Liver transplantation linked to accelerated cellular aging

Researchers have found that liver transplant recipients develop premature immune senescence, the normal process by which the immune system ages and becomes less effective.
Source: ScienceDaily: Latest Science News | 1 May 2010 | 3:00 pm

Gut bacteria offer new insights -- and hope -- for people with celiac disease

Dietary changes that include probiotics and/or prebiotics (found in some foods) may help alleviate the severity of celiac disease for some patients. According to new research differing intestinal bacteria in celiac patients could influence inflammation to varying degrees.
Source: ScienceDaily: Latest Science News | 1 May 2010 | 3:00 pm

Climate change affects subterranean ecosystems

Changes above the ground, such as a higher concentration of carbon dioxide and increased temperatures have major consequences for the contact zone between plant roots and the soil, according to researchers in the Netherlands.
Source: ScienceDaily: Latest Science News | 1 May 2010 | 3:00 pm

Renewable Energy: Inexpensive metal catalyst can effectively generate hydrogen from water

Researchers have discovered an inexpensive metal that can generate hydrogen from neutral water, even if it is dirty, and can operate in sea water. Experts agree that hydrogen can play a key role in future renewable energy technologies if a relatively cheap, efficient and carbon-neutral means of producing it can be developed.
Source: ScienceDaily: Latest Science News | 1 May 2010 | 3:00 pm

Communication trumps penalties in new study of social-ecological systems

Research conducted in a computerized microworld by scientists show how common-pool resources -- such as fisheries, forests, water systems or even bandwidth -- can be managed effectively by self-organized user groups under certain conditions.
Source: ScienceDaily: Latest Science News | 1 May 2010 | 3:00 pm

More trouble ahead from volcanic ash?

Iceland's Eyjafjallajokull volcano continues to be active, but the full effects of volcanic ash on the aviation industry have yet to be seen, according to an aviation expert from the UK who believes the impact of ash on airplane air-conditioning systems could be serious and will build over the next few weeks as planes begin to 'hoover up' the additional ash in the atmosphere.
Source: ScienceDaily: Latest Science News | 1 May 2010 | 3:00 pm

New vaccines may come from forcing Giardia parasite to display its many disguises

The intestinal parasite Giardia lamblia changes outfits nearly as often as a fashion model on a Parisian runway. With more than 200 protein coats in its molecular wardrobe, this troublesome creature -- the cause of innumerable cases of diarrheal infections each year -- can change its appearance from one instant to the next, throwing the body's immune cells off track. Now, researchers report that Giardia parasites engineered to express all their surface proteins can work as vaccines that could help prevent or mitigate future infections.
Source: ScienceDaily: Latest Science News | 1 May 2010 | 9:00 am

Through the looking glass: Scientists peer into Antarctica's past to see our future climate

In response to growing concerns about our planet's changing climate, rising global temperatures and sea levels, and increasing concentrations of atmospheric carbon dioxide, scientists are looking to the planet's past to help predict its future. New results from a research expedition in Antarctic waters may provide critical clues to understanding one of the most dramatic periods of climatic change in Earth's history -- and a glimpse into what might lie far ahead in our climate's future.
Source: ScienceDaily: Latest Science News | 1 May 2010 | 9:00 am

Catching multiple sclerosis before it strikes

Medical researchers have uncovered a new way of detecting MS in the blood. The findings is expected to pave the way for a diagnosis of MS before symptoms can appear, allowing for earlier treatment.
Source: ScienceDaily: Latest Science News | 1 May 2010 | 9:00 am

Big role for microRNA in lethal lung fibrosis

A small piece of RNA appears to play a big role in the development of idiopathic pulmonary fibrosis, according to lung disease researchers. Their study, which is the first to examine microRNAs in the disease, points to novel ways to treat the typically lethal, lung-scarring disease.
Source: ScienceDaily: Latest Science News | 1 May 2010 | 9:00 am

U.S. pressures BP as Gulf oil slick spreads (Reuters)

Reuters - The U.S. government pressured energy giant BP to avert an environmental disaster as a huge, unchecked oil spill reached coastal Louisiana, imperiling fish and shrimp breeding grounds and vulnerable wetlands teeming with wildlife.

Source: Yahoo! News: Science News | 1 May 2010 | 4:14 am

BP plan deemed major spill from Gulf well unlikely (AP)

AP - The worst U.S. oil spill in decades reached into precious shoreline habitat along the Gulf Coast as documents emerged showing British Petroleum downplayed the possibility of a catastrophic accident at the offshore rig that exploded.

Source: Yahoo! News: Science News | 1 May 2010 | 3:34 am

Second Brazil rancher sentenced in U.S. nun murder (Reuters)

Reuters - A court in Brazil sentenced on Saturday a second rancher to 30 years in prison for ordering the murder in 2005 of U.S.-born nun Dorothy Stang, who defended poor peasants and opposed the destruction of the Amazon rain forest.
Source: Yahoo! News: Science News | 1 May 2010 | 2:41 am

BP under fire over US oil spill

Criticism mounts in the US of BP over its handling of the Gulf of Mexico oil spill, as bad weather hampers the clean-up.
Source: BBC News | Science & Environment | UK Edition | 1 May 2010 | 2:36 am

The power of election smears

How putting the facts straight entrenches deeply-held prejudices

Elections are a time for smearing, and the Daily Mail's desperate story about Nick Clegg and the Nazis is my favourite so far. Generally the truth comes out, in time. But how much damage can smears do?

An experiment published this month in the journal Political Behaviour sets out to examine the impact of corrections, and what they found was more disturbing than expected: far from changing people's minds, if you are deeply entrenched in your views, a correction will only reinforce them.

The first experiment used articles claiming that Iraq had weapons of mass destruction immediately before the US invasion. The 130 participants were asked to read a mock news article, attributed to Associated Press, reporting on a Bush campaign stop in Pennsylvania during October 2004.

The article described Bush's appearance as "a rousing, no-retreat defence of the Iraq war" and quoted a line from a genuine Bush speech from that year, suggesting that Saddam Hussein really had WMD, which he could have passed to terrorists. "There was a risk, a real risk, that Saddam Hussein would pass weapons or materials or information to terrorist networks, and in the world after September 11," said Bush, "that was a risk we could not afford to take."

The 130 participants were then randomly assigned to one of two conditions. For half, the article stopped there. For the other half, the article included a correction: it discussed the release of the Duelfer report, which documented the lack of Iraqi WMD stockpiles or an active production programme immediately prior to before the US invasion.

After reading the article, subjects were asked to state whether they agreed with the statement: "Immediately before the US invasion, Iraq had an active weapons of mass destruction programme, the ability to produce these weapons, and large stockpiles of WMD, but Saddam Hussein was able to hide or destroy these weapons right before US forces arrived." Their responses were measured on a five-point scale ranging from "strongly disagree" to "strongly agree".

As you would expect, those who self-identified as conservatives were more likely to agree with the statement. More knowledgeable participants (independently of political persuasion) were less likely to agree. Then the researchers looked at the effect of whether you were also given the correct information at the end of the article, and this was where things got interesting. They had expected the correction would become less effective in more conservative participants, and this was true, up to a point: so for very liberal participants, the correction worked as expected, making them more likely to disagree with the statement that Iraq had WMD when compared with those who were very liberal but received no correction.

For those who described themselves as left of centre, or centrist, the correction had no effect either way. But for people who placed themselves ideologically to the right of centre, the correction wasn't just ineffective, it backfired: conservatives who received a correction telling them that Iraq did not have WMD were more likely to believe that Iraq had WMD than people given no correction. Where you might have expected people to dismiss a correction that was incongruous with their pre-existing view, or regard it as having no credibility, it seems that such information actively reinforced their false beliefs.

Maybe the cognitive effort of mounting a defence against incongruous new facts entrenches you further. Maybe you feel marginalised and motivated to dig in your heels. Who knows? But these experiments were then repeated, in various permutations, on the issue of tax cuts (or rather, the idea that tax cuts had increased national productivity so much that tax revenue increased overall) and stem cell research.

All the studies found the same thing: if a dodgy fact fits with your prejudices, a correction only reinforces these. If your goal is to move opinion, this depressing finding suggests that smears work and, what's more, corrections don't challenge them much: because for people who already agree with you, it only make them agree even more.

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

Japan police hunt 'bee rustlers'

Japanese bee-keepers are warned to be on their guard after a spate of thefts of hives.
Source: BBC News | Science & Environment | UK Edition | 30 Apr 2010 | 9:22 pm

The Mystery 'Middle Child' of the Black Hole Family

In a galaxy, not so far away, two elusive intermediate black holes may have been spotted by NASA's Chandra X-ray Observatory.
Source: Discovery News - Top Stories | 30 Apr 2010 | 6:59 pm

Transitional housing slowly getting built in Haiti (AP)

AP - Unlike the vast majority of earthquake victims still crowded into squalid camps, the simple farmers of this hard-hit village have reason to hope as hurricane season looms.

Source: Yahoo! News: Science News | 30 Apr 2010 | 6:50 pm

James Cameron Building 3-D Camera for Mars Rover

Oscar-winning director James Cameron has come up with some out-of-this-world ideas for his movies, and now his ideas are truly going out of this world.
Source: Discovery News - Top Stories | 30 Apr 2010 | 6:40 pm

Fusion reactor aims to rival ITER

But scientists doubt that IGNITOR will lead to fusion power.<img src="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~r/news/rss/today/~4/BKIxEKkgJQU" height="1" width="1"/>
Source: NatureNews - All articles published today - nature.com science feeds | 30 Apr 2010 | 6:38 pm

U.S. fights to defend fragile coast from big oil spill (Reuters)

Reuters - The U.S. government scrambled on Friday to ward off an environmental disaster that could cost billions of dollars as a huge oil spill reached coastal Louisiana, imperiling shrimp fishing grounds, oyster beds and fragile wetlands with a rich variety of wildlife.

Source: Yahoo! News: Science News | 30 Apr 2010 | 6:26 pm

Which Kentucky Derby Winner Is the Biggest Stud? (LiveScience.com)

LiveScience.com - After a horse wins the Kentucky Derby, you can bet that it becomes as valuable for its breeding ability as it was for its running ability in the race. However, despite 135 years of championship breeding, only one Derby winner has fathered more than one future winner, and just two bloodlines dominate the sport today.
Source: Yahoo! News: Science News | 30 Apr 2010 | 5:20 pm

Another Tablet Falls: HP Slate Canceled

HP has canceled development of the Slate.
Source: Livescience.com | 30 Apr 2010 | 5:17 pm

Some people have God. I have Hubble

For 20 years, the space telescope has been sending us images of breathtaking beauty

This week, pictures taken by Nasa's Solar Dynamics Observatory were published: they show solar flares and storms in incredible detail; the observatory will help us understand the sun's magnetic field and how space weather is generated. Also this week, the Hubble Space Telescope is 20 years old. Hubble is a fantastic achievement; at one point it seemed that, because of a flaw in the mirror, the telescope might be a dud, but it was repaired by astronauts in space and has sent back images of breathtaking clarity and beauty. I've heard the opinion expressed that spending money on this kind of investigation of the universe is wasteful. With so many pressing problems here on Earth, how can we justify expending resources on studying the heavens?

Of course this sort of investigation can bear fruit, which is of practical use to us in our daily lives. But that's only half an answer to the question. At The School of Life – an educational enterprise that brings the history of ideas to bear on modern problems – I teach a class titled How to be Calm. Among other things, we discuss how to gain a sense of perspective on one's life and problems. For people with a religious faith, this can be quite straightforward: if nothing else, the focus on an omnipotent, infinite God can't help making your own difficulties seem entirely surmountable.

But for those of us without faith, I propose the Hubble Deep Field Image as an excellent alternative way to get some perspective. In 1995, the Hubble telescope was pointed for 10 days at a patch of sky which appears completely blank to the naked eye from the Earth. It's a tiny piece – much smaller than the area of sky you'd cover with your little fingernail if you held your arm outstretched. And in that apparently blank area of sky the Hubble Deep Field Image discerned with amazing clarity more than 10,000 galaxies. Each galaxy is made up, on average, of about 100bn stars. Every star could, like our sun, be orbited by planets. That is the size of the universe we live in.

This may not be a thought that makes you feel calm. Although many people find that this sense of scale helps make their own problems seem less enormous, it doesn't work for everyone. For some the sense of how incredibly small we actually are seems to instil terror instead. But perhaps even terrifying perspective is important. In 1968, during the Apollo 8 mission, a photograph known as Earthrise was taken. It shows the Earth, from the moon, rising across the lunar landscape. This photograph has been called "the most influential environmental photograph ever taken". The sense it gave of the Earth as small, beautiful and fragile – the understanding that, whatever our differences, we're all together on one small planet – has been credited with kick-starting the environmental movement of the 1970s.

The Apollo space missions may have come partly out of the paranoia of the cold war, but the legacy they've left has been one that can move us out of tribalism. Hubble's contribution to scientific understanding has been impressive, including information about the speed at which the universe is expanding, investigating black holes and improving our estimates of its age. But the benefits of appreciating the size and scale of our universe aren't limited to science.

If I were in charge of such things, I'd mandate that before every climate change conference, before peace talks and trade negotiations, leaders and policians should spend some minutes contemplating the Hubble Deep Field. This is the size of the universe we may as a species, if we're industrious, resourceful and fortunate, get to explore. This can be our goal: surely one worth pursuing. With so many pressing problems on Earth, how can we afford not to try to focus on the things that unite us? Human beings used to cast their eyes heavenwards in search of divine inspiration, but it turns out that the stars themselves can be inspirational enough.

Sadly, the space programme is one of the casualties of our very Earth-bound financial meltdown. Two weeks ago, President Obama announced that the US is cancelling its ambitious $108bn (£75bn) Constellation programme, which aimed to put a man on Mars by 2030. Instead, there's a more modest and amorphous plan to research new rocket technologies and make a new decision in 2015.

Depressing compromises and scalings-back of big ambitions like this are likely to become increasingly familiar. It's pretty obvious that the current election hoopla is distracting us from thinking about the very painful decisions that are going to have to be made, but in a few days' time those questions will come back to centre-stage.

In the meantime, Channel 4 has made an online game to refocus our attention on the unattractive financial future. Chop or Not starts out humorously: "Startling new research suggests that if you keep spending money eventually it runs out", but presents stark choices. Would you rather halve pension credits, or stop grants to housing charities? Cut 50% of A&Es or stop nuclear decommissioning? Cut all BBC funding or close some primary schools? The game is building up a picture of the preferences of the country: so far it's not looking good for military spending and support for churches, while education and pensions are high on the list of spending to preserve.

Like the Hubble Deep Field Image, what this little game does really well is to give a sense of scale. Human beings often have trouble getting an intuitive sense of very big or very small numbers; it can be hard to fully imagine the difference in scale between a billion and a trillion. Often it's only by turning figures into concrete images that we can really understand them: a blue whale is as long as three double-decker buses, 1m seconds is 12 days, while 1 trillion seconds is 30,000 years.

Releasing 10,000 prisoners sounds like a lot, and it cuts £247m from the deficit, which also sounds like a substantial amount of money. But it barely makes an impact on the row of zeroes of our £152bn deficit. Shutting 40 secondary schools saves £1,600m, but that still doesn't make much of an impact. It's not happy reading. But the only way we're going to make sensible choices is to raise our heads and really start to understand the scale of the problems, and the opportunities that confront us.

Source: Science news, comment and analysis | guardian.co.uk | 30 Apr 2010 | 5:15 pm

Unfavorable Weather Worsens the Gulf Oil Spill

A storm system moving through the area is expected to force rescue boats into port, exacerbating the disaster/
Source: Discovery News - Top Stories | 30 Apr 2010 | 4:29 pm

Why Do Adults Kill Children?

Adults so rarely murder children that psychiatrists and law enforcement officials don’t have enough data to draw any conclusions about possible similarities in the killers’ motives.
Source: Livescience.com | 30 Apr 2010 | 4:14 pm

Reverse-Engineering a Quantum Compass

If the weird rules of atomic physics do help birds find their way around the globe — as some scientists suspect — a new study has identified ways of finding out how.

The study is among the first to propose a direct test of how quantum entanglement, an effect that inexorably links two electrons in a way that Einstein called “spooky,” could change the behavior of whole animals.

“This paper has really made a contribution by suggesting an experimental test,” comments Thorsten Ritz, a physicist at the University of California, Irvine, who was not involved in the new work.

The new paper, which will appear in an upcoming issue of Physical Review Letters, builds on a growing body of evidence that the bizarre rules of quantum mechanics, which govern particles like atoms and electrons, can be exploited by living organisms to solve problems like photosynthesis and navigation.

“For a long time people thought this couldn’t be, because nature is just too messy,” Ritz says. But work over the past decade by Ritz and others suggests that the mechanism birds use to “see” Earth’s magnetic field and navigate accordingly could rely on quantum effects.

Ritz and colleagues previously identified a molecule called cryptochrome, which is found in the nerves of avian eyes, as a candidate for controlling birds’ ability to sense magnetic fields.

Electrons in cryptochrome usually come in pairs, each with an opposite spin like a planet revolving on its axis. But when light strikes the molecule, it can carry one of the electrons away. The presence of a magnetic field can then make each spinning electron wobble like a plate balanced on a stick. When the wayward electron returns to its original molecule, any change it has picked up in its spin sparks a chemical signal that some scientists believe allows birds to see magnetic fields as a pattern of colors.

How this chemical signal gets triggered may depend on whether or not the spins of cryptochrome electrons are intimately entwined in a quantum state called entanglement. When two electrons’ spins are entangled, one always knows what the other is doing, spinwise, even if they’re far apart.

Physicist Hans Briegel and colleagues at the University of Innsbruck in Austria wondered if having entangled electrons in cryptochrome could make birds more sensitive to magnetic fields. The researchers calculated how strongly a pair of electrons with entangled spins should respond to a magnetic field, compared with an unentangled pair.

The results showed that entanglement can be helpful, but maybe not for birds. Briegel and colleagues ran the numbers for cryptochrome and for another molecule, pyrene, a well-studied molecule with little biological significance. For pyrene, they found that entanglement between the electrons’ spins made the particles much more sensitive to magnetic fields. But for cryptochrome, entanglement made no difference.

“This first indication says no,” Briegel says.

A disappointment, perhaps. But spinning off the theoretical work on cryptochrome, the researchers have come up with a way to test this effect in real molecules. Zapping the electron pair with short, energetic bursts of microwaves could reveal whether the electrons are entangled or not. The same calculations used for cryptochrome suggest that if electrons’ spins are entangled, their sensitivity to magnetic field shouldn’t change. If the spins are not entangled, their sensitivity should drop, Briegel says.

This technique could be used to test many different molecules. Finding that different molecules can use entanglement differently highlights the complexity of the role quantum mechanics may play in biology, Briegel says. “This is one example where you would think upon first seeing this, well, that is a proper quantum feature,” he says. “But it requires a closer look. It’s nontrivial because, as we see in our study, it depends on the molecule.”

Briegel imagines jolting individual molecules in a lab, but Ritz hopes to find a way to test quantum entanglement effects in live birds. He’s already doing the legwork to see if it’s possible, he says.

“I’m sufficiently interested in these suggestions to see whether they can be realized, to work on designing experiments,” Ritz says. “There’s a lot of promise there.”

Image: mikebaird/flickr

Source: Wired: Wired Science | 30 Apr 2010 | 4:14 pm

Second Oil Rig Overturns Off Louisiana Coast

No fuel leaks have yet been reported, but the Coast Guard is monitoring the situation.
Source: Discovery News - Top Stories | 30 Apr 2010 | 4:10 pm

Nurse wants elite UK science focus

Incoming head of Royal Society sets out his agenda.
Source: NatureNews - All articles published today - nature.com science feeds | 30 Apr 2010 | 4:00 pm

Space Tourism Firm to Offer Suborbital Joy Rides at Lower Costs (SPACE.com)

SPACE.com - An American space tourism company that arranges multimillion-dollar treks to the International Space Station for the ultra-wealthy has struck a new deal to offer suborbital spaceflights for nearly half the going cost. The price is still steep though: $102,000 for the works.
Source: Yahoo! News: Science News | 30 Apr 2010 | 3:45 pm

Can you hurt a chimp's feelings?

Video footage claiming to show chimps 'grieving' has sparked new debate over the ethical treatment of animals – but we should beware of jumping to conclusions

Is it an invasion of privacy to film an animal in its burrow? Or a whale as it exhibits its penis in a courtship display? Or to use a remote camera to film a bear giving birth in its den? According to a film studies lecturer from the University of East Anglia, it could be. If an animal retreats to its burrow, it obviously doesn't want to be seen, he claims. Unlike the inhabitants of the Big Brother house, these creatures have not given consent. These assertions are a step further along the line from a cautionary ethical approach towards taking care not to disrupt wild behaviour. Instead, Brett Mills appears to be claiming that human emotions can be assumed within animals as well.

It was not the first time this week that recognisable human emotions have been assumed within animal species. A video accompanying a report in the journal Current Biology was released that seemed to demonstrate incontrovertibly a group of chimpanzees exhibiting grief. Anyone who has seen the video would have to have a hard heart not to have been moved. It showed the chimps apparently mourning the death of Pansy, an elderly member of the troop. The chimps gathered around her, moving her bedding gently and checking her breathing. Last year an equally striking image showed chimpanzees gathering to watch as the body of Dorothy, a group matriarch, was carried off. The chimps stood silently, their arms around each other's shoulders.

Both images have received widespread media coverage, most of it sympathetic to the idea that animals, especially primates, share human emotions such as grief, sadness, and even empathy. ITN news framed its report with the claim that "dignity in death may be just as important to chimpanzees as it is to humans". Much of the coverage referred to the growing body of "evidence" for this. The reports mentioned Professor Marc Bekoff's claim to have witnessed a magpie "funeral", where a group of magpies brought pieces of grass to the body of one of their members killed by a bike, and the accounts of how elephants often gather around a dead or dying animal.

I welcome the interest in this subject. For many years 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. This attitude derives from Judeo-Christian assumptions of human superiority, where it is believed that God created the universe and all life within it for man. It is man's use of language and symbolisation ("The Word was God") that marks humanity out from the animals, beliefs that have justified dominance, exploitation and abuse of animals. The increasing 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 we should resign our critical faculties or fail to interrogate flaws in how the evidence is presented.

The popular media have taken the chimp pictures as "scientific" proof of animal emotions. Yet the interpretation lacks substantial data to back it up.

Dr Stuart Semple is a reader in evolutionary anthropology at Roehampton University who has been involved in the study of animal behaviour. He is concerned about the dangers of presenting speculation as science. To him, the grieving chimps video is "a classic case of anthropomorphism, the projection of human feelings on to 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 that we'd see something totally different if the caption was changed to: "Candy sits in his enclosure clutching his stolen banana."

Anthropomorphism is, of course, a term of insult and one of the key ways in which the human species has been able to disregard the abuse we have inflicted on animals. In the past, those who have shouted anthropomorphism most loudly have been those who have disregarded animal welfare issues and have promoted a resolutely "human-centred" version of the universe. Nevertheless, Semple is right to suggest caution. The real issue, he thinks, is less a dispute about the existence of animal emotions, and more a matter of establishing what exactly it is animals might be feeling. "I don't have a problem," he says, "with the idea that we share emotions. It's very likely that we do, since we share the same neurocircuitry. But it's a matter of investigating what emotions they might have and how they might feel, not about making assumptions of direct equivalence with humans."

Semple points to recent research that measured stress and social responses in baboons who had lost close relatives. Bereaved baboons showed an increase in stress hormones and in 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."

Nowhere is this assumption of direct human equivalence writ more large than in the article by Mills about invading the privacy of animals by wildlife filmmaking. He writes: "Many species could be read as desiring not to be seen; animals in burrows and nests have constructed a living space which equates with the human concept of the home, and commonly do this in locations which are, by their very nature, explicitly hidden, often for practical purposes."

"Often for practical purposes" would seem to be the important part of this comment. Is the creature in the burrow hiding for reasons of "privacy" understood in human terms? Or is the burrow a practical response to self-protection? Without a rigorous study of the whole social behaviour and life cycle of the creature of the kind advocated by Semple, any interpretation is likely to be just speculation.

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 cautious about conflating animal and human emotions doesn't mean assuming the absence of emotions. Professor Marion Dawkins, regarded as the world's leading advocate of the scientific approach to animal emotions, nevertheless advocates pragmatism. In the absence of certainty about what animal emotions are, we should behave towards animals as if they do share emotions.

The main reason this distinction is important is in case we go to the opposite extreme. If we assume 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 feelings are, then treating them as identical to humans might be just as cruel as ignoring their feelings. If we take Mills' argument to its logical conclusion, would it mean that we should observe the privacy of a burrowing animal and never film it? What if that study revealed the animal's dependency on a species of plant or the need for conditions that were threatened elsewhere? If we failed to study, to film and to observe, we might lose that creature 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 | 30 Apr 2010 | 3:43 pm

This oil spill 'the bad one' — recipe for disaster (AP)

AP - What makes an oil spill really bad? Most of the ingredients for it are now blending in the Gulf of Mexico.

Source: Yahoo! News: Science News | 30 Apr 2010 | 3:41 pm

Adult Death Rates Lowest in Iceland, Cyprus

If you're a man in Iceland or a woman in Cyprus, you have a lot less to worry about than the rest of us.
Source: Discovery News - Top Stories | 30 Apr 2010 | 3:30 pm

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. "It's been on the beach for a while," Howell says, flipping over the decomposing, dried-out shell.

Source: Yahoo! News: Science News | 30 Apr 2010 | 3:22 pm

Spider Silk as Strong as Kevlar!

Since the time of the ancient Greeks, humans have been using spider silk to dress wounds. Scientists now know spider webs not only have healing qualities, they can be stronger than steel!
Source: Livescience.com | 30 Apr 2010 | 3:08 pm

China Child Attacks: Are They Copycat Crimes?

Some crimes do appear to be contagious, according to experts who study criminology.
Source: Livescience.com | 30 Apr 2010 | 3:06 pm

Does Post Position Affect the Odds of Winning the Derby?

How are post positions are determined, and which one has historically been the most successful?
Source: Livescience.com | 30 Apr 2010 | 2:26 pm

What Causes Corporate Greed?

Greed is universal drive shared by all mankind.
Source: Livescience.com | 30 Apr 2010 | 2:21 pm

Alt Med Supplement Guru Nearly Killed By Own Product

Alternative medicine guru Gary Null is nearly killed by his own supplements.
Source: Discovery News - Top Stories | 30 Apr 2010 | 2:15 pm

Play as Mega Man in New 'Super Mario Brothers' Mashup

A new, unofficial recreation of the original "Super Mario Brothers" video game now allows gamers to play as characters from other iconic titles, including Mega Man and Link from "The Legend of Zelda."
Source: Livescience.com | 30 Apr 2010 | 1:59 pm

9 Super-Cool Uses for Supercomputers

Supercomputers are helping scientists tackle the really big issues.
Source: Livescience.com | 30 Apr 2010 | 1:52 pm

Tracked From Space: Gulf Oil Slick Approaches Land

The oil slick that resulted from the rig explosion on April 20 in the Gulf of Mexico is heading toward the Mississippi Delta and nearby coastline. Some experts are predicting the impact of the oil reaching the marshlands in the area could be bigger than that of the 1989 Exxon Valdez oil spill in Prince William Sound. As hard as it is to clean oil-covered rocks, oily marshland would be far more difficult to deal with.

Experts recently told the New Orleans Times-Picayune that as much as 210,000 gallons of oil a day could be leaking from the well for two months.

The oil slick covers thousands of square miles and is big enough to be easily seen from space by NASA satellites. The following images in this gallery chronicle the oil’s approach, starting with the burning rig a day after the explosion.

April 29, 2010

The natural-color image above was taken April 29 by the MODIS instrument on the Terra satellite. The oil slick can be seen just beyond the delta.

High winds hampered the Coast Guard’s attempts at a controlled burn of the oil at the surface, while the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration worked on containing the oil that was still spilling out at the sea floor, beneath 5,000 feet of water.

One day later, the first reports of oil hitting the coast are already coming in.

Image: NASA

Source: Wired: Wired Science | 30 Apr 2010 | 1:41 pm

Nasal Spray Makes Men More Sensitive, Study Claims

Spray laced with bonding hormone improves empathy in men.
Source: Livescience.com | 30 Apr 2010 | 1:18 pm

Science Nation

Science for the People: Surprising discoveries and fascinating researchers.
Source: Livescience.com | 30 Apr 2010 | 1:09 pm

Gulf spill spells uncertainty for new drilling (AP)

AP - In the conservative Florida Panhandle, where Sarah Palin's battle cry "Drill, Baby, Drill" is still visible on car bumpers, some are reconsidering their support of offshore drilling as a growing spill in the Gulf of Mexico drifts closer to shore.

Source: Yahoo! News: Science News | 30 Apr 2010 | 12:53 pm

Oil Spill Progress Tracked by Satellites

While ground crews work to contain the spill on the ground, satellites are monitoring the oil slick from the skies.
Source: Discovery News - Top Stories | 30 Apr 2010 | 11:35 am

Study to 'unlock tornado secrets'

An international team of researchers embarks on what is described as the "most ambitious tornado study in history".
Source: BBC News | Science & Environment | UK Edition | 30 Apr 2010 | 11:04 am

Vietnam Celebrates Anniversary of War's End

Thirty-five years ago, the city formerly known as Saigon fell, marking the end of the Vietnam War.
Source: Discovery News - Top Stories | 30 Apr 2010 | 10:45 am

Conservationists warn of catastrophe

Oil drifting ashore along the Gulf of Mexico coastline will affect key breeding grounds for seabirds as well as fisheries, wildlife bodies say

• In pictures: Wildlife affected by the oil spill
• Interactive: species under threat

Conservationists monitoring the spread of oil from the Deepwater Horizon rig across the Gulf of Mexico say the situation is at risk of turning into a disaster for the biodiversity in the area. Coastal areas around Louisiana, Mississippi, Alabama and Florida will all potentially be affected by the spill.

Oil that drifts ashore will impact on important breeding grounds for seabirds and many other species, according wildlife experts. Oyster and lobster fisheries could also be badly hit.

"It seems to me yet another man-made environmental tragedy on our hands," said Martin Spray, chief executive of the UK Wildfowl and Wetlands Trust. "The coast of Louisiana has about 40% of the US coastal wetlands so it's a seriously important area. These are incredibly important for their fisheries as well, so there are human livelihoods involved as well."

"The terrible loss of 11 workers may be just the beginning of this tragedy as the oil slick spreads toward sensitive coastal areas vital to birds and marine life and to all the communities that depend on them," said Melanie Driscoll, a conservation director based in Louisiana for the US National Audubon Society (NAS). "For birds, the timing could not be worse - they are breeding, nesting and especially vulnerable in many of the places where the oil could come ashore."

Efforts to stop the oil before it reached shore may not be enough, she said. "We have to hope for the best, but prepare for the worst, including a true catastrophe for birds."

Chris Mann of the Pew Environment Group said: "The Exxon Valdez oil spill provided a mass of scientific data on how oil affects marine life, ecosystems, coastal communities, fisheries and subsistence economies – the effects extend far beyond the inevitable photographs of seabirds, marine mammals and fish covered in oil."

Important bird habitats at risk in the Gulf of Mexico include Chandeleur Islands, Gulf Islands National Seashore in Louisiana and Mississippi and the Active Delta in Louisiana.

The brown pelican, the state bird of Louisiana, nests on islands in the Gulf of Mexico and its breeding season has already started this year. The NAS said many pairs are already incubating eggs. Other species at risk include terns and gulls that nest on the beach, including the Caspian tern, royal tern, laughing gull and the black skimmer. These birds roost on the beaches and also plunge into the water to feed on fish and other marine life. They are therefore at risk from oil on the surface of the water or if it washes ashore.

Similarly, the American oystercatcher, Wilson's plover and snowy plover feed on invertebrates on the beach and could find their sources of food at risk if oil ends up on their sands.

Ocean-dwelling birds such as the magnificent frigatebird could also be affected by oil on the surface of the water that could damage their feathers.

Migratory birds such as plovers and sandpipers are currently on their way from wintering grounds in South America to their breeding grounds near the Arctic. They usually rest and refuel in the Gulf of Mexico on their long journey across the world.

If the oil flows east, it will encounter the seagrass beds that form a key habitat for manatees, among other species.

Carl-Gustaf Lundin, head of the marine programme at the International Union for the Conservation of Nature (IUCN) told the BBC: "If you've got seagrass beds badly contaminated, clearly the manatees could be seriously affected." Less than 2,500 adult manatees remain in the area and are already at risk from climate change and disturbance by boat traffic.

Mann said that the effects of the Exxon Valdez oil spill in Alaska in 1989 can still be found along the beaches in Prince William Sound more than 20 years after the accident. "And research has shown that polyaromatic hydrocarbons - components of crude oil that are highly resistant to weathering - are also highly toxic to marine life."

The accident could also been seen as a warning for those wanting to drill for oil in the Arctic circle, around Alaska. "With decades of experience in drilling in the gulf, and response equipment nearby, the gulf is one of the 'safest' places to drill," said Mann. "If Deepwater Horizon can happen there, it can certainly happen in the Arctic Ocean, where bitter cold, ice, and extreme wind and wave conditions are everyday facts of life and response equipment would be days or even weeks away."

Source: Science news, comment and analysis | guardian.co.uk | 30 Apr 2010 | 10:21 am

Oil Spill: Bracing for Impact: Special Report

Preparations are underway at the shore and on water to try and minimize damage from the Gulf oil spill.
Source: Discovery News - Top Stories | 30 Apr 2010 | 10:16 am

Why Should YOU Care About the Sun?

Because the sun is awesome! Actually, it's more than that. Living with a star impacts our daily lives and the new Solar Dynamics Observatory (SDO) will help us predict its next temper tantrum.
Source: Discovery News - Top Stories | 30 Apr 2010 | 9:49 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 | 7:05 am

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 | 30 Apr 2010 | 5:20 am

Richard Dawkins' watchmaker still has the power to open our eyes

In The Blind Watchmaker, penned by Richard Dawkins almost 25 years ago, Tim Radford rediscovers a writer who is patient, lyrical and immensely persuasive

Next up is The Fabric of Reality by David Deutsch (Penguin, £10.99). Tim will kick off the discussion on Friday 11 June

One sometimes forgets, given his recent combative secular humanism, just how warm and lyrical Richard Dawkins can be. This is a patient, often beautiful book from 1986 that begins in a generous mood and sustains its generosity to the end. It takes its title from a famous sentence in William Paley's Natural Theology (1802), which Dawkins calls "a book that I greatly admire..."

Not only does he profess admiration, he even concedes that he might once have been convinced by Paley. "I could not imagine being an atheist at any time before 1859, when Darwin's Origin of Species was published," he volunteers.

This generosity extends even to the "sincere and honest", but clearly somewhat confused, Church of England bishop Hugh Montefiore who could not believe (Dawkins calls this the Argument from Personal Incredulity) that natural selection explained, for instance, the whiteness of polar bears.

But most of all, Dawkins' generosity extends to the reader, who is confronted with meticulous reasoning, leavened by lyrical riffs upon metaphor that have always been his trademark.

Dawkins can hardly have been the first to propose the idea of "genetic space" in which "the actual animals that have ever lived are a tiny subset of the theoretical animals that could exist", but I cannot think of anybody else who would then go on to propose notional genetic engineers who could "move from any point in animal space to any other point" and then concede that, sadly, we might never know enough to navigate towards the "dear dead creatures" the dodo, T. rex and the trilobites, lurking forever "in their private corners of that huge genetic hypervolume".

This passage grows out of his seemingly artless excitement at an experiment he was running on a 64-kilobyte computer (yes, this book was written in the silicon palaeolithic). His simple evolutionary modelling program had, in 29 generations, started to provide two-dimensional biomorphs that look like bats, spiders, scorpions, tree frogs and even a fox. The insects have eight rather than six legs but "even so! I still cannot conceal from you my feeling of exultation as I first watched these exquisite creatures emerging before my eyes."

All the way through the book, he seizes happy analogies, bright metaphors and shining images to light up his passion and our darkness: just as he makes his biomorphs seem alive, so he has a way of making living things seem transcendent. Soldier ants in Panama, for instance, guarding the ant queen, also guarded "the master copies of the very instructions that made them do the guarding. They were guarding the wisdom of their ancestors, the Ark of the Covenant."

He is of course, about to address the idea of DNA, and he casually introduces DNA molecules as "dewdrops" that form only to evaporate, an existence measured in moments, whereas the instructions locked in DNA "are as durable as the hardest rocks", with lifespans to be measured on a geological timescale.

If this book consisted only of bright ideas and beautiful language, however, we wouldn't be reading it now. It endures in print because it must be one of the best books ever to address, patiently and persuasively, the questions that has baffled bishops and disconcerted dissenters alike: how did nature achieve its astonishing complexity and variety?

Dawkins dismisses the "what use is half an eye?" question with such grace and assuredness that I cannot understand why it is still being asked, in various forms. He addresses all those issues of improbability (how did self-replicating molecules emerge, how did life begin, why did it begin on Earth and apparently only on Earth?) not by answering the questions but by patiently explaining what improbability really means, given a starting point of energy and organic chemistry, on a timescale of billions of years and with 100 trillion planets to choose from.

The point of every chapter – every page in fact – is to convince the reader that what we see now, buzzing, flapping or scuttling around us everywhere, is the consequence of the operation of natural selection upon random mutations over an immense period of time. To understand this is not to explain how life started, or why the first fish crawled on to dry land, or why birds learned to swim under water, or why humans have enough intelligence to ask questions about an unknowable prehistory. To understand this is to realise that, whatever the puzzle set by the appearance of design in living things, it is most easily explicable in terms of Darwin's huge, all-embracing idea, and the enormous time available since the first organisms began to drift on the warm pre-Cambrian tides.

In the course of this very substantial and always meticulously sustained argument, Dawkins writes things that one feels he might not choose to write now, on punctuated equilibrium, cladism and other clashes of heresy and orthodoxy, doctrine and ritual within the broad church of evolutionary argument. But one can read even these with profit.

Almost everything about this book – the instances, the writing, the passion, the lyrical imagery – confirms again and again that there is nothing dry about science, nothing heartless about research, and nothing unfeeling about the way a biologist looks at an animal.

My copy of the Concise Oxford Dictionary of Quotations has four entries from Charles Darwin (which shows how concise it must be) and two quotations from Dawkins: both of them from this book, and one of them from the passage that gives this book its title.

"Natural selection, the blind, unconscious, automatic process which Darwin discovered, and which we now know is the explanation for the existence and apparently purposeful form of all life, has no purpose in mind. It has no mind and no mind's eye. It does not plan for the future. It has no vision, no foresight, no sight at all. If it can be said to play the role of watchmaker in nature, it is the blind watchmaker"

Last month, club member TopTroll suggested The Fabric of Reality by David Deutsch (Penguin £10.99) as our next book. Who could resist an author prepared to tackle the multiverse, time travel, virtual reality, the significance of life and the theory of everything, and considerately end each chapter with a glossary and an executive summary just in case you didn't get it? Thanks @TopTroll. See you back here on Friday 11 June

Source: Science news, comment and analysis | guardian.co.uk | 30 Apr 2010 | 5:20 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

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

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