhere, and, while it does not reflect that well on governments here or on the aviation industry, this has not been a simple case of overreaction. We remain in a state of confusion over the threat posed by volcanic ash because the basic scientific and technical work needed to measure it more accurately has not yet been done. It has not been done in part because it has not been funded, and in part because competing scientific projects have taken precedence. There is as a result considerable uncertainty on the two fundamental questions of how to gauge more exactly the amount of volcanic material in the atmosphere, and, having gauged it, how to decide what amount aircraft can cope with and what presents a serious danger. That danger was first dramatised in 1982 when a British Airways 747 lost its engines flying over Indonesia during an eruption. Over the years since, an international institutional framework for early warning of volcanic events has been put in place, but progress on the satellite instrumentation needed for accurate measurement of volcanic clouds and on the testing of jet engines to see what levels they can tolerate has not been so rapid. It is perhaps symptomatic that Dr Fred Prata, one of the world's leading experts on the measurement of volcanic eruptions and clouds, who now works with the Norwegian Institute for Air Research, was made redundant by his old employers, the Australian Commonwealth Scientific and Industrial Organisation, three years ago. His speciality was apparently not seen as a priority. In Europe, we have not yet got purpose-designed instrumentation for volcanic dust on our satellites, instead making do with less than optimal instruments adapted from other work. Manufacturers, meanwhile, will not set thresholds for their engines, presumably because they have not done the research needed to know what those thresholds are. Now that we have all had a lesson in the costs of ignorance, the necessary research will no doubt be pushed forward and the funding swiftly found. Until then the authorities will have little choice but to operate on a worst case basis. guardian.co.uk © Guardian News & Media Limited 2010 | Use of this content is subject to our Terms & Conditions | More Feeds Source: Science news, comment and analysis | guardian.co.uk | 19 Apr 2010 | 5:05 pm Another Iceland Volcano Under WatchReports of second Iceland eruption false, but one volcano could follow Eyjafjallajokull's lead.Source: Livescience.com | 19 Apr 2010 | 4:31 pm Airlines, scientists split over impact of ashPARIS (Reuters) - Experts disagree over how to measure the dispersal of volcanic ash and who should decide when it is safe to fly, as millions of travelers remain grounded and revenue losses top $1 billion due to the Icelandic ash crisis.Source: Reuters: Science News | 19 Apr 2010 | 4:21 pm 'No tolerance'Aviation authorities await advice on how to proceedSource: BBC News | Science & Environment | UK Edition | 19 Apr 2010 | 4:00 pm Ancient Hominids Had Humanlike GripHominids may have evolved thumbs long before they figured out how to make tools.Source: Discovery News - Top Stories | 19 Apr 2010 | 3:50 pm Universities Ban iPadsA few American universities that are publicly blocking the iPad from their networks.Source: Livescience.com | 19 Apr 2010 | 3:29 pm Indoor Tanning Is Addictive, Study FindsSome people who use indoor tanning beds could be considered addicted based on criteria used to diagnose substance abuse addiction, a new study finds.Source: Livescience.com | 19 Apr 2010 | 3:00 pm Dog-Sized Dinosaur Had Thick, Head-Butting SkullA plant-eating dinosaur with a lump on its head roamed what is now Big Bend, Texas, some 80 million years ago, according to a dinosaur fossil.Source: Livescience.com | 19 Apr 2010 | 2:56 pm Scientists measure atomic nudgeAt 174 trillionths of a trillionth of a newton, new 'yoctoforce' is smallest yet measured.<img src="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~r/news/rss/today/~4/BZ48O0NjGoQ" height="1" width="1"/>Source: NatureNews - All articles published today - nature.com science feeds | 19 Apr 2010 | 2:55 pm Rewiring Plants Could Supersize Crops
With a bit of biomathematical wizardry, researchers have found a new way for plants to breathe. The newly discovered chemical reactions would allow plants to process carbon dioxide more efficiently. Crops could grow to enormous size. “We wondered if we could take parts designed by nature, and rewire them together in a mix-and-match approach to get something that’s more efficient for human needs,” said synthetic biologist Ron Milo of the Weizmann Institute, co-author of the study published April 19 in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. So-called carbon fixation is essential for the growth of plants, which combine carbon dioxide with water to produce organic compounds in their bodies. But while modern crops have been intensively bred, the essential process of carbon fixation has remained unaltered.
The chemical process used by almost all plants to fix carbon is called the Calvin-Benson cycle. Researchers have tried without success to tweak the cycle’s key enzyme, Rubisco. Evolution appears to have optimized the cycle — but according to Milo’s team, the cycle itself isn’t necessarily optimal.
For now, MOG pathways exist only in a server farm. The enzymes involved are found in various species of bacteria, not plants. The researchers hope to engineer bacteria with the pathways, and then tissue samples of plants. Evolution might have stumbled on this solution, but Mother Nature also had to worry about pests, nutrients, water and other factors that modern farmers have under control. “When you’re working in modern agriculture, what you’re trying to optimize is different from what nature is trying to optimize,” said Milo. “We’re trying to get the most food.” Images: 1) Kevin Lallier/Flickr. 2) Two MOG pathways/PNAS. See Also:
Citation: “Design and analysis of synthetic carbon fixation pathways.” By Arren Bar-Even, Elad Noor, Nathan Lewis, and Ron Milo. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, Vol. 107. No. 16, April 20, 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 | 19 Apr 2010 | 2:42 pm Leaf Sensor: Plants "call you" when they are thirstyNASA estimated that crews headed to or living on Mars would spend 80% of their waking hours farming! Research into a leaf sensor that could "call in" with its vital statistics morphed into technology that can help farmers on this planet.Source: Livescience.com | 19 Apr 2010 | 2:25 pm North American Dinosaurs Were One Big Happy Family
Dinosaurs may have roamed and mingled more freely in the western interior of North America than previously thought, according to a new study. For decades, many paleontologists believed that during the Late Cretaceous period, from about 100 million to 65 million years ago, dinosaur species occupied relatively restricted ranges in the West. At the end of this period, Leptoceratops, with its beaked snout and neck frill, inhabited the northern part of the West, the long-necked Alamosaurus resided in the south and the triple-horned Triceratops meandered through the western interior. “This didn’t make any sense to me,” said paleontologist Matthew Vavrek, of McGill University in Montreal, coauthor of the study published April 19 in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. “Large animals need more space to survive and reproduce. Why would dinosaurs be unable to colonize the whole continent like mammals do today?” Vavrek and Hans Larsson of McGill University now report that dinosaur ranges were more extensive than previous estimates suggested. The fossil record is spotty, and different sites vary in the number of fossils that have survived and been discovered. Past studies didn’t take this into account, Vavrek said. At many sites, fewer than 10 specimens have been uncovered, and nearly every new fossil paleontologists unearth represents a new species for that site. Other sites have been sampled more heavily, and consequently more species have been found there. The uneven fossil sampling among sites may lead to low estimates of range size, Vavrek said.
The duo adapted techniques ecologists use to approximate species’ numbers. After taking into account the number of unique species found at each site, they estimated the number of species that were missing from the fossil record. Once they compensated for the unevenness in sampling across sites, their analysis predicted that the same set of dinosaur species dwelled together throughout the area they studied, rather than being restricted to distinct regions. “This is another important step in really showing how dominant these animals were,” Vavrek said. “People often think of dinosaurs as slow animals that were not very well adapted, but we showed that they were able to disperse and colonize a large area.” The flip side is that when similar species occupy a widespread area, diversity is low. “It may well be that a reduction in biodiversity is what set dinosaurs up for the big extinction at the end of the Cretaceous,” said Philip Currie, a dinosaur paleontologist at the University of Alberta in Edmonton. One weakness of the study is that the researchers restricted their analysis to northern locations, so they could not capture any differences between species that inhabited the north and south. “I don’t know that their results are conclusive or comprehensive,” said Scott Sampson, a dinosaur paleontologist at the University of Utah. “There’s still a lot of room for surprises.” Next Vavrek would like to look at how the ranges and diversity of dinosaurs and other mammals may have responded to past climate change and catastrophic events so that he could predict species diversity millions of years into the future. Images: 1) Triceratops./Adrian Bobb/Redpath Museum. 2) Triceratops./erinblatzer [HMNS]/flickr. See Also:
Source: Wired: Wired Science | 19 Apr 2010 | 1:42 pm Brewing up identity with Billy BraggThe singer-songwriter discusses why who we are is more than genetics.Source: NatureNews - All articles published today - nature.com science feeds | 19 Apr 2010 | 1:40 pm Science NationScience for the People: Surprising discoveries and fascinating researchers.Source: Livescience.com | 19 Apr 2010 | 1:25 pm Is 3-D TV Dangerous?3-D television looks awesome, but can it be hazardous to your health?Source: Livescience.com | 19 Apr 2010 | 1:24 pm How to Reduce Risk of Heart Failure in SeniorsGrowing older makes you more prone to heart failure but there is something you can do about it.Source: Livescience.com | 19 Apr 2010 | 1:21 pm Airlines Brave Volcanic Ash CloudsAfter days of flight deadlock, European officials have designated zones for air travel to help bring stranded passengers home.Source: Discovery News - Top Stories | 19 Apr 2010 | 1:15 pm Older Motorcycle Riders More Likely to Be InjuredMotorcycle riders across the country are growing older, and these aging road warriors are more likely to be injured.Source: Livescience.com | 19 Apr 2010 | 12:53 pm Microbes galore in seas; "spaghetti" mats PacificOSLO (Reuters) - The ocean depths are home to myriad species of microbes, mostly hard to see but including spaghetti-like bacteria that form whitish mats the size of Greece on the floor of the Pacific, scientists said on Sunday.Source: Reuters: Science News | 19 Apr 2010 | 12:32 pm UK Government Study: Homeopathy WorthlessThe British government recently conducted an inquiry into whether homeopathy is a scientifically valid and effective treatment. The results are in, and homeopaths won't be happy.Source: Discovery News - Top Stories | 19 Apr 2010 | 12:26 pm April 19: A History of ViolenceApril 19 is a heavy day in history. Fifteen years ago, a truck bomb blasted through the Alfred P. Murrah Federal Building, claiming the lives of 168 people. Two years prior, April 19 marked the end of the 51-day siege ...Source: Discovery News - Top Stories | 19 Apr 2010 | 12:24 pm Betting on Climate Change: Corporations Stand to Make or Lose Billions
Last year, Beluga Shipping discovered that there’s money in global warming. Beluga is a German firm that specializes in “super heavy lift” transport. Its vessels are equipped with massive cranes, allowing it to load and unload massive objects, like multi-ton propeller blades for wind turbines. It is an enormously expensive business, but last summer, Beluga executives hit upon an interesting way to save money: Shipping freight over a melting Arctic.
Now, a warming climate had — for six to eight weeks beginning in July — transformed much of the route into mostly open water, studded with ice floes that the Beluga ships could navigate. So its executives got permission from the Russian government to travel along the coast, paid a transit fee of “a comparably moderate five-digit figure,” and sent the ships on their way. Four months later, they’d finished the trip. Compared to the old Suez Canal journey, this shorter route saved an enormous pile of money: It cost $300,000 less per ship in lower fuel and bunker costs. Global warming had boosted the company’s revenues by more than half a million dollars in one year alone.
When I interviewed Beluga CEO Niels Stolberg via email this spring, he said he envisions using the Northeast Passage regularly. Indeed, he’s planning on another trip this summer. He said that since the shorter passage requires generating far less C02, it’s “greener”; it’s also more ironic, since it was high concentrations of C02 that helped melt the route in the first place. “I am convinced,” Stolberg added, “that the Arctic will become an area of quite regular sea traffic at least during summer.” If you looked merely at the realm of politics, it would be easy to believe that the question, “Is climate change really happening?” is still unresolved. In recent months, skeptics have attacked climate science with renewed vigor. Doubters seized on “Climategate” — leaked emails from bickering atmospheric scientists — to argue that the evidence in favor of warming is being cooked. Other skeptics unearthed shoddy parts of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change’s main report, such as the fact that it cited non-peer-reviewed work by an activist group when it predicted that the Himalayan glaciers would melt by 2035. And all along, conservative politicians have hissingly denounced global warming as a shady liberal scheme: Senator James Inhofe of Oklahoma has famously called it “the greatest hoax ever perpetrated on the American people.” These attacks appear to be working. A spring Gallup study found that Americans’ concern over global warming peaked two years ago, and has steadily declined since. But there’s one area where doubt hasn’t grown — and where, indeed, people are more and more certain that climate change is not only real, but imminent: The world of industry and commerce. Companies, of course, exist to make money. That’s often what makes them seem so rapacious. But their primal greed also plants them inevitably in the “reality-based community.” If a firm’s bottom line is going to be affected by a changing climate — say, when its supply chains dry up because of drought, or its real estate gets swamped by sea-level rise — then it doesn’t particularly matter whether or not the executives want to believe in climate change. Railing at scientists for massaging tree-ring statistics won’t stop the globe from warming if the globe is actually, you know, warming. The same applies in reverse, as the folks at Beluga Shipping adroitly realized: If there are serious bucks to be made from the changing climate, then the free market is almost certainly going to jump at it. This makes capitalism a curiously bracing mechanism for cutting through ideological haze and manufactured doubt. Politicians or pundits can distort or cherry-pick climate science any way they want to try and gain temporary influence with the public. But any serious industrialist who’s facing “climate exposure” — as it’s now called by money managers — cannot afford to engage in that sort of self-delusion. Spend a couple of hours wandering through the websites of various industrial associations — aluminum manufacturers, real-estate agents, wineries, agribusinesses, take your pick — and you’ll find straightforward statements about the grim reality of climate change that wouldn’t seem out of place coming from Greenpeace. Last year Wall Street analysts issued 214 reports assessing the potential risks and opportunities that will come out of a warming world. One by McKinsey & Co. argued that climate change will shake up industries with the same force that mobile phones reshaped communications. Consider, as one colorful example, the skiing industry. Beginning ten years ago, the Aspen Skiing Company began noticing that European ski lodges were being slowly destroyed by warmer weather. Europe’s ski resorts tend to be located on lower mountains — about 6,000-8,000 feet high, compared to American peaks up around 11,000 feet — so they’re vulnerable to even extremely tiny increases in global temperature. The 2 percent rise in the 20th century was enough “to put a lot of them out of business,” says Auden Schendler, executive director of sustainability for the Aspen Skiing Company, which operates two resorts spread across four mountains. But now Aspen’s own season is getting shorter: “More balmy Novembers, more rainy Marches,” Schendler says. “That’s what we’re seeing, and that’s what the science suggests would happen. If you graph frost-free days, there are more and more in the last 30 years.” Climate-change models also predict warmer nights. Aspen Skiing has noticed that happening too, and the problem here is that nighttime is when ski lodges use their water-spraying technology to make snow — “and if you make it when it’s warmer it’s exponentially more expensive.” The increasing volatility of weather overall — another prediction of climate change — poses a particular danger for ski resorts, because they operate in the red most of the year, making up their deficit during the ultra busy spring break in March. So if the weather is terrific for the entire winter but suddenly balmy during March break, that can ruin the whole fiscal year. Schendler has also learned firsthand a point that climate scientists have been making for some time: With climate change, “warming” isn’t the only — or even the most serious — challenge. The sheer interdependence of complex ecosystems systems can grease you. For example, recent droughts in Utah have kicked up red dust clouds that settle on Aspen’s snow. This makes the snow melt more quickly (because the red absorbs more heat from the sun) while also making it too gritty to ski on. Are all Aspen Skiing’s recent weather problems caused by global warming? It’s impossible to tell. But as Schendler notes, the last few years certainly mimic the precise effects that climate models predict, so it is at least a taste of what’s to come. During a recent dust storm on Aspen’s slopes, Schendler’s boss wandered into his office looking morose. “He said, ‘Auden, if climate change is the scary thing for the future, this is the apocalypse now. What if you get this in March?”’ Schendler recalls. Now, all this tricky weather hasn’t exactly destroyed Aspen Skiing; the firm could probably survive even worse stuff. The top of the mountain is so high “we can ski it in 50 years and it’ll be great,” Schendler notes. But it could certainly erode Aspen’s profits, and Colorado would suffer: The ski industry overall is a $2 billion business for the state, employing fully 8 percent of the workforce.So to try and preserve its profit margins, the Aspen Skiing Company has recently become a loud voice in favor of congressional action on the climate. In 2007, Schendler testified before the House Subcommittee on Energy and the Environment, calling for a cap on carbon emissions — among other things. “Our attitude when we go to Congress is, look, we’re a business!” he adds. “We didn’t ask for this. We just started looking at the data and the science dispassionately and said, look, we’ve got a problem.” Another industry that can’t pretend climate change is a myth is insurance. Insurance firms have always carefully studied real-world data to figure out what, precisely, constitutes a risky activity. As a result, they were among the first to notice that weather was getting more violent, and more unpredictably so. “It’s just a logical consequence,” says Peter Hoppe, head of the “Geo Risks Research” division of Munich Re, the multinational reinsurance firm. “Global warming affects our core business. We have seen changes already in some readings.” Worldwide, Munich Re has found that “great catastrophes” — act-of-god weather events that cause more than a billion dollars of damage — have tripled since 1950. In 2008, even though there weren’t any Katrina-level disasters, weather-related events were so severe that “catastrophic losses” to the world’s economy were the third-highest in recorded history, topping $200 billion globally — including $40 billion in the United States. Hoppe doesn’t think global warming is all to blame; some of these events are likely due to natural cycles like the 30-year “North Atlantic Oscillation” that is currently warming the Atlantic. But Munich Re’s policy is that anthropogenic global warming is already making things worse, and that governments ought to act quickly while they still can. Granted, a warming globe isn’t just downside for insurance firms. There are also profitable new business opportunities, as Hoppe points out. Munich Re is now offering coverage for renewable energy products, because wind farms and solar parks need insurance against the possibility that low wind and weak sunlight will reduce their output. “It’s very important for investors to dampen and level out the volatility from season to season,” Hoppe says. Munich Re has also developed a product to cover solar cells that wear out before their expected 30-year lifetime. Buying insurance against bad weather isn’t entirely new. Farmers have done it for years. But back in the late ’90s, before Enron imploded, it created a huge new market of selling “weather futures” to electric utilities — hedges that would pay out if, say, a mild summer hurt their sales (because people would use less air conditioning.) After Enron pancaked, weather futures stayed around — still mostly for utilities and farms — but buying them wasn’t easy: You had to personally contact one of the few weather-futures traders who’d set up their own trading desks in the wake of Enron’s dissolution. But with climate-change models predicting increasingly erratic weather, a new generations of startups is heading into the field, figuring that almost any firm might want to hedge against the bad economic effects of weather — such as clothing manufacturers (who could suffer massive losses in coat sales if an unexpectedly mild winter emerges) airlines (since weather is the top cause of delays) or sporting-event promoters (when it’s rainy, everyone stays away). Weatherbill is one such startup. Founded three and a half years ago by Google expatriates, it lets anyone use their website to quickly create weather insurance for almost anything. Type in the thing you’re trying to insure — say, an Iowa county fair in the third week of July — and the Weatherbill system calculates the probability of what the local weather will be like up to two years out, down to a 100-mile-wide area. It then uses that guess to instantly price a weather future or insurance contract. CEO Dave Friedberg told me Weatherbill had already sold contracts to the likes of the US Open, and that he envisions worldwide opportunities: Global agriculture suffers billions in weather-related losses each year, for example, yet many countries don’t have any institutions offering easy weather insurance. That’s especially true for countries likely to be the first to experience the dire consequences of climate change, such as coastal regions of Asia or Latin America. “If you think about Brazil, their two biggest industries are mining and agriculture,” Friedberg says. “That’s billions of dollars, and there’s a massive market for developing crop insurance. If we can figure out agriculture and do it right, the opportunity is huge to go country by country.” Does he believe that global warming is already noticeable? “Oh yeah,” he says. In just the three years that Weatherbill has been collecting data, extreme weather events have risen 8 percent. One of the big political questions of climate change is how far we’ve gone: Have we passed a tipping point of no return? Has the atmosphere already accumulated such high levels of greenhouse gases that even if we manage to cut back on emissions, we’ll still wind up with a globe so much hotter that everyday life will change significantly? One emerging sector built on the assumption that we have is the “adaptation marketplace” — firms offering new products and services to help companies and cities cope with changes. A 2009 study by Oxfam identified seven potentially lucrative adaptation areas, such as water management and disaster preparation; one firm in this field — the Minneapolis-based Pentair Inc., which makes pumps and filtration systems — has soared to $3.35 billion in annual revenues, partly due to contracts from the Army Corps of Engineers to provide massive pumps that will protect New Orleans against another Katrina. Another firm, North Carolina’s WeatherPredict, has developed a technique to retrofit roofs with aerodynamic edges, reducing the damage they sustain in hurricane winds. Firms that produce genetically engineered crops are also predicting they’ll reap profits from climate change: Monsanto, Bayer, BASF, and their sister firms have registered 55 worldwide patents for “climate ready” seeds designed to thrive in conditions of drought or other stress, according to a 2008 report by ETC Group, an environmental advocacy organization. Will all this climate-propelled economic activity be good for the planet? Sure, it can be satisfying to see some major CEOs agree that climate change is a real and present danger. But many environmentalists predict that the flurry of new economic activity will create its own new problems. The melting Arctic, in particular, gives many observers the willies. It’s likely to see an explosion in seabed oil-and-gas exploration and tourism. (Cargo shipping, interestingly, is likely to increase at a slower rate, partly because cargo ships ferrying “just in time” products can’t abide the delays that even small ice floes would cause — and nobody thinks the Arctic will be entirely ice-free for 100 years or more.) Arctic experts — and the Navy — predict a catastrophe the first time a tourist vessel or oil tanker hits an iceberg and cracks up. “Tourist vessels aren’t ice-hardened, and in the polar regions “there’s no search and rescue or salvage,” standing by says Lawson Brigham, a University of Alaska professor who chaired the Arctic Marine Shipping Assessment, a four-year study of how the commercial activity will progress in the warming north. “The water’s near freezing. All you need is one good Titanic.” Other realms of climate-change commerce aren’t much prettier when you look at them closely. In agriculture, the advent of climate-ready crops is clearly useful, maybe even crucial, for adaption. But it also concentrates ever more power in the hands of a small coterie of firms that own the patents to drought-resistant seeds, and the cost could cause serious hardship in the desperately poor countries of Asia or Africa, where the seeds might be most needed. And it’s also true that the number of climate visionaries in industry is still quite small. Certainly, companies with skin in the game are preparing for a warmer world. But as the McKinsey report found, they’re in the minority. The grand majority are deeply myopic, focused narrowly on goosing profits in the next quarter — who cares what’ll happen ten years from now? In a sense, that makes them mildly agnostic force. When climate change finally does impinge on their business, they’ll probably take action to adapt to it. But it also means that if they can see a short-term profit from fighting against climate science and sowing doubt, they’ll do that, too. This is precisely what’s still happening in the energy industry, where many firms that pay lip service to the reality of climate change also quietly funnel millions to lobbyists who fight ferociously to prevent Congress from passing laws that curtail C02 emissions. “We all know big companies who are doing all this green stuff, and their lobbyists are trying to kill the carbon bill as quickly as they can,” says Mindy Lubber, president of Boston-based CERES, an association of environment-minded investors whose members have $10 trillion under management. It may be that the corrective force comes not from inside corporations, but from investors. Many large investors, the California State Teachers’ Retirement System — the nation’s second largest public-pension fund — have begun demanding that firms examine and disclose any potential risks from global warming. Shareholder resolutions demanding action on climate change have nearly doubled in the last two years, rising from about 55 in 2007 to 99 in 2009, Lubber notes. In February, the Securities and Exchange Commission issued guidelines requiring that publicly traded firms better disclose their climate-change risk, including potential “physical” risks. (Read a live Grist forum on the new SEC regulations here .) “Anyone that’s building out new manufacturing facilities without working out water shortages related to climate change is getting itself into trouble,” Lubber adds. “Or anyone that’s building on waterfront property.” Another common request from shareholder resolutions is for companies to calculate the cost of their carbon footprint. Even if electric utilities and the US Chamber of Commerce are fighting against carbon-limiting legislation, investors seem to believe it is inevitable — indeed, they evidently think the government might cap carbon even in the next few years, which could dramatically increase the cost of electricity. To make corporations true partners in tackling climate change, Lubber thinks investors need to push for basic changes in the way their companies function. CEOs whose bonuses are based on bumping next-quarter results will make short-term decisions. Those who are paid based on reducing carbon usage will make long-term ones — investing in technology and processes that reduce greenhouse gases. “If they’re compensated for producing 86 percent more widgets, they’ll do that. But if they use less fuel, they ought to be compensated for meeting their carbon-reduction goals.” In the short run, though, there’s probably only one force that will get today’s blithe firms to snap to attention — and that’s legislation. If Congress actually puts a price on carbon, it’ll hit the world of industry with tsunamic force. At minimum, it would probably goose the price of electricity and make emissions-heavy industries instantly less profitable. (Indeed, this is one of the things the SEC and many investor groups are urging firms to do: calculate how badly they’ll be shellacked if new regulations make carbon expensive.) Not everyone will be a loser. The McKinsey study calculated that alternative-energy firms will do quite well (for obvious reasons), but so will less-predictable sectors like the construction industry, as people rush to retrofit buildings with extra insulation and energy-saving rebuilds. The farsighted firms — and the ones who work on the colder fringes of the world — can see the future clearly, because they’re living it. But with the stroke of a pen, Obama can bring it a lot closer. Whether it’s a melting Arctic or a bold new law, the biggest forces shaping industry are, as it were, man-made. This piece was produced by the Climate Desk collaboration. Image: Christoph Hitz Clive Thompson is a contributing writer for the New York Times Magazine and a columnist for Wired.
Source: Wired: Wired Science | 19 Apr 2010 | 12:20 pm Spectacular New View of a Cosmic Cat’s Paw
This new image of the Cat’s Paw Nebula reveals new details laid bare by the near-infrared imaging of the VISTA telescope. The Cat’s Paw, located 5,500 light-years away in the Scorpius constellation is filled with dust that makes for a beautiful image (below) but obscures many of the stars. The European Southern Observatory’s VISTA telescope in the Chilean Atacama Desert is the most powerful near-infrared imager on Earth with a main mirror that is more than 13 feet across as well as the largest infrared camera on any telescope. The new image clearly shows large, infant stars near the center of the nebula as well as many more older stars on the outskirts that hadn’t been seen before. Even near-infrared radiation can’t penetrate the densest areas of dust, which show up in the image as a dark swatch branching away from the center of the nebula.
VISTA will spend the next few years surveying the southern sky, giving us a view with unprecedented detail.
Images: 1) Cat’s Paw Nebula image from the VISTA telescope./ESO/J. Emerson/VISTA. 2) Cat’s Paw Nebula from the Wide Field Imager./ESO.
Source: Wired: Wired Science | 19 Apr 2010 | 11:34 am Online nerdverse has made science coolThere is plenty of evidence to suggest that web 2.0 has helped science become more connected, more open – and more cool One of last week's G2 cover stories was a broad collection of pieces on "How science became cool". I put down my paper copy, switched on my computer and watched the online nerdverse react. It sped quickly through the Guardian's Zeitgeist, was passed around Twitter, Facebook and other social media sites. You can read the comments and letters yourself. But for me, the reaction that stuck out most came from Dr Karen James: a complaint about the reliance on anecdotal evidence. Although Dara O'Briain, a contributor to the collection, quite rightly quipped back that "people are allowed to 'chat' about 'stuff' sometimes, even scientists", we can take a more evidence-based approach to this issue. Some of us have known for years that the British public like science: we read the Wellcome Trust/Office of Science and Technology's Science and the Public report back in 2000. Their key finding: three-quarters of their respondents were "amazed" by the achievements of science, and two-thirds agreed science and technology made our lives healthier, easier and more comfortable. Only a fifth claimed they were not interested in science, and broadly respondents were in support of government investment in research. A more recent report also reflects similar findings. Taking a long view, the Science Museum Media Monitor (SciMuMeMo to its friends) was an ambitious content analysis surveying 6,000 articles from the British press 1946-1990. It provided interesting results, some more predictable than others. For example: over time, science stories got longer – often being covered in feature pieces. Until the 1960s, science stories were largely celebratory, but they have become slightly more critical since then. Science coverage increased massively in the broadsheet press between 1946 and 1960, decreasing until 1974 before increasing again so 1990 levels were roughly as high as they were in 1960. Some more recent work on the "most emailed" stories on the New York Times website threw up fascinating results with respect to science stories online. Researchers noted that people seemed to like to send long articles on intellectually challenging topics that inspired awe. The audience action of web 2.0, it seems, is good for science stories. Such broad public surveys and content analyses have their limitations. They should always be read critically, and I wish there was more qualitative audience research on science communication products to supplement, confront and develop their findings. However, they extend our frame of reference outside of simply our personal social sphere and challenge assumptions such as the idea that the public are hostile to science. If you want evidence on this topic, you can also look for yourself. The rather public nature of web 2.0 science consumption makes it all traceable (and archived for evermore). This is not only a goldmine for researchers, but a possible explanation for any new coolness of science, if such a trend does exist. As Alok Jha's contribution to the collection emphasises, the web allows us to more readily connect; to "find like-minded people to geek on about some favourite subject". This is also a point reflected in Ian Sample's celebration of the "rising army of sceptics", albeit in the context of connections made for political activism as opposed to simple geeky chat. As both Ben Goldacre and Nick Cohen noted in their reflections on the Simon Singh story last week, social media has played a significant role in the development and mobilisation of such a sceptical "army". Whether building the campaign against homeopathy, "retweeting" of Cern's exclamation marks, running history of science reading groups or sharing a sense of excitement at BBC's Wonders of the Solar System, science online is more connected, and more open. Of course, this online nerdverse remains a limited place. We should not forget the ways in which it lacks connection: the cliques, boundaries, scandals, fights and various iterations of "digital divide". As Allen Green concluded his blogpost on the Simon Singh case last weekend, precisely because an evidence-based approach is so important "we will find that it was a little more complicated than that". Still, I suspect that if science really has become cool, the web has played a large role. Yes Dr James, this is a statement based largely on anecdotal evidence, but I have a load of examples – and if I can get a research grant, I'll have a proper look. • This article was commissioned after the author contacted us via a You tell us thread. If you would like to propose your own subjects for Cif to cover, please visit the latest thread guardian.co.uk © Guardian News & Media Limited 2010 | Use of this content is subject to our Terms & Conditions | More Feeds Source: Science news, comment and analysis | guardian.co.uk | 19 Apr 2010 | 11:00 am Eruption curbs carbon emissionsCooling effect from volcano ash cloud will be 'very insignificant', but flight ban stops emission of estimated 2.8m tonnes of CO2 The eruption of the Eyjafjallajokull volcano is unlikely to have any significant impact on climate but has caused a small fall in carbon emissions, experts say. Although large eruptions such as Mount Pinatubo in 1991 can spew out enough material to shade and cool the planet, recent activity in Iceland is very small in comparison. The ash cloud has not reached the high atmosphere, where it would have the most effect, and it contains little sulphur, which forms reflective droplets of sulphuric acid. The World Meteorological Organisation in Geneva says any cooling effect from Eyjafjallajokull will be "very insignificant". A larger effect on the atmosphere, though still small in global terms, comes from the mass-grounding of European flights over the past few days. According to the Environmental Transport Association, by the end of today the flight ban will have prevented the emission of some 2.8m tonnes of carbon dioxide since the first flights were grounded. The volcanic eruption has released carbon dioxide, but the amount is dwarfed by the savings. Based on readings taken by scientists during the first phase of Eyjafjallajokull activity last month, the website Information is Beautiful calculated the volcano has emitted about 15,000 tonnes of CO2 each day. Worldwide, the US Geological Survey says volcanoes produce about 200m tonnes of carbon dioxide every year. guardian.co.uk © Guardian News & Media Limited 2010 | Use of this content is subject to our Terms & Conditions | More Feeds Source: Science news, comment and analysis | guardian.co.uk | 19 Apr 2010 | 10:20 am Friday News Feedbag for April 16, 2010!If this is your first exposure to the Friday News Feedbag...we're glad to have you in the club. Welcome to Feedbag Nation, which stems from our weekly science news podcast that you can subscribe to here on iTunes and chat ...Source: Discovery News - Top Stories | 19 Apr 2010 | 10:08 am Green prize for Swazi lawyerThuli Makama wins a prestigious Goldman Prize for her work exposing the extra-judicial killings of suspected poachers.Source: BBC News | Science & Environment | UK Edition | 19 Apr 2010 | 9:55 am Social Media Sites Help Volcano-Stranded TravelersNot since 9/11 has air traffic been disrupted so much. So far, the volcano in Iceland has disrupted tens of thousands of flights across Europe as it spews ash into the atmosphere. According to the European Organization for the Safety ...Source: Discovery News - Top Stories | 19 Apr 2010 | 9:41 am Coping with rejectionCarole Jahme shines the cold light of evolutionary psychology on readers' problems. This week: rejected advances From an anonymous, 23-year-old male Suddenly she told me one day that she was uncomfortable talking so much and going out as her family is very reserved and she is not that fast kinda girl. We stopped talking so much. A couple of weeks ago she started talking normally again and replying to my text messages. One day I asked her out to dinner and she gave me the excuse that her team members would feel bad if she didn't go out with them. I was very disappointed and told her in anger that she doesn't care how I feel. I said I blamed her that she used to talk to me when she was newly joined and didn't have many friends in the office and now she doesn't care for me at all. Since that day she hasn't even spoken to me. Please help me find out what's going on in her mind. We used to be so close when she used to text me every second minute, I don't understand her sudden change in behaviour. I really love her!! Carole replies: To avoid inbreeding, young adult female apes usually leave their birth group and join a new, unrelated group.1 Lone young females newly arrived in an established group must ingratiate themselves and work their way up the patriarchal hierarchy. For a human primate, this is no easy manoeuvre. It appears that you took advantage of this woman's social vulnerability at a time when she needed friends (not sexual partners). At first she indulged your advances. You were an unknown quantity, she was not familiar with the office culture and she didn't want to cause offence. She didn't know who held influence, so she hedged her bets and played for time. Eight months down the line this woman now knows the score. She knows your opinion of her has little or no bearing on her social rank and survival chances, and thus she is no longer prepared to indulge your attention-seeking behaviour. She tried to distance herself from you but you pursued her and kept texting. She spoke to you and tried to let you down gently by making lame excuses. This was the moment when, for both your sakes, she needed you to empathise and understand. But still you didn't get the hint and back off. You escalated things and fell into a trap from which few men in Western society can free themselves unscathed. (Strictly patriarchal Eastern and African societies tend to accept this type of male behaviour.) You succumbed to the common male ape behaviour of coercion.2 You wanted control over her, you became angry and intimidated her in an attempt to force her into guilty submission. You have made yourself objectionable and now she is entirely justified in not talking to you and she probably has the support of her colleagues in this. You need to improve your mating strategies. Do you really want a girlfriend who is only your girlfriend because she has been harassed by you? Would a submissive, guilty girlfriend do it for you? Your lack of self-awareness is the problem here. You alone are responsible for your feelings in this scenario and you have got to try and rise above your basic urges to save your self-respect. There is a large body of primate research on the evolutionary origins of aggressive male sexual jealousy,3 covering the strategies of rape, harassment, intimidation and monopolisation of time – referred to as "mate guarding". Males usually behave in these sexually coercive ways around fertile females they want to impregnate. These strategies can be observed in all ape species, but less so among gorillas, who live in harems with a dominant silverback male. Sexually aggressive male behaviour has evolved as an adaptation to living in multi-male, multi-female societies where there is a lot of choice in mating opportunities but also a lot of sexual rivalry.4 These sorts of sexually aggressive male behaviours are more often exhibited by low-status males. High-status males who have repeatedly shown kindness, and are high status due to their mix of good genes for intelligence and physical stamina, are more likely to have females soliciting them for sex rather than their having to harass or rape in order to mate. You say you love her, and a component of love is altruism, but you don't seem to be showing much altruism here. Yes, you gave her a birthday present, but with the strings of sexual coercion securely attached. It's good to give, but don't ever give to receive. Instead notice when your giving isn't reciprocated and adapt, and if necessary cut your losses. You could apologise to her for bullying her, but that might invite accusations of sexual harassment. Instead, I suggest you keep a respectful distance from this woman. Be friendly to her but no more so than you would be towards anyone else in the office. Do not text her again. You need to reinvent yourself, and as a young male of 23 years you can do that. Improve upon your social and intellectual skills, perhaps take up night classes in varied subjects. This way you will raise your social status and make yourself more attractive to the opposite sex. If you do so you will discover how much better it feels to be pursued by ardent females compared with how it feels to be a rejected pursuer. Good luck. References Terms and conditions We regret that Carole cannot answer all the mails we receive. We cannot provide urgent advice and suggest that if you need such advice you seek it immediately without waiting for a response from Carole. With regards to legal, medical or financial issues, we recommend seeking the advice of a listed professional. We will not be held liable for any loss, damage or injury you incur as a result of using this site or as a result of any advice given. We will not enter into personal correspondence via email. Carole is UK-based and as such any advice she gives is intended for a UK audience only. guardian.co.uk © Guardian News & Media Limited 2010 | Use of this content is subject to our Terms & Conditions | More Feeds Source: Science news, comment and analysis | guardian.co.uk | 19 Apr 2010 | 9:29 am Marine Census Counts Creatures Large and SmallHow exactly do scientists go about counting every single microbe that inhabits the oceans?Source: Discovery News - Top Stories | 19 Apr 2010 | 9:01 am Cloudy skies delay space shuttle's homecomingCAPE CANAVERAL, Florida (Reuters) - NASA delayed the shuttle Discovery's homecoming from an International Space Station servicing mission until Tuesday after cloudy skies scuttled two landing attempts on Monday, NASA officials said.Source: Reuters: Science News | 19 Apr 2010 | 7:09 am Fading futureBolivians want world to pay as their glaciers meltSource: BBC News | Science & Environment | UK Edition | 19 Apr 2010 | 6:08 am Toxic ash threatens Iceland herdsIcelandic farmers race to protect their animals from being poisoned as rural areas become caked in dust.Source: BBC News | Science & Environment | UK Edition | 19 Apr 2010 | 5:33 am Bolivia hosts Mother Earth talksDelegates are gathering in the Bolivian city of Cochabamba for a "people's conference" on climate change called by President Evo Morales.Source: BBC News | Science & Environment | UK Edition | 19 Apr 2010 | 4:24 am Ultrathin Silk-Based Electronics Make Better Brain Implants
Silk has made its way from the soft curves of the body to the spongy folds of the brain. Engineers have now designed silk-based electronics that stick to the surface of the brain, similar to the way a silk dress clings to the hips. The stretchable, ultrathin design would make for better brain-computer interfaces (BCIs), which record brain activity in paralyzed patients and translate thoughts into movements of computer cursors or robotic arms. Because it’s so thin and flexible, a silk-based device could reach regions of the brain that were previously inaccessible. “This development heralds a new class of implantable devices, not just for the brain, but for many other tissues,” said neurologist Brian Litt of the University of Pennsylvania who co-authored the study published April 18 in Nature Materials.
“This will significantly improve recording by conforming the electrode array to the surface of the brain,” said biomedical engineer Barclay Morrison of Columbia University. “It will move forward the field of flexible electronics.” The team found that the mesh-like device conforms perfectly to the contours on a model of the human brain. When tested on the visual processing area of the cat’s brain, the flexible array—about one 40th of the thickness of a sheet of paper—faithfully recorded neural activity for about a month without causing inflammation. By increasing the contact between the electrodes and brain tissue, the system produced better signals compared with more rigid electrode arrays, which are about 30 times thicker. Some BCIs made of silicon pierce through and damage brain tissue during implantation. But even BCIs that sit on the surface of the brain have problems: The electrodes are often so widely spaced that it’s difficult to obtain high-resolution neural signals, and the systems tend to cause immune reactions that compromise their lifespan. BCIs often fail after a short period of time, in some cases only a few months, and patients have to undergo multiple surgeries to replace the devices. The new system, consisting of stable, finely spaced electrodes, may overcome all of these problems and lead to the development better neural prosthetics, Morrison said. “Its full potential remains to be seen in long-term BCI studies,” Morrison said. “Currently, there are no BCIs that use such compliant mesh electrodes, and the potential is pretty big that the implant array will provide a neural interface that is stable over a long period of time.” The scientists would like to extend their findings by making fully dissolvable implantable electronics for monitoring and stimulating tissue growth. They have also developed rolled-up devices, which they could deliver to the brain without making large holes in the skull during surgery. Eventually, they hope to adapt the technology for retinal and cochlear implants and to treat patients with a wide range of psychiatric and neurological diseases. Images: 1) Conformal, neural electrode array wrapped onto a model of the brain. The wrapping process occurs spontaneously, driven by capillary forces associated with dissolution of a thin, supporting substrate of silk./John Rogers/Nature Materials. 2) Conformal, neural electrode array wrapped onto the hemispherical tip of a glass rod./John Rogers/Nature Materials. See Also:
Source: Wired: Wired Science | 19 Apr 2010 | 4:00 am Flush to hobWill we switch to gas made from human waste?Source: BBC News | Science & Environment | UK Edition | 19 Apr 2010 | 3:18 am
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In the new study, the researchers analyzed samples from the Maastrichtian formations from 71 to 65 Ma, just before the major dinosaur extinction event. They corrected for sampling bias by only considering four formations in the northwestern interior that each included more than 100 specimens. The larger samples would provide more accurate measures of dinosaur diversity.
The research team printed electrode arrays onto silk films that disintegrate after they are placed on the brain’s surface and flushed with saline. They’re just 2.5 microns thick, so thin that they need to rest on a platform so they don’t fall apart during fabrication or implantation. After the silk film dissolves, the array wraps around the curves on the brain.