New reliable method based on patients’ gait helps to diagnose fibromyalgia

A researcher from Spain has designed a reliable method that -- combined with the diagnostic criteria of the American College of Reumathology -- helps to diagnose fibromyalgia on the basis of patients' walk parameters, i.e. their gait.
Source: ScienceDaily: Latest Science News | 30 Apr 2010 | 9:00 am

Watching a living brain in the act of seeing -- with single-synapse resolution

Scientists report evidence that individual neurons carry out significant aspects of visual processing. Their novel microscopy method makes it possible to observe individual synapses on a single neuron in a living mammalian brain. Focusing on neurons involved in processing movement-related signals, they discovered that an individual neuron integrates inputs from many synapses into a single output -- a decision, in essence, made by a single nerve cell.
Source: ScienceDaily: Latest Science News | 30 Apr 2010 | 9:00 am

Out of mind, out of sight: Blinking eyes indicate mind wandering

When your mind wanders, you're not paying attention to what's going in front of you. A new study suggests that it's not just the mind, it's the body, too; when subjects' minds wandered, they blinked more, setting up a tiny physical barrier between themselves and the outside world.
Source: ScienceDaily: Latest Science News | 30 Apr 2010 | 9:00 am

Purple pokeberries hold secret to affordable solar power worldwide

Pokeberries -- the weeds that children smash to stain their cheeks purple-red and that Civil War soldiers used to write letters home -- could be the key to spreading solar power across the globe, according to researchers.
Source: ScienceDaily: Latest Science News | 30 Apr 2010 | 9:00 am

Researchers preparing for Blue Waters: Most powerful supercomputer in the world

Researchers are preparing their computational chemistry tools for the Blue Waters supercomputer and its quadrillion calculations per second. Blue Waters is expected to be the most powerful supercomputer in the world for open scientific research when it comes online in 2011.
Source: ScienceDaily: Latest Science News | 30 Apr 2010 | 9:00 am

Curcumin nanoparticles 'open up' resistant cancers

Pre-treatment with curcumin, a component of the spice turmeric, makes ovarian cancer cells more vulnerable to chemotherapy and radiotherapy. Researchers found that delivering the curcumin via very small (less than 100nm) nanoparticles enhanced the sensitizing effect.
Source: ScienceDaily: Latest Science News | 30 Apr 2010 | 9:00 am

Healthy person's genome analyzed to predict risk for diseases, responses to treatments

For the first time, researchers have used a healthy person's complete genome sequence to predict his risk for dozens of diseases and how he will respond to several common medications.
Source: ScienceDaily: Latest Science News | 30 Apr 2010 | 6:00 am

World first remote heart operation carried out in UK using robotic arm

A pioneering world first robotics system operation is to be conducted at Glenfield Hospital Leicester in the UK. The system is novel because it allows a doctor to carry out a common heart treatment procedure remotely using a robotic arm.
Source: ScienceDaily: Latest Science News | 30 Apr 2010 | 6:00 am

Tiny particles may help surgeons by marking brain tumors

Researchers have developed a way to enhance how brain tumors appear in MRI scans and during surgery, making the tumors easier for surgeons to identify and remove. Scientists are experimenting with different nanoparticles that they hope may one day be injected into the blood of patients and help surgeons remove lethal brain tumors known as glioblastomas.
Source: ScienceDaily: Latest Science News | 30 Apr 2010 | 6:00 am

Smoking during radiation therapy for head and neck cancers linked to poorer outcomes

Smokers who don't quit before radiation therapy for throat, mouth and other head and neck cancers fair significantly worse than those who do, researchers have found.
Source: ScienceDaily: Latest Science News | 30 Apr 2010 | 6:00 am

Pelicans, otters along La. shore in path of spill (AP)

AP - Oil from a massive spill in the Gulf of Mexico was starting to ooze ashore, threatening migrating birds, nesting pelicans and even river otters and mink along Louisiana's fragile islands and barrier marshes.

Source: Yahoo! News: Science News | 30 Apr 2010 | 4:05 am

Rig explosion dirties BP's green image (AP)

AP - BP brands itself a friend of the environment, an energy company that goes "beyond petroleum."

Source: Yahoo! News: Science News | 30 Apr 2010 | 3:58 am

Many endangered turtles dying on Texas Gulf Coast (AP)

AP - Flies buzz everywhere and the stench is overwhelming as biologist Lyndsey Howell stops to analyze the remains of yet another endangered sea turtle washed up from the Gulf of Mexico.
Source: Yahoo! News: Science News | 30 Apr 2010 | 3:56 am

Germany, Mexico trying to push climate talks ahead (AP)

AP - Five months after the troubled United Nations conference in Copenhagen, Germany and Mexico are teaming up in an effort to break the deadlock in negotiations on a global climate deal.

Source: Yahoo! News: Science News | 30 Apr 2010 | 3:33 am

Frog genome may aid conservation

The first sequencing of a frog genome could help combat a disease killing amphibians around the world, scientists say.
Source: BBC News | Science & Environment | UK Edition | 30 Apr 2010 | 3:15 am

The nation's weather (AP)

AP - Forecasters said severe weather could pop up anywhere along the Mississippi River Valley on Friday.

Source: Yahoo! News: Science News | 30 Apr 2010 | 3:02 am

Volcano ash drives falcon to isle

Volcanic ash from the eruption in Iceland is suspected of driving the world's largest species of falcon to the Western Isles.
Source: BBC News | Science & Environment | UK Edition | 30 Apr 2010 | 2:52 am

New front garden

South Africa blooms in front of The British Museum
Source: BBC News | Science & Environment | UK Edition | 30 Apr 2010 | 2:39 am

Oil 'reaches' coast in US spill

The US Coast Guard investigates reports that oil has begun washing ashore on the Gulf Coast following a massive spill.
Source: BBC News | Science & Environment | UK Edition | 30 Apr 2010 | 2:37 am

Cranes set to return to the skies

A project hopes to release wild cranes back into the landscape of South-West England.
Source: BBC News | Science & Environment | UK Edition | 30 Apr 2010 | 2:36 am

Monkeys are filmed feasting on a swarm of locusts

Gelada monkeys are filmed feasting on a swarm of locusts in the highlands of Ethiopia, behaviour rarely seen before.
Source: BBC News | Science & Environment | UK Edition | 30 Apr 2010 | 2:33 am

The naked politician

Evolutionary psychologist Carole Jahme strips Gordon Brown, Nick Clegg and David Cameron of their political clothes to reveal their inner apes

One difference between chimpanzee dominance hierarchies and political hierarchies is that chimp behaviour is genuine. Chimps allow themselves to be wholly known while negotiating their survival. They can be as greedy, devious and Machiavellian as politicians, but nothing happens out of sight, behind the closed doors of campaign headquarters or inside cars speeding away from a photo opportunity.

If you watch closely enough and for long enough through the undergrowth, all the ugly displays of dominance, shifts of allegiance, bullying and betrayals are there, out in the open, as are their acts of compassion. Chimpanzees are honest in their self-serving behaviour.

I'm not sure we can say the same of Gordon Brown, David Cameron and Nick Clegg. Only one man can be Britain's alpha male, and as any high-ranking chimp would tell you, you need friends in high places to win and retain this most elevated social rank.

If Cameron and Brown were chimps, mutual antipathy would motivate them to try to monopolise Clegg's attention, which is what we saw in the first, "I agree with Nick" debate. The two older politicians groomed him in the hope that he would reciprocate and scratch their backs in turn, taking their side against the other. Chimp Clegg would weigh up his options – who's more trustworthy, Cameron or Brown? And finally a male-bonded twosome would turn on the lone one in a potentially fatal attack.

If we get a hung parliament next week, a coalition between the Lib Dems and either Brown or Cameron will gang up on the third leader. Alpha chimps that suddenly lose their status in a fight are sometimes forced to leave the community to face isolation and death on the outside. If they are allowed to stay they hang around on the periphery, ignored shadows of their former selves. In a hung parliament, either Brown or Cameron must confront this fate.

Moral high ground

But for now, the aggression of these three political apes is self-consciously tempered by their attempts to appear statesmanlike while the other two fight it out. In all three TV debates, any chance to give the appearance of rising above a squabbling twosome was snatched at.

The three men have self-consciously competed for the moral primate high ground as they try to win voters with a conscience over to their side.

They have fought with high-sounding words rather than sticks. Vacuous rhetoric is not enough, however, because an ape can only become the alpha male while in his prime. And primes, whether short or long, usually correlate with increased breeding opportunities. One of the similarities between chimp hierarchical behaviour and politics is that it can be reduced to sex and who's getting it.

Flaunting their fertility

This synthesis of sex, status and politics is a potent statement of strength written in vital bodily fluids. So, for example, primates take a great deal of interest in the birth of a new infant, particularly a high-status one.

John F Kennedy became a father for a second time just weeks before being elected president in 1961. The Kennedys were the original political power couple, photogenic and fertile, and many western politicians have tried to recreate that charisma.

In 1997, the Blairs were also breeders in their prime who ostentatiously showed off their fertility. It may have been one of the factors that helped to trigger the Labour landside.

In this election it is the Camerons who have flaunted their fertility. During the first TV debate David Cameron self-consciously drew attention to Samantha's pregnancy. The Cameron court has also attempted to sex-up their public image by sharing with us some old and slightly embarrassing pictures of a reclining Samantha. We are expected to infer that the Camerons enjoy the mating process, whether on the floor or on the sofa.

Clegg, the youngest of these competing apes, is also a successful breeder in his prime. In evolutionary terms he might be best placed of the three men because he and his wife, Miriam, have produced three sons, and due to the difference in reproductive potential between males and females, sons can produce more offspring than daughters.

With all this vital fluid slopping around, for Brown to hang onto the Number 10 alpha sleeping site he must appear as though he too is a fertile breeder. But the Browns are at an age where most couples agree they won't reproduce any more. Added to that, Sarah is camera-shy and unlikely to pose on the floor in boots and a short frock. And due to Britain's hypocritical moral code, a love affair certainly wouldn't help Brown's career in the way it might in other, less buttoned-up countries.

Xenophobic instincts

So if an ape cannot rely on his fertility to win over supporters, what's left to him?

Apes are highly territorial. Groups of male chimps patrol the borders of their territory and if they encounter outsider chimps and outnumber them, they will murder them.

We humans are also motivated by ancient and powerful xenophobic instincts, and these three politicians know it. Thus both Cameron and Brown have pressed our primitive buttons in the past two debates by advocating a strong border police force. Last night Brown promised biometric visas, Cameron a cap on immigration. Both rounded aggressively on Clegg for proposing an amnesty for those who've been here illegally for more than 10 years.

Our tribal ancestors were nomadic. Humans will always want to travel and settle in new environments, it's in our nature to do so, and yet it is also in our nature to mistrust strangers. On Wednesday Brown attempted to calm the primordial fears of a voter – fears that strangers would steal our sleeping sites, our mates and our food – with claims that net inward migration had fallen under his leadership. Unfortunately just minutes later his microphone betrayed this ostentatious display of empathy to be a sham.

Alpha females

It is to be regretted that, like chimpanzees, only males are competing for the alpha role in Britain. Imagine for a moment the ideal female candidate.

Joanna Lumley managed to win everyone over to her side on that tricky subject of immigration, in spite of our instinctive xenophobia. When she negotiated the Gurkhas' right to stay in Britain, she stuck out her neck, squashed the Labour government, won over the Tory press and the British public, all in one, smooth, political manoeuvre.

How did she do it? Lumley is an alpha female ape endowed with a sexually selected mix of good genes. In terms of looks, talent, likeability, keen primate Machiavellian intelligence and genuine passion, Lumley outshines Clegg, Cameron and Brown.

It's a shame we won't get the chance to vote her into the Number 10 sleeping site on 6 May.

Source: Science news, comment and analysis | guardian.co.uk | 30 Apr 2010 | 1:13 am

Is Stephen Hawking right about aliens?

Stephen Hawking thinks that making contact with aliens would be a very bad idea indeed. But with new, massive telescopes, we humans are stepping up the search. Have we really thought this through?

In February 2008, Nasa sent the Beatles song, Across the Universe, across the universe. Pointing the telescopes in its Deep Space Network towards the north star, Polaris, astronomers played out their short cosmic DJ set, hoping that it might be heard by intelligent aliens during its 430-year journey to the star.

The hunt for intelligent species outside Earth may be a staple of literature and film – but it is happening in real life, too. Nasa probes are on the lookout for planets outside our solar system, and astronomers are carefully listening for any messages being beamed through space. How awe-inspiring it would be to get confirmation that we are not alone in the universe, to finally speak to an alien race. Wouldn't it?

Well no, according to the eminent physicist Stephen Hawking. "If aliens visit us, the outcome would be much as when Columbus landed in America, which didn't turn out well for the Native Americans," Hawking has said in a forthcoming documentary made for the Discovery Channel. He argues that, instead of trying to find and communicate with life in the cosmos, humans would be better off doing everything they can to avoid contact.

Hawking believes that, based on the sheer number of planets that scientists know must exist, we are not the only life-form in the universe. There are, after all, billions and billions of stars in our galaxy alone, with, it is reasonable to expect, an even greater number of planets orbiting them. And it is not unreasonable to expect some of that alien life to be intelligent, and capable of interstellar communication. So, when someone with Hawking's knowledge of the universe advises against contact, it's worth listening, isn't it?

Seth Shostak, a senior astronomer at the Seti Institute in California, the world's leading organisation searching for telltale alien signals, is not so sure. "This is an unwarranted fear," Shostak says. "If their interest in our planet is for something valuable that our planet has to offer, there's no particular reason to worry about them now. If they're interested in resources, they have ways of finding rocky planets that don't depend on whether we broadcast or not. They could have found us a billion years ago."

If we were really worried about shouting in the stellar jungle, Shostak says, the first thing to do would be to shut down the BBC, NBC, CBS and the radars at all airports. Those broadcasts have been streaming into space for years – the oldest is already more than 80 light years from Earth – so it is already too late to stop passing aliens watching every episode of Big Brother or What Katie and Peter Did Next.

The biggest and most active hunt for life outside Earth started in 1960, when Frank Drake pointed the Green Bank radio telescope in West Virginia towards the star Tau Ceti. He was looking for anomalous radio signals that could have been sent by intelligent life. Eventually, his idea turned into Seti (standing for Search for Extra Terrestrial Intelligence), which used the downtime on radar telescopes around the world to scour the sky for any signals. For 50 years, however, the sky has been silent.

There are lots of practical problems involved in hunting for aliens, of course, chief among them being distance. If our nearest neighbours were life-forms on the (fictional) forest moon of Endor, 1,000 light years away, it would take a millennium for us to receive any message they might send. If the Endorians were watching us, the light reaching them from Earth at this very moment would show them our planet as it was 1,000 years ago; in Europe that means lots of fighting between knights around castles and, in north America, small bands of natives living on the great plains. It is not a timescale that allows for quick banter – and, anyway, they might not be communicating in our direction.

The lack of a signal from ET has not, however, prevented astronomers and biologists (not to mention film-makers) coming up with a whole range of ideas about what aliens might be like. In the early days of Seti, astronomers focused on the search for planets like ours – the idea being that, since the only biology we know about is our own, we might as well assume aliens are going to be something like us. But there's no reason why that should be true. You don't even need to step off the Earth to find life that is radically different from our common experience of it.

"Extremophiles" are species that can survive in places that would quickly kill humans and other "normal" life-forms. These single-celled creatures have been found in boiling hot vents of water thrusting through the ocean floor, or at temperatures well below the freezing point of water. The front ends of some creatures that live near deep-sea vents are 200C warmer than their back ends.

"In our naive and parochial way, we have named these things extremophiles, which shows prejudice – we're normal, everything else is extreme," says Ian Stewart, a mathematician at Warwick University and author of What Does A Martian Look Like? "From the point of view of a creature that lives in boiling water, we're extreme because we live in much milder temperatures. We're at least as extreme compared to them as they are compared to us."

On Earth, life exists in water and on land but, on a giant gas planet, for example, it might exist high in the atmosphere, trapping nutrients from the air swirling around it. And given that aliens may be so out of our experience, guessing motives and intentions if they ever got in touch seems beyond the realm's even of Hawking's mind.

Paul Davies, an astrophysicist at Arizona State University and chair of Seti's post-detection taskforce, argues that alien brains, with their different architecture, would interpret information very differently from ours. What we think of as beautiful or friendly might come across as violent to them, or vice versa. "Lots of people think that because they would be so wise and knowledgeable, they would be peaceful," adds Stewart. "I don't think you can assume that. I don't think you can put human views on to them; that's a dangerous way of thinking. Aliens are alien. If they exist at all, we cannot assume they're like us."

Answers to some of these conundrums will begin to emerge in the next few decades. The researchers at the forefront of the work are astrobiologists, working in an area that has steadily marched in from the fringes of science thanks to the improvements in technology available to explore space.

Scientists discovered the first few extrasolar planets in the early 1990s and, ever since, the numbers have shot up. Today, scientists know of 443 planets orbiting around more than 350 stars. Most are gas giants in the mould of Jupiter, the smallest being Gliese 581, which has a mass of 1.9 Earths. In 2009, Nasa launched the Kepler satellite, a probe specifically designed to look for Earth-like planets.

Future generations of ground-based telescopes, such as the proposed European Extremely Large Telescope (with a 30m main mirror), could be operational by 2030, and would be powerful enough to image the atmospheres of faraway planets, looking for chemical signatures that could indicate life. The Seti Institute also, finally, has a serious piece of kit under construction: the Allen Array (funded by a $11.5m/£7.5m donation from Microsoft co-founder Paul Allen) has, at present, 42 radio antennae, each six metres in diameter, but there are plans, if the Seti Institute can raise another $35m, to have up to 300 radio dishes.

In all the years that Seti has been running, it has managed to look carefully at less than 1,000 star systems. With the full Allen Array, they could look at 1,000 star systems in a couple of years.

Shostak is confident that, as telescope technology keeps improving, Seti will find an ET signal within the next two decades. "We will have looked at another million star systems in two dozen years. If this is going to work, it will work soon."

And what happens if and when we detect a signal? "My strenuous advice will be that the coordinates of the transmitting entity should be kept confidential, until the world community has had a chance to evaluate what it's dealing with," Davies told the Guardian recently. "We don't want anybody just turning a radio telescope on the sky and sending their own messages to the source."

But his colleague, Shostak, says we should have no such concerns. "You'll have told the astronomical community – that's thousands of people. Are you going to ask them all not to tell anybody where you're pointing your antenna? There's no way you could do that.

"And anyway, why wouldn't you tell them where [the alien lifeform] is? Are you afraid people will broadcast their own message? They might do that but, remember, The Gong Show has already been broadcast for years." And, for that matter, the Beatles.

Source: Science news, comment and analysis | guardian.co.uk | 30 Apr 2010 | 1:00 am

Japan seeks arrest of anti-whaling ship chief (AFP)

AFP - Japan is seeking an international arrest warrant for the head of anti-whaling group Sea Shepherd over high-seas clashes in Antarctic waters, media reports said Friday.

Source: Yahoo! News: Science News | 30 Apr 2010 | 12:45 am

Plastic Made From Algae Is Crazy Green

Just imagine if all the plastic around us was made from algae. We'd have thoroughly green car parts, bottles, containers, keyboards. In several years, this could be real. A California-based company is currently putting their algae plastic prototype to the ...
Source: Discovery News - Top Stories | 29 Apr 2010 | 9:59 pm

Gulf state shrimpers sue BP over oil spill (Reuters)

Reuters - Shrimpers in Louisiana and Alabama have filed class-action lawsuits against oil giant BP Plc and owners of the drilling platform that exploded in the Gulf of Mexico, as claims for economic losses anticipated from the disaster began to mount.

Source: Yahoo! News: Science News | 29 Apr 2010 | 8:21 pm

Pressure Mounts on Chevron to Disclose Burma Revenue (OneWorld.net)

OneWorld.net - BANGKOK, Apr 29 (IPS) - When shareholders of the multinational company Chevron gather for their annual meeting in the U.S. city of Houston in late May, they will come face to face with Naing Htoo, whose community has suffered due to the exploits of the energy giant in military-ruled Burma.
Source: Yahoo! News: Science News | 29 Apr 2010 | 7:52 pm

Why this man knows his genetic destiny

A scientist has had all his DNA screened for what diseases he may succumb to in later life.
Source: BBC News | Science & Environment | UK Edition | 29 Apr 2010 | 6:51 pm

Humans Interbred with Neanderthals, Study Suggests (LiveScience.com)

LiveScience.com - Humans today could be part Neanderthal, according to a new study that found our ancestors interbred with an extinct hominid species some millennia ago.
Source: Yahoo! News: Science News | 29 Apr 2010 | 6:03 pm

Doctors use gene sequence to predict health risks (AP)

AP - The next time Stephen Quake is prescribed a drug, he says he won't worry about having a bad reaction. The Stanford University professor will simply consult his genome to see if there are any warning signs in his DNA.
Source: Yahoo! News: Science News | 29 Apr 2010 | 5:57 pm

Iceland has longest-lived men, U.S. scores poorly

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - AIDS, smoking and obesity are reversing progress made in helping people live longer around the world, with mortality rates worsening over the past 20 years in 37 countries, researchers reported on Thursday.
Source: Reuters: Science News | 29 Apr 2010 | 4:58 pm

Gene scan shows man's risk for heart attack, cancer

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - A California college professor who sequenced his own genome has had it analyzed -- and discovered he has a high risk of dropping dead of a sudden heart attack, as well as a high prostate cancer risk.
Source: Reuters: Science News | 29 Apr 2010 | 4:53 pm

Coast Guard May Experiment with New Oil Cleanup Technique

BP, the Coast Guard and the Minerals Management Service are jointly considering an experimental technique of applying the oil dispersant underwater, directly at the source of the oil leak.
Source: Livescience.com | 29 Apr 2010 | 4:44 pm

Healthy genome used to predict disease risk in later life

A study by a Stanford University scientist, published in the Lancet, is the first to use the full genome to glean information on somebody's future wellbeing

For the first time, doctors have used the genetic profile of an apparently healthy middle-aged man to predict his risk of developing dozens of diseases in later life.

Dr Stephen Quake, a 40-year-old scientist at Stanford University in California, was found to be carrying a rare genetic mutation that can cause a sudden and fatal heart attack, and other genes that boosted his risk of becoming diabetic and obese to more than 50%.

Some genes revealed how Quake would respond to different medications, including a number of heart disease drugs to which he is at risk of reacting badly.

The study, published in the Lancet, is the first to use the full genome of a healthy person to glean information on their future wellbeing and the likelihood of responding well to drugs treatments.

Further gene variants suggest Quake has a 23% risk of prostate cancer, but only a 1.4% chance of developing Alzheimer's disease.

Quake, who sequenced and published his own genome last year, joined forces with colleagues at Stanford to investigate how useful the information was in predicting his future health.

The scientists began by building a database of gene variants and their links to medical conditions, ranging from obesity and schizophrenia to diabetes and gum disease.

Atul Butte, who worked on the study, said: "We read thousands of publications and made a list of every single spot in the genome where we know that, for example, the letter A raises the risk of a particular disease, or the letter T confers protection."

The scientists used a computer to produce a combined risk assessment for 55 medical conditions based on Quake's genetic make-up, age, gender and other clinical information.

Quake was already aware he carried a gene that put him at risk of a sudden heart attack. The same gene variant was probably responsible for the death of a distant relative, who died unexpectedly in his sleep at the age of 19.

Medical tests showed Quake had no signs of heart defects, but given his risk, doctors suggested he take statins, the cholesterol-lowering drugs usually given to older men at risk of heart disease.

"We're at the dawn of a new age in genomics," Quake said. "Information like this will enable doctors to deliver personalised healthcare like never before. Patients at risk for certain diseases will be able to receive closer monitoring and more frequent testing, while those who are at lower risk will be spared unnecessary tests."

Many genetic tests that claim to measure patients' risk of disease are of limited value, because the only advice doctors can give is to give up smoking, drink less alcohol, eat better and exercise more. With more precise tests, doctors expect to give more refined advice and crucially learn which drugs will work best for their patients.

Speaking about the implications of knowing his own genetic make-up, Quake said: "It's certainly been interesting. I was curious to see what would show up. But it's important to recognise that not everyone will want to know the intimate details of their genome, and it's entirely possible that this group will be the majority."

The rapid advance of genetic technology will soon make it possible to read a patient's complete genome for less than $1,000 (£655). Many doctors expect that the information will become a standard part of a patients' medical records, and will be used to personalise their treatment.

Dr Philippa Brice at the Foundation for Population Health Genomics, an independent genetics thinktank, said: "This is an exemplar of the sort of approach that will become increasingly feasible in the future as the costs of genome sequencing continue to fall."

Brice said the work highlights urgent issues that must be addressed before widespread genetic testing becomes commonplace, including distinguishing between genuinely useful and irrelevant, misleading or even harmful genetic information.

"Prompt action is needed to consider how health services should be preparing for the onset of whole genome-sequencing as a clinical tool, including such areas as the development of the necessary bioinformatic and IT systems, wider societal and regulatory issues related to the more extensive use and storage of personal genomic information, and the development of a health professional workforce with the necessary knowledge and skills," she said.

In an accompanying article, Nilesh Samani, professor of cardiology at the University of Leicester, warned of significant ethical issues surrounding progress in genetic testing.

"Who should have their genome sequenced, what counselling should be provided before and after testing and by whom, and who should have access to an individual's genetic information?" he wrote. "Whereas these issues are familiar in genetic testing, the scale of the data contained within each personal genome, and the potential implication for so many different aspects of an individual's health, mean these issues will need to be even more carefully considered."

Source: Science news, comment and analysis | guardian.co.uk | 29 Apr 2010 | 4:30 pm

World's Smallest World Map: Nano-Scale

IBM researchers in Zurich paint individual atoms to build a 3D Earth so tiny that 1000 of them could fit on one grain of salt.
Source: Livescience.com | 29 Apr 2010 | 4:08 pm

Frogs and humans are kissing cousins

Gene order of shows surprising similarity to that of mammals.<img src="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~r/news/rss/today/~4/207ykD1Iez8" height="1" width="1"/>
Source: NatureNews - All articles published today - nature.com science feeds | 29 Apr 2010 | 4:00 pm

Nature target 'will not be met'

Governments will not meet the target of curbing the loss of species and nature by 2010, a major study confirms.
Source: BBC News | Science & Environment | UK Edition | 29 Apr 2010 | 3:45 pm

Experts: Most of the Gulf Oil Spill Won't Be Cleaned Up

History and science suggest this clean-up effort probably won't end in a spotless environment.
Source: Livescience.com | 29 Apr 2010 | 2:57 pm

Aircraft Lands on Side of Wall, Vertically

If the walls could talk, they'd say, "I think an airplane just landed on me." This unmanned vehicle from a research team at the University flies straight toward a wall and then at the last second raises its nose up ...
Source: Discovery News - Top Stories | 29 Apr 2010 | 2:24 pm

Quake analysis rewrites history books

New Madrid quakes were smaller than originally thought.
Source: NatureNews - All articles published today - nature.com science feeds | 29 Apr 2010 | 2:23 pm

Plan B: California Braces for Climate Change

When it comes to environmental regulation, California doesn’t wait for the Feds to ride in and lay down the law. The Golden State led the way on mandating emissions-control equipment in motor vehicles in 1961. It pioneered tailpipe-emissions standards in 1967 and ratcheted them up into the 1990s, prompting the federal government to follow. When the Environmental Protection Agency proved reluctant to tighten fuel-economy standards, California outmaneuvered it in 2002 by limiting carbon dioxide from cars. That decision achieved the same end — and was the first move in the United States to control greenhouse gases.

And so it goes with climate change. By the mid-2000s, when the rest of the country was waking up to the challenge of global warming, California was already pursing an aggressive program to assess the likely damage. According to the state energy commission’s climate research, the U.S. west coast faces sea-level rise of 12 to 18 inches by 2050, and as much as nearly six feet by the turn of the century. Precipitation is projected to fall increasingly as water rather than snow, draining into the sea rather than lying in cold storage until the long, dry summers. Higher-than-average temperatures and more frequent extreme weather promise heat waves, wildfires, droughts and floods.

The sense of impending crisis sent California Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger into action-hero mode. In 2006, he signed the Global Warming Solutions Act, capping carbon emissions statewide throughout all activities and sectors. Then, last December, he stood on Treasure Island — an expanse of landfill in the San Francisco Bay that stands to be inundated by the upwelling of glacial melt — and unveiled the 2009 California Climate Adaptation Strategy, a plan to prepare for what many scientists regard as inevitable changes. “We have the responsibility to have a Plan B just in case we can’t stop the global warming,” he said, apparently missing the document’s emphatic assertion that mitigation (making efforts to minimize the onset of climate change) and adaptation (learning to live with it) are equally necessary and inherently complementary undertakings.

The strategy document is 200 pages of meticulously footnoted, thoroughly bureaucratic prose that directs state agencies to take climate change into account. Individual chapters are devoted to seven critical sectors: agriculture, biodiversity, coastal resources, energy and transportation, forestry, public health, and water supply and flood protection. The plan outlines the range and severity of potential impacts — eroding coastlines, flooded freeways, extended wildfire seasons, devastating disease outbreaks. The executive summary lists a dozen action items and an appendix of 163 further recommendations.

Mostly, these directives call for better coordination between federal, state and local regulators; updating existing resource-management plans in light of the latest scientific findings; ongoing research to sharpen estimates of impending change; and funding to accomplish these aims and, presumably, the more concrete actions that would follow. Perhaps most interesting is the recommendation to create a website called CalAdapt that would mash up government data with Google maps, providing officials with up-to-date visualizations of rising waters, increasing temperatures and other risks.

Not all of this is new. California’s coastal and water agencies have been planning for the impact of climate change since the mid-1980s. Until the turn of the century, though, adaptation was a dirty word in Sacramento. “You got slapped on the head if you mentioned it,” says Anthony Brunello, who worked for the Pew Center for Global Climate Change from 1999 to 2001. “It equated to giving up.”

But evidence began to mount that the effects were already being felt, particularly a 7-inch rise in sea level at the Golden Gate over the past century, which convinced even hard-core advocates of mitigation that it wasn’t too early to consider, say, building sea walls. In late 2008, Schwarzenegger ordered the California Natural Resources Agency to look into what it would take to adapt to the changes wrought by global warming.

By then, Brunello had become California’s Deputy Secretary for Climate Change and Energy — and the state was deep into a fiscal crisis. He directed state agencies to form sector-specific working groups that invited business leaders, academics and NGOs to help hash out the strategy. The governor released the plan just in time for the Copenhagen climate summit — only to see it swept off the front pages when leaked e-mails from eminent climate scientists sparked the Climategate scandal.

That was a pity because — lack of bold proposals notwithstanding — the Climate Adaptation Strategy is a significant step forward in the U.S. response to climate change. “Of the dozen states published or working on plans that include adaptation measures, California stands out for the breadth and depth,” says Terri Cruce, a climate researcher with the Pew Center for Global Climate Change and the Georgetown Climate Center. (Cruce maintains a website detailing climate-change adaptation initiatives on a state-by-state basis.) The report covers every state agency and reaches into every vital sector that’s touched by climate change. Most important, it establishes a permanent task force to guide implementation, so the effort won’t die when Schwarzenegger leaves office. And although it may seem trendy, the CalAdapt website looks like an especially smart move, creating a convenient, cost-effective way for officials see how latest projections play out in their jurisdiction.

Which is not to say the document is perfect. “It’s a strategy, not a plan,” Cruce notes — a set of general directions, not a detailed roadmap. Generally, action items are divided between politically low-cost/low-impact maneuvers (such as adding agricultural inspection stations to catch pests following warmer temperatures northward) and more ambitious goals (a host of measures to restore wetlands that would absorb storm surges) with no deadline, budget or process attached.

The milquetoast language of many recommendations (”Consider requiring applicants to address how sea-level rise will affect their project….”) leaves officials with any number of ways to avoid taking action. Moreover, economic analysis is almost entirely absent. Given that both adaptation and mitigation will have a price tag, it’s impossible to know which is more expensive in any given case. Is it more costly to cut emissions or relocate San Francisco International Airport on higher ground? And where will the money come from?

The strategy’s harshest critics believe that such flaws render it ineffectual. Susanne Moser, a geographer who worked as a consultant on the project, dismisses the near-term goals as merely “best practices” and the long-term objectives as unattainable without a more forceful mandate. But she finds some good in the effort. The most important outcome, she says, isn’t the document itself but a cultural shift in Sacramento: The disparate agencies, accustomed to competing for jurisdiction and funding, have discovered the value of cooperation. “They realized they needed to work together if they were going to get beyond business as usual,” she says. “That’s a huge shift — from ‘I don’t want to talk to these people’ to ‘let’s work together.’ It will make all the difference moving forward.”

Despite weaknesses in the plan, most observers view it as an important first step. “There’s a broad range of decision makers,” says Matt Vander Sluis, who contributed to the effort as global warming program manager at the Planning and Conservation League, an environmental lobbying group based in Sacramento. “Some get it, but others need this type of guidance to wrap their heads around the problem.” One immediate result, he points out, is that officials will think twice about approving proposed San Francisco Bay Area developments that would stand below sea level. “It’s a useful set of recommendations,” he says. “Now, state and federal decision makers need to make the investment in carrying them out, because without resources, it’s going to be like trying to put out a fire without a fire hose.”

The follow-up is already underway, starting with the top-line directive: formation of a task force to establish future priorities. William Reilly, who served as the first President Bush’s head of the Environmental Protection Agency, leads the group, which is due to report its recommendations to the governor by summer. Meanwhile, the strategy will be updated every two years. By the time the first biennial review rolls around in late 2011, the short-term goals should be complete and presumably the roadmap to the more politically challenging recommendations will have been sketched in. That is, unless California finds that adapting to the new politics of climate change even harder than responding to the change itself.

This report was produced by the Climate Desk collaboration.

Image: The central San Francisco Bay coastline has areas, including the San Francisco International Airport, that will be inundated by a 16-inch sea-level rise (in light blue) and a 55-inch sea-level rise (in dark blue)./San Francisco Bay Conservation and Development Commission.

See Also:

• What Climate Change Means for Wine Industry
• Treating Climate Change as a Curable Disease
• Betting on Climate Change: Corporations Stand to Make or Lose Billions
• Attractive Nuisance: Should Judges Help Tackle Climate Change?
• The Coming Tide of Global Climate Lawsuits
• Fair and … Carbon Neutral?

Ted Greenwald is a writer and editor in Northern California.

Source: Wired: Wired Science | 29 Apr 2010 | 2:07 pm

Twist, Flick, Tap: New Way to Operate Mobile Electronics

Researchers have created a new way for users to interact with their mobile electronics.
Source: Livescience.com | 29 Apr 2010 | 2:06 pm

Frogs Surprisingly Like Humans, Genetically Speaking

African clawed frogs have more in common with humans than you might think, according to their newly sequenced genome.
Source: Livescience.com | 29 Apr 2010 | 1:14 pm

Gulf Oil Spill of 'National Significance': White House

Government officials are racing to the scene, but time may be running out.
Source: Discovery News - Top Stories | 29 Apr 2010 | 1:10 pm

California's Beautiful Tectonic Jigsaw

New geological maps reveal another level of California's enchanting natural wonders.
Source: Discovery News - Top Stories | 29 Apr 2010 | 12:38 pm

Bizarre Frogs, Lizards, and Salamanders

Legless amphibians with tentacles on their heads and ghost frogs are just a few of the world's weirdest amphibians.
Source: Livescience.com | 29 Apr 2010 | 12:07 pm

What Cuba Can Teach Us About Health Care

Just a morning’s boat ride from the tip of Florida is a place where medical costs are low and doctors plentiful. It’s Cuba, and Stanford University physician Paul Drain says it’s time for the United States to pay attention to our neighbor’s shoestring success.

Despite a 50-year trade embargo by the United States and a post-Soviet collapse in international support, the impoverished nation has developed a world-class health care system. Average life expectancy is 77.5 years, compared to 78.1 years in the United States, and infant and child mortality rates match or beat our own. There’s one doctor for every 170 people, more than twice the per-capita U.S. average.

Not everything is perfect in Cuba. There are shortages of medicines, and the best care is reserved for elites. But it’s still a powerful feat. “In Cuba, a little over $300 per person is spent on health care each year. In the U.S., we’re spending over $7,000 per person,” said Drain, co-author of Caring for the World and an essay published April 29 in Science. “They’re able to achieve great health outcomes on a modest budget.”

With Fidel Castro’s reign as Cuba’s leader ending two years ago, relations with the United States have thawed. President Obama eased restrictions on travel to Cuba last year, and the oft-introduced Free Trade With Cuba Act finally has a chance of passing Congress. Drain would like the Institutes of Medicine to conduct a full study of the island nation’s success.

“There are so many lessons we might be able to learn from Cuba’s health care and medical education system, but we don’t know too much about it,” said Drain.

Wired.com: How does Cuba keep health care costs so low?

Paul Drain: Partly by keeping physicians’ salaries low. Obviously, given the government they have, they can do that. But they also emphasize primary care and preventive care, addressing diseases and problems before they become major. It’s a very different approach to health care.

In the United States, we essentially do the opposite. We treat diseases when they occur. We’re not very good at the preventive component, which causes the costs of our health system to be much higher.

Wired.com: What are the origins of Cuba’s approach?

Drain: Starting in 1964, they encouraged all medical school graduates to do at least two years of service in a rural area. That program became so popular that by the mid-1970s, almost all new physicians were doing rural service. From there, almost all medical graduates were channeled into a three-year family medicine residency. That’s where they do clinical training, making the transition to full doctor from medical student.

Almost all their residents do family medicine. They focus on primary care for all ages. Once everybody learns primary care, about 35 percent go on and specialize. It’s quite the opposite of what we have here.

Wired.com: How so?

Drain: Our medical students choose what they want to do. Only about 7 or 8 percent go into family medicine, which is our primary care system. In Cuba, everyone becomes a primary care doctor. They learn to prevent diseases.

Cuba also provides very good access. In the mid-1980s, they created a system of neighborhood doctors’ clinics. One doctor is responsible for a catchment area of a couple of city blocks. They get to know their patients well. If somebody has a problem, they can see the doctor in the clinic that day.

Wired.com: Could the U.S. government ever mandate a system like that?

Drain: It would be a big leap, but there are smaller steps that could be taken. We’re the only developed country without universal access to a nationalized health care system. Other countries have seen health care as a basic right and insured everybody. Everyone gets primary care. That would be a first step.

I saw someone in my clinic yesterday who hadn’t seen a doctor in 10 years. Her blood pressure was through the roof, and it’s probably been like that for a decade. She’s at tremendous risk for having a stroke or heart problems. If she’d seen somebody back when this started, it could have been controlled. But because of her high blood pressure, who knows what her future medical bills will be like.

If she were in the Cuban system, she would have had a visit scheduled yearly for the last 10 years. If she hadn’t shown up, someone would have gone to her home to see if she was OK. Blood pressure is an easy thing to check. It would have been controlled.

Wired.com: One problem in the United States is the shortage of doctors. How does Cuba train physicians?

Drain: Education is paid by the government, so students don’t have debt. In the United States, medical students come out $200,000 or $300,000 in the hole, which deters them from going into primary care. Cuban doctors are making a fraction of what we make in the U.S., but most Cubans aren’t going into medicine to earn money. They’re going into it to treat people in their communities.

In 1999, Cuba created a school of medicine for Latin America. They bring students in, train them for six years, give them room and board and a stipend. Afterward the students are required to go home and practice in poorer communities. It’s a remarkable program, with 10,000 students now from 33 countries, and an interesting model for developing health care workers.

Wired.com: Do President Obama’s health reforms move the United States toward what’s seen in Cuba?

Drain: What we’re passing is starting to move us in a better direction. I’m an advocate for universal health care, and there’s still a long way to go. But I think we’ll eventually catch up to our western counterparts, and realize that we’re the only country not providing full equity in terms of accessing health care, and that’s reflected in health outcomes. When you compare us against most developed countries, we’re near the bottom in most health indicators. Our life expectancy isn’t as good, our infant mortality rates are higher, and we’re spending twice as much money.

Image: Cuba and the southern tip of Florida./NASA.

See Also:

• A Cuban Space Program?
• Gadgets and Ideas to Revolutionize Health Care
• Doctor Urges Creation of ‘Science of Health Care Delivery’
• Report Pushes Open Access to Improve Health Care
• To Pay for Health Care, Treat Aging
• Obama’s Computerized Hospital Vision May Have Blind Spot

Citation: “Fifty Years of U.S. Embargo: Cuba’s Health Outcomes and Lessons.” By Paul K. Drain and Michele Barry. Science, Vol. 328 No. 5977, April 30, 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 | 29 Apr 2010 | 11:55 am

'Grieving' chimps need more research

Recent chimpanzee images have been taken as proof animals share human emotions – but more rigorous study is required

Who could have seen, and not been moved by, the video shown this week of a group of chimpanzees apparently mourning the death of Pansy, an elderly member of their troupe? The chimps gathered around her, moving her bedding gently and apparently checking her breathing. The video accompanying a report in the journal Current Biology was offered to support the idea that chimpanzees share human emotions like grief. Last year an equally striking image had shown a group of chimpanzees watching as the body of one of their group was carried off. The chimps stood silently, their arms around each other's shoulders, apparently consoling one other.

Both these images received widespread media coverage. Most was highly sympathetic to the idea that animals, especially primates, share human emotions like grief, sadness, and even empathy. Much of the coverage referred to the growing body of "evidence" for this, mentioning Marc Bekoff's claim to have witnessed magpie "funerals" and to the well-documented accounts of elephant behaviour when one of their herd dies.

I welcome the interest in this subject and openness to the idea of animal emotions. For many years now I have wanted to see an end to claims of human superiority based on the belief that animals, even if they feel, do not have the "higher" emotions of humans based on the capacity for symbolisation and self-awareness. For too long those Judeo Christian beliefs in human superiority have justified dominance, exploitation of and especially abuse of animals. So interest in animal emotions seems like an important first step in changing consciousness about our relationship with other species. But this does not necessarily mean that presented with such wonderful images, we should resign our critical faculties or fail to interrogate flaws the evidence.

This new report is a case in point. The popular media has taken it up as "scientific" proof of animal emotions. Yet the interpretation of the behaviour as grief lacks substantial data to back it up and does not offer a more extensive study telling us what animals might be feeling and what those feelings are.

Stuart Semple is a reader in evolutionary anthropology at Roehampton Unviersity who has been involved in the study of animal behaviour and is concerned about the dangers of presenting speculation as fact and observation as science. Of the grieving chimps video he says: "It's a classic case of anthropomorphism: the projection of human feelings onto animals, which is made easier because of their physiological resemblance to humans.'' Looking at the Daily Mail coverage it's hard not to see his point. In one photo a chimp with a rather ambiguous expression is shown sitting holding a banana. The caption reads "Chippy the chimp looks downcast while clutching a banana in an enclosure". It doesn't take a semiotician to point out we'd see something totally different if the caption was changed to "Candy sits in his enclosure clutching his stolen banana".

Of course, there are also dangers with these accusations of anthropomorphism. Anthropomorphism is a term of insult, much beloved by lecturers in cultural studies and one of the key ways in which the human species has been able to disregard the abuse we have inflicted on animals. Nevertheless, Semple is right to suggest caution. The real issue, he thinks, is not any dispute about the existence of animal emotions but more a matter of establishing what exactly it is animals might be feeling and what those emotions are.

Semple points to recent research which measured stress levels and social responses to baboons who lost close relatives. Bereaved baboons showed an increase in stress hormones and increased levels of social grooming: very similar responses to humans. "This kind of evidence is more compelling," says Semple. "It's rigorous and scientific. It allows us to speculate on what they are feeling or not."

Why is this distinction between speculative observation and more rigorous study important? It's not because it would allow us to turn our back on animal welfare issues. Being cautions about conflating animal and human emotions doesn't mean assuming the absence of emotions. Professor Marian Dawkins, regarded as the world leading advocate of the scientific approach to animal emotions, nevertheless advocates pragmatism. In the absence of certainty about what exactly animal emotions are, we should behave towards animals as if they do share emotions. We should give them the benefit of the doubt and ensure the highest standards of animal welfare across the board.

The most important reason, however, for why this distinction is important is in case we go to the opposite extreme and make just as serious mistakes. If we assume that animals have identical emotions to humans, perhaps we will insist on treating them as human. But until we know what animals really feel and what those feeling really are, then treating them as identical to humans might be just as cruel as ignoring their feelings altogether. All of which suggests that investigating what exactly animals are feeling is one of the most pressing areas of contemporary research.

Source: Science news, comment and analysis | guardian.co.uk | 29 Apr 2010 | 11:40 am

Car Steered With Eyes

Look mom, no hands! Can you imagine driving a car by using just your eyes? A group of researchers at the Freie Universität Berlin developed the eyeDriver software, which steers a car with eye movements. Cameras mounted on the driver's ...
Source: Discovery News - Top Stories | 29 Apr 2010 | 11:32 am

Gene Grows Worm Heads

A worm named Schmidtea mediterranea has the unique ability to regenerate not only its limbs, but also its head and brain. Now, scientists studying the worm have discovered one of the genes that allows it to accomplish this amazing feat.

The gene, called “smed-prep,” regulates the location and structure of the flatworm’s brain during regeneration. When the gene is absent, the worm forms a stump with random junk from other parts of its body, but no brain. When it’s expressed in other areas of the body, heads can be made to sprout from anywhere.

“One of the main goals in the lab was to understand the mechanisms that allowed this worm to regenerate its head, brain and sensory organs,” said molecular biologist Aziz Aboobaker of the University of Nottingham, lead author of the paper published in PLoS Genetics April 22. “It’s a big problem because you have to make this all from the old tissue. The cells have to mobilize, migrate to the right place and differentiate.”

The S. med worm is small, but has complex organs and a primitive bilateral brain. Not only can it regenerate its head and brain, but each piece you cut off (down to about 1 millimeter) can re-grow into a complete organism. The worm can do this because about 25 percent of its cells are stem cells, which can differentiate into any cell type.

To find the gene, Aboobaker scanned the worm’s genome looking for developmental genes. After testing several other genes, Aboobaker’s team stumbled upon smed-prep, whose expression was concentrated in the worm’s head region.

To see how the gene affected the worm’s ability to regenerate, they tricked the cell into destroying any messenger RNA or protein made from it, using interfering RNA. The worms who had their gene expression cut down were unable to regenerate their brains after amputation, but other aspects of the regeneration process were unaffected.

“That’s the interesting thing, we haven’t killed them off, they are still healthy,” Aboobaker said. “They just can’t navigate or find food.”

Humans have a gene that is similar in biochemical structure and genetic code to smed-prep, but its function in humans is unknown. Related genes in other vertebrates, like mice and zebrafish, are expressed in the brain during embryo formation.

“The most interesting aspect of this paper is its evolutionary perspective,” said cell biologist Alejandro Sánchez Alvarado, of the University of Utah, because C. elegans (a commonly studied worm) and drosophila (the fruitfly) do not appear to have evolved a directly corresponding gene. Alvarado previously discovered two other genes involved with S. med’s head regeneration process.

The worm and its properties can teach us more about human health, because it’s a good model system to learn about stem cells, regeneration and aging, said Aboobaker.

“You can’t just make neurons from stem cells, then insert them into your brain, because you have no idea what would happen,” he said. “If you ask someone to make you a brain from a ball of tissue, they won’t be able to, because we don’t know how. But the worm does.”

The team’s next step is to determine what other genes are regulated when smed-prep is turned on and off. ”Finding [smed-prep] means you can find which genes don’t turn on properly when it is knocked down,” Aboobaker said. “Those are the genes that must be involved in this network that makes the brain.”

Image: Wikimedia Commons/Alejandro64

See Also:

• Salamander Discovery Could Lead to Human Limb Regeneration
• Scientists Search Starfish For Key to Human Regeneration
• First Animals Found That Live Without Oxygen
  
• World’s Freakiest Worm Gets Expanded Family Tree

Citation: “The TALE Class Homeobox Protein Smed-prep Defines the Anterior Compartment for Head Regeneration.” By Daniel A. Felix and A. Aziz Aboobaker. PLoS Genetics Vol. 6, Issue 4, April 22, 2010.

Source: Wired: Wired Science | 29 Apr 2010 | 11:13 am

Vision Improves With the Right Outlook

Could a little motivation help you to focus your eyesight?
Source: Discovery News - Top Stories | 29 Apr 2010 | 11:05 am

See Better by Believing You Can

Imagine seeing better by thinking differently. That’s a vision with a future, according to Harvard University psychologist Ellen Langer.

Eyesight markedly improved when people were experimentally induced to believe that they could see especially well, Langer and her colleagues report in the April Psychological Science. Such expectations actually enhanced visual clarity, rather than simply making volunteers more alert or motivated to focus on objects, they assert.

Langer’s new findings build on long-standing evidence that visual perception depends not just on relaying information from the eyes to the brain but on experience-based assumptions about what can be seen in particular situations. Those expectations lead people to devote limited attention to familiar scenes and, as a result, to ignore unusual objects and events.

In perhaps the most eye-popping of Langer’s new findings, 20 men and women who saw a reversed eye chart — arranged so that letters became progressively larger further down the chart, with a giant “E” at the bottom — accurately reported more letters from the smallest two lines than they did when shown a traditional eye chart with the big letters on top. All volunteers had normal eyesight.

These results reflect people’s expectation, based on experience with standard eye charts, that letters are easy to see at the top and become increasingly difficult to distinguish on lower lines, the researchers suggest.

Participants who said they thought that they could improve their eyesight with practice displayed a bigger vision boost on the reversed chart than those who didn’t think improvement was possible, but only for the next-to-smallest line. Both groups did equally well at reading the smallest, topmost line.

Another set of experiments included 63 members of the Reserve Officers’ Training Corps at MIT. Eye testing determined that their vision ranged from below average to excellent.

An experimenter told a group of 22 cadets to assume the role of a fighter pilot while operating a flight simulator. During this exercise, participants tried to identify letters shown on four plane wings of approaching aircraft. Each wing contained one of the bottom four lines of an eye chart.

Another 20 cadets performed the visual task while pretending to fly a plane in a simulator that they were told was broken. Ten other cadets read a motivational essay before the exercise. A final group of 11 cadets didn’t use a simulator but practiced eye exercises that researchers described as capable of improving eyesight before taking an eye test.

Vision improved substantially for nine of 22 simulator pilots compared with none of those who pretended to fly, two of 11 eye exercisers and one person in the motivational group. Simulator pilots did so well relative to the others because they more thoroughly adopted a mind-set of being real fighter pilots with presumably superior vision, the researchers posit. An initial survey of ROTC members found that they attributed particularly good vision to fighter pilots.

Simulator pilots with below-average vision displayed the biggest jumps in visual performance, perhaps because they had more room for improvement, the researchers suggest.

These results suggest that if eye exercise programs designed to improve vision work for some people, it’s not because of any physical effect on the eyes or brain. Such regimens “may be effective because they prime the belief that exercise improves vision,” Langer and her colleagues write.

Mind-set may boost visual performance without sharpening vision itself, comments psychologist Daniel Simons of the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. Experimental manipulations in the new study, such as reversing the arrangement of an eye chart, may have made volunteers more willing to guess when they felt a bit unsure, Simons says. Such guesses stand a good chance of being right, in his view.

Image: lenoz/flickr

See Also:

• Nearsightedness Increasing in U.S.
• Semiconductor Tech Diagnoses Eye Disease Over the Internet
• Secret Math of Fly Eyes Could Overhaul Robot Vision
• Schizophrenic Brains Not Fooled by Optical Illusion
• Adults Fooled by Visual Illusion, But Not Kids

Source: Wired: Wired Science | 29 Apr 2010 | 11:04 am

Little-Known Disorder: People Can't Recognize Faces

Some people can't remember names. Thomas Grueter can't hold onto a face. And there are probably many others like him that stay under the radar.
Source: Livescience.com | 29 Apr 2010 | 10:48 am

Study at sea assesses ash impacts

Scientists hope to gather "unique data" on the impact of volcanic ash from the eruption in Iceland on marine biology.
Source: BBC News | Science & Environment | UK Edition | 29 Apr 2010 | 10:04 am

Do Nature Films Deny Animals Their Right to Privacy?

New research argues that wildlife documentaries may deny animals their right to privacy.
Source: Discovery News - Top Stories | 29 Apr 2010 | 9:37 am

Science matters

Concern that science is being left off election agenda
Source: BBC News | Science & Environment | UK Edition | 29 Apr 2010 | 9:16 am

Rattlesnakes, Avoiding Roads, Become Inbred

Why did the rattlesnake cross the road? It didn't, and that's a problem, say conservationists.
Source: Discovery News - Top Stories | 29 Apr 2010 | 9:12 am

NASA may stretch out Mars missions to save money

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - NASA is considering a plan to get around limited budgets set in Washington by stretching out missions to bring back samples from Mars, a researcher said on Wednesday.
Source: Reuters: Science News | 29 Apr 2010 | 9:11 am

New Species of Ancient Flying Reptile Discovered

An ancient reptile with a 9-foot wingspan was soaring over the sea in what is now North Texas some 95 million years ago when – plop – it fell into the water and died.
Source: Livescience.com | 29 Apr 2010 | 9:08 am

Giant NASA Balloon Crashes, Destroys Telescope

The Nuclear Compton Telescope (NCT) was being prepared for launch in Australia, but the wind changed direction, dragging the NCT across the launch site, smashing into a parked SUV. No injuries are reported.
Source: Discovery News - Top Stories | 29 Apr 2010 | 8:53 am

Are the Greens still anti-science?

We challenged the main political parties to answer key questions about their science policies. Here, Martin Robbins analyses the responses from the Green party

Read the Greens' answers in full here

When we put questions to the parties ahead of the European elections last year, the Green party performed miserably, attracting considerable criticism for a range of policies from banning GM research to pushing alternative medicine for the treatment of cancer.

Since then, and in direct response to our criticism, more rational elements in the party have made an effort to reform policy in a number of areas to ensure that it has a scientific basis. Have their efforts paid off?

The Green party manifesto is considerably more polished than last year's, with a focus on radical left policies centred on community, "fairness" and of course the environment. Radical action on climate change is promised, with the party pushing for reductions in CO₂ emissions of 10% a year, achieved mostly through punitive measures against businesses such as heavy taxation on water consumption and air travel.

In fact, reading their policies on climate is like being faced with a sort of "anti-Ukip", and in many ways – while well-intentioned – equally unrealistic.

On a more positive note, the Greens are excellent on drugs policy, and it is refreshing to see a party highlighting the issue of managing Britain's water supplies, a problem that is likely to loom much larger in the future.

So how do they score on our questions?

Brian Cox: Science funding

Do you plan to maintain Britain's science budget below the European average?

The Greens admit, refreshingly, that they don't yet know what they would spend on scientific research, and focus instead on a "radical commitment" to jobs in high-tech manufacturing and research as part of their wider, ambitious plans to reshape the economy into a nicer, greener form. This isn't an analysis of economic policy, which I suspect is a good thing for the Greens, but certainly they appear to understand the importance of science and technology to Britain's future prosperity.

Alternative medicine

If the balance of evidence suggests that a treatment does not perform any better than placebo, should it be supported by the NHS?

In a welcome U-turn since last year, Redding states that, "Our policy is that any medicine or treatment available on the NHS should be backed up by scientific evidence." Their manifesto uses rather more compromising language, likely reflecting the internal debates in the party over this policy over the past year, pledging to, "make available on the NHS complementary medicines that are cost-effective and have been shown to work." Which is pretty much none of them.

Interestingly, they also seek to reform the labelling of medicines, with a pledge to make sure they carry an accurate list of all ingredients. Presumably homeopathic remedies would carry a blank label.

Simon Singh: Libel reform

What will your party do to reduce the chilling effect of our libel laws on science? Currently there is no statutory public interest defence, so scientists risk running the gauntlet of London's High Court if they publish material they believe to be in the public interest, but that a major corporation or litigious charlatan believes to be libellous.

Party leader Caroline Lucas is herself a signatory to the Libel Reform Campaign pledge, so no problems here.

Climate change/Energy

Should nuclear power be part of our country's strategy for reducing greenhouse gas emissions? How soon can we bring new plants online?

The Greens energy policy is noble, and I would love to believe that it could happen, but the idea of making a 65% cut in CO₂ emissions by 2020 through energy efficiency and renewable energy projects alone seems far-fetched. Unlike the Liberal Democrats, the Greens' dislike for nuclear energy is ideological, but both parties would benefit from presenting a clearer, realistic analysis of how such ambitious targets would be achieved.

David Nutt: Drugs policy

To what extent should drug policy be based on scientific evidence? What evidence, if any, would you require to declassify a drug?

Drug policy is the highlight of the Green manifesto, and by far their strongest policy area. Their approach is based on the recognition that drug harm is ultimately a public health problem, not a criminal issue. The Greens also understand that prohibition itself can cause harm, which logically leads to an evidence-based policy of weighing up "any possible health risks from a particular substance against the social harm of criminalising, for example, millions of cannabis users".

Campaigners have noted that the Greens, and the Lib Dems, have slightly watered down some of their views on drug policy for their manifestos.

They should trust the public and be bold.

Animal testing

Is animal testing necessary? Are the ethical concerns outweighed by the benefits? How would you like to see regulations on animal testing change under your government, if at all?

The same can't be said for their policies on animal testing, which remain an unmitigated disaster.

While we're all entitled to our ethical opinions, the party continues to make statements that are about as grounded in reality as Narnia, from the baseless assertion that animal testing somehow increases the risk of adverse reactions in medicine, to the persistent myth that researchers are not interested in better, cheaper alternatives.

There's also a worrying failure to understand that animal research is not simply used for drug testing, but is the foundation of basic biomedical research. Immunology would barely exist as a research discipline without a ready supply of lab mice. As blogger Gimpy puts it: "They have no understanding of scientific research or medicine."

Incidentally, the "independent patient safety organisation" referred to in the Greens' answer – the Safer Medicines Trust – lists Green party leader Caroline Lucas MEP among its patrons. Independent?

Petra Boynton: Public health

How will your party ensure public health/education campaigns are underpinned by evidence, and how will you evaluate their success? PR companies are increasingly influential in directing both the content and delivery of public campaigns, frequently at the expense of expertise from scientists, healthcare providers and academics.

"Campaigns should be piloted and evaluated, using comparative before-and-after surveys or other means of measuring public awareness, and rolled out to wider populations only if shown to be effective."

With this statement, the Greens join a rapidly emerging cross-party consensus on evidence-based public health campaigns.

Genetic engineering/Stem cell research

Should Britain be at the forefront of research in these areas? What benefits do you believe such research will bring for society?

Happy with stem cell research, the Greens maintain an ideological objection to GM crops. To be fair, they have made some progress since last year in distinguishing between GM crops and wider GM research, which they are happy to let continue. But as with animal testing, the party seems to be in thrall to scientifically illiterate activists.

There are of course some genuine concerns over the behaviour of companies like Monsanto, and there will always be a need to scrutinise claims made for new technologies, but increasingly elements of the Green movement – notably Greenpeace – have adopted a hysterical and unscientific tone on GM food that misinforms the public and prevents sensible debate. The party would do well to step back and engage with independent scientists to improve its understanding of current research.

Ben Goldacre: Pharmaceutical regulation

Do you believe pharmaceutical companies should be forced to publish all the research data they have on the potential benefits and harms of drugs they manufacture?

The Greens go further, and state that all scientific research institutions should publish all relevant research data – a nice idea in theory, although see the caveats I mentioned in my response to Ukip earlier in the week.

The declaration that in order to open up drug production in poorer nations "[drug design] information should be regarded as public property not commercial data" needs considerable clarification. Drug development may cost hundreds of millions of dollars, and Greens should aim to work with pharmaceutical companies to come up with something fair to all parties, rather than simply demanding that they hand over expensive commercial data to competitors.

Conclusion

Their policy in some areas is excellent, and it's tempting to be generous to the Greens. As a party they're well intentioned and admit that they are in the midst of a process of reform:

"We have recently completed a radical overhaul of our health policies which was extremely encouraging. This saw us adopt far stronger policies in areas like complementary therapies and stem cell research and we're intending to approach the science and technology chapters of our policies in the same constructive fashion."

Unfortunately that reform hasn't come quickly enough for this election, and it remains to be seen how entrenched the bad science in areas such as animal testing and GM really is. A lot of work still needs to be done to make the Green party electable on science issues, and it needs to engage with the scientific community to get a much more realistic and balanced understanding of modern science.

Progress has been made, and party members like Redding deserve respect for their achievements so far, but they have a long way to go.

Source: Science news, comment and analysis | guardian.co.uk | 29 Apr 2010 | 8:48 am

Citizen Scientists Look for Mergers in Galaxy 'Zooniverse'

Zooniverse projects studies effects of galaxy mergers with help from citizen scientists.
Source: Livescience.com | 29 Apr 2010 | 8:43 am

NASA Has Big Plans for Humanoid Robot

NASA is making a to-do list for the space station's new humanoid robot. Nicknamed R2, the mechanical crew member's chores could range from the most delicate science experiments to old-fashioned house cleaning.
Source: Science@NASA Headline News | 29 Apr 2010 | 8:02 am

Humans Interbred with Neanderthals, Study Suggests

Humans today could be part Neanderthal, according to a new study that found our ancestors interbred with an extinct hominid species some millennia ago.
Source: Livescience.com | 29 Apr 2010 | 7:24 am

Native Americans Left Carbon Footprints

Early Americans tinkered with the forests by wielding the most powerful tool they had available: fire.
Source: Discovery News - Top Stories | 29 Apr 2010 | 5:00 am