Astronomers plan second look at mega star birthing grounds

Astronomers this summer will take a close look at a rare cosmic cradle for the universe's largest stars, baby bruisers that grow up to have 50 times the sun's mass.
Source: ScienceDaily: Latest Science News | 12 May 2010 | 9:00 am

Lake sturgeon have genes from parasite, signs of human STD

While trying to find a DNA-based test to determine the sex of lake sturgeon, researchers found that the sturgeon genome contains trematode genes that didn't originally belong to it and may harbor a protozoan parasite that causes a sexually transmitted disease in humans.
Source: ScienceDaily: Latest Science News | 12 May 2010 | 9:00 am

Genetic variations associated with Alzheimer's disease, but do not help predict risk

Although genome-wide analysis identified two genetic variations associated with Alzheimer's disease (AD), these variations did not improve the ability to predict the risk of AD, according to a new study.
Source: ScienceDaily: Latest Science News | 12 May 2010 | 9:00 am

Differences in language circuits in the brain linked to dyslexia: Important 'information highway' less well organized in the dyslexic brain

Children with dyslexia often struggle with reading, writing, and spelling, despite getting an appropriate education and demonstrating intellectual ability in other areas. New neurological research has found that these children's difficulties with written language may be linked to structural differences within an important information highway in the brain known to play a role in oral language.
Source: ScienceDaily: Latest Science News | 12 May 2010 | 9:00 am

Clues to neuronal health found in tree-like nerve cell structures

Using the small, round worm C. elegans, researchers have discovered how elaborate dendritic trees (tree-like nerve structures) are formed and maintained. Possible applications include treatments for neurodegenerative diseases and repair of injuries in which neurons are damaged.
Source: ScienceDaily: Latest Science News | 12 May 2010 | 9:00 am

X-ray discovery points to location of missing matter in universe

Using observations with NASA's Chandra X-ray Observatory and ESA's XMM-Newton, astronomers have announced a robust detection of a vast reservoir of intergalactic gas about 400 million light years from Earth. This discovery is the strongest evidence yet that the "missing matter" in the nearby Universe is located in an enormous web of hot, diffuse gas.
Source: ScienceDaily: Latest Science News | 12 May 2010 | 9:00 am

Most high schoolers cheat -- but don't always see it as cheating, study finds

Most high-school students participating in a new study on academic honesty say they have cheated on tests and homework -- and, in some alarming cases, say they don't consider certain types of cheating out of line.
Source: ScienceDaily: Latest Science News | 12 May 2010 | 6:00 am

Sickle cell disease may affect brain function in adults, study suggests

Sickle cell disease may affect brain function in adults who have few or mild complications of the inherited blood disease, according to results of the first study to examine cognitive functioning in adults with sickle cell disease.
Source: ScienceDaily: Latest Science News | 12 May 2010 | 6:00 am

DNA could be backbone of next-generation logic chips

In a single day, a solitary grad student at a lab bench can produce more simple logic circuits than the world's entire output of silicon chips in a month. So says an engineer who believes that the next generation of these logic circuits at the heart of computers will be produced inexpensively in almost limitless quantities. The secret is that instead of silicon chips serving as the platform for electric circuits, computer engineers will take advantage of the unique properties of DNA, that double-helix carrier of all life's information.
Source: ScienceDaily: Latest Science News | 12 May 2010 | 6:00 am

Cancer: Trapping the escape artist

Cancer uses devious means to evade treatment and survive. One prime example is the way tumors express anti-cell death (anti-apoptotic) proteins to resist chemotherapy and radiation. However, new research may help curb these anti-apoptotic proteins and make current treatments more effective.
Source: ScienceDaily: Latest Science News | 12 May 2010 | 6:00 am

Studying bat sensory system could improve robotic navigation

Better cochlear implants may emerge from close study of the way that bats and dolphins use sound to sense their surroundings.
Source: BBC News | Science & Environment | UK Edition | 12 May 2010 | 3:55 am

Green groups hope Gulf spill galvanizes movement (AP)

AP - In the weeks after an oil rig exploded and killed 11 men in the Gulf of Mexico, worried environmental groups scoured the water for oil plumes, set up animal triage centers and stretched boom across shorelines.

Source: Yahoo! News: Science News | 12 May 2010 | 3:51 am

Scientists stunned as grey whale sighted off Israel (AFP)

AFP - The appearance of a grey whale off the coast of Israel has stunned scientists, in what was thought to be the first time the giant mammal has been seen outside the Pacific in several hundred years.

Source: Yahoo! News: Science News | 12 May 2010 | 3:45 am

Big oil to get more grilling as oil gushes in Gulf (Reuters)

Reuters - Top oil executives face a second day of grilling by U.S. lawmakers on Wednesday over a deadly well rupture that unleashed a huge oil slick and the specter of environmental disaster in the Gulf of Mexico.

Source: Yahoo! News: Science News | 12 May 2010 | 3:01 am

There is no 'addictive personality' | Dorothy Rowe

Addiction is a defence against a life or memories too difficult to bear. It is a way of coping that can be overcome

The question: Is AA right about human nature?

All the research on the effectiveness of different kinds of therapy shows that what matters is not the form of the therapy but the nature of the relationship between the therapist and the client. Clients are rarely interested in the theory of therapy that the therapist espouses. What they want is a relationship with a person who is genuinely interested in them, and who is able to become a reliable point in the client's empty and chaotic internal landscape. In group therapy the group itself becomes the reliable point.

People who don't understand what therapy is about and who want to believe that they're superior to those in need of help often use pseudo-medical terms like "addictive personality". Nobody has a personality, addictive or otherwise. "Personality" is an abstract noun which refers to an individual's more or less regular ways of thinking and acting. These ways of thinking and acting change with time and circumstances.

Every action has a purpose. The actions we call addictions have two possible purposes. The first is to give us a break from the reality of our life. Some people relax in the afternoon with coffee and chocolate cake, and some people have a gin and tonic at the end of their working day. These kinds of addictions are rarely called addictions because everyone has this kind of addiction. As TS Eliot said, "Humankind cannot bear very much reality".

The second purpose of addictions is to act as a defence against memories and feelings that threaten to overwhelm the person's sense of being a person. This is illustrated in the testimonies by men who, as children, were sexually assaulted by Catholic priests. Here the men talk about their heavy drinking and about being depressed, both of which are defences against being overwhelmed by memories and feelings. In their descriptions of the assault they told how totally helpless they felt in the hands of a man who, as well as inflicting pain, warned them that God would punish them if they told what had happened to them. They were also told that what was happening to them was their own fault.

When our sense of being a person is in danger of being overwhelmed, we feel that we are about to be wiped out as a person. We shall become a no-thing. This is utterly terrifying. If we have considerable self-confidence, we can tell ourselves that we shall survive this experience, but, if we see ourselves as unacceptable, even wicked, we feel that we are always in danger of being destroyed as a person. We can try to blot out our memory of the terror by consuming alcohol, but, no matter how much we drink, it is never enough. Or we can blame ourselves for what has happened to us, and thus become depressed. We can then drink to blot out the pain of being depressed.

Alcoholism and depression are only two of a number of desperate defences that we can use to try to fend off the fear of being annihilated as a person. Whatever defence we unconsciously choose to use, the only way to eradicate the need for a desperate defence is to arrive at the position where you value and accept yourself. In a good therapeutic relationship the client has the opportunity to come to value and accept himself, and to use this to create the courage to face what he needs to face in his life. In chronic illnesses like diabetes, epilepsy and cystic fibrosis where the physical basis of the disease has been clearly demonstrated, individuals will readily learn to manage their illness if they value themselves and are determined to be as healthy as possible and lead as normal a life as possible.

The AA philosophy that teaches that alcoholics have a chronic illness which renders them incapable of looking after themselves, and so they must submit themselves to a higher power, prevents them from being able to value and accept themselves. Resolving not to drink again has saved the life of many people, but this is like the situation where a sailor manages to get from his wrecked ship to rocks above the stormy sea but lacks the courage to cross the rocks to solid land.

• Dorothy Rowe's Beyond Fear (3rd edition) is published by HarperCollins

Source: Science news, comment and analysis | guardian.co.uk | 12 May 2010 | 3:00 am

Oil companies pass the buck for Gulf of Mexico spill (AFP)

AFP - Oil executives braced for a second day of grilling by angry US lawmakers Wednesday over their failure to prevent a giant slick threatening environmental and economic calamity.

Source: Yahoo! News: Science News | 12 May 2010 | 2:50 am

The nation's weather (AP)

AP - Another rainy day was expected over the Northeast and New England on Wednesday as a low pressure slowly moved eastward and into the Atlantic Ocean.

Source: Yahoo! News: Science News | 12 May 2010 | 2:46 am

Off-the-shelf genetics tests to hit pharmacies (AFP)

AFP - Want to find out what diseases await you in the future, your chances of developing Alzheimer's? Or whether you will pass something on to your child? Then a trip to the pharmacy may reveal all.

Source: Yahoo! News: Science News | 12 May 2010 | 2:11 am

Mother's phone call as comforting as a hug, says oxytocin study

US scientists believe hearing your mother's voice on the telephone has same stress-busting effect as a cuddle

Children know that mum's got the words when life seems to be getting too much.

Now it seems her voice on the phone can work the same soothing magic as when she is there to give her offspring a comforting cuddle. US scientists believe hearing mother down the line produces the same stress-busting effect on her daughter as physical contact such as a hug or a loving arm round the shoulder.

In a study that will send phone companies into their own comfort zone, researchers found mothers' calls released similar levels of the social bonding hormone oxytocin in girls as when they were in close proximity. Writing in the journal Proceedings of the Royal Society B, the scientists report how they deliberately raised the stress levels of 61 girls aged seven to 12. The children had to make an impromptu speech and solve maths problems in front of strangers. This sent their hearts racing and levels of stress hormone cortisol higher.

The girls were then divided into three groups, one comforted by physical contact with their mothers, another by phone calls from their mothers and a third by watching a film deemed emotionally neutral, the March of the Penguins.

Oxytocin rose to similar levels in the first two groups and did not increase in the third, saliva and urine tests revealed. As this hormone's presence grew, cortisol faded.

Leslie Seltzer, from the University of Wisconsin-Madison, who led the research, said: "The children who got to interact with their mothers had virtually the same hormonal response, whether they interacted in person or over the phone.

"It was understood that oxytocin release in the context of social bonding usually required physical contact. But it's clear from these results that a mother's voice can have the same effect as a hug, even if they're not standing there."

The effects lingered too, said another member of the team. "It stays well beyond the stressful task," said Professor Seth Pollak, from the university's child emotion laboratory. "By the time the children go home they're still enjoying the benefits of this relief and their cortisol levels are still low. That a simple telephone call could have this physiological effect on oxytocin is really exciting."

Girls were used in the study because oxytocin responses are stronger in females than in males. In adult women the hormone plays a role in labour, preparing for birth and breastfeeding.

There might be an evolutionary reason for other responses, experts believe. A threatened male is free to choose between "fight or flight", but this may not be so easy for a female who is pregnant or caring for offspring. It might be that females alleviate stress by making the peace.

Seltzer is investigating whether other forms of communication, such as text messaging, have an effect on oxytocin and hopes to expand the research into animals.

"Lots of very social species vocalise," she said. "On the one hand we're curious to see if this effect is unique to humans. On the other we're hoping researchers who study vocal communication will consider looking at oxytocin release in other animals and applying it to broader questions of social behaviour and evolutionary biology."

Source: Science news, comment and analysis | guardian.co.uk | 12 May 2010 | 2:11 am

Theo's Adventure Capitalists, Luther and The Story of Science | TV review

Whatever Theo's wannabe millionaires are selling in Injuh, I'm not buying

The Theo in Theo's Adventure Capitalists (BBC2) is of course Theo Paphitis. The middling-annoying dragon from Dragons' Den – above Deborah Meaden but below Duncan Bannatyne – has noticed a business opportunity, and its name is spin-off. People's appetite for watching underinformed entrepreneurs micturate money up the wall has not yet been exhausted, and so Theo is bidding adieu to the sluggish domestic market and taking trios of wannabe millionaires abroad to see if they can take advantage of the weak pound and the increasingly hungry export market.

This week he's off to explore India, a "brand new market", which will come as a surprise to the cotton mill owners of eighteen hundred and blah, but we know what he means. He means "a brand new susceptibility for the kind of appetites artificially created through branding shenanigans that the developed world has embraced without a moment's critical thought and which is serving us so well at the moment".

First up, therefore, are two brothers who own a luxury watch business. Apparently they have already identified 120 people in the UK and its immediate environs who are willing to pay £6,500 for a watch made from parts of a Spitfire engine, and are looking to widen the net. They are called Nick and Giles English, and they are looking forward to their trip to somewhere called "Injuh". Their plans soon founder when they discover that import duties and the people of Injuh's preference for haggling (and for flashier accessories) will make it almost impossible to sell high numbers of watches at a profit there.

Second up are Matt and Cheryl from Unilever, owners of the Marmite brand. Cheryl burns with an unholy fever to bring the yeast-based condiment to a nation that, like most of us, would appear to be happier without it. A focus group objects to the smell, says it tastes like medicine and proclaims children won't eat it. Cheryl and Theo hand out sample sandwiches in the street. A starving dog, literally, refuses to touch one. Cheryl is undaunted. Marmite was first marketed as a health food, she muses. "There's a line going round in my head – 'Good cooks (or maybe healthy cooks) love Marmite.'" All she needs is a marketing budget, to reposition the stuff as a flavouring rather than prime ingredient and she's good to go. It's the modern colonial spirit. You'd think they had suffered enough.

The final entrepreneur actually does have a benefit to bring to the continent. Mike Lawton's invention can convert any diesel engine to run on plant oil. There are a kazillion diesel engines in India, but very little plant oil. They crunch both experimental tree seeds and numbers but cannot extract enough fuel from either. Mike, an optimist, insists they will get there soon. The investors who own 90% of his business say nothing.

It is, then, an almost wholly unrewarding hour – thin, repetitious, unperceptive – for viewer and participant alike. With the exception of Paphites, who is presumably well-remunerated for his duties. Truly, to dragons that have shall be given more.

Watching Idris Elba (once Stringer Bell in The Wire) in Luther (BBC1) is like watching a whale being forced to dive into a swimming pool. Painful to witness, but worse for the whale. There is a cop-killer on the loose. Again, the episode is built round a quartet of Luther Moments – flashes of brilliant, idiosyncratic intuition whose brilliance and idiosyncrasy are dimmed only by the fact that the viewer intuits them at precisely the same time and even, perhaps, a little before. Even I, who habitually watch telly with a little streak of drool running happily out of the corner of my mouth and a brain saying nothing more than "Feed me, flicker friend!", could deduce that the son's hunched posture meant he didn't like what he was hearing and that the botched third shooting was to draw further police in for an ambush. "But I thought that!" is death to this kind of caper.

The makers have assembled a quality cast round their quality lead – Steven Mackintosh, Ruth Wilson and Saskia Reeves – but they are plums in a very duff pudding indeed.

The Story of Science: Proof, Power and Passion (BBC2) continues its mission to contextualise the story of science. Last night, Dr Michael Mosley showed how the evidence of the earth's great age and of a history of species extinctions grew to unignorable proportions and began to undermine collective faith in God's grand plan. The Industrial Revolution and its own faith in progress and the guiding principle of competition provided fertile soil in which Darwin's idea of evolution could take root. And so modern man – and, alas, Marmite – was born. Sweepingly superb stuff.

Source: Science news, comment and analysis | guardian.co.uk | 12 May 2010 | 1:00 am

US senators to unveil climate bill

US senators John Kerry and Joe Lieberman are to unveil their long-awaited bill aimed at cutting carbon emissions.
Source: BBC News | Science & Environment | UK Edition | 11 May 2010 | 10:05 pm

New Alzheimer's Risk Genes Identified (HealthDay)

HealthDay - TUESDAY, May 11 (HealthDay News) -- Scientists have pinpointed two genes that are linked to Alzheimer's disease and could become targets for new treatments for the neurodegenerative condition.
Source: Yahoo! News: Science News | 11 May 2010 | 9:47 pm

Okla. officials lower storm death toll from 5 to 2 (AP)

AP - Oklahoma officials revised the state's storms death toll from five to two Tuesday after learning three critically injured children had survived.
Source: Yahoo! News: Science News | 11 May 2010 | 9:24 pm

Flea-Sized Creatures Are Fastest Jumpers Known (LiveScience.com)

LiveScience.com - Shrimp-like critters the size of fleas could be the champion jumpers of the animal kingdom, scientists now reveal.
Source: Yahoo! News: Science News | 11 May 2010 | 8:35 pm

The Enemy Within: Male Fish Dislike Their Reflections More Than Competitors

Even though a male cichlid is one tough fish, he may be scared of his own reflection. A new study shows that squaring off to fight a mirror opponent can be worse than fighting a real foe.

Male cichlid fish readily attack other males as well as mirror images of themselves, posturing and lunging with the same aggression, says Julie K. Desjardins of Stanford University. Yet the reflection-fighting males show heightened activity in a part of the brain associated with fear and other negative reactions in vertebrates, she and Stanford colleague Russell Fernald have found.

Tangling with a real male doesn’t stir up that response, the researchers report in a Biology Letters study released online the week of May 11. Desjardins hesitates to equate whatever is going on in the fish brain with the human concept of “fear,” but she says the reaction to mirror images is indeed “negative.”

Earlier studies of fish and mirrors have suggested that fish just mistake their reflections for some impertinent, other fish that needs a good trouncing. The new paper gives the first indication of differential brain activity when fish meet mirrors, Desjardins says.

Scientists have a long tradition of studying animal reactions to mirrors as a way of trying to explore animal consciousness. Great apes, elephants, dolphins and magpies show evidence of recognizing themselves when gazing into mirrors, says Diana Reiss of Hunter College in New York City, who studies animal cognition. In experiments done so far, other animals, including monkeys and fish, don’t seem to get it.

The new study does not demonstrate mirror self-recognition in fish. “I want to be clear about that,” Reiss says. Yet the fish do perceive something different about their reflected opponent.

Desjardins and Fernald tested reactions to mirrors in males of an African cichlid species, Astatotilapia burtoni. Hormones as well as behavior looked similar regardless of whether the fish menaced a mirror image or a real male behind a clear partition. To see into the brain, researchers used two marker genes to compare activity in various brain regions. “It’s a kind of fishy MRI,” Desjardins says. What fired up more in the mirror fighters was the amygdala, a structure that’s involved in emotions in people.

Using this technique in a mirror study is certainly uncommon and possibly unprecedented, Desjardins says. Reiss adds, “It’s an interesting tool.”

Even with older approaches, though, a few studies have found that some animals without mirror recognition still perceive differences between reflections and reality, notes Joshua Plotnik of Emory University in Atlanta, who worked with Reiss in documenting mirror self-recognition in elephants. Work by other researchers shows differences in heart rates or in behaviors when monkeys encounter a reflection versus a real monkey, even though scientists have not shown self-recognition in monkeys.

As far as mirror self-recognition (or not), the new work “does not really change much,” says comparative psychologist Thomas Suddendorf of the University of Queensland in Brisbane, Australia.

What could change though, says Desjardins, is the current, widespread use of mirrors in experiments that probe behaviors unrelated to self-recognition. Researchers may want to show a fish or other creature another of the same size and species, for example. If animals are sensing that something is off about the mirror, “I think mirrors need to be used with caution,” Desjardin says.

Image: flickr/Ben Lawson

Source: Wired: Wired Science | 11 May 2010 | 6:53 pm

14th-century aqueduct found in Jerusalem (AP)

AP - Archeologists said Tuesday they have uncovered a 14th-century aqueduct that supplied water to Jerusalem for almost 600 years along a route dating back to the time of Jesus — but unlike most such finds, this time the experts knew exactly where to look.

Source: Yahoo! News: Science News | 11 May 2010 | 6:39 pm

5 Myths About Gay People Debunked

Here are 5 gay myths that just aren't true.
Source: Livescience.com | 11 May 2010 | 5:57 pm

Healthy Mouth, Healthy Pregnancy?

Taking care of your teeth and gums was never more important -- it could affect the health of your unborn baby.
Source: Discovery News - Top Stories | 11 May 2010 | 5:46 pm

Blame game as US fights oil spill

Oil executives point fingers at one another in Congress over the Gulf Coast oil disaster, as the fight to contain the slick goes on.
Source: BBC News | Science & Environment | UK Edition | 11 May 2010 | 5:33 pm

Dinopolis

Tourists flock to the wonders of India's Jurassic Park
Source: BBC News | Science & Environment | UK Edition | 11 May 2010 | 5:26 pm

How You Can Help the Oil Spill Cleanup Effort

Find out how you can help with the Gulf oil spill wildlife recovery effort. Here's a hint: soap isn't needed.
Source: Discovery News - Top Stories | 11 May 2010 | 5:12 pm

Flea-Sized Creatures Are Fastest Jumpers Known

A flea-sized creature called a copepod is now the fastest jumper known.
Source: Livescience.com | 11 May 2010 | 5:01 pm

World's Best Animal Jumper Identified

Copepods may be small, but their tiny leg muscles generate the most forceful leaps in the world.
Source: Discovery News - Top Stories | 11 May 2010 | 5:01 pm

Hubble Spies Trailblazing Star Ripped from Stellar Nursery

Sometimes even the biggest stars can be bullied. Hubble has spotted a large star ejected from its place of birth, probably catapulted by the gravity of a couple of stellar siblings.
Source: Discovery News - Top Stories | 11 May 2010 | 4:49 pm

Medieval Aqueduct Found in Jerusalem

The 14th-century aqueduct runs along a route that dates back to the time of Jesus.
Source: Discovery News - Top Stories | 11 May 2010 | 3:40 pm

Hubble Deciphers Misfit Star Mystery

The massive, hot star seemed out of place when astronomers first spotted it in 2006, and now thanks to Hubble, we know why. The misfit, 30 Dor #016, appears to have been ejected from a cluster of even heftier stars, pinging off of them and off into space at tremendous speed.

The star is traveling away from the R136 star cluster at about 250,000 miles per hour. Just 1 or 2 million years old, the star already appears to have traveled 375 light-years from its place of birth.

“These results are of great interest because such dynamical processes in very dense, massive clusters have been predicted theoretically for some time, but this is the first direct observation of the process in such a region,” astronomer Nolan Walborn of the Space Telescope Science Institute in Baltimore said in a press release. Walborn is a member of the team that tracked down the star,

30 Dor #16 is 90 times more massive than the sun and resides in the Tarantula Nebula, approximately 170,000 light-years from Earth. It’s part of the Large Magellanic Cloud, the Milky Way’s third-closest neighbor.

You can see the R136 cluster in the middle left part of the imageabove. The runaway star is in the upper right, a bright blue spot trailing red dust. Check the annotated image below to make sure you’ve got your stars properly aligned.

Images: European Southern Observatory. High resolution versions available.

See Also:

• New Space Telescope Delivers First Mind-Blowing Video of the Sun
• The Making of a Mind-Blowing Space Photo
• Even more Mindblowingspacephotos

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

Source: Wired: Wired Science | 11 May 2010 | 2:44 pm

China drought highlights future climate threats

Yunnan's worst drought for many years has been exacerbated by destruction of forest cover and a history of poor water management.<img src="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~r/news/rss/today/~4/-2xL3Xkx2mM" height="1" width="1"/>
Source: NatureNews - All articles published today - nature.com science feeds | 11 May 2010 | 2:17 pm

China and Taiwan strengthen academic ties

Legislators opt for pragmatism over nationalism.
Source: NatureNews - All articles published today - nature.com science feeds | 11 May 2010 | 2:16 pm

Space Images, DNA Data Help Track Rare Dolphins

Satellites and DNA analysis are used to track dolphin populations.
Source: Livescience.com | 11 May 2010 | 1:43 pm

Inside Tornado Science: Monday's Twisters Could Have Been Worse

Forecasting techniques are building toward the long-awaited goal of being able to predict tornadoes an hour before they form.
Source: Discovery News - Top Stories | 11 May 2010 | 1:08 pm

NASA'S outdated labs jeopardize research: report

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Many of NASA's research labs are old, and budget cuts have seriously jeopardized scientific research at the space agency, according to a National Research Council report released on Tuesday.
Source: Reuters: Science News | 11 May 2010 | 12:49 pm

Most Fat Dinosaurs Didn't Chew

New research explains the ultimate dinosaur fast food lifestyle. Many gulped down their food whole without chewing.
Source: Discovery News - Top Stories | 11 May 2010 | 12:40 pm

Ancient Egyptian 'Nilometer' Helped Measure River's Height

The structure was among several new discoveries at the so-called Avenue of Sphinxes.
Source: Discovery News - Top Stories | 11 May 2010 | 12:23 pm

David Clark

Psychiatrist who breathed new life into mental health care

David Clark, who has died aged 89, was a pioneer of social therapy in psychiatry and the development of therapeutic communities in mental hospitals. In 1953, soon after completing his training as a psychiatrist, he applied to be medical superintendent at Fulbourn hospital, Cambridge, in order to gain interview practice, and to his astonishment was offered the job. At 32, David became Britain's youngest medical superintendent, responsible for a depressing and oppressive mental hospital with nearly 1,000 patients.

He began by involving the other doctors and nurses in his plans for change. Two or three other mental hospitals in Britain had begun to open some of their locked wards. David took this further, and by 1958 there were no locked wards at Fulbourn. Therapeutic workshops, industrial units, halfway houses and open days for visitors followed. David said that he "gave the nurses a chance to do for the patients the things they'd always wanted to". For the first time in Fulbourn's 100-year history, he got male and female nurses working together.

The next step was to create fully fledged therapeutic communities in some of the wards, where patients had responsibility for day-to-day tasks and regular community meetings were held. To begin with, these meetings might be punctuated or even terminated by brawls, but gradually the violence lessened, as patients and staff came to understand its causes, and the more disturbed patients were able to make social and emotional contact.

David's core achievement at Fulbourn was that he changed the focus from treating individuals in isolation to working with the whole institution. He believed that doctors who wanted to help long-term patients must concern themselves with the morale of the ward, in particular the fears and tensions of the staff. Creative administrative action was far more valuable than clever diagnostics. His first book, Administrative Therapy, was written in 1962 when he and his family were offered a year at Stanford University in California, where he had the opportunity to discuss his ideas with Carl Rogers, one of the founders of humanistic psychology, and Erik Erikson, the developmental psychologist and psychoanalyst. This was followed in 1974 by Social Therapy in Psychiatry, which was translated into seven languages.

David became part of a network of psychiatrists developing liberal regimes in their hospitals, including TP Rees and Maxwell Jones. His capacity to inspire through his lectures and writing also made him an international figure in the therapeutic community movement. In 1967, he was appointed as a World Health Organisation adviser, visiting psychiatric services in Japan, Peru, Argentina and Poland. In 1972, David helped to found the Association of Therapeutic Communities and was its first chairman.

He was born in London into a high-achieving family. His father, Alfred, was a member of the Somerset Quaker shoemaking family, who became professor of pharmacology at University College London and expected David, his eldest child, to follow in his footsteps. David's parents rejected religious belief but brought up their four children with a Quakerly emphasis on social justice.

At the age of 16 David visited Germany to improve his language skills. His host family were committed Nazis and arranged for him to spend two weeks in a Hitler Youth camp. He enjoyed the fellowship but was aghast at their racial theories and alarmed by preparations for war. He came home committed to the anti-fascist crusade. He began his medical training in 1937, but when the second world war broke out he was eager to finish his studies quickly so that he could join the army.

Aged 24 he was parachuted into Germany to set up field ambulances. As medical officer to a transit camp for refugees he was strongly affected by what he learned about the horrors of Belsen. After the war ended, he was sent to Sumatra, where he organised the evacuation of 2,000 Dutch civilians from a Japanese internment camp. In March 1946 he was posted to Palestine for eight months where he had his first experience of psychiatry. "It was there," he wrote, "that I began my lifelong study and practice of psychiatry." In his retirement he wrote Descent Into Conflict (1995), a book about his wartime experiences.

By the end of the war, David had decided to make his career in psychiatry. He trained with some of its leading figures, including Sir David Henderson in Edinburgh and Professor Aubrey Lewis at the Maudsley, where he also had the good fortune to spend two years working with SH Foulkes, the founder of group analysis, before applying to the Fulbourn.

In 1946, David married Mary Rose Harris. Their three children had the run of Fulbourn hospital grounds as their garden. They divorced and David married Margaret Farrell in 1983, which was also the year of his retirement from the NHS. It was a sadness for David that by this time the changes he had worked so hard for, paving the way for a more humane psychiatry, had been largely superseded by the closure of most mental hospitals.

In the foreword to David's last book, The Story of a Mental Hospital: Fulbourn 1858-1983 (1996), Roy Porter, the medical historian, wrote that "a rich irony reveals itself: our age, which has seen the agitation for the closing of traditional asylums come to fruition, has also been the time when many of them have been, at long last, most therapeutically innovative and successful".

David is survived by Margaret, his children and five stepsons.

• David Hazell Clark, psychiatrist, born 28 August 1920; died 29 March 2010

Source: Science news, comment and analysis | guardian.co.uk | 11 May 2010 | 11:53 am

Gravity-defying ramps take illusion prize

Vision scientists award 'Oscar of perception' to Japanese mathematician.
Source: NatureNews - All articles published today - nature.com science feeds | 11 May 2010 | 11:50 am

Europe looking at bigger CO2 cut

Europe's climate commissioner Connie Hedegaard is to set out the case for a unilateral 30% EU cut in CO2.
Source: BBC News | Science & Environment | UK Edition | 11 May 2010 | 11:45 am

Gulf Oil Spill Animal Victim Tally May Be Misleading

Oil spill animal victim tallies may be misleading, since BP has used a chemical dispersant to break up oil released into the Gulf.
Source: Discovery News - Top Stories | 11 May 2010 | 11:32 am

Stress Can Change Your DNA

New research says that Post Traumatic Stress Disorder isn't all in your mind -- it's in your genes, too.
Source: Discovery News - Top Stories | 11 May 2010 | 11:18 am

Neanderthal App Turns You into a Caveman

A new app called Meanderthal transforms your face into that of a Neanderthal, our closest extinct relative.
Source: Livescience.com | 11 May 2010 | 11:17 am

The Crystals at the Center of the Earth

Seismic waves traveling between Earth’s poles move faster than those moving east-west, and now scientists think they may know why.

The iron alloys in the solid inner core of the Earth appear to have crystallized in such a way that it’s easier for energy to pass on the north-south axis than on the east-west, as described in a new study led by Maurizio Mattesini, a geologist at the Universidad Complutense de Madrid, which appeared in the journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.

“The structure of the atoms looks different in one direction than the other,” explained Norm Sleep, a Stanford geologist who was not part of the new study,

In the textbooks of yore, the Earth’s inner regions like the mantle and core were presented as simple, fairly homogeneous regions. But the geology of the core is turning out to be much more complex as scientists make use of more and better seismographs to generate better data about how seismic waves travel through the planet.

The outer core is composed mostly of liquid iron. The inner core is solid ball about 750 miles in diameter, or a little less than the maximum width of the state of Texas, which formed as the Earth cooled over geologic time, said David Stephenson, a geologist at CalTech.

“The center of the earth is literally a crystal,” said Stephenson. Over time, it grew and now is no longer a single crystal but an aggregate of them.

In the mid-1990s, geologists began to notice an interesting thing. Seismic waves traveling north-south were reaching their destinations about 3 percent faster than waves moving along east-west paths.

“It’s one of these things that’s been detected for some time but kind of why it occurs has been somewhat of a puzzle,” Sleep said. They didn’t know why, but then again, the middle of the globe is perhaps the most difficult place to gather data on Earth.

The new paper suggests that as the crystals formed, they received a particular alignment. That alignment, known as anisotropy, makes it easier for waves to travel in one direction than the other.

The most significant thing about the new paper, Stephenson said, is that the researchers were able to match up the results that seismologists have been getting on the speed of seismic waves through the core with new laboratory tests with particular kinds of iron crystals.

Image: NASA

“Hemispherical anisotropic patterns of the Earth’s inner core” by Maurizio Mattesinia, Anatoly B. Belonoshkob, Elisa Buforna, María Ramíreza, Sergei I. Simakc, Agustín Udíasa, Ho-Kwang Maod, and Rajeev Ahujae in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences DOI: 10.1073/pnas.1004856107

See Also:

• Earth’s Magnetic Field Is 3.5 Billion Years Old
• How Deep Is Europe?

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

Source: Wired: Wired Science | 11 May 2010 | 10:55 am

Working Overtime Could Kill You

Working overtime can be bad for the heart, a new study suggests
Source: Livescience.com | 11 May 2010 | 10:44 am

Tree-ring patterns are intellectual property, not climate data | Michael Baillie

Ancient woodland would not have the same response to climate factors, such as temperature or rainfall, as oak trees today

• Climate sceptic wins landmark data victory 'for price of a stamp'

In April, the UK Information Commissioner's Office ruled that Queen's University Belfast must hand over data obtained during 40 years of research into 7,000 years of Irish tree rings to a City banker and part-time climate analyst, Doug Keenan. Professor Mike Baillie, the man who collected most of that data, called the ruling a "staggering injustice". He explains his opinion below.

I regard myself as a chronologist and a dendro-catastrophist; in particular I wish to link the tree-ring and ice core chronologies so that we can view some historical events, such as those around AD540 or 44BC, in human records, in tree-ring records and in ice core records of atmospheric chemistry. My early work was as part of a team involved in constructing a 7,000-year oak chronology at Belfast to allow calibration of the radiocarbon timescale. Since then I have built further chronologies and have studied some extreme events initially indicated by the Irish trees.

To put the record straight, I am neither a climatologist nor a dendro-climatologist. I have no academic stance on human-caused global warming except that, as a scientist reviewing the issue from an evolutionary perspective, if humans are even partly the cause of the warming since 1990 then we are already doomed as a species. I agree with Doug Keenan (the man who placed FOI requests at Queen's University Belfast asking for my data) that the issue of the Medieval Warm Period (MWP) is of critical importance at the present time. In a nutshell, either the MWP was warmer than now and we are in with a chance of surviving long enough to do something about climate change, or the MWP was cooler than now and we are probably due for rapid extinction.

In the 1980s we supplied our modern oak data (available at www.noaa.gov) to the Climatic Research Unit at the University of East Anglia. Work by the dendro-climatologists there gave rise to two papers Dr Keith Briffa and colleagues that convinced us that British/Irish oak was not a good subject for the reconstruction of instrumental-style temperature and rainfall records. Thereafter, at Belfast, we gave up any hope of contributing to the issue of climate change using tree rings. Recently a paper by Dr Garcia-Suarez (I am a co-author) on Irish trees and climate records shows results compatible with that research. It confirms that it is very unlikely that past temperatures can be reconstructed from Irish oaks. I recently stated that our Irish oak data has never been used in climatic reconstructions. It turns out I was wrong on this point. I did not know that the US climate scientist Professor Michael Mann had used a few of our oak records in a 2008 publication. I was not aware of his paper, nor of the use of the data. While this seems to be regarded by some members of the public as criminal (not to have read every paper on climate reconstruction), my reply is, why should I have known about it? I am not a climatologist. I have little research interest in present climate, only in trying to understand aspects of the past (as my publication list for the last several decades shows).

I consider that our raw tree-ring measurements should not have been released following an FOI request. I know the Irish data better than anyone else; particularly the highly disparate nature of the samples before the year AD1700 (variously from historic buildings, archaeological sites, lake margins and peat bogs). It is unlikely that these ancient woodland, forest or bog trees would have the same response to climate factors (such as temperature or rainfall) as current living oak trees. Worse still, living parkland oaks in Ireland are much wider ringed than any of the ancient oak populations. This is almost certainly because modern oaks on walled estates are probably imported stock, brought in from the 17th century onwards by landowners who wished to beautify their estates with large oaks. Even worse than that, although ancient bog oaks occur across Northern Europe, there are no good examples of oaks currently growing on raised lowland bogs anywhere. So it is essentially impossible to find out exactly what such oaks were responding to.

These latter observations mean that even if a climate-calibration exercise had been successful (comparing oak growth with modern instrumental records), it is unlikely that any attempt at interpreting the climate response of the more ancient Irish oaks would be meaningful. That is my considered view, though doubtless few will accept it.

Finally, regarding intellectual property and the release of data under FOI, when a dendrochronologist measures the widths of the growth rings in a sample, he or she has to make multiple decisions with respect to the starts and ends of the rings, problem rings, and so on. Repeated measurement of the same sample, will not give exactly the same measurements. The number of rings must be the same, but the actual measured widths will not be. This means that the ring pattern of a tree-ring sample carries the "intellectual fingerprint" of the dendrochronologist who measured it, every bit as much as this text carries my intellectual fingerprint. In my opinion, tree-ring patterns are therefore intellectual property and should not be handed out as if they are instrumental climate data.

• Prof Michael Baillie retired as a paid academic in 2005 before the current FOI issue began. He now holds an Emeritus position at Queen's University Belfast where he pursues research on chronology and mythology with a particular interest in sorting out the likely effects of volcanoes from those of comets or other extraterrestrial vectors.

* Individual tree ring-width data is available from 12 modern oak sites in Ireland, namely Ardara, Baron's Court, Breen Wood, Caledon, Cappoquin, Enniscorthy, Garryland Wood, Glen of the Downs, Killarney, Loch Doon, Rostrevor and Shane's Castle. Individual tree data is also available for seven English and Scottish sites.

Source: Science news, comment and analysis | guardian.co.uk | 11 May 2010 | 10:28 am

Air Force Uses Augmented Reality for Recruitment

The U.S. Air Force has created a mobile theme park of sorts that lets people experience military missions through 3-D animation and video.
Source: Livescience.com | 11 May 2010 | 10:01 am

India's carbon emissions increase

India's annual greenhouse gas emissions grow by nearly 60% between 1994 and 2007, a government study says.
Source: BBC News | Science & Environment | UK Edition | 11 May 2010 | 9:36 am

Radical new tack urged on climate

The failure of the UN climate process and questioning of the science mean a new approach is needed, a report says.
Source: BBC News | Science & Environment | UK Edition | 11 May 2010 | 9:25 am

Continuing Eruption of Iceland Volcano Monitored from Space

The renewed eruption of Iceland's Eyjafjallajökull volcano seen by NASA satellite.
Source: Livescience.com | 11 May 2010 | 7:58 am

Wise Researchers Close in on Definition of Wisdom

Wisdom is hard to define. Now experts weigh in on a definition of wisdom.
Source: Livescience.com | 11 May 2010 | 7:50 am

How Would Elena Kagan Change the Supreme Court?

If confirmed by the Senate, President Obama Supreme Court nominee Elena Kagan will mark the first time in history that the Supreme Court has three female justices simultaneously. The change will affect the tone of the court's discussions, political scient
Source: Livescience.com | 11 May 2010 | 7:33 am

Active Volcano Holds Clues to Violent Landslides

Research team surveys damage from volcanically-trigged landslides on seabed.
Source: Livescience.com | 11 May 2010 | 7:21 am

Subterranean fish

The rediscovery of Brazil's blind, underground fish
Source: BBC News | Science & Environment | UK Edition | 11 May 2010 | 7:03 am

Top 50 Twitter climate accounts to follow

Discover the key people and organisations you should be following on Twitter if you're interested in climate change and the environment

From ministers' tweets inside climate talks and cameraphone photos of climate activism as it happens, to tips on how to live a greener life and 140-character global warming news updates: who are the key people and organisations you should be following on Twitter if you're interested in climate change? With the help of Guardian readers on Facebook, we've pulled together the top 50 accounts worth following.

Did we get it right, or did we miss out brilliant climate tweeters? Let us know below. You can subscribe to the list with one click on our @guardianeco Twitter account.

Charities

1. Oxfam

Updates from campaigners helping communities on the frontline of climate change.

2. Global Action Plan

Lots of interaction and climate campaigning from this UK-based environmental charity.

3. Greenpeace

Climate change news and campaigns, plus big business in the spotlight.

4. WWF_Climate

Climate-specific wildlife news and aggregation.

5. Friends of the Earth

Busy and popular feed with links to climate news reports, campaigns and topical comment.

Politics

1. Ed Miliband

Climate and energy secretary of the former Labour government used Twitter to broadcast from inside Copenhagen climate talks (his Lib Dem and Tory counterparts are not on Twitter).

2. Al Gore

Climate-centric tweets from the most-followed climate activist on Twitter.

3. Caroline Lucas

Not content with being the first green MP in England, Lucas also tweets her movements and chats frequently on her Twitter account.

4. United States Environmental Protection Agency

Links and news from the main Twitter account of the US government department responsible for the environment.

5. Department of Energy and Climate Change

News and a commendably high level of interaction from the UK government department responsible for climate change policy.

News

1. The Ecologist

News, aggregation and more from the Twitter account of the long-running UK magazine.

2. Digg Environment

A good barometer of what's gone viral on the climate blogosphere.

3. James Murray

Climate news and re-tweets for a business audience, from the editor of BusinessGreen.

4. Andy Rekvin

Thoughts and news from the New York Times columnist and environment author.

5. The Climate Desk

Independent journalistic collaboration on the impact of climate change.

Bloggers

1. Climate Progress

Thoughts and re-tweets on climate science and politics.

2. Grist

News and retweets by this US-centric green news and comment blog.

3. TreeHugger

Chat and thoughtful tweets from the grandaddy of the green blogosphere.

4. Julian L. Wong

Useful links for anyone interested in China and climate change.

5. Kate Sheppard

A prolific US blogger at Mother Jones who re-tweets interesting content on energy and climate change.

Campaigners

1. Eric Pooley

Author of The Climate War - tweets regularly about the fight in the US to keep climate change on the political agenda.

2. Bill McKibben

Commentary and an insight into the life of author and the founder of 350.org climate campaign.

3. Polly Higgins

Regular tweets from a campaigner and lawyer pushing for a new "ecocide" law that would declare the mass destruction of ecosystems a crime on a par with genocide.

4. Franny Armstrong

Newsy tweets and links from the founder of the 10:10 climate campaign and the director of The Age of Stupid climate documentary.

5. Kevin Grandia

Campaigner and blogger who puts climate change lobbying under the microscope.

Campaign groups

1. Stop Climate Chaos

Campaign news and aggregation from the largest UK coalition tackling climate change issues.

2. 350.org

The lively account of Bill McKibben's global campaign to get CO2 down to 350 parts per million in the atmosphere.

3. 10:10

UK group campaigning to reduce carbon emissions by 10% in 2010. Lots of carbon-cutting tweets.

4. TckTckTck

Campaigning for a legally binding global climate deal, the Twitter account for this coalition is a good source of links on climate negotiations.

5. Plane Stupid

Opinion and links from the direct action campaign group against airport expansion.

6. One Climate

Retweets aplenty and news on climate change from this social networking site.

7. Climate Camp

Often the first stop for breaking news about direct action on climate change.

8. Energy Action coalition

Tweets from a coalition of youth groups campaigning on clean energy.

9. The Climate Group

Business-minded climate news and aggregation from this alliance of politicians and business leaders.

10. People and Planet

Actions and campaign news from the UK's largest student environment group.

Carbon-cutting

1. The Daily Green

Green consumer tips and news from this long-running US-based site.

2. Energy Saving Trust

Useful impartial energy-saving advice from the UK government.

3. Do the Green Thing

Fun videos and virals spurring action on climate change.

4. Good Guide

Advice on the products with the smallest environmental impact.

5. CTC

Tweets from the campaign group representing one of the lowest-carbon forms of transport: cycling.

Climate scientists

1. Earth Institute

Climate debate and news from Columbia University's climate science department.

2. Katherine Hayhoe

Comment and interesting links from an atmospheric science professor at Texas Tech and author of A Climate for Change.

3. Tyndall Centre for Climate Research

Useful links from one of the world's leading climate research centres

Norwich-based group of climate scientists.

4. Met Office

News on climate change and weather from the UK Met Office.

5. Climate Central

Newsy aggregation of anything climate-related by a non-profit group of climate scientists.

Miscellaneous

1. Arcticsurvey

Arctic humour, climate science updates and multimedia aplenty from the Catlin Arctic survey in the North Pole.

2. UNEPandYou

Surprisingly lively and wide-ranging account featuring climate stories and official UN news.

3. worldresources

Expert Q&As, analysis and useful aggregation on climate change policy, economics and science.

4. Hopenhagen

Tweets aggregating a diverse international spread of climate content, from a campaign group born out of the 2009 Copenhagen climate conference.

5. BraveNewClimate

Thoughts from a climate science professor on nuclear power, energy and climate politics in Australia.

And four voices from the other side of the climate debate ...

1. Climate Change Facts

Tweets from Dr John Everett, climate sceptic and a researcher and manager in fisheries and ocean programmes.

2. James Delingpole

News and chat from polemical UK blogger for the Telegraph, Express and other titles.

3. The Climate Realists

The account of a blog that believes solar variation is the reason the climate is changing. Provides a feast of links to more climate scepticism

4. Senator Jim Inhofe

Tweets from the press office of the Republican senator and vocal climate change sceptic.

• We rated sites on the quality and frequency of their tweets, as well as looking at levels of aggregation and interaction - we didn't include accounts that were just RSS feeds. It's also worth noting some prominent blogs that we would like to have included do not have Twitter accounts.

• Thanks to Jennifer Atkinson, Cindy Baxter, Ange Fennell, Louise Hazan, Jenny Hodge and Philip Painter for contributing suggestions to this list on our Facebook fan page - and thanks to everyone else who took part in the discussion on Facebook.

Source: Science news, comment and analysis | guardian.co.uk | 11 May 2010 | 6:35 am

Snooker and the geography of the British Isles | Mind your language

The Irish Republic may (traditionally) be part of the British Isles. That does not make it part of Britain

"Please teach your subeditors the basic facts about your own country. It does NOT include the Republic of Ireland," a reader lamented last week when our coverage of the World Snooker Championship left us, well, snookered.

Our correspondent, Clive Everton, wrote: "Neil Robertson this morning became the first world champion from outside the British Isles since Canada's Cliff Thorburn 30 years ago."

A reader complained: "Mr Everton seems to have forgotten that Ken Doherty, from the Republic of Ireland, won this title in 1997."

Actually Everton was correct, as the British Isles is a geographical term generally taken to embrace the large islands of Great Britain and Ireland, and the many smaller ones in the vicinity, such as Orkney, Shetland and the Isle of Man. So Doherty was not "from outside the British Isles".

However, the Guardian style guide advises against using the term because of its unpopularity in the Irish Republic – with good reason, you may think (as I do), given the nature of the historical relationship between Britain and Ireland. As our sports desk will have been aware, for example, the former "British Isles" rugby union team (often referred to as the "British Lions") has, since 2001, been known as the British and Irish Lions.

Getting back to the snooker, we made an ambiguous situation much worse when the front page of guardian.co.uk proclaimed that Robertson, an Australian, had become the "first foreigner to win the world title since 1980". (It also described him, at one stage, as "the first non-British winner" since 1980.) Doherty, winner in 1997, is of course foreign and non-British.

A reader responded: "Your reporting of Neil Robertson's victory … gets to the heart of why many Irish people are irked by the term British Isles. Trailing an article that uses the term accurately ("the first world champion from outside the British Isles in 30 years") with an innacurate statement on the front page of the website ("first foreigner to win world title since 1980") shows how it can be easy to lazily conflate the geographical with the political while making poor Ken Doherty a subject of the British crown.

"It is easy to see how this can happen given the ambiguity inherent – maybe this is why you should retire the term altogether." I agree.

Another reader, more emphatically, said: "Ken Doherty is from the Republic of Ireland. He is NOT British. He is just as foreign as Neil Robertson. The Republic of Ireland is NOT British. Unlike Australia, the Republic of Ireland is not in the Commonwealth and has its own NON-BRITISH head of state. As an Australian, Neil Robertson is therefore more 'British' than Ken Doherty. This is far from the first time the Guardian has referred to Ireland as being British. Please stop it as we Irish find this insulting."

The Guardian has long enjoyed a good relationship with its wide readership in the Irish Republic. We are the only British newspaper, I believe, to spell Irish Gaelic words and phrases, such as Fianna Fáil, with their correct accents. The Irish Free State was established in 1922 and the Republic of Ireland in 1949. We normally remember that.

Source: Science news, comment and analysis | guardian.co.uk | 11 May 2010 | 6:18 am

Nut harvests 'risk fresh growth'

A study examining the dispersal of Brazil nuts suggests intensive harvests could threaten future regeneration of the trees.
Source: BBC News | Science & Environment | UK Edition | 11 May 2010 | 4:40 am

All of a flutter - fossil reveals early bird plumage

A new study of a 150-million-year-old fossil of an Archaeopteryx has shown that remnants of its feathers have been preserved.
Source: BBC News | Science & Environment | UK Edition | 11 May 2010 | 4:27 am