Scientists sever molecular signals that prolific parasite uses to puppeteer cells

Scientists studying a cunning parasite that has commandeered the cells of almost half the world's human population have begun to zero in on the molecular signals that must be severed to free the organism's cellular hostages.
Source: ScienceDaily: Latest Science News | 24 Apr 2010 | 3:00 pm

Protein plays a critical role in the development of aggressive breast cancer

Researchers have identified a potentially significant molecular player in the development of aggressive breast cancer. The team's findings show that a protein called NEDD9 is critical in the formation of breast tumors induced by high levels of the cell-surface receptor HER2/neu in mice. HER2-driven breast cancer is known to be one the most aggressive forms of the disease.
Source: ScienceDaily: Latest Science News | 24 Apr 2010 | 3:00 pm

Gene that allows worms to grow new head and brain discovered

Scientists have discovered the gene that enables an extraordinary worm to regenerate its own body parts after amputation -- including a whole head and brain.
Source: ScienceDaily: Latest Science News | 24 Apr 2010 | 3:00 pm

Sports stars are no role models, say UK scientists

The loutish and drunken behavior of some of our sporting heroes -- routinely reported in the media -- has little or no effect on the drinking habits of young people, new research in the UK has found.
Source: ScienceDaily: Latest Science News | 24 Apr 2010 | 3:00 pm

Monitoring bridges: Early warning system for rust developed

Damage to concrete bridges caused by rust can have fatal consequences, at worst leading to a total collapse. Now, researchers have developed an early-warning system for rust. Sensor-transponders integrated in the concrete allow the extent of corrosion to be measured.
Source: ScienceDaily: Latest Science News | 24 Apr 2010 | 3:00 pm

Starry-eyed Hubble celebrates 20 years of awe and discovery

The best recognized, longest-lived and most prolific space observatory zooms past a milestone of 20 years of operation. On April 24, 1990, the Space Shuttle and crew of STS-31 were launched to deploy the NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope into a low-Earth orbit. What followed was one of the most remarkable sagas of the space age.
Source: ScienceDaily: Latest Science News | 24 Apr 2010 | 3:00 pm

Long-term elder care patients and HIV infected patients may carry MRSA in their noses

Researchers have determined that long-term elder care, HIV-infected and hemodialysis patients are at increased risk of carrying MRSA in their nose. The study also found that patients have vastly different quantities of MRSA in their noses, a potential indicator for their risk of developing an infection after surgery.
Source: ScienceDaily: Latest Science News | 24 Apr 2010 | 9:00 am

Car steered with eyes, computer scientists demonstrate

"Keep your eyes on the road!" Scientists in Germany have given a completely new meaning to this standard rule for drivers: Using software they developed, they can steer a car with their eyes.
Source: ScienceDaily: Latest Science News | 24 Apr 2010 | 9:00 am

In breasts considered 'healthy,' too much of one protein identifies abnormal growth

By examining tissue removed during breast reduction surgery in healthy women, researchers have found a molecule they say identified women who had atypical hyperplasia, a potentially precancerous condition in which cells are abnormally increased.
Source: ScienceDaily: Latest Science News | 24 Apr 2010 | 9:00 am

Searching for dark energy with the whole world's supernova dataset

The Supernova Cosmology Project's Union2 compilation and reanalysis of decades of supernova surveys from the world's leading researchers, with the addition of six high-redshift supernovae, puts new bounds on possible values for the nature of dark energy. Einstein's cosmological constant comfortably fits the data, but there's still plenty of room at the top for dynamical theories.
Source: ScienceDaily: Latest Science News | 24 Apr 2010 | 9:00 am

New oil-rig safety rules eyed even before blast (AP)

AP - Federal regulators had already been working on new safety rules for offshore drilling when an oil rig exploded off the Louisiana coast this week, the latest and most glaring accident in a string of dozens of deaths and hundreds of injuries in the industry over the last several years.

Source: Yahoo! News: Science News | 24 Apr 2010 | 3:58 am

The nation's weather (AP)

AP - A low pressure system was forecast to move over the Mississippi River Valley on Saturday, creating two strong frontal boundaries. A warm front was expected from the Central Plains and up the Ohio River Valley. Meanwhile, a cold front was likely to extend from north to south, along the Mid- and Lower Mississippi River Valleys and move northward up the Tennessee Valley.

Source: Yahoo! News: Science News | 24 Apr 2010 | 2:45 am

Indonesia aims to tap volcano power (AFP)

AFP - Indonesia has launched an ambitious plan to tap the vast power of its volcanoes and become a world leader in geothermal energy, while trimming greenhouse gas emissions.

Source: Yahoo! News: Science News | 24 Apr 2010 | 12:51 am

The truth will out

Not only can we test claims made by politicians in this election, we can use data that has been previously hard to find

What can science and evidence bring to an election? First there are the micro-issues: we can assess the validity of claims made by politicians by seeking out the evidence. David Cameron, for example, claimed that UK cancer services were bad because fewer people die of cancer in Bulgaria than in the UK, which many have already debunked: he used death data from a country with inferior monitoring standards, and a far lower life expectancy, but more than that, he used death data, which is driven not just by treatment success, but also by the number of new cases to start with, which can vary widely for all kinds of reasons.

Still on cancer, but in a neglected example, Cameron also said: "I have a man in my constituency [with] kidney cancer who came to see me with seven others. Tragically, two of them have died because they couldn't get the drug Sutent that they wanted." This was odd, because Sutent is actually available on the NHS for kidney cancer, having been approved by the National Institute for Health and Clinical Excellence (Nice) in February 2009 (despite costing £54,366 per "quality adjusted life year", while Nice generally draws the line at £30,000).

Where did Cameron get the idea it was rejected? I don't know. On 9 April the Daily Mail published a bizarre article claiming that 15 cancer drugs (including Sutent) had been rejected by Nice. It provided a list. Bizarrely, 10 of the 15 drugs on that list which the Mail says Nice rejected have actually been approved by Nice. The head of Nice wrote to all three parties on 9 April explaining that this article was bizarrely wrong. His letter is posted in full on the Nice website. Nice did reject Sutent for people with a poor prognosis who are unsuitable for immunotherapy, but only because they weren't given any evidence on its use in that group.

As a side issue, of course, it's always unwise to claim that someone would be alive today if they had a specific treatment, in any situation. The mighty statistician Prof David Spiegelhalter has run through the maths on his Understanding Uncertainty website, and even if you are in the better prognosis group, for whom we do have evidence, you only have a 58% chance of surviving longer after receiving Sutent, and the median survival is 37 months with the drug and 27 months without it. Worth it, of course. I'm just saying.

Alongside the science of individual claims, it's also worth looking at what the parties say about science itself. Here, only the Liberal Democrats' manifesto stands out, promising funding like the others, but also making pledges on the use of independent scientific advice in policy (in contrast to the David Nutt affair), and even coming out in favour of open-access academic publication.

But more than anything, this election offers a new opportunity: beyond expecting our politicians to follow the evidence, we can be evidence-based ourselves, in our voting decisions, and hold ourselves to the same high standards. VoteMatch can match your views against the party manifestos. Skeptical Voter knows if your MP believes in the homeopaths' magic beans.

Using TheyWorkForYou I can see that my last MP (Andrew Smith, Labour, Oxford East) voted very strongly in favour of the Iraq war, very strongly against an inquiry into it, very strongly in favour of ID cards, and so on. It's grim reading. PoliticsPosters will print that on a poster, so you can make sure your neighbours know too.

Websites such as these recognise that disseminating data in a meaningful form is as important as gathering it in the first place. Your MP's voting record, and attendance in parliament, have always been publicly available, but until recently it was an effort to find, so only journalists and lobbyists knew the ugly details. That has changed. In the past we relied on hunches and reputation, but now – uniquely – we have the option to leave tribalism behind, and deploy our vote using data.

Source: Science news, comment and analysis | guardian.co.uk | 24 Apr 2010 | 12:00 am

Spanish hospital claims 1st full-face transplant (AP)

AP - A team of surgeons has carried out the world's first full-face transplant on a young Spanish farmer unable to breathe or eat on his own since accidentally shooting himself in the face five years ago.

Source: Yahoo! News: Science News | 23 Apr 2010 | 11:40 pm

Tracking the Asian Monsoon

In the bestiary of powerful climate regimes -- El Ninos, La Ninas and other oscillations of one kind and another -- the Asian Monsoon is in a class by itself. Its rainfall feeds half the world's population. Its failure can ...
Source: Discovery News - Top Stories | 23 Apr 2010 | 8:47 pm

Commission proposes limited commercial whale hunts (AP)

AP - Japan cautiously welcomed an International Whaling Commission proposal that would effectively allow commercial whaling for the first time in 25 years — though under strict quotas that the commission argues will reduce the global catch.

Source: Yahoo! News: Science News | 23 Apr 2010 | 6:27 pm

Humans Have a Lot to Learn From Bonobos, Scientist Says (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 | 23 Apr 2010 | 6:10 pm

Reader Photo Gallery: Your Desk Celebrates Hubble’s 20th Anniversary

The Hubble Space Telescope’s journey crossed the double-decade mark today, and our readers and followers are celebrating the beloved satellite with their desktops.

For the past five weeks, we’ve asked followers of @wiredscience on Twitter to change their computer backgrounds to some of our favorite Hubble images and send us a photo of their workstations.This week, we featured Hubble’s newest image, a spectacular shot of part of the Carina Nebula. Above is our favorite Space Desk this week, from @moshbrown, who may have gotten some extra credit for having Wired Science on the desktop as well.

We’ve collected some of the best shots here from the whole series on the following pages. If you need more Space Desk, we’ve included links to each weeks’ gallery of entries.

Carina Nebula complete Space Desk gallery

This week’s honorable mentions:

Source: Wired: Wired Science | 23 Apr 2010 | 5:59 pm

Scheme to save ancient orchards

Dozens of orchards have been created and cultivated in a bid to protect traditional fruit trees and wildlife habitat.
Source: BBC News | Science & Environment | UK Edition | 23 Apr 2010 | 5:54 pm

Michael Jackson: King of hypochondria

Brian Dillon on what made Michael Jackson the man he was

On 16 September 1986, a photograph of Michael Jackson, then aged 28 and long embarked on the regal phase of his solo career, appeared on the front page of the National Enquirer. It showed the singer in a striped shirt, dark trousers and white socks, lying on his back with his eyes closed in a hyperbaric chamber of the type used to treat victims of serious burns, embolisms and carbon monoxide poisoning. Such a machine typically consists of a steel and glass or Perspex cylinder inside which the patient is sealed while pure oxygen, under considerable pressure, floods damaged flesh, thus preserving circulation and maintaining tissues essential to the healing process. In Jackson's case, it was claimed, he had become convinced that regular inundation with oxygen could prolong his life by up to 150 years, and so had taken to sleeping in the apparatus, which he had had installed at his home.

Within days, this report crossed the world, and may be said to mark Jackson's definitive transformation in the public mind from shy, mercurial talent into a mysterious eccentric with prodigious whims and, in the end, ruinous obsessions. But the story of the "oxygen tent" was a sham, invented by Jackson himself with various associates who were tasked with adding lurid detail. His manager Frank DiLeo, for example, fretted convincingly to the press: "That damn machine is too dangerous. What if something goes wrong with the oxygen?"

It seems Jackson had first seen a hyperbaric chamber two years earlier at Brotman Medical Center, California, where he had been treated after his hair caught fire during the filming of a Pepsi commercial in Los Angeles. His injuries were by no means grave enough to warrant time in the chamber, but his doctors' explanation of its uses had intrigued him, and he subsequently told his manager he would like to buy one. DiLeo scoffed at the supposed life-preserving qualities of the device (which would have cost $200,000) and managed to dissuade him; Jackson decided instead he simply wanted to be photographed inside it. When pictures of his visit to the hospital for that purpose made their way to the National Enquirer, Jackson seems to have seen an opportunity to make himself appear more enigmatic in the public mind. It was a curious change in attitude, considering his previous anguished responses to rumours about his personal life: his alleged homosexuality, his supposed decision to have a sex change in the late 70s and the initial media reports that his obvious recourse to plastic surgery was spurred by a desire to look like his mentor Diana Ross. Whatever led Jackson to court notoriety now, the ruse certainly worked; it prompted just the first and perhaps least disturbing of the many bizarre stories that would emerge about him in the years to come.

Though it was not true, the "oxygen tent" story now seems to presage so much about Jackson's decline that it is hard not to read the im'age that accompanied it as an emblem of his eventual predicament: reclusive, ailing and unable to reverse his toxic reputation for eccentricity and worse. For the young man in the photograph – whose skin is still brown, whose face has changed since his early 20s but not yet taken on the inhuman aspect of his middle age, whose dancer's body is not yet emaciated – already resembles nothing so much as a sacred or royal corpse.

Here he lies as if in state, awaiting his mourners and a dignified interment. Jackson, who was fanatical in his devotion to the works of Walt Disney, may well have had Sleeping Beauty in mind as he slipped playfully into his crystal bed, or perhaps Disney himself, who was falsely rumoured to have been cryogenically frozen after his death in 1966. There is even a hint of the embalmed body of Lenin, immured in its monument in Red Square, for ever signifying to those who file by it the passing away of a collective dream.

It is easy to be morbid and metaphorical about the unfeigned death of Michael Jackson, on 25 June 2009. In the days that followed, media speculation was inevitably concerned with the state of his body: a body that, in life, had perhaps been subject to more intimate and detailed conjecture than that of any other modern celebrity. Attention shifted swiftly from the immediate cause of death to the ghastly physical condition Jackson had attained in the last years of his life, so that while there was assuredly a story to be unearthed about the drugs that apparently killed him, the physician who might have administered them and the aides who enabled the whole affair, it seemed that what the media most relished was the adjacent story of skin, hair, bone and gristle. It was as if Jackson were recently martyred and his relics now to be disposed as so many discrete reminders of the sanctified whole he had once been. Tabloid readers were told his emaciation was due to his eating "just one meagre meal a day". It was said he had lost most of his hair and wore a wig that covered the remaining "peach fuzz". Bruising on his legs and cuts to his back suggested recent falls. Journalists now spoke of his physical frailty with all the enthusiasm they had once brought to his eccentric behaviour, only this time with an added piety about the tragic pass to which the King of Pop had come.

It was his ruined nose that was most often invoked as a symbol of Jackson's general decay. The nose, one was reminded, had been reshaped up to a dozen times, and as a result either of excessive surgery or botched operations, it had started to die before its owner. For some years it had been conjectured that the tip of Jackson's elfin nose was in fact a prosthesis; without it, asserted a Vanity Fair article, the singer looked "like a mummy with two nostril holes". Formerly close associates of Jackson's denied the most gruesome claims, but admitted that the nose had to be augmented in public; the process of attachment was painful and humiliating, and so he sometimes left off the prosthetic tip and wore a surgical mask instead. Now, in death, his nose continued to fascinate; it functioned often in press reports to instance the horror inside which Jackson had lived for decades, and ghoulish rumours circulated on the internet about the tip of the nose having come off as the dead or dying man was taken to hospital.

The fate of Jackson's face was perhaps the aspect of his oddity that, while he was alive, attracted the most comment and least sympathy – that is, of course, apart from the accusations of child sexual abuse that twice almost destroyed him – and his nose was the reductio ad absurdum of his long and obsessive relationship with plastic surgery. But how did Jackson arrive at this extreme point of delusive self-fashioning? What does it mean to have so vigilantly remade yourself that you end up excising or abrading parts of yourself, irreparably? And then to have salved the remaining, agonised "I" with analgesics and even (as it seems he did) powerful anaesthetics? How much of a self can one reasonably say such a person has left? And what filled that void, in Jackson's case, if not the desires and fears of his public, who were just as morbidly fixated, just as addicted to the cycle of gruesome failure, just as hypochondriacal in their way as the celebrated body they worshipped and then, in time, turned away from, appalled?

To understand Jackson's hypochondria, we have to go back at least as far as his early adolescence, when the child star's ordinary teenage self-consciousness about his appearance seems to have taken a pathological turn. As it was for Warhol, bad skin was the first of Jackson's problems; his acne was covered up on stage with make-up, but off stage he was increasingly aware of the reactions of fans, journalists and others to his complexion. In conversation he avoided eye contact, and grew so fretful about the problem he was reluctant to leave the Jackson family home. As an adult he would recall: "I became subconsciously scarred by this. I got very shy and became embarrassed to meet people. The effect on me was so bad that it messed up my whole personality." Along with his acne, he worried that his skin was too dark. But most of all, from the age of 13, he worried about his nose.

The Jackson family did not make it easy to overcome his fears, according to one biographer; among his brothers, Michael was nicknamed "Big Nose", and his famously tyrannical father Joseph laughed at his son's self-consciousness, insisting he had inherited his own magnificent nose. For Michael, it seems, this was precisely the problem; as soon as he was able, he tried to separate himself personally and professionally from his father.

Jackson had his first rhinoplasty in 1979. In the spring of that year, he fell and injured his nose while on stage, and took the opportunity to have it "fixed". Some months later, he claimed to his family that another surgeon, Dr Steven Hoefflin, who would carry out much of the subsequent work on Jackson's face, had recommended a second operation due to his continued breathing problems while singing. (Much later, when confronted in interviews about his surgery, Jackson would proffer the same explanation for the few procedures he admitted to having had.) It was after this second nose job in 1981, when the change in his appearance could no longer be put down to the sharpening of his features in early adulthood, that speculation began about what, or who, Jackson was hoping to look like. He had been close to Diana Ross since childhood and now, it was pointed out, he was starting to look like her. Jackson strenuously denied the claim. A third nose job is rumoured to have followed in 1984 and a fourth two years later; at the same time, a cleft was added to his chin. It was around this time, according to one of his biographers, that Jackson admitted to one of his household: "I do want to be perfect. I look in the mirror, and I just want to change, and be better… I'm a work in progress."

He submitted to several further operations in the late 80s and early 90s, each one leaving the nose narrower and more upturned, until the skin or cartilage could take no more trauma. One biographer has it that the eventual wreckage was the result of a failed effort to add more cartilage to the already cartoonishly pointed tip. If change was what he desired, Jackson had definitively changed, and there was nothing more to be done.

Among the meagre references Freud makes to hypochondria, one instance concerns a patient who had become obsessed by the condition of his nose. Sergei Pankejeff, a Russian aristocrat whom Freud called the Wolf Man, is better known in the history of psychoanalysis for a dream he recounted in which his bedroom was invaded by a pack of white wolves, a dream Freud interprets as having to do with his witnessing his parents having sex as a young boy. In 1926, Freud referred the Wolf Man to an American colleague, Ruth Mack Brunswick; Pankejeff was suffering, Freud said, "from a hypochondriacal idée fixe concerning a scar on his nose". Brunswick diagnosed castration anxiety, but Pankejeff is now routinely presented as an example instead of body dysmorphic disorder: a state of anxiety regarding an imagined body defect, accompanied by time-consuming rituals of self-examination and reclusive behaviour.

It was often claimed while he was alive that Jackson suffered from body dysmorphia: the surgery, apparent skin whitening and dramatic weight loss were evidence of a distorted perception of his own physical being, and he was incapable of knowing when to stop. It is a plausible surmise. Apart from his nose, it was Jackson's skin that seemed to cause him most concern. In some ways, the bleaching of his skin is a more vexed topic than the history of his nose jobs, because it raises more starkly the question of his attitude to being black. For more than 25 years, the opinion was regularly canvassed that he simply wanted to be white, though his eventual pallor suggested he aimed to go further than that, to become racially as well as sexually indeterminate – androgyny having long been essential to his image – and even vanish altogether. (We might recall Warhol's "best American invention – to be able to disappear".) Biographers have unearthed ex-employees who talk of skin-bleaching creams being delivered to Jackson's home in industrial quantities, and a rumour persists of his having once burned his scrotum with a whitening product. Jackson himself maintained the change in the colour of his skin was due to illness, and it seems he was indeed diagnosed in 1986 with vitiligo, a physically harmless but chronic and distressing condition in which pigment is lost in patches that appear spontaneously and at random anywhere on the body. In 1993, Jackson announced in an interview he had the disease, and claimed that his chosen treatment involved removing pigment from the rest of his body to achieve a uniform appearance. His dermatologist, Dr Arnold Klein, has said that around the same time Jackson had also been diagnosed with discoid lupus, an auto-immune disease that causes skin lesions, loss of pigment and permanent alopecia. It also requires that the skin be kept out of the sun – Jackson often appeared in public with an umbrella.

If it is the case that Jackson suffered from this disfiguring combination of diseases, we may imagine the effect on a young man who was already super-sensitive about his appearance – and who, in an interview with Rolling Stone, claimed to be so jealous of his privacy he was "just like a haemophiliac who can't afford to be scratched". At the same time, we have to acknowledge that sensitivity became part of Jackson's public persona. What one critic has called his "demented self-pity" was expressed in elaborate prophylaxis against the outside world: the gloves, masks and umbrella-wielding entourage may have protected his ailing body, but they also seemed to be deployed with theatrical self-consciousness. (In this regard, he did seem to know when he had gone too far: for a time he planned a Perspex barrier that would shield him from his audience in concert, but eventually abandoned the idea.)

The same is true, surely, of the emotional susceptibility Jackson claimed at every turn of his long artistic, financial and legal troubles; he paraded his sensitivity towards the plight of "the children" (an indeterminate mass whom he seemed to invoke at every chance) in numerous songs and public statements, all the while insisting he had never himself had a proper childhood so ought to be indulged, in middle age, as he acted out his puerile fantasies. At the same time, there was a strain of grisly and fearless physical curiosity in his character. He was rumoured to take a robust interest in the techniques of major surgery and to attend operating theatres at UCLA Medical Center. He seems even to have had a freakish sense of humour about his reputation: the story of his wishing to buy the remains of Joseph Merrick, the so-called "Elephant Man", in 1987, appears to have been concocted by Jackson himself. And in 1999, in what seemed a knowing reference to his growing strangeness, he announced his intention to play the title role in a forthcoming film, The Nightmare Of Edgar Allan Poe.

For the last quarter-century of his life, Jackson's relationship with his body was by turns a matter of morbid public knowledge and pure mystery. He revealed certain facts about his illnesses and was disbelieved; he foisted absurd stories on the press and found they were swallowed whole; even as he became more reclusive, he found it increasingly difficult to control the images and information about his body that breached the cordon sanitaire of immense wealth and professional security. The one story that seemed unambiguous, because he had admitted to it in 1993, concerned his dependence on prescription drugs and, in particular, painkillers. His acquaintance with opiates may have begun after the Pepsi accident; as footage of the incident reveals, the burns to his scalp were extensive. Following the first allegations of sexual abuse in the early 90s, he began to rely on analgesics and tranquillisers to cope with the stress. Four years later, his song Morphine was a haunted memoir of his adventures with the pharmacopoeia. Accounts of his last years are no doubt rife with the exaggerations of special interests, but it seems incontrovertible that his drug use was prolonged and serious, even to the extent of having himself anaesthetised in a desperate effort to find relief from his chronic insomnia. It is this sort of detail, which emerged in the days following his death, that perhaps best enables us to understand how it felt to be Michael Jackson: to have vanished so far inside a world of pain (whether real or imagined) that anaesthesia seemed the only alternative.

According to a religious-political convention that prevailed in slightly different versions from the Roman republic to the Renaissance, the body of a monarch existed on two planes: actual and ideological; biological and emblematic. The doctrine of "the king's two bodies" required that at his death the monarch should be accorded two funerals: one for the bodily remains, the other for the idea, or spiritual element, of his kingship, which was represented by a wax effigy burned in its turn once the king "himself" had been interred. In fact, most versions of the tradition considered the two bodies equally authentic: the effigy or imago was looked on as an emanation of the once-living body rather than its representation. In life as in death, in other words, the king was dual, ambiguous, even paradoxical.

What was the King of Pop – a title, we should recall, Michael Jackson acquired (or rather adopted) only when his career was already in decline – if not a body split in two? The body that performed, the body that his fans adored, was lithe, energised and at the same time impressively controlled in its robotic impersonation of musical or sexual ecstasy. Jackson was never, as a singer or dancer, able fully to let go; his dance moves and vocal tics were stylised copies of gestures and sounds that in the performers who were his models (notably James Brown) had been liberated as well as rigorous, earthy as well as in time. What Jackson projected, for all his mobility and skill, was a set of static tableaux: Michael moonwalking, Michael flicking at his crotch, Michael reduced to his props and (increasingly regal or military) wardrobe. But behind this kingly body was another that was frightened, sick, addicted and hurt. In time, the suffering body emerged into the light and confused us and him about which was the real Michael Jackson, for in his case the real body resembled nothing so much as an artificial imago. We might say that as the music and the musician faded, there was no role left for him to play but that of his own sick and self-tormenting body. In death, he was less talked about for what he had done than for what he had done to himself.

• This is an extract from a previously unpublished chapter of Tormented Hope: Nine Hypochondriac Lives, by Brian Dillon, published in paperback by Penguin on 6 May at £8.99. Copyright Brian Dillon 2010. To order a copy for £7.99, including free UK mainland p&p, go to guardian.co.uk/bookshop or call 0330 333 6846.

Source: Science news, comment and analysis | guardian.co.uk | 23 Apr 2010 | 5:14 pm

What I'm really thinking: The teenager

'If there's one thing that makes me want to crash around the house swearing, it's when parents say, "Bloody teenagers! Always slamming doors and making a racket!" '

The thing that really gets to me is the stereotyping. It starts the day you turn 13. Relatives make remarks to your parents like, "It'll all be over in six years" and, "Good luck with the terrible teens!" It's almost as if they're waiting for you to hurl your birthday cake at the wall, scream at everyone, slam the door and stomp upstairs swigging vodka and playing deafening music, before donning a hoodie, smoking a joint and going out and getting pregnant – even though it's your turn to empty the dishwasher.

In fact, if there's one thing that does make me angry enough to want to crash around the house swearing, it's when people (especially parents) say stuff like, "Bloody teenagers! Always slamming doors and making a racket!" It's a self-fulfilling prophecy.

We're not as daft as you think. We're lightning quick at spotting a teacher's weaknesses. That's when you get the really bad behaviour. All the teacher-slapping and chucking of chairs, fire extinguishers or year sevens across the room that I've seen in my four years in a colossal comprehensive takes place when the students don't respect the teacher. If the teacher is intelligent, confident and calm, it doesn't happen.

Of course, the stereotypes are occasionally true – there are always the teenage mothers, the weed smokers, the drinkers, the hoodies, the really annoying ones who play loud music and shout idiotic profanities at the back of the bus. But they're not usually real teenagers, they're year sevens. We don't like them either.

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

Source: Science news, comment and analysis | guardian.co.uk | 23 Apr 2010 | 5:10 pm

Hubble Telescope Spies Majestic Space Mountains (SPACE.com)

SPACE.com - The prolific Hubble Space Telescope will hit an important milestone this weekend – the 20th anniversary of its launch. Hubble scientists are celebrating the iconic space telescope's milestone with a stunning new photo of pillar-like mountains of dust in a well-known nebula.
Source: Yahoo! News: Science News | 23 Apr 2010 | 4:45 pm

SOS! Major Oil Disasters at Sea

Ocean drilling and the transport of oil across the seas are dangerous work. The world uses about 3 billion gallons of oil a day. And sometimes, a few million gallons end up spilled or lost.
Source: Livescience.com | 23 Apr 2010 | 4:09 pm

Blippy Credit Card Leak Is Isolated Incident

Social network Blippy had posted credit card numbers and user data throughout Google search results.
Source: Livescience.com | 23 Apr 2010 | 4:08 pm

Vatican to finance adult stem cell research (AP)

AP - The Vatican is pushing for research of adult stem cells as an alternative to the use of embryonic stem cells, which the Catholic Church opposes because it maintains that the destruction of the embryo amounts to the killing of human life.

Source: Yahoo! News: Science News | 23 Apr 2010 | 3:43 pm

VisWall: High Resolution Display Wall

A giant video screen that takes up an entire wall, floor to ceiling, is allowing scientists to see details they've never seen before. The high definition clarity of the VisWall rivals IMAX in its sharpness.
Source: Livescience.com | 23 Apr 2010 | 3:23 pm

College Students 'Addicted' to Social Media, Study Finds

College students are literally addicted to Facebook and other social media.
Source: Livescience.com | 23 Apr 2010 | 3:21 pm

Bill Gates and Friends Make Case for Energy R&D

Bill Gates and a host of other corporate heavy hitters have founded a new organization to push for more research and development into clean energy technology.

Gates and former DuPont CEO Charles Holliday heralded the launch of the American Energy Innovation Council with an unusually clear and concise argument for increased government support for green tech R&D.

“Despite talk about the need for ’21st century’ energy sources, federal spending on clean energy research is also relatively small. The U.S. government annually spends less than $3 billion — compared with roughly $30 billion annually on health research and $80 billion on defense research and development,” they argued in The Washington Post.

The editorial goes on to lay out why energy technologies deserve government backing. First, they write, “There are profound public interests in having more energy options.” Second, the huge costs associated with developing new energy technologies requires government help. As they put it, “The nature of the energy business requires a public commitment.” And last, they point out that the cheapest electricity comes from the oldest plants, which makes for a conservative industry. “Power plants last 50 years or more, and they are very cheap to run once built, meaning there is little market for new models.”

Gates has shown an increasing interest in energy problems delivering an impressive TED talk this year about the need for low-carbon energy. He has also funded energy startups and geoengineering research.

Many independent groups like The Breakthrough Institute have been pushing for increased energy R&D funding, but none have the roster of heavy hitters of the council. The new organization lists a herd of other corporate leaders behind the effort including Ursula Burns, Xerox CEO, green tech venture capitalist John Doerr, and General Electric CEO Jeff Immelt. Also listed is Norm Augustine, former CEO of Lockheed Martin and head of the Obama Administration’s blue-ribbon panel on NASA and the future of human spaceflight.

While the Gates/Holliday letter and the corporate leadership is impressive, there is little on the group’s sparse website about what exactly they suggest. Instead, the council is reaching out to scientists, policy wonks and others to develop detailed recommendations that will be released “in a few months.”

The Council hired Widmeyer Communications to man their public relations, a mid-size firm that has worked with Coca Cola, Pfizer and a host of government agencies. They also appear to be linked to ClimateWorks, which registered the americanenergyinnovation.org domain.

Image: The rooftop solar installation at Solyndra, a solar company.
Jon Snyder/Wired.com

See Also:

• DOE’s New Baby Bell Labs on Budget Chopping Block
• 3 Bets the DOE Is Placing on Science to Break the Climate Stalemate
• Wired 13.07: The Dot-Com King & the Rooftop Solar Revolution

WiSci 2.0: Alexis Madrigal’s Twitter, Tumblr, and forthcoming book on the history of green technology; Wired Science on Twitter and Facebook.

Source: Wired: Wired Science | 23 Apr 2010 | 2:54 pm

Plastics hamper DNA assays

Chemicals leaching from lab plastic throw off results.<img src="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~r/news/rss/today/~4/hG5gpae7kv8" height="1" width="1"/>
Source: NatureNews - All articles published today - nature.com science feeds | 23 Apr 2010 | 2:34 pm

Science Nation

Science for the People: Surprising discoveries and fascinating researchers.
Source: Livescience.com | 23 Apr 2010 | 2:21 pm

Bigger, Better Space Telescopes Following In Hubble's Footsteps (SPACE.com)

SPACE.com - Hubble Space Telescope huggers are celebrating the iconic observatory's 20th birthday, even as scientists anticipate the next generation of bigger and more powerful successors to the famed orbital instrument.
Source: Yahoo! News: Science News | 23 Apr 2010 | 2:15 pm

Market Madness: 5 Tastes that Change with the Economy

From fashion to pet preferences, scientists say economic swings, including the current recession, could change more our billfolds.
Source: Livescience.com | 23 Apr 2010 | 1:34 pm

Scientists Eager to Climb on and Study Iceland's Volcano

Volcanologists who study ice-covered volcanoes have to wait for Eyjafjallajökull to stop erupting before their work can begin.
Source: Livescience.com | 23 Apr 2010 | 1:18 pm

Is the Recession Really Over?

News sources are hinting that the end of the recession may be near.
Source: Livescience.com | 23 Apr 2010 | 1:17 pm

Hubble's 20-Year Odyssey

The cosmos was certainly a more staid-looking place before Hubble unveiled a cataclysmic, discordant and evolving universe where matter an energy shape stars, planets and nebula against a backdrop of galaxies that seems unimaginably deep.
Source: Discovery News - Top Stories | 23 Apr 2010 | 1:04 pm

New plan would allow whale hunts, with limits (McClatchy Newspapers)

McClatchy Newspapers - WASHINGTON — A ban on commercial whale hunting since 1986 hasn't stopped Japan, Iceland and Norway from killing 35,000 whales, according to U.S. government counts. Now the International Whaling Commission has proposed a new approach — legalize whaling for those three nations for the next 10 years, but impose limits and watch the whalers more carefully.
Source: Yahoo! News: Science News | 23 Apr 2010 | 12:19 pm

Dinosaur Killer Could Return

A sudden change in the Atlantic Gulf Stream, which new research has linked to the mass extinction of dinosaurs, may happen again, many scientists fear.
Source: Discovery News - Top Stories | 23 Apr 2010 | 12:17 pm

Your Mind Will Control TVs and Phones

When I was a kid, my dad used me as his remote control. I, or one of my brothers, would at his request, turn the dial on the television -- click, click, click -- to the desired station. Soon we ...
Source: Discovery News - Top Stories | 23 Apr 2010 | 11:42 am

Like Sept.11, volcano plane ban may hold climate clue

OSLO (Reuters) - Plane-free skies over Europe during Iceland's volcanic eruption may yield rare clues about how flights stoke climate change, adding to evidence from a closure of U.S. airspace after September 11, 2001, experts say.
Source: Reuters: Science News | 23 Apr 2010 | 11:08 am

FAQ: The Science and History of Oil Spills

Frequently asked questions about how oil spills happen and the damage they can do.
Source: Livescience.com | 23 Apr 2010 | 10:52 am

Humans Have a Lot to Learn From Bonobos, Scientist Says

Primatologists Brain Hare thinks humans can learn a thing or two from banobos. One of his recent studies found these apes enjoy sharing, while chimps don't
Source: Livescience.com | 23 Apr 2010 | 10:13 am

Wow! Celebrate Hubble’s 20th With Best Space Image Ever

We were already dreading the day Hubble dies, but this mind-blowing new image released to celebrate the space telescope’s 20th anniversary makes us wish for eternal life for the famous satellite even more.

This new gem rivals what may be Hubble’s most famous image, a shot of the Pillars of Creation taken in 1995. The shot above is of a star-forming region in the Carina Nebula. The enormous pillar of gas and dust is 3 light-years tall. The seam in the middle is the result of new stars forming and emitting powerful gas jets that are ripping the pillar apart.

Hubble’s capabilities are all the more impressive considering the rocky start the telescope suffered through when a defect was discovered in its primary mirror after it had been launched and began returning images that weren’t in focus. Scientists and engineers were able to fix the problem, and today Hubble is more capable than ever with its new Wide Field Camera 3, installed last year.

If you’ve read this far without making this image your computer desktop background, click here now. We’ve been celebrating Hubble on our desktops for the last month, by asking followers of @wiredscience on Twitter to send us a photo of their workstations with a different Hubble photo on their computer screens each week. So far we’ve featured the Black Eye Galaxy, the Eagle Nebula, Jupiter and the Cat’s Eye Nebula.

Send us a photo of your desk or office with the new Carina Nebula photo, on twitter or by e-mail, and we’ll tweet our favorite and include the best from all five weeks in a post on Wired Science later today.

Also, check out this interactive timeline of Hubble’s history, and the links below to more mind-blowing Hubble photos we’ve featured on Wired Science before.

Image: NASA, ESA, and M. Livio and the Hubble 20th Anniversary Team (STScI)

See Also:

• Impressive New Hubble Image of Odd Galaxy Triplet
• Hubble Is Back! With New Stunning Images
• Hubble’s New Camera Delivers Another Stunner
• Hubble Captures Sparkling ‘Jewel Box’ Star Cluster
• Hubble Snaps Image of Triple Galaxy, as Ordered by the People
• Hubble Captures Images of Rare Mammoth Stars

Follow us on Twitter @betsymason and @wiredscience, and on Facebook.

Source: Wired: Wired Science | 23 Apr 2010 | 10:10 am

Dawn of Urban Life Uncovered in Syria

Before the invention of the wheel and writing, a prehistoric civilization in northern Mesopotamia engaged in trade, processed copper and developed the first social classes based on power and wealth. Evidence of the civilization that formed the basis of urban ...
Source: Discovery News - Top Stories | 23 Apr 2010 | 9:36 am

Stop the wedding!

Carole Jahme shines the cold light of evolutionary psychology on readers' problems. This week: Ill-advised weddings

From an anonymous male
Dear Carole, A close friend has recently become engaged to her boyfriend. We, her friends, are unanimous in our disapproval. We have never liked her boyfriend, but have maintained a tactful silence; we felt things would come to a natural end without our interference.

It seems we were wrong.

He is not an attractive man, he is not particularly successful, not rich, not exotic and interesting, not creative, not charming. He has an active, if rather crude, sense of humour, which I accept she may appreciate more than we do, but he is sleazy, and acts inappropriately towards her female friends.

She, on the other hand, is attractive, intelligent, independent, and a thoroughly sunny person, but she has a serious lack of experience with relationships. In the many years we knew her before her current relationship she was always single, going on first and sometimes second dates, but never starting relationships or flings. She may associate the benefits of being in a relationship with this man, not realising that the same benefits would come from any relationship.

He is pushy, and self-confident, and I'm sure it is these attributes that got him into the relationship in the first place. He courted her with a cringe-worthy forthrightness. She hates to cause people offence and, it seems, is incapable of saying no.

We need to stop this. We need her to ditch the unworthy mate.

If we fail and she goes through with the wedding, I will of course support her. I will never mention her partner's inadequacies, I will help her cope with her inevitable regret, and I will strongly encourage her to sleep with her personal trainer for the sake of her children's genes. But before I have to take my seat in the church and forever hold my peace, what can I do?

Carole replies:
Natural selection is not a process that always offers happy endings. Rather, it is the mechanism by which the fittest survive. Golden wedding anniversaries have not been selected for – sometimes the sexual attraction between couples only lasts long enough for a child to be conceived.

You say he has little to offer in terms of creativity, charm or attractiveness, yet, nonetheless, he is confident with a pushy cringe-worthiness – it sounds as though he lacks self-awareness. She, on the other hand is described as being intelligent, sunny and incapable of saying "no" for fear of hurting others – it sounds as though she may suffer from runaway empathy.

If she is highly self-aware her pathology may compel her to accommodate his lack of the same. Sexual attraction is a complex phenomenon. People often seek out significant others who exhibit traits they themselves lack.¹ Indeed, if these two people are opposites, this may add to the mutual attraction.²

A child born from this relationship might inherit a sunny, intelligent, attractive, self-confident pushiness. All good qualities when it comes to reproductive fitness. On the other hand the child could inherit a sleazy lack of charm and an inability to say no – not such a good combination. In spite of the meteoric advances in the science of genetics, primate inheritance is complex and remains highly unpredictable. Add to that the impact of the environment on children, where one wrong move can have a knock-on effect that negatively affects the long-term success of a promising individual, and it's clear that predicting individual outcomes is nigh on impossible.

This couple could produce a wonderful new infant who will grow to achieve greatness. Any problems they experience may stem from their differences, which ironically may be part of their initial sexual attraction. But the evolutionary cause of producing fit offspring will have been served.

As for happiness, if 10 years from now your friend has some kind of crisis, but her partner's lack of self-awareness means he cannot provide the neccesary emotional support, she will need you and her other friends more than ever. I can only hope that the inappropriate sleaziness of this man won't have driven away her friends before their first wedding anniversary.

If you feel as strongly as you say you do and you are a "close friend" to this woman then why have you remained silent? Shouldn't you be saying to her what you have said to me?³ Do you fear ostracism from your clique and exclusion from the wedding if you speak out? If you genuinely care about this woman you should place your feelings of concern for her above your own fears of social isolation.

It is an understandable weakness to remain silent for fear of hurting the feelings of others and perhaps being cast out. Messengers do get shot from time to time (and an ostracised primate's survival chances are much diminished⁴). But this same inability to say "no" is something you accuse your female friend of. In fact you cite it as a cause for her present predicament.

You need to find the courage to stand up for what you believe in and learn to say what's on your mind, just as much as your friend needs to hear it to learn the same lesson and say "no" to this man.

References
(1) Ihara, Y and Feldman, MW (2003) Evolution of disassortative and assortative mating preferences based on imprinting. Theoretical Population Biology; 64: 2.
(2) Geary, DC et al (2004) Evolution of Human Mate Choice. Journal of Sex Research; 41 (1): 27-42.
(3) Campbell, DT (1986) Rationality and Utility from the Standpoint of Evolutionary Biology. The University of Chicago Press.
(4) Lancaster, JB (1986) Primate social behavior and ostracism. Ethology and Sociobiology. 7; 3-4: 215-225.

You can email your questions to Carole by clicking here. Please put "Ask Carole" in the subject line.

Terms and conditions
Please say whether you wish to be named in connection with your enquiry and if so by what name. We reserve the right to edit questions. If you mail us a question, you agree that your email may be published on the site.

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.

Source: Science news, comment and analysis | guardian.co.uk | 23 Apr 2010 | 9:21 am

Demonic Possession, Reincarnation, and Xenoglossia

Cases of alleged demonic possession and reincarnation involve unusual language skills like those seen in a recent medical case.
Source: Discovery News - Top Stories | 23 Apr 2010 | 9:03 am

Bi-Ped Robot Has Heel-Toe Walking

Boston Dynamics is doing remarkable stuff with walking robots. There's Big Dog, a four-legged guy that can carry big loads over rough, uneven terrain. And now this. The robots from this company are creepily life-like in their mobility. You can't ...
Source: Discovery News - Top Stories | 23 Apr 2010 | 9:00 am

In pictures: The week in wildlife

From lungless frogs to northern quolls, here is this week's pick of images from the natural world

Source: Science news, comment and analysis | guardian.co.uk | 23 Apr 2010 | 8:33 am

Evolution’s New Foe: Timid School Administrators

Evolution education is under attack in Weston, Connecticut, but not from the usual direction.

Nobody is promoting intelligent design in the curriculum, or asking schools to teach evolution’s “strengths and weaknesses.” There’s just an administration afraid that teaching third graders too much about Charles Darwin will cause trouble.

“They might have just been looking to avoid controversy, but that has the same effect,” said Steve Newton, programs and policy director at the National Center for Science Education. ” If you’re not looking to teach children the best science, that harms their education.”

At issue is a class section proposed in 2008 by Mark Tangarone, teacher of the third, fourth and fifth grade Talented and Gifted program at the Weston Intermediate School. Tangarone wanted his third graders to study and compare the accomplishments of Abraham Lincoln and Charles Darwin.

To learn about Darwin, students would have retraced the path of the HMS Beagle, the expedition that inspired a young Darwin’s theory of evolution. Each student would study a stop in the voyage, reporting on the animals and adaptations that Darwin observed.

When Tangarone ran his class plan by then-principal Mark Ribbens, he was denied.

In an email obtained by the Weston Forum, Ribbens explained that his objections had nothing to do with the soundness of the theory of evolution. Instead, he was worried about parent reaction.

“While evolution is a robust scientific theory, it is a philosophically unsatisfactory explanation for the diversity of life. I could anticipate that a number of our parents might object to this topic,” wrote Ribbens. “It is not appropriate to have [Darwin's] work or the theory part of the TAG program since the topic is not age appropriate.”

Ribbens explained further, “Evolution touches on a core belief — Do we share common ancestry with other living organisms? What does it mean to be a human being? I don’t believe that this core belief is one in which you want to debate with children or their parents, and I know personally that I would be challenged in leading a 10-year-old through this sort of discussion while maintaining the appropriate sensitivity to a family’s religious beliefs or traditions.”

However, the class wasn’t out of step with official state science standards [.doc]. At the time, these instructed teachers to impart to third graders the ability to “describe how different plants and animals are adapted to obtain air, water, food and protection in specific land habitats.” That section of the standards was subtitled, “Heredity and Evolution — What processes are responsible for life’s unity and diversity?”

Ribbens left the school this year, and Tangarone asked to teach his Darwin program again. The request was rejected, and Tangarone submitted a letter of resignation on February 12, the date of Darwin’s birthday. “I feel that Weston has become anti-science and no longer a place I feel comfortable teaching in,” said Tangarone, who will retire two years early.

“I never dreamed this would be an issue in Weston,” he said. It’s a highly educated community. Many parents work in New York. There are authors, artists and scientists. They’re committed to education for their children.”

Weston Public Schools superintendent Jerry Belair did not respond to requests for an interview.

According to Newton, the motives of school administrators are not in doubt. “They just wanted to avoid controversy,” he said.

Image: Jon Tandy/Flickr.

See Also:

• Evolution on Trial in Texas Board of Education Battle
• Evolution Wins as Creationists (Accidentally) Switch Sides in Florida
• Why Evolution Is Important in the Classroom
• At 200, Darwin Evolves Beyond Evolution

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 | 23 Apr 2010 | 7:49 am

Images of Suicidal Thoughts

I was watching TV the other night, when a commercial came on for the medication Cymbalta. I wasn't paying that much attention, but my boyfriend chimed in and said, "Why would anyone take a pill for depression when one of ...
Source: Discovery News - Top Stories | 23 Apr 2010 | 7:46 am

US fears ease over oil rig spill

The oil rig that caught fire and sank off the Louisiana coast does not appear to be leaking oil, the US Coast Guard says.
Source: BBC News | Science & Environment | UK Edition | 23 Apr 2010 | 7:28 am

Lift-off for military spaceplane

A prototype spaceplane developed for the US military has been launched into orbit from Florida.
Source: BBC News | Science & Environment | UK Edition | 23 Apr 2010 | 6:26 am

Full face transplant 'a success'

A team of 30 Spanish doctors claim to have successfully performed the world's first full face transplant.
Source: BBC News | Science & Environment | UK Edition | 23 Apr 2010 | 5:36 am

First footage of giant deep sea jellyfish

Amazing footage of a rarely seen giant deep sea jellyfish has been recorded by scientists in Gulf of Mexico.
Source: BBC News | Science & Environment | UK Edition | 23 Apr 2010 | 5:35 am

Self drive

Is this the end of the road for human car drivers?
Source: BBC News | Science & Environment | UK Edition | 23 Apr 2010 | 5:32 am

Coma Victim's Language Ability Explained

How could a Croatian girl speak German but forget her native language after coming out of a coma?
Source: Discovery News - Top Stories | 23 Apr 2010 | 5:00 am

Nanodevice Powered by Motion

Soon, simply walking or running with your iPod in your pocket could keep it powered and pumping tunes.
Source: Discovery News - Top Stories | 23 Apr 2010 | 4:34 am

U.S. military tests X-37B reusable spaceship

CAPE CANAVERAL, Florida (Reuters) - An unmanned Atlas rocket carrying a miniature space shuttle blasted off from Cape Canaveral Air Force Station on Thursday on a technology test flight that could last as long as nine months.
Source: Reuters: Science News | 23 Apr 2010 | 3:51 am

Beijing fires deodorant at foul-smelling city dumps

Beijing uses water cannons to fire deodorants on to its foul-smelling dumps in a bid to make life sweeter for residents.
Source: BBC News | Science & Environment | UK Edition | 23 Apr 2010 | 3:34 am