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New blood test for newborns to detect allergy riskA simple blood test can now predict whether newborn babies are at high risk of developing allergies as they grow older.Source: ScienceDaily: Latest Science News | 24 May 2010 | 9:00 am Decoding our network communitiesA new way of finding community structure within networks -- anything from social networks such as Facebook, to power grids, political voting networks, and protein interaction networks in biology -- could help us understand how people are connected and how connections change over time. The new technique aims to be more realistic than conventional approaches, which only capture one type of connection or a network at only one moment in time.Source: ScienceDaily: Latest Science News | 24 May 2010 | 9:00 am Uncovering lithium's mode of actionThough it has been prescribed for over 50 years to treat bipolar disorder, there are still many questions regarding exactly how lithium works. Researchers have provided solid evidence that lithium reduces brain inflammation by adjusting the metabolism of the health-protective omega-3 fatty acid called DHA.Source: ScienceDaily: Latest Science News | 24 May 2010 | 9:00 am Ribbon at edge of our solar system: Will the Sun enter a million-degree cloud of interstellar gas?Is the Sun going to enter a million-degree galactic cloud of interstellar gas soon? A U.S.-Polish team of scientists suggests that the ribbon of enhanced emissions of energetic neutral atoms, discovered last year by the NASA Small Explorer satellite IBEX, could be explained by a geometric effect due to the approach of the Sun to the boundary between the Local Cloud of interstellar gas and another cloud of a very hot gas called the Local Bubble. If this hypothesis is correct, IBEX is catching matter from a hot neighboring interstellar cloud, which the Sun might enter in a hundred years.Source: ScienceDaily: Latest Science News | 24 May 2010 | 9:00 am Small RNA controls a bacterium's social lifeFor the first time, biologists have directly shown how spontaneous mutation of a small RNA (sRNA) regulatory molecule can provide an evolutionary advantage. The scientists also identify the sRNA as a key regulator of social behavior in Myxococcus xanthus, a soil bacterium widely studied for its ability to cooperatively construct fruiting bodies that house stress-resistant spores when food runs out.Source: ScienceDaily: Latest Science News | 24 May 2010 | 9:00 am Game theoretic machine learning methods can help explain long periods of conflictResearchers have developed new machine learning methods to study conflict. The new method, which they call Inductive Game Theory, has been applied to a time series of fights gathered from detailed observations of an animal society model system.Source: ScienceDaily: Latest Science News | 24 May 2010 | 9:00 am Physicists develop a quantum interface between light and atomsPhysicists in Germany have developed a quantum interface which connects light particles and atoms. The interface is based on an ultra-thin glass fiber and is suitable for the transmission of quantum information. This is an essential prerequisite for quantum communication which shall be used for secure data transmission via quantum cryptography.Source: ScienceDaily: Latest Science News | 24 May 2010 | 6:00 am Small mammals -- and rest of food chain -- at greater risk from global warming than thought, research findsSmall-mammal communities got knocked seriously askew about 12,000 years ago by the last episode of global warming. Environmental disruptions let highly adaptable species thrive while others lost population and range. The current warming may push some species to extinction, destabilizing the food chains and ecosystems of which they are a vital part.Source: ScienceDaily: Latest Science News | 24 May 2010 | 6:00 am Scientists make important step toward stopping plaque-like formations in Huntington's diseaseResearchers describe a laboratory test that allows scientists to evaluate large numbers of fruit fly genes for a possible role in the formation of plaque-like protein aggregates within cells. Those genes often have counterparts in humans, which might then be manipulated to stop or slow the formation of plaque-like protein aggregates, the hallmark of Huntington's and other neurodegenerative diseases.Source: ScienceDaily: Latest Science News | 24 May 2010 | 6:00 am Immune evasion common in many viruses, bacteria and parasites is uncommon in M. tuberculosisScientists have discovered that the strategy of "immune evasion" common to many viruses, bacteria and parasites, is uncommon to M. tuberculosis where the antigens remain strikingly unchanged and homogeneous. The study suggests that M. tuberculosis antigens do not mutate because they hope to be recognized by the body's immune system -- perhaps because the host immune mechanism that leads to the typical lung destruction and cough can contribute to the spread of the disease. This finding has the potential to change the direction of vaccine research and could result in a new focus on different targets of immune response to the bacteria.Source: ScienceDaily: Latest Science News | 24 May 2010 | 6:00 am MMR doctor struck off registerThe doctor who first suggested a link between MMR vaccinations and autism has been struck off the medical register.Source: BBC News | Science & Environment | UK Edition | 24 May 2010 | 4:16 am Rubbish future?Getting children off waste heaps into educationSource: BBC News | Science & Environment | UK Edition | 24 May 2010 | 4:10 am Pressure on BP mounts as US threatens to take control (AFP)
Source: Yahoo! News: Science News | 24 May 2010 | 4:01 am The nation's weather (AP)
Source: Yahoo! News: Science News | 24 May 2010 | 3:48 am Pressure piles on BP as Gulf spill widens (Reuters)
Source: Yahoo! News: Science News | 24 May 2010 | 3:46 am US warns it may 'push BP aside'A top US official says BP may be "pushed" aside if it fails to perform in the Gulf of Mexico oil disaster clean-up.Source: BBC News | Science & Environment | UK Edition | 24 May 2010 | 3:43 am Questions, uncertainty grow along with Gulf spill (AP)
Source: Yahoo! News: Science News | 24 May 2010 | 3:41 am Pressure piles on BP as Gulf spill widens (Reuters)
Source: Yahoo! News: Science News | 24 May 2010 | 3:24 am Hubble spots a planet-eating starThe Hubble Space Telescope captures evidence of a Sun-like star "eating" an Earth-like planet, in the constellation Auriga.Source: BBC News | Science & Environment | UK Edition | 24 May 2010 | 3:19 am Frank Drake Returns to Search for Extraterrestrial LifeYou can't keep a dreamer down. Extraterrestrial hunter Frank Drake returned to Green Bank last week to recreate his famous observations with one of the largest radio telescopes in the world.Source: Discovery News - Top Stories | 24 May 2010 | 2:13 am The Great Escape: Intergalactic Travel is PossibleImagine a space faring civilization hurtling between galaxies, propelled by the gravitational energy of a black hole, and having resources for supporting a population of several billion.Source: Discovery News - Top Stories | 24 May 2010 | 1:57 am In Pictures: Lemur loveScientists are studying how ring-tailed lemurs from Madagascar use smell to choose the best mate.Source: BBC News | Science & Environment | UK Edition | 24 May 2010 | 1:41 am Astronauts need a last inspection of Atlantis (AP)
Source: Yahoo! News: Science News | 24 May 2010 | 1:17 am Matt Ridley: 'We can overcome disease, poverty and climate change'The author of The Rational Optimist on why life on earth is bound to get better Let's get the bad news over with first: we can't talk about Northern Rock. Well, not much, anyway. And then only tangentially. But maybe it won't matter. Matt Ridley, lanky, diffident, sandy hair, spectacles, author of assorted elegant and successful works of popular science on the subjects of sex and evolution, human virtue, nature v nurture and – his big bestseller – genes, was non-executive chairman of said ignominious institution for the three years before it blew up, and had to be fixed by £16bn of taxpayer funded loans. He must, therefore, have a few stories to tell. But he can't. Terms of employment, you understand. Thankfully, his new book is original, clever and will – you can just tell – prove controversial enough to compensate for this early setback. Climate change? We can beat it. Population explosion? Won't happen. Cancer, Aids? In retreat. Global food shortage? Already history. Economic depression? A mere hiccup. Peak oil? Really not an issue. Ridley, you see, has the temerity to believe that life on earth can only get better, and the state of the earth itself with it – not a view, one imagines, guaranteed to win him instant and universal adulation. But we'll get to that later. In the meantime, he's sorry about the Northern Rock business. "I'm truly sorry," he says over coffee in the cafeteria at the Centre for Life, the award-winning life sciences centre in Newcastle he helped found. "It was an awful time. A fantastically painful memory. There's not a week I don't think about it. But the problem is that every time I try to work out how I can go on the record about it, I end up having to go into detail. And that's what I'm not allowed to do." It seemed, presumably, a sensible thing to do at the time. Born to a noble Northumberland family (Ridley's father, Matthew, is the fourth Viscount Ridley; his uncle was Nicholas, the late member of Margaret Thatcher's cabinet; the family pile, Blagdon Hall, is a Grade I-listed mansion in 8,500 acres) whose fortunes were assured by "a spectacularly successful 18th-century coal merchant", Matt was the third generation of the family to sit on Northern Rock's board. "I was on the board of quite a few companies in the north-east by that time," he says. "Of course I was unqualified, but the mantra at the time was that banks needed people with independent experience. Those with chairmen who had more relevant experience got into just as much trouble." The main problem was: "Like everyone living in a bubble, you don't know you are." So Ridley came in for a fair amount of stick for his part in the Northern Rock debacle, not least before a parliamentary committee, where he was castigated for not "recognising the risks of the bank's strategy" and "harming the reputation of the British banking industry". Other critics, notably the environmentalist and Guardian writer George Monbiot, were harsher, arguing that Ridley's writings promoted a "geneticist's version of the market", amounting to a call for precisely the kind of libertarian, anti-regulation, non-interventionist approach that, applied to banks, had precipitated the global financial crisis. He wanted less regulation, his critics said – and look at the result. Ridley says that's not the case. It's true that he once wrote, in a 2006 article, that "the more we limit the growth of government, the better off we will all be". But, he says, "I never 'lobbied' for deregulation, let alone in financial services. Writing articles criticising bad regulation in non-financial areas, and criticising excessive regulation – also in non-financial areas – as part of a wider critique of government fallibility is the closest I've come. But I don't call that lobbying." The whole foul experience, though, undoubtedly helped inform his thinking. Which is what, exactly? How does he justify such immoderate optimism in the future of the species, and – even more immoderate – its habitat? Ridley is, at root, a naturalist. It was the "happy distraction" of bird-watching at Eton that first got him interested in science, and he eventually left Oxford with a DPhil in zoology: "On polygamy in birds, with particular reference to the pheasant." He joined the staff of the Economist in 1983, and was the magazine's science editor from 1984-87. He then spent three years in the US as Washington correspondent, then returned to Britain as American editor for a couple more. Then he left. "I wanted, gradually, to take over the running of the house from my father," he says. "I wanted to start a family, and to do that in the north-east. My wife [neuroscientist Anya Hurlbert] had got a job at Newcastle University. I opted for a freelance writing career. I was lucky enough to have the means to do it." His first book (bar a "rather embarrassing five-week job on the election of George Bush") was The Red Queen, about the evolution of sexual reproduction. The Origins of Virtue, published in 1996, traced the evolution of society in genes, animals and humans. The big breakthrough came three years later with Genome: The Autobiography of a Species in 23 Chapters. Appearing just before the mapping of the human genome in 2000, Ridley's book, variously praised as absorbing, lucid, perceptive, exhilarating, stylish, witty and brilliant, has since sold more than 500,000 copies and been translated into 25 languages. He is equally proud, though, of a later book that made a rather smaller splash, Nature via Nurture. And so to the new one. The Rational Optimist: How Prosperity Evolves is out this month. It is, essentially, about progress: how, of all the species on earth, only humans have managed so radically and completely to change the way they live. Animals, even the most intelligent ones, have not thus far known "economic growth" or "rising living standards" or "technological revolutions" (or, indeed, "credit crunches"). Why? "I'd written four books about how similar humans are to animals," Ridley says. "This one's about how we're different. We think we're free agents, but human nature itself is a constant. If you go back 30,000 years or so, you'd find you were on much the same wavelength as the man who painted the images in the Chauvet cave in the south of France. You'd know what he was about, his nature; you'd recognise him as human in every psychological way." So the question that intrigued Ridley was this: "If people are all the same underneath, how has society changed so fast and so radically? Life now is completely different to how it was 32,000 years ago. It's changed like that of no other species has. What's made that difference? Clearly our genes haven't changed; this process has happened far too fast for genetic change. My answer, bringing together my evolutionary knowledge and a lot of economic reading, is this: sex is to biology as exchange is to culture." That probably requires a little unpicking. Ridley's argument is that just as biological evolution depends on sex (because sex is what brings together the genes of different individuals, allowing natural selection to come up eventually with, say, an eye), cultural evolution depends on ideas meeting and – Ridley's term – mating, allowing mankind to come up with, say, chocolate ice cream. Or a jet engine. Or even The X Factor. And what allows those ideas to meet and mate is our facility for exchanging. Except, of course, it's not just ideas that humans exchange, but things. And as soon as human beings, sometime before 100,000 years ago, began exchanging ideas and things, "culture became cumulative, and human economic 'progress' began," says Ridley, setting his coffee aside, suddenly animated. "It just dawned on me how unusual exchange is in other animal species – not teaching or learning, as many animals do, but genuinely exchanging. Then you start reading, and you realise Adam Smith had seen this: 'Nobody ever saw a dog make a fair and deliberate exchange of one bone for another with another dog.' And you realise, maybe, you could be on to something." What Ridley was on to was a bold and immensely seductive theory, extensively and elegantly demonstrated over 350-odd pages, with examples from the Stone Age to the internet and Tasmania to Ming-era China. Through "exchanging", he argues, humans discovered what he calls "the specialisation of efforts and talents for individual gain". Specialisation, in turn, encouraged innovation. And innovation saved time, which, in Ridley's thesis, equals prosperity – and rising living standards. The world, he thankfully volunteers at this juncture, is far from perfect. Millions still live in misery. But the majority are infinitely better off than they were 200 or even 50 years ago: since 1800, average life expectancy has more than doubled, and real income multiplied more than nine times. Even since 1955, people earn lots more, eat better, lose fewer children, are better educated, and own more useful things such as telephones, toilets and fridges. They are also far less likely to die as a result of murder, accidents, natural disasters and from any one of a whole range of diseases. And that's not just "on average": even including impoverished Africa, Ridley says, it's hard to find any region in the world where longevity, health and wealth haven't risen overall since the 1950s; even the UN reckons that globally, poverty has fallen more in the last 50 years than in the previous 500. "The fact is," he says, "that the more we specialised as producers, and diversified as consumers – the more we exchanged – the better off we have become. And the better off we will be in the future, because this is a process that doesn't stop. It just trundles along, producing higher living standards, in an inexorable way. "And if 6.7 billion people continue to keep specialising and exchanging and innovating, there's no reason at all why we can't overcome whatever problems face us – population explosions, food shortages, disease, poverty, terrorism, climate change, you name it. In fact I think it's quite probable that in 100 years' time both we and the planet will be better off than we are now." Well, it's certainly a tantalising idea. Just a shame no one else seems to believe it. But that, suggests Ridley, is simply because we are pessimists, on a grand scale. People have been predicting the worst for at least the last couple of centuries – and so far they've always been proved wrong. Growing poverty, worldwide famine, population explosion, imminent pandemics, disastrous resource shortages, thinning ozone layers, Y2K bugs, acid rains: none happened as predicted. "For reasons I don't fully understand," concedes Ridley, "it just sounds smarter to shake your head when everyone else is clapping. And catastrophe prediction sells: look at any bookshop." Added to this, humans have a selective memory: we like to believe things were better in the past. Of course, they weren't. "For the vast majority of people," says Ridley, "they were a lot more miserable – lives were harder, poorer, shorter, sicker. We look at Jane Austen on the television and think: the early 19th century looks quite nice. But most of us wouldn't have come anywhere near the ballroom. And even if we had, the body odour would have been terrible." The underlying point about doom-mongering is that it's all based on extrapolation: if we carry on like this, we'll run out of oil, or paper, or food, or water (or temperatures will rise by 6C) within 20, or 50, or 100 years. Rubbish, Ridley says, briskly: "Of course it's right to say, 'We can't carry on like this.' We can't. But the point is, we don't: we find ways to replace things, to be more frugal, more productive. We shouldn't be saying, 'We can't go on as we are,' but: 'How can we best encourage change?'" And the answer to that – assuming you buy Ridley's line – is obviously through exchange. So that's it, then? Our salvation lies in free markets? "Ah," he says, taking stock for a moment. "I'm not talking about all markets. I'm talking, really, about commerce." This book – and, clearly, that unfortunate stint at Northern Rock – have taught him an important lesson: "Markets in goods and services are very different from markets in capital and assets." The latter are "prone to bubbles that pop; the former are not. In fact it's hard to design the latter so they work at all, which is why they need good regulation. I've never argued against that. The former, on the other hand, work so well in delivering efficiency and innovation that it would actually be quite hard to design them so they'd fail." The key difference, he says, lies in the fact that commerce is "a two-sided thing. I think if you put people in front of some huge temptation where it's possible to grab as much as they can for themselves, almost everyone will. The beauty of commerce is that it mutes that. The chap behind the counter in the corner shop has no interest in short-changing you, because he wants you to come back." Markets in assets are not nearly so sensible. And these markets in goods and services need less, not more regulation? He reflects again. "There is," he confesses, "an element of the libertarian in this, but I think socially as well as economically libertarian. The conclusion I've reached is that prosperity, enrichment, is a bottom-up process: it relies on people being able to get on and do things. Governments see it as top-down. And they're cautious, they see the bad things that may come of a new technology rather than the good things. A balance needs to be struck." Not, he hastens to add, that he's opposed to government altogether: "I'm not a great fan of it after the last 1,000 years, but I'm not an extremist who wants rid of it. What we don't want is for the chiefs, priests and thieves to kill the goose that lays the golden egg – which they've often been guilty of in the past. "And I absolutely see that the process of enrichment produces inequalities, and that a government has a responsibility to redistribute. My objection to redistribution in this country is not redistribution in itself, it's that in the process so much gets trousered by bureaucrats." (In keeping with this view, he says, he's giving away half the post-tax proceeds from his book to agricultural charities in Africa.) Hence, he says, standing up and loping off to meet the photographer, the Rational Optimist: not because he was born that way ("I'm as low as anyone else at three in the morning"), but because he's looked at the biological, economic and cultural evidence and convinced himself that we can be optimistic about our future. There are plenty, doubtless, who will think him mad, or bad, or possibly both. It would be kind of a relief, though, wouldn't it, if he was right? • Matt Ridley is appearing at the Hay literature festival on Saturday 5 June guardian.co.uk © Guardian News & Media Limited 2010 | Use of this content is subject to our Terms & Conditions | More Feeds Source: Science news, comment and analysis | guardian.co.uk | 24 May 2010 | 1:00 am British scientists launch first stem cell project recreating brain diseaseTeam led by Sir Ian Wilmut will hope their research gives an unprecedented insight into motor neurone disease British scientists have launched the world's first stem cell project to recreate a devastating and incurable brain disease in the laboratory. The team, led by Sir Ian Wilmut, the Edinburgh researcher who cloned Dolly the sheep, will use stem cells to make diseased and healthy brain cells to study how motor neurone disease progresses into a lethal condition. The research, which will give scientists unprecedented insight into a disease that is almost impossible to study in living patients, could be the best long-term hope doctors have for finding treatments for the condition. In motor neurone disease (MND), brain and spinal cord nerves that control muscles steadily die off, leaving patients trapped in a body that becomes increasingly useless. People become paralysed, unable to talk or eat, and often can only breathe with aid from a mechanical ventilator. Around half of all MND patients die within three years of being diagnosed. Five people die every day from the condition in Britain. One of the longest-living survivors of the condition is Stephen Hawking, the 68-year-old cosmologist, who was diagnosed at the age of 21. Wilmut's team at Edinburgh will work with scientists in London and New York to understand how the disease kills off nerve cells and spreads itself to healthy parts of the brain and central nervous system. The project represents a refinement of plans to use controversial "hybrid embryos" to create stem cells that carry a genetic mutation responsible for motor neurone disease. With hybrid embryo technology, a skin cell from a disease-carrying patient is fused with an animal egg to form an early-stage embryo. Stem cells can be collected from these embryos and grown into adult nerve cells that are prone to developing the disease. Many scientists have abandoned plans to use hybrid embryos in favour of a simpler and less controversial technique, in which adult skin cells are chemically reprogrammed into a stem cell-like state, so called induced pluripotent stem (iPS) cells. Wilmut's team has already taken skin cells from patients with a rare genetic mutation that causes motor neurone disease and converted them into iPS cells. They grew these in Petri dishes into two kinds of adult nerve cells, and did the same with skin cells from healthy people. The £800,000 project, funded by the Motor Neurone Association, will investigate how the brain cells grow, and in particular will examine why those carrying the genetic mutation die off. Understanding what goes wrong will give scientists a clue as to how to slow and even stop the disease. Drugs that may show promise in slowing or stopping the condition can be tested by adding them directly to the disease-carrying brain cells in the lab. "Slowing down the disease is our first aim, stopping the disease is the second, and the home run would be to repair and restore lost function," said Prof Siddharthan Chandran, a member of the Edinburgh University team. The patients in the study carry a mutation in a gene called TDP43. Although the gene is thought to cause only 1% of cases directly, the mutation is linked to changes seen in 90% of patients with the disease. One question the researchers will try to answer is how the disease spreads from one part of the brain to another. Colin Blakemore, president of the MND Association, said: "There is great hope that this approach will enable us to unravel the mystery of motor neuron disease: why and how particular nerve cells die." guardian.co.uk © Guardian News & Media Limited 2010 | Use of this content is subject to our Terms & Conditions | More Feeds Source: Science news, comment and analysis | guardian.co.uk | 24 May 2010 | 12:00 am Indonesian worker bitten by Komodo dragon (AP)AP - An Indonesian worker freed himself from an attacking Komodo dragon by punching the reptile's snout until it released him and ran away, a national park official said Monday.Source: Yahoo! News: Science News | 23 May 2010 | 11:19 pm World's Largest Airship Inflated to Create Monster 'Stratellite' (SPACE.com)SPACE.com - A huge inflatable vehicle as long as a 23-floor skyscraper is tall has become the world's largest airship in its bid to serve as a stratospheric satellite, or "stratellite," according to its developers.Source: Yahoo! News: Science News | 23 May 2010 | 9:45 pm Protecting Biodiversity: The Cost of InactionIn order to save the world's fisheries, we have to acknowledge that some fish may be worth more to us alive than on our plates, economists say.Source: Discovery News - Top Stories | 23 May 2010 | 9:28 pm Scots aim to safeguard rare mussels from criminalsWildlife crime officers begin an operation to halt the "shocking" destruction of Scotland's freshwater pearl mussels.Source: BBC News | Science & Environment | UK Edition | 23 May 2010 | 6:52 pm Icelandic volcano 'cooling off'The Icelandic volcano disrupting air traffic for weeks is showing a marked drop in activity, new findings suggest.Source: BBC News | Science & Environment | UK Edition | 23 May 2010 | 6:37 pm Craig Venter is not playing God yetBy inserting a synthetic strand of DNA into a living bacterium, Craig Venter's team has made an impressive technical advance with considerable technological and basic scientific potential (God 2.0, 21 May). But what they have emphatically not done is "create life". DNA is a relatively inert molecule unless placed in the environment provided by a living cell. When biologists learn to create cells from scratch, then and only then will they have created life. Professor Steven Rose London • JBS Haldane once said that God had a fondness for beetles. Until Craig Venter creates a few, I don't think God 1.0 needs to worry. It would seem that all Venter has done is to take some already existing genome, modified a bit and placed it back inside some other bacterial "shell". More a small step than a giant leap. As I accept God 1.0 as real, I'm often thought of as making unreasonable claims. I don't think I do and would certainly want to examine Ventner's work in the light or reason rather than hyperbole. Geoff Bagley Nottingham • You fear that the ability to produce microbes for specified purposes may hand a gift of new biological weapons to "terrorists". A more likely horror, as we may learn from history, is that new weapons will be developed in the "defence" departments of governments. Donald Rooum London • Religious groups claim Craig Venter is playing God. Should they not be claiming that God is playing with Venter? Alun Pugh Ruthin, Denbighshire • My concern now as an atheist is that a crazed evangelist may use the technology to create God. Robert Smith Merstham, Surrey guardian.co.uk © Guardian News & Media Limited 2010 | Use of this content is subject to our Terms & Conditions | More Feeds Source: Science news, comment and analysis | guardian.co.uk | 23 May 2010 | 5:05 pm Time to remix humankind…And while we're at it let's create crocodiles with breasts and cross a cow with a shark OK, time to revise those nightmare visions of the future. Rather than being laser-gunned in the lungs by robotic shock troopers, we'll be absorbed by undulating blob monsters – all because a group of scientists in Maryland have created artificial life in a laboratory. What surprised me most about the news was that it was surprise news. I thought artificial life had been mastered years ago, when Sega created Sonic the Hedgehog. But apparently he didn't count. Instead we're meant to be excited by a pair of thing-a-zoids which, placed side-by-side in the photographs, look less like the dawn of a new scientific era and more like a pair of giant googly eyeballs, as though Nookie Bear is staring at you from inside a burqa. The underwhelming bio-glob in question is, we're told, "based on a bacterium that causes mastitis in goats", which might make an amusingly wry on-screen sub-heading at the start of the next Transformers movie, but doesn't do much to make the breakthrough any more thrilling. That's possibly because the breakthrough itself is impossible to understand unless you're a geneticist. Here's what happened: the scientists created a computer simulation of the goat bug thingy, then fed the code into a genetic synthesizer. You know, a genetic synthesizer. It looks like a George Foreman grill, but in white, and with twice as many winking lights on the top. They fed it into that. Probably using a USB stick. Anyway, the DNA grill heated up and went beep and "produced short strands of the bug's DNA", which I imagine were an absolute bugger to pick up with tweezers. Said strands were then "stitched together" by some bits of yeast and E coli, which eventually knitted the strand into a complete million-letter-long DNA sequence, which you're probably incorrectly picturing right now. So far, so baffling. Then it gets weirder. To "watermark" their artificial bug, the geneticists spliced a James Joyce quotation into the DNA sequence. The unsuspecting genome now has the phrase "to live, to err, to fall, to triumph, to recreate life out of life" written through it like letters in a stick of rock. In other words, it's the world's most pretentious bacterium. After Quentin Letts. This raises the question of whether it's possible to shove an entire book into the genetic synthesizer and create a new life form. I'd be quite interested in seeing what would pop out if you fed it one of Jordan's novels. It might result in a lifeform more sophisticated than Jordan herself, even if it was just a burping elbow with eyelashes. Incidentally, the DNA sequence also includes an email address, presumably so you know who to contact if you discover a bacterium wandering about in the street without its owner present. Anyway, leaving aside the immense philosophical and spiritual considerations, the most pressing concern about artificial life is the prospect of sinister man-made lifeforms being used for nefarious means. Even Craig Venter himself, who oversaw the experiments, describes it as a "dual-use technology", which is a brilliantly non-specific way of saying "good or evil". On the one hand, energy companies could create an organism which converts CO2 into power, thereby solving climate change and the energy crisis. And on the other, North Korea could unleash an army of sabre-toothed jackdaws. Or we could accidentally create a kind of whispering, intelligent mud that rises up and smothers us to death in our sleep. Literally all of the above can but won't happen. If we survive long enough to perfect the life-creation process, we'll have zany new animals to look forward to. Entire zoos will be dedicated to ridiculous remixed animals: 100-legged cat centipedes, crocodiles with breasts, ladybirds the size of a church. Ever wondered what happens when you cross a cow with a shark? Wonder no more at the charkinarium. Disney could breed a real Mickey Mouse, a real Donald Duck, and a real whatever-Goofy-is to greet kids in their amusement parks – genuine walking, breathing mascots, with their own lungs and digestive systems and everything. Your kids won't know whether to laugh or cry. Although ultimately "cry" is probably the likeliest option, since given the size of Mickey's head he'll probably break his own neck when he bends down to shake their hand. I'd create an animal that excretes meat, just to give vegetarians pause for thought. Ethically, what's the problem with eating a sausage, if it's been harmlessly pooed out by an animal? To sweeten the pill yet further, what if you put pleasure receptors in the animal's colon, so it actively enjoys the sausage-creation process – enjoys it to such a degree that it chases you down the street, yelping in orgasmic delight and producing a string of pan-ready chipolatas? If you think that's disgusting, I'd just like to point out that it's far less revolting than killing a pig with a bolt gun then mashing it up into sausagemeat. And we could remix humankind too, removing all the rubbish bits we're cursed with, like the appendix, or empathy. It'd be fun to create a race of people without memories, pain receptors, or shame cells, then populate a pleasure-island with them: a hyper-decadent, consequence-free paradise where you can spend a fortnight's holiday having sex with everyone you see, or deliberately ramming your car into them, or both – like a real-life 3D Grand Theft Auto. It'd be just like being an oligarch. All in all, a brave new world full of sweating, belching horror lies just over our collective horizon. But don't be scared. Consider yourself lucky to be alive just as we've worked out precisely how special that's not. guardian.co.uk © Guardian News & Media Limited 2010 | Use of this content is subject to our Terms & Conditions | More Feeds Source: Science news, comment and analysis | guardian.co.uk | 23 May 2010 | 5:04 pm Fast-breeding mice dominate a warming worldPast climate change led to lower diversity in the small and furry.<img src="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~r/news/rss/today/~4/xs2S3OrWelA" height="1" width="1"/>Source: NatureNews - All articles published today - nature.com science feeds | 23 May 2010 | 3:00 pm Astronomer Copernicus reburied in Polish cathedralWARSAW (Reuters) - The Polish astronomer Nicolaus Copernicus has been reburied in Poland in a lavish ceremony 467 years after his death, media reported over the weekend.Source: Reuters: Science News | 23 May 2010 | 1:37 pm I fought the squirrel and the squirrel wonHe may be small and furry, but he's crafty – and he and his mates have outsmarted me The squirrels are lying low. Maybe it's the early morning surprise attack I launched – my four year old let out of the backdoor as they yet again ate the bread for the birds. Maybe they're regrouping in the spotted laurel, planning their next sortie. Either way, I know, with the weariness of the besieged, that it won't be long before battle is rejoined. "They're very smart, they work things out, and chew their way into people's houses and suss out how to get exactly what they want," says Ian Woods of Grey Squirrel Control. There are estimated to be more than 2.5 million squirrels in England, Scotland and Wales. Last summer, with the warm weather encouraging us to leave our kitchen door open, the low-level dirty war that the squirrels had been waging on our house (gnawing a hole through the shed and ripping open the binbags buffet-style) stepped up a notch. I began to find them in the kitchen, rummaging through the bread bin. Then they discovered the bathroom skylight and started coming in through that. Battle culminated with me and one particularly stubborn little fighter facing off on the stairs, trying to work out who was going to get out of the way first (me, of course). So what can you do? Woods says that more and more people are buying traps from him. "However, it's illegal to re-release squirrels into the wild. So if you use a live trap, you need to kill the squirrel yourself and the only legal ways of doing that are shooting it with an air rifle, or putting it in a sack and hitting it on the head." In other words, they've got us, chaps. My back door will be staying shut while I contemplate the terms of surrender. guardian.co.uk © Guardian News & Media Limited 2010 | Use of this content is subject to our Terms & Conditions | More Feeds Source: Science news, comment and analysis | guardian.co.uk | 23 May 2010 | 1:00 pm As Mammoths Died Out, Earth ChilledAs massive grazing animals were killed off by early human hunters, methane levels dropped, contributing to a chilling planet.Source: Discovery News - Top Stories | 23 May 2010 | 12:46 pm Fish Oil Could Reduce Bone Loss for Astronauts in Space (SPACE.com)SPACE.com - A group of nutrients found in fish oil, known as omega-3 fatty acids, may help mitigate bone breakdown that occurs during spaceflight and in those who suffer from osteoporosis, a new study suggests.Source: Yahoo! News: Science News | 23 May 2010 | 12:45 pm Shuttle Atlantis departs from space stationCAPE CANAVERAL, Florida (Reuters) - Space shuttle Atlantis departed the International Space Station on Sunday, leaving behind what one astronaut called a "palace" in space that is 98 percent finished after 12 years of construction.Source: Reuters: Science News | 23 May 2010 | 12:32 pm 57 ancient tombs with mummies unearthed in Egypt (AP)
Source: Yahoo! News: Science News | 23 May 2010 | 12:13 pm 57 Ancient Egyptian Tombs with Mummies UnearthedThe oldest tombs date to around 2750 B.C. during Egypt's first and second dynasties.Source: Discovery News - Top Stories | 23 May 2010 | 11:56 am Ornate ancient tombs found in EgyptArchaeologists have unearthed 57 ancient Egyptian tombs, most of which hold an ornately painted wooden sarcophagus with a mummy inside, it was announced today. The oldest tombs date back to around 2750BC during the period of Egypt's first and second dynasties. Twelve belong to the 18th dynasty which ruled Egypt during the second millennium BC. The discovery throws new light on Egypt's ancient religions, the country's Supreme Council of Antiquities said. Egypt's archaeology chief, Zahi Hawass, said the mummies dating back to the 18th dynasty are covered in linen decorated with religious texts from the Book of the Dead and scenes featuring ancient Egyptian deities. Abdel Rahman el-Aydi, head of the archaeological mission that made the discovery, said some of the tombs are decorated with religious texts that ancient Egyptians believed would help the deceased to cross through the underworld. Aydi said one of the oldest tombs is almost intact, with all of its funerary equipment and a wooden sarcophagus containing a mummy wrapped in linen. In 31 tombs dating to around 2030-1840BC, archaeologists discovered scenes of different ancient Egyptian deities, such as the falcon-headed Horus, Hathor, Khnum and Amun, decorating some of the tombs. The findings were unearthed at Lahoun, in Fayoum, 70 miles south of Cairo. Last year, 53 ancient stone tombs were found in the area. guardian.co.uk © Guardian News & Media Limited 2010 | Use of this content is subject to our Terms & Conditions | More Feeds Source: Science news, comment and analysis | guardian.co.uk | 23 May 2010 | 11:25 am Methane Tracking Could Size Up Gulf Oil SlickMeasuring methane in the Gulf could give a better estimate of the Gulf oil spill.Source: Livescience.com | 23 May 2010 | 11:00 am 'To Measure the Oil, Measure the Methane'Questions about how much oil has been spilled in the last month by the Deepwater Horizon oil rig explosion could be answered if scientists move quickly to measure the plumes of dissolved methane gas drifting around the Gulf of Mexico, ...Source: Discovery News - Top Stories | 23 May 2010 | 11:00 am Creeping crisis?Will Salt Lake evaporation ponds harm waterfowl?Source: BBC News | Science & Environment | UK Edition | 23 May 2010 | 9:38 am French farmers turn Champs-Elysees greenThe Champs-Elysees avenue in Paris is turned into a green space by farmers to highlight their financial plight.Source: BBC News | Science & Environment | UK Edition | 23 May 2010 | 6:09 am Eating Disorders Go Untreated as Experts Debate DefinitionsThe criteria used to diagnose eating disorders need to be revised experts say. More than half of patients end up with an eating disorder diagnosed as "not otherwise specified" which creates a number of problems.Source: Livescience.com | 23 May 2010 | 5:19 am "Human rights" urged for whales and dolphinsOSLO (Reuters) - Whales and dolphins should get "human rights" to life and liberty because of mounting evidence of their intelligence, a group of conservationists and experts in philosophy, law and ethics said Sunday.Source: Reuters: Science News | 23 May 2010 | 5:01 am Oil Washing Into Louisiana WetlandsFrustration mounts as BP says their next attempt to stop the leak in the Gulf of Mexico won't happen until Tuesday.Source: Discovery News - Top Stories | 23 May 2010 | 4:48 am
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