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Pollution dispersion research aids understanding of 2002 break-up of Antarctic ozone holeResearchers report findings on the flow of particles that will aid in understanding and controlling global-scale phenomena, such as pollution dispersion in the atmosphere and the ocean. For instance, the BP oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico might be modeled to provide greater insight into how the particles might be dragged into the Loop Current.Source: ScienceDaily: Latest Science News | 25 May 2010 | 9:00 am Sept. 11 attacks linked to increased male baby miscarriages, even in women with no direct connection to eventsStress caused by psychological shock from the Sep. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks, felt even by people with no direct link to the event, may have led to an increase in male children being miscarried in the US.Source: ScienceDaily: Latest Science News | 25 May 2010 | 9:00 am Drinking fewer sugar-sweetened beverages may lower blood pressureDrinking fewer sugar-sweetened beverages -- a leading source of added sugar in the US diet -- may lower blood pressure, according to new research.Source: ScienceDaily: Latest Science News | 25 May 2010 | 9:00 am H1N1 associated with serious health risks for pregnant women, study findsPregnant women who contract the H1N1 flu strain are at risk for obstetrical complications including fetal distress, premature delivery, emergency cesarean delivery and fetal death, according to a new report.Source: ScienceDaily: Latest Science News | 25 May 2010 | 9:00 am To attack H1N1, other flu viruses, gold nanorods deliver potent payloadFuture pandemics of seasonal flu, H1N1 and other drug-resistant viruses may be thwarted by a potent, immune-boosting payload that is effectively delivered to cells by gold nanorods, scientists report.Source: ScienceDaily: Latest Science News | 25 May 2010 | 9:00 am Were dinosaurs warm- or cold-blooded? First method for directly measuring body temperatures of extinct vertebratesQuestions about when, why, and how vertebrates stopped relying on external factors to regulate their body temperatures and began heating themselves internally have long intrigued scientists. Now, a team of researchers has taken a critical step toward providing some answers. They have developed the first method for the direct measurement of the body temperatures of large extinct vertebrates -- through the analysis of rare isotopes in the animals' bones, teeth, and eggshells.Source: ScienceDaily: Latest Science News | 25 May 2010 | 9:00 am Beta-blockers may be associated with benefits in patients with lung diseasePatients with chronic obstructive pulmonary disease may have fewer respiratory flare-ups and longer survival if they take beta-blocker medications, according to a new report.Source: ScienceDaily: Latest Science News | 25 May 2010 | 6:00 am Can bacteria make you smarter?Exposure to specific bacteria in the environment, already believed to have antidepressant qualities, could increase learning behavior, according to new research.Source: ScienceDaily: Latest Science News | 25 May 2010 | 6:00 am Research points to two promising proteins for preventing diabetesTwo human proteins that evolutionary processes have conserved from ancient single-celled organisms appear to provide new targets of opportunity for scientists hoping to thwart the development of diabetes.Source: ScienceDaily: Latest Science News | 25 May 2010 | 6:00 am Phoenix Mars Lander is silent, new image shows damageNASA's Phoenix Mars Lander has ended operations after repeated attempts to contact the spacecraft were unsuccessful. A new image transmitted by NASA's Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter shows signs of severe ice damage to the lander's solar panels.Source: ScienceDaily: Latest Science News | 25 May 2010 | 6:00 am BP had a key role in the Exxon Valdez disaster (AP)
Source: Yahoo! News: Science News | 25 May 2010 | 3:46 am BP hatches 'top kill' bid to plug leak (AFP)
Source: Yahoo! News: Science News | 25 May 2010 | 3:44 am Memorial planned for rig victims; BP readies plan (Reuters)
Source: Yahoo! News: Science News | 25 May 2010 | 3:15 am The nation's weather (AP)
Source: Yahoo! News: Science News | 25 May 2010 | 2:52 am Synthetic life patents 'damaging'A leading UK scientist says efforts to patent the first synthetic life form would give its creator a monopoly on a range of genetic engineering.Source: BBC News | Science & Environment | UK Edition | 25 May 2010 | 2:35 am Grains of historyUnearthing Qatar's lost city from 125 years of sandSource: BBC News | Science & Environment | UK Edition | 25 May 2010 | 2:30 am Oil leaks from Singapore tankerEmergency workers try to contain 2,000 tonnes of oil spilled when a tanker and a bulk carrier collided off Singapore.Source: BBC News | Science & Environment | UK Edition | 25 May 2010 | 2:03 am Space shuttle Atlantis on last leg of last mission (AP)
Source: Yahoo! News: Science News | 25 May 2010 | 2:00 am Offshore drilling here to stay, but changes coming (AP)
Source: Yahoo! News: Science News | 25 May 2010 | 1:40 am The Grown-Up Galaxy Among Kids10 billion light-years away, a behemoth lurks. However, this mysterious galaxy is too old, putting a monkey wrench in the accepted model of galactic formation.Source: Discovery News - Top Stories | 25 May 2010 | 1:07 am Polar bears face 'tipping point'Climate change will trigger a dramatic and sudden decline in the number of polar bears, a study concludes.Source: BBC News | Science & Environment | UK Edition | 25 May 2010 | 1:05 am Nature's own Mexican waveWhat football fans could learn from the giant honeybee of southern Asia Known in the United States simply as "the Wave", and in Latin America by the Spanish translation "la Ola", the stadium wave caught the attention of the world's media at the 1986 football World Cup, held in Mexico. Coca-Cola was quick to associate itself with these spontaneous crowd celebrations, running TV ads that showed the waves, and ended with the line "Coca-Cola, la Ola del Mundial" (the World Cup Wave). Since the company was one of the World Cup sponsors, these ads – and so the waves – were watched by a cumulative audience of 13.5bn TV viewers. Most of us have now contributed to a Mexican wave at one time or another, whether at a Test match at Lord's or a Coldplay gig at Wembley Stadium (where the crowd performed one in the dark, holding up the lights of their mobile phones). I remember one sweeping through the crowd at a football match I was at once. I liked the way it meant abandoning any sense of my individuality and succumbing to the collective will of the crowd. The Mexican wave can also be seen in nature. The giant honeybees of southern and south-eastern Asia, Apis dorsata, don't build their hives in enclosed spaces like European honeybees. Instead, they suspend their honeycomb out in the open, attached to a high branch or an overhanging rock, and cluster around it as a huge, buzzing ball. Such a nest is among the most impressive sights in the insect world, in part because of its epic scale – with the 1m x 1.5m honeycomb swathed in a protective armour of more than 50,000 wiggling bodies – but also due to the Mexican-style waves that regularly sweep across its surface. These are produced by the bees on the outside of the cluster performing what can best be described as highly co-ordinated apian moonies. Such behaviour is known as "shimmering". The insects flick their bottoms in the air in waves. Since the undersides of their abdomens are darker than their yellow backs, the appearance is of black swathes moving across the surface of the colony. These waves tend to spread from a single point in an expanding spiral pattern. The manoeuvre seems to have evolved to scare off predatory wasps, such as bee-hawking hornets, which will attack the nest to try to reach the delicious pupae and honey within. Since the bees would die if they deployed their stings, they have developed a less suicidal defence strategy. The wave of shimmering bee bottoms begins at the point on the surface of the hive where the hornet threatens to attack. The overall effect is of something rearing up against the hornet that is far larger than the individual bees. In most "normal", mechanical waves, energy travels along with the wave shape, while the medium it passes through – be that water, air or rock – remains roughly where it started. But the waves that sweep through stadiums or across the surface of giant honeybee hives are different. In these cases, each individual expends energy, but does not pass this energy on to its neighbour. No, what passes from one to the next is something quite different: information. All that travels through the crowd is how and when each individual should move in order to contribute to the wave. If you are planning to start a Mexican wave, you'll need the help of a group of friends, because just you and your mate jumping up with your hands in the air during a Millwall game will achieve precisely bugger all. We know this thanks to the studies of Professor Tamás Vicsek, of the Eötvös Loránd University in Budapest. He and his colleagues found that in order to spark a wave in a stadium, you need no fewer than 25 people in on the plan, and they all need to co-ordinate themselves to jump up at once. Whether the 25 have to be drunk, shirts off and chanting was not addressed in the research. Vicsek studied how Mexican waves begin and propagate by analysing videos from sporting events. He devised a simplified computer model of the crowd to mimic its behaviour. Vicsek and his colleagues demonstrated that the speed with which a wave travels around a stadium is determined by the crowd members' reaction times. It generally moves fast – at about 12m per second, or 27mph. Vicsek found that an overwhelming number of waves went only in one direction. In fact, in a second study a bias emerged: "We found that the proportion of clockwise to counter-clockwise is something like 60:40." This study included an online survey of Mexican-wave participants. Bizarrely, of the 75 people who participated in this, all the wavers in Europe remembered their waves travelling clockwise around the stadiums, while 70% of those from Australia reported them going counterclockwise. It all seems rather reminiscent of that old myth of water spinning opposite ways down the plughole in the northern and southern hemispheres. This seemed so unlikely that I decided I had to conduct a study of my own. Not the most robust study, I admit, but I did watch 94 different YouTube videos of Mexican waves. Sixty-nine of them were of waves travelling around stadiums within the northern hemisphere. Within these, I found a ratio of 58:42 in favour of clockwise. The other 25 videos were of waves at games in the southern hemisphere. Here there was a ratio of 40:60 in favour of counterclockwise. Clearly, this is robust evidence that stadium waves are more likely to go clockwise in the north, and anticlockwise in the south. I hereby name this the Mexican Law of Hemispherical Bias. Extracted from The Wavewatcher's Companion by Gavin Pretor-Pinney, published by Bloomsbury on 7 June at £14.99. To order a copy for £14.49 (including UK mainland p&p), go to guardian.co.uk/bookshop or call 0330 333 6846. © Gavin Pretor-Pinney Limited 2010 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 | 25 May 2010 | 1:00 am Here come the wavesWaves are one of nature's most spectacular – and familiar – forces, but how much do we really know about them? What exactly is an ocean wave? You may think the answer is obvious: it is a moving mound of water. But if you think that, you are not watching carefully enough. The best way to understand is to observe the effect waves have on something floating in the water – a sprig of seaweed, for example. Watch it as it rises and dips and ducks and weaves, rather like a featherweight boxer. As the peaks move below it, the bobbing seaweed remains in the same general position. It isn't swept along with the crests. So if these waves aren't travelling water, what exactly are they? What is moving from out at sea to the shore? The answer is energy. Water is just the means by which energy moves from one place to another. It is the medium through which the wave's energy travels. When you gaze at the waves lapping up the beach of some exotic holiday location they look calm and tranquil, like the relaxed breathing of the ocean. But such a graceful arrival belies the waves' troubled upbringing. These serene visitors will often have begun life amid the chaotic, wind-torn tumult of a storm somewhere out at sea – one that has long since dissipated. Waves are formed all the time, right across the world's oceans, but it would help to observe their formation in a clutter-free environment: on a patch of smooth, calm and wave-free sea. In reality, no such place exists. The closest approximations are probably within the "horse latitudes", the bands of the seas that fall between 30 degrees and 35 degrees latitude in both the northern and southern hemispheres, and the "doldrums", the band at the equator, extending five degrees or 10 degrees to the north and south. In both regions, the winds can be feeble and inconsistent. The periods of calm can be persistent in the perpetually high pressure of the horse latitudes (the name is thought by some to derive from 18th-century Spanish merchant ships transporting horses to the New World having to jettison their cargo to conserve dwindling water supplies). But we don't want to wait around for ever, so let's choose a patch of water in the doldrums. As the poet Samuel Taylor Coleridge famously described them, the winds here can be so feeble and dithering that they leave a sailing vessel "stuck, nor breath nor motion;/As idle as a painted ship/Upon a painted ocean". The word "doldrums" derives from the old English word "dol", meaning "dull". But these regions experience consistently low pressure; their sultry, eerie calm will soon be broken by weather of a very different character that will conveniently turn the gentle, glassy undulations into towering waves. The warm, humid air around this equatorial belt can lead to intense atmospheric instability. Squalls and storms near the doldrums develop suddenly and can keep growing into enormously destructive tropical cyclones. But we don't need anything as violent as that to bring our waves into being. A simple storm at sea will do the job. Once the wind's speed has reached a couple of knots, or one metre per second, the friction it exerts on the water starts to leave subtle imprints. Tiny ripples dance across the surface, each no higher than a centimetre or so. Soon, scattered, diamond-shaped ripples, known as "cat's paws", sparkle in the light "where the wind's feet shine along the sea", to borrow a phrase from the Victorian poet Algernon Swinburne. These incipient ripples are the newborns: the very first stage in the life cycle of a wave. They soon become established as they are nourished by the stiffening air currents of the building storm into an enduring roughening of the water's surface. This in turn increases the friction between the water and the winds. Tiny eddies develop just above the capillary waves, resulting in fluctuations in the pressure that the air exerts upon the water. The ripples respond enthusiastically to such stimuli: they lift a crest here and sink a trough there and grow in size. Once they have risen to a couple of centimetres in height, our waves are no longer infants. They are now known as "gravity waves" because the weight of the water – the force gravity exerts on it – has become the more significant influence on them. This is now the dominant force in opposing the disturbance of the wind, tending to restore the water to its level and so powering the young waves forwards through the ensuing melee. As the wind builds in force and becomes more sustained, so the waves' appearance changes completely. The crests and troughs now grow agitated and chaotic. They rush this way and that, running into each other, tumbling over each other, like a roomful of toddlers under the dubious guidance of a hyperactive childminder. This confused and irregular ocean surface is known simply as a "wind sea". Before long, the significant wave height has grown to a metre. They are waves now, rather than wavelets. They grow angrier and more aggravated under the wind's abusive guardianship, until plumes of foam begin to form at their crests. Now emerging into adulthood, the waves have "badass" written all over them. This stage is marked by the appearance of foaming lips of white water on the larger specimens. Known as "whitecaps", these are the waves beginning to tumble over themselves, under the relentless, harrying force of the gale. If storm-force winds blow for long enough, and over a large enough area, they begin to tear plumes of spray, or "spindrift", from the crests. Each wave face becomes marbled with streaks of white foam, described by Joseph Conrad as "like a wall of green glass topped with snow". The waves keep on growing, their significant heights eventually surpassing 5m. Now the whitecaps have become commonplace. Mariners sometimes describe them as "white horses", occasionally as "skipper's daughters" – the latter, presumably, because you don't want to mess with them. These spitting mountains of water are most dangerous to ships. Not only are they the steepest of waves, they are also liable to break over the ship, bringing tonnes of seawater crashing down on to deck. To try to avert such a danger, mariners have, since classical times, had a trick up their sleeves. They have poured fish oil overboard, or hung sacks containing oil-soaked rags into the water, to calm the waves in a storm. It seems that the ancient Greeks considered that this curious effect might be explained by the film of oil that spreads over the surface, reducing friction between wind and water: "Is it, as Aristotle says," wondered the Greek historian Plutarch, "that the wind, slipping over the smoothness so caused, makes no impression and raises no swell?" In fact, the effect the oil has on the water's surface tension is the critical factor. It spreads over it as an extremely thin film, or skin, which has a lower surface tension than the surface of water. This makes the water less able to riffle under the influence of the wind and form the centimetre-high capillary waves. By suppressing the surface ripples, the oil can make enough of a difference to the wind's grip to stop an enormous crest from being thrown on to, rather than under, the deck of a ship. While we've been distracted, the storm has continued to howl and the waves have grown to significant heights, to 12–15m brutes the size of four-storey buildings. This is now a fully developed sea, which means that the waves have grown as high as they can under these wind speeds. For a good idea of how our waves might appear, we need look no further than Jan Porcellis's 1620 mini-masterpiece Dutch Ships in a Gale, in London's National Maritime Museum (pictured on previous page). Porcellis was hailed as the "Raphael of marine painters" by a contemporary, the artist Samuel van Hoogstraten. Characteristically of Porcellis at this time, the painting was small, not much larger than an A4 piece of paper. But the low, dramatic perspective makes you feel as if you are peering through a window on to the marine equivalent of a ferocious tavern brawl, thanks to the sheer mayhem of these deranged and uncontrollable waves. Only when the storm eventually passes and the winds die down do our waves enter the next stage in their lives. The waves that were generated in the wind sea continue to travel over the water – but without the need to be pushed along. They've changed from "forced waves", driven by the winds, into "free waves". And how their mood can shift as they mature and enter middle age. No longer a wind sea, the surface is now what is known as a "swell", which seems an appropriately harmonious name. Although the storm may have passed, the energy it transferred to the water cannot simply disappear. They just roll on, doing their thing. Waves on the surface of the sea lose remarkably little of their energy to the surroundings once they are up and running. This means they can travel enormous distances. As they do so, the heights of the ocean swells diminish to minuscule levels. This is not because the energy ebbs away. It is merely a result of the way waves spread out, fan-like, from their source, the energy imparted to the surface by the storm winds spreading over increasingly greater areas of ocean. Gone are the steep, peaked crests of the wind sea. Their smoother appearance now makes them more like the swell in Claude Monet's The Green Wave. Monet was something of a pioneer in the deployment of impressionistic techniques for painting the sea and was described by his fellow impressionist Edouard Manet, unoriginally, as the "Raphael of Water". The swell is now a most peculiar procession of crests. They are in the form of groups of larger waves, separated by gaps, in which the waves are smaller, and sometimes barely even there. What is so strange is that each individual wave crest travels faster than the group it is in. The crest appears from the calmer water at the back of the group, travels through it and disappears again in the calmer water at the front. It is like a train, on which are running the ghosts of marathon runners. As this train chugs along in the approach to a station, it happens to be travelling at about jogging speed. Being deceased marathon runners, the ghosts on the train can't actually stop jogging. They therefore appear at the back of each carriage, run through it and disappear again at the front. As seen from the platform, the ghosts will be moving twice as fast as the carriages. This is how the waves in the swell move. And so we come to the final stage in the life of our waves. Perhaps they have travelled in the peculiar grouped arrangement of wave adulthood for many hundreds of miles. Only as they approach landfall do they make one more transformation. This is the stage with which many of us are most familiar, when waves release their energy in a churning, foaming crash on to the shore. Their swansong begins as they enter shallower water. Where the wave base first makes contact with the rising seabed, the waves "feel" the ground beneath them. The progress of their bases is slowed by friction. As they slow, they bunch up and steepen, so that their shapes change from smooth undulations back into the sharp peaks of their youth. One rule comes to dominate their behaviour: the shallower the water, the slower they travel. Due to the gradient of the seabed, the crests at the front of the wave train slow down before those behind. Again, like a marathon runner stumbling so that those behind fall and ride up on top of each other, so the undulations in the water are concertinaed. As the waves are squeezed, there is nowhere for the water to go but upwards. If the gradient is just right, and the waves have enough energy, they can rise up so dramatically that they become unstable: below the water, the wave's feet slow down, while the top keeps going, and the wave trips over itself, causing the crest to pitch forward and crash over on itself. Oceanographers tend to divide breaking waves into three types: "spilling breakers", "plunging breakers" and "surging breakers". When the slope of the beach is very shallow, the waves crumble at the crests as spillers. These fringes of white water stretch down from the lip along the front of the wave, making it look as if it is wearing one of those Tudor ruffs. The waves depicted in Sennen Cove, Cornwall, painted by John Everett in 1919, are spilling breakers. Everett made extensive voyages around the world, often aboard merchant vessels as a working member of the crew, in order to study and paint waves. He hasn't had the acknowledgement he deserves, and I feel compelled to call him the "Raphael of Spilling Breakers". Plunging breakers form when the slope of the beach or reef is steeper, and they are the most beautiful of the three types. The lip of the wave is thrown forward so that it curls over to form a tube before crashing to the water below. At their most impressive, these breakers are the "barrels" that surfers ride within, the canopy of water thrown over their heads as they disappear from view. Surging breakers, which occur on the steepest gradients of the seabed, look completely different. They are hardly breakers at all. The water just sloshes up against the steep shore and back again, like water at the end of the bathtub as you sit yourself down with a thump. Whatever the particular style of their demise, our waves finally die on the unyielding shore, as their energy dissipates. They are gone in a tumble of white water. Extracted from The Wavewatcher's Companion by Gavin Pretor-Pinney, published by Bloomsbury on 7 June at £14.99. To order a copy for £14.49 (including UK mainland p&p), go to guardian.co.uk/bookshop or call 0330 333 6846. © Gavin Pretor-Pinney Limited 2010 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 | 25 May 2010 | 12:59 am Thunderstorms as Nature's Particle AcceleratorsForget the Large Hadron Collider, Mother Nature has her own version of an accelerator, created by unique conditions that sometimes occur during thunderstorms, some 40 kilometers above the surface of the Earth.Source: Discovery News - Top Stories | 25 May 2010 | 12:45 am Top 10 Species of the Year AnnouncedThe top 10 species discovered in 2009 were announced. These species are all super bizarre from big-fanged minnows to carnivorous slugs.Source: Discovery News - Top Stories | 24 May 2010 | 10:17 pm NASA ends effort to contact Phoenix Mars Lander (AP)AP - The Phoenix lander will not rise again.Source: Yahoo! News: Science News | 24 May 2010 | 9:21 pm Several tornadoes spotted in Midwestern states (AP)
Source: Yahoo! News: Science News | 24 May 2010 | 9:20 pm Umbilical Cords Clamped Too Soon, Researchers Say (LiveScience.com)LiveScience.com - Usually within the first minute of birth, the umbilical cord running between mother and infant is clamped. But this may be too fast, researchers say.Source: Yahoo! News: Science News | 24 May 2010 | 7:42 pm Britain bans doctor who linked autism to vaccine (AP)
Source: Yahoo! News: Science News | 24 May 2010 | 7:30 pm NASA calls it quits for Mars Phoenix landerLOS ANGELES (Reuters) - NASA has officially called it quits for the Mars landing craft Phoenix, two years after the stationary probe touched down on the frigid northern polar surface of the Red Planet, the space agency said on Monday.Source: Reuters: Science News | 24 May 2010 | 7:26 pm US toughens talk over Gulf spillThe US toughens its stance on BP, with one official pledging to "keep our boot on their neck" until the Gulf oil leak is stopped.Source: BBC News | Science & Environment | UK Edition | 24 May 2010 | 7:19 pm Video: Kamikaze Comet Dives Into Sun’s Lower Atmosphere
NASA’s twin sun-observing spacecraft tracked a comet further than ever before as it dove into the sun. The video above is a compilation of images from the two STEREO spacecraft that orbit with the Earth, one ahead of the planet and the other behind. The configuration allows for nearly full, continuous coverage of the sun, increasing the chance of witnessing something like the kamikaze comet that they spotted in March. Seeing comets and other small objects approach the sun is difficult because the objects are overwhelmed by the sun’s brightness. Scientists were able to track this one closer to the sun than ever, before it it burned up in the sun’s lower atmosphere. “We believe this is the first time a comet has been tracked in 3-D space this low down in the solar corona,” Claire Raftery of the University of California, Berkeley said in a press release. The images were presented at the American Astronomical Meeting in Miami May 24. See Also:
Source: Wired: Wired Science | 24 May 2010 | 6:03 pm Tony Blair in green advisory roleFormer UK Prime Minister Tony Blair is to join Silicon Valley venture capital firm Khosla Ventures as an adviser.Source: BBC News | Science & Environment | UK Edition | 24 May 2010 | 5:40 pm The Oil Spill: Anatomy of a Blowout (and How It Will Happen Again)Analysis of the final hours before the Deepwater Horizon explosion reveals a key safety step was ignored. And oil wells around the Gulf of Mexico may be repeating the mistake every day.Source: Discovery News - Top Stories | 24 May 2010 | 5:22 pm Researchers try new approaches to preventing HIV(Reuters) - Tablets, insertable rings and dissolving films can effectively deliver drugs to help protect women and perhaps men from infection with the AIDS virus, researchers reported on Monday.Source: Reuters: Science News | 24 May 2010 | 5:07 pm Scientists find clues to kidney transplant successLONDON (Reuters) - European scientists have found a full range of markers in the blood of kidney transplant patients which could predict whether their new organ will be a success and whether they need large amounts of medication to help it.Source: Reuters: Science News | 24 May 2010 | 5:03 pm Teeth tell temperature talesDinosaurs' dental samples could reveal details of body temperature.<img src="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~r/news/rss/today/~4/ffuZxkdJEE8" height="1" width="1"/>Source: NatureNews - All articles published today - nature.com science feeds | 24 May 2010 | 5:01 pm Air Force Troops Laugh as Comrades Get Zapped by TaserBy releasing a video of airmen laughing while they shock each other with Tasers during training, the Air Force has documented a key role humor plays in group bonding.Source: Livescience.com | 24 May 2010 | 4:35 pm Planetary Bullies Make Astronomers Rethink the Habitable Zone
Exoplanet orbits that seem just right for life could be bent out of shape by pushy neighbors. New simulations of extrasolar planetary systems may mean the definition of “habitable” planets needs to be completely overhauled. When astronomers talk about the “habitable zone,” they mean the shell around a star where the temperatures are right for liquid water. Any closer, and oceans will boil. Any farther, and the planet will freeze. But this definition assumes that most planets have roughly circular orbits, like the Earth and most other planets in the solar system. “What we know from studying exoplanets is that that is definitely not the rule,” said Rory Barnes of the University of Washington at the meeting of the American Astronomical Society in Miami. Many of the 454 exoplanets discovered to date have highly elliptical orbits, meaning the planets are not always the same distance from their parent star. Thanks to this uneven geometry, the planet spends more time closer to its star, which tends to make for warmer planets. Adding another planet, especially a bullying Jupiter-sized planet, can mess with orbits and make a once-hospitable planet move in and out of the habitable zone over time. Using computer simulations of several hypothetical planetary systems, Barnes showed that a giant neighbor can pull an Earth-like planet’s orbit like a rubber band, shifting it from circular to elliptical and back to circular again in as little as a few thousand years. “It’s a very stable, repetitive process,” Barnes said.
The Earth’s orbit actually does feel similar nudges from Jupiter, known as Milankovitch Cycles. But luckily for us, these orbital shape shifts are subtle. Barnes’ simulations predicted more-dire consequences for extrasolar planets near the edge of their habitable zones, though. If the planet is on the cooler edge of the habitable zone, it could go through cycles of freezing and thawing. If it’s on the warmer side, the temperature could fluctuate from comfy to boiling from one millennium to the next. “The inner edge is much more dangerous,” Barnes said. All the water could boil off and be lost forever, or the warming planet could experience a “runaway greenhouse” effect and end up a scorched wasteland like Venus. But it’s not all bad news. Barnes suggests that some planets we might dismiss as snowballs could just be going through an eccentric phase. “Our own Earth has gone through stages of glaciation — we call them snowball Earth phases — and we managed to pull out of it,” he said. “On a planet like that, on the outer edge, you will have reservoirs of life, and there will be habitats that will persist.” For planets around dim, low-mass stars, which have to be especially close to be in the habitable zones, neighboring giant planets could wreak havoc with the length of the day, and the gravitational pull could cause cycles of volcanic activity and earthquakes interspersed with relative calm. “These are fascinating worlds to think about,” Barnes said. “It will do lots of interesting things as far as how climates might evolve and how evolution might happen on such a planet.” The results suggest that the current definition of “habitable zone” may be too simplistic. Astronomers may have to consider the whole family of exoplanets in a system before determining if one is habitable or not. “One of the things that this new work is emphasizing is that one needs to be very careful about defining habitability,” commented Phil Armitage of the University of Colorado, Boulder. “Those ideas about terrestrial planet formation and habitability of terrestrial planets will need to be re-evaluated from scratch.” Image: NASA See Also:
Source: Wired: Wired Science | 24 May 2010 | 4:22 pm Testosterone Makes People Suspicious of One Another
Testosterone is linked to aggression, competition and social status. Now scientists have found that the hormone also reduces naive individuals’ confidence in others. “Testosterone reduces trust just enough to make people vigilant and careful,” said psychologist Jack van Honk of Utrecht University in the Netherlands, who led the study published May 24 in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. In the study, a few dozen females received half a milligram of testosterone under the tongue — enough to increase hormone levels tenfold. The women viewed pictures of faces and judged how trustworthy they looked. The drug decreased ratings by about half, and the effect was only strong for females who are normally easily fooled.
Van Honk speculates that the effect does not occur in cautious individuals, because the hormone would make them so paranoid that they would become socially disabled. “I think that people are going to see that testosterone has beneficial effects on social behaviors and carries properties that might be important for applications in certain psychiatric diseases, one of them being social anxiety disorder,” he said “It’s interesting work that fits nicely with recent work suggesting that testosterone influences social motivation and perception,” said Pranjal Mehta, a psychologist at Columbia University who was not involved in the study. Future studies should test whether testosterone decreases trust in all individuals in more competitive situations, he said. “It’s absolutely critical to test the effect of the hormone in real-world social contexts,” he said. Previous studies have found that oxytocin, a hormone involved in bonding, increases faith in others. The two hormones together may keep trust at an optimal level, van Honk said. In future studies, he would like to determine which brain circuits regulate trust through these hormones. Image: flickr/an untrained eye See Also:
Source: Wired: Wired Science | 24 May 2010 | 3:47 pm The Phoenix Mars Lander is Dead, Goes to Silicon HeavenIt's official. After hundreds of flyovers by Mars Odyssey and overhead photographs taken by the Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter, Phoenix isn't going to rise from the dead.Source: Discovery News - Top Stories | 24 May 2010 | 2:55 pm New Threat to Public Wi-Fi Users: Typhoid AdwareA new strain of adware shows how easy it may be to infect computers signed on to public Wi-Fi networks.Source: Livescience.com | 24 May 2010 | 2:55 pm A synthetic creation storyClaims of 'synthetic life' reflect only our changing conception of what life is and how it might be made, says Philip Ball.Source: NatureNews - All articles published today - nature.com science feeds | 24 May 2010 | 2:52 pm Nasa Mars lander 'broken by ice'New images from Martian orbit appear to confirm Nasa's Phoenix lander broke apart during the Red Planet's winter.Source: BBC News | Science & Environment | UK Edition | 24 May 2010 | 2:38 pm 'Little Dog' Robot Ambles Over Rocks Like Nuttin'You've seen the Big Dog robot, right? The one from Boston Dynamics that walks walks, runs, climbs and carries heavy loads over uneven terrain. Try to push it over and it re-stabilizes itself almost exactly the way a person would. ...Source: Discovery News - Top Stories | 24 May 2010 | 2:18 pm Vaccine Could Help People Quit SmokingIt produces antibodies that stop nicotine from getting into the brain and triggering the pleasure-center chemical, dopamine.Source: Discovery News - Top Stories | 24 May 2010 | 2:08 pm Umbilical Cords Clamped Too Soon, Researchers SayDelaying umbilical cord clamping by just a few minutes may impart significant health benefits to the baby.Source: Livescience.com | 24 May 2010 | 1:40 pm Study: Anti-Aging Supplements Best Taken in Middle AgeAnti-aging supplements might work best if taken in middle age rather than after the age of 65, a new study suggests.Source: Livescience.com | 24 May 2010 | 1:16 pm AKC Allows Mixed-Breed to Enter Dog ShowJust yesterday, my dog Drama and I were lounging around watching "What Not to Wear" on TLC. Drama propped himself under my neck, allowing me to use him as a pillow, providing maximum comfort and tons of sloppy doggy kisses. ...Source: Discovery News - Top Stories | 24 May 2010 | 1:03 pm Testosterone Makes Women Less TrustingTrusting women appear to become more skeptical when they are given doses of the sex hormone testosterone, a new study finds.Source: Livescience.com | 24 May 2010 | 1:02 pm Woolly Mammoths, Rhinoceroses Were ToastyScientists devise an accurate method of determining the body temperatures for extinct animals, including woolly mammoths and eventually even dinosaurs.Source: Discovery News - Top Stories | 24 May 2010 | 1:00 pm Can Bacteria Make You Smarter?Take another breath of that fresh air. It might make you smarter.Source: Discovery News - Top Stories | 24 May 2010 | 12:40 pm How the Lancet was seducedEven a journal as prestigious as the Lancet was seduced into publishing bad science by an apparently dramatic finding The Wakefield saga, brought to an unhappy conclusion by the General Medical Council's decision to strike the doctor at the heart of the MMR-"autism" controversy off the British medical register, highlights many troubled issues in medical research: the influence of funding sources and disclosure of conflicts of interest, the role of big personalities and limited insight that may go with that, and the question of regulation, to name but a few. But none would have caused this MMR scare to run as it did had not the Lancet, the UK's most prestigious medical journal, chosen to publish Andrew Wakefield's original study associating gastrointestinal disease, MMR vaccination and developmental regression in the first place. The standards of 1998 do not pertain today, but even then there was a strong expectation that peer review would be rigorous and the Lancet would not have published bad science – and it was difficult then for clinical researchers to get published in that journal. It might be a little more difficult now. Much has been written on the purported association between the gastrointestinal pathology findings and the children's developmental regression: were the findings sufficiently rigorous, did interpretation of the slides change and were these properly reported? There has been less focus on what most interested the public – the link suggested between MMR vaccination and developmental regression in eight of the 12 children. The paper reports that the average interval from MMR vaccination exposure to first behavioural symptoms was 6.3 days, with a range of 1-15 days. The point has been repeatedly made that autism develops around the time MMR is given in any case, and that temporal association does not prove causation. But looking at the reported methods of gathering these data, Wakefield and colleagues state in their paper – subsequently retracted by 10 of his 12 co-authors, and latterly by the Lancet – that "the history was obtained by a senior clinician … In eight children, the onset of behavioural problems had been linked, either by the parents or by the child's physician, with measles mumps or rubella vaccination". This is key. Was this physician the same as the clinician who took the history? Or the child's GP? Or the referring clinician? And how was the question phrased? Was its wording standardised? Did those being asked about his link know what hypothesis the researchers were exploring? Could the respondents in any way have been included in the study because of a particular concern about this link? It is even unclear whether Wakefield and colleagues confirmed the date of exposure to the MMR vaccine by examining the primary care clinical records. Such inadequate reporting should have resulted in rejection of the paper at the outset. The variable, retrospective data collection, the excruciatingly small number of cases, and a situation where parents were desperate to find a cause for a child's illness, make recall bias highly likely. The meaning of the findings is clearly at odds with the general conclusion of the paper in any case; no peer reviewer should have let this pass. So, why did the Lancet make space for this paper? Medical journals are ranked by their "impact factors", a score based on how often the papers they publish are cited by other researchers. Impact factors, in turn, provide a pecking order for researchers: although the UK Research Excellence Framework is circumspect about the value of "bibliometrics", it is inconceivable that journal status has no influence on ratings. Researchers are sometimes driven to extremes to get their paper into high-impact journals, and journals, in their turn, are fiercely keen to publicise their work. It is clear that editors will consciously assess the likely "impact of a paper" not only on its usefulness, but also on its potential citation career. They might also be thinking, beyond the learned journals, about what the lay press might make of it. Are controversial papers more likely to be published than research that is methodologically solid, clinically useful, but probably unexciting to the general public? That studies with negative findings are less likely to be published, or published in journals with lower impact factors, is widely recognised. (The Lancet, incidentally, has contributed considerably to combating this by establishing peer-reviewing of study protocols, in which decisions are made about which research papers will be sent out for review based on a description of the research question and study methods alone, before the findings themselves are known.) But where are the peer reviewers of this most controversial of papers in all of this? Did the reviewers have expertise in research methods as well as in the scientific topic area? Have their comments been subject to external scrutiny? Did they point out the research methods' weaknesses? They were anonymous and their reviews are not routinely part of the scientific or public record. Some publication vehicles no longer allow anonymous peer review, and reviewer names are published online, together with their reviews and authors' replies. This transparency is helpful for all those interpreting the work; simultaneously, it makes peer reviewers less vulnerable to recriminations, and authors and editors more accountable. Had the sloppy research methods and reporting by Dr Wakefield and colleagues been picked up and properly acted on, none of this would have happened. This association in the minds of parents or physicians about the cases of eight children would not have become a cause celebre, leading to the suffering and, indeed, deaths of many children. The editor of the Lancet has written that the decision to publish the Wakefield paper must be seen in the context of criticism of the government for not making known early reports of bovine spongiform encephalopathy risk. If Wakefield's methods had been robust, that would have been fair enough. Robust clinical epidemiology – the basic tools for collecting and interpreting the clinically meaningful data – should never stop being a necessary criterion for publishing applied medical science. Ultimately, the test of a clinical research advance must be whether or not it delivers improved outcomes for patients. Wakefield – abetted by the Lancet – failed that test. 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 | 12:30 pm Odds 1-in-3 for Northwest Mega-Quake Within 50 YearsThere's more than a one-in-three chance that a titanic temblor will happen within the next 50 years in the Pacific Northwest.Source: Livescience.com | 24 May 2010 | 12:21 pm The psychology of catching burglarsProfessor David Canter has a system to catch burglars ... if only Boris Johnson could fix the computer As the new coalition grapples with the problem of cutting the cost of policing without increasing crime, help could be at hand from the University of Huddersfield. A team at its research centre for investigative psychology has developed a computer system that could improve burglary detection rates by between 10% and 20% "for virtually no extra cost", according to its director, Professor David Canter. This is no idle boast. For 25 years, at three different universities, Canter, 66, has been helping police with their inquiries. But he is at pains to dissociate himself from the portrayal of his trade in fictional programmes such as Waking the Dead, CSI and Cracker. "It's very misleading to think that psychologists will ever solve crimes," he says. "What we're doing is developing a new understanding of criminal behaviour, as well as whole strategies and styles of what I call problem-solving research." It began in 1985 when Canter was at Surrey University investigating how people react to emergencies such as fires with regard to the evacuation of buildings. The work brought him into contact with the police at a time when three forces were desperate to catch the so-called "Railway Rapist" and serial killer who had attacked 18 women in 12 months. "I was approached by a senior officer in the Met who had seen a television documentary on offender profiling by the FBI," he recalls. The message from cop to academic was: "Can you help us catch this man before he kills again?" It was the first time in the UK that a psychologist had been used in a major investigation, and it would lead to Canter developing the field of investigative psychology from scratch. To cut a long story short, John Duffy was brought to justice for the murders and rapes. Canter "contributed to his capture", as he puts it, by applying a process that would become known as geographical profiling – "getting behind the dots on the map to understand how a criminal makes sense of and uses places". It gave the police vital clues as to the offender's location as well as a detailed profile of his habits and traits. And it is that kind of detailed profiling that Canter and his team hope to bring to the less grizzly but far more widespread and extremely costly crime of burglary. With some funding from the Metropolitan police, they have developed an interactive geo-behavioural profiling system. "We're not the only ones working on projects like this," he says. "But all the other systems work at the aggregate level. The mathematics are averaged across a set of offenders and then applied to a particular case. We've always known that that is limited. We've now got a way of doing it that allows us to develop a system for each individual offender. The maths is adjusted according to the individual." An exciting development? "It is," he says and goes on to outline the potential consequences. "One is theoretical. Yes, we want to help the police but, in a sense, what universities are for is to develop understanding and contribute to knowledge. Because this is a research tool, it gives us the basis to explore in much more detail the activities of offenders." And the practical consequences? "If one in 10 burglaries is solved, then a police force is doing quite well. It's rarely more than 12%." So the Huddersfield system could double detection rates? "For sure," Canter says. However: "Our prototype is still lying on a desk somewhere in the Met, unused. I did actually write to Boris Johnson about it when he became mayor [of London]. He said it was a technical matter – in other words that the Met were having problems fitting our computer system with theirs. But that could be overcome. As a taxpayer, I don't want the police to tell me'We have a three-year programme that will eventually help us to catch the guy'. I want them to catch someone tomorrow and get my telly back." "The British police are very effective, compared to other forces around the world, at dealing with the here and now – issues such as crowd control or murder investigations. But they don't have a framework for following through on strategic issues. And the Met has enormous problems because it's so big. They have our pilot, which shows the system can work ... But it's never been used in relation to an actual case, as far as I know." So does that leave the project in limbo? "Well ... the next stage is for the Met to give us the resources to turn the prototype into something operational. And that's where we've got stuck. I am now rebuilding it in Huddersfield, using different mathematics, and trying to make it more sophisticated." What emerges may yet be of interest to politicians more elevated than Boris Johnson as the new government seeks ways of fighting crime while making financial savings. • David Canter's Forensic Psychology: A Very Short Introduction will be published by Oxford University Press this summer, at £7.99 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 pm Why do women put up with violence?Carole Jahme shines the cold light of evolutionary psychology on readers' problems. This week: domestic violence From an anonymous female Lately he has lost his job and his drinking is now daily, with my daughter suffering frequent beatings in front of the three children. He's always insisted she shouldn't work and now he has no income either so I find myself sending them money and food regularly. Carole, when I suggest she should leave him, she just laughs. What's up with that? It has been theorised that some women who live with domestic violence do so because they learned how to when they themselves were growing up.1 If so, this would mean that your three grandchildren are, at this very moment, adapting to abnormal patterns of attachment that could well give them pain throughout their lives. Other research has suggested that while battered mothers can provide the maternal warmth their children need, they are unable to supply maternal authority due to low self-esteem.2 According to some surveys, approximately a quarter of all heterosexual women experience physical or sexual abuse, or both, by an intimate partner at some time during their lives.3 This damage radiates outwards from the victim, scarring her children and others emotionally close to her.4 Women habituated to battery are frequently unable to step back and take stock of the bigger picture. The trauma impacts upon cognition and they tend to employ short-term coping strategies, such as fleeing when violence erupts, only to return during a hiatus when things are quiet and he has said sorry.5 Frequently men who batter their partners justify the violence by saying she provoked them and should have realised they would become angry or jealous. Jealousy of the perpetrator is a universally cited reason given by victims for why their male partner battered them. Incidentally, male jealousy is theorised to have evolved as a way to dominate females and assure paternity.6 Victims are often blamed and frequently blame themselves. They may feel guilt or shame. In addition, a woman's uncertainty over finances or inability to manage the situation will result in anxiety and feelings of helplessness. Unfortunately, if a victim empathises with her abuser's psychological weaknesses she may forgive and even pity him. Women like this need external intervention to help them to objectify their relationship and see it for what it is, so they can start to prioritise their own needs without feeling guilt or pity.7 You say your son-in-law has just lost his job and he has always forbidden your daughter from working. The tighter money becomes the more your daughter will be punished.8,9 He sounds like a socially inflexible, jealous, controlling man, who suffers low self-esteem, has intentionally isolated your daughter and stamps on her to raise his own status. His uncontrollable anger is never far from the surface and soon your grandchildren will not just be witnesses, they will become physical victims of battery too. What can you do to put a stop to this? There is no single, universally effective strategy for ending abuse.10 You want to help your daughter, but you also feel frustrated by her. Don't tell her she has brought this on herself and that you tried to warn her but she wouldn't listen to you. She needs help to self-assess so try not to judge her. The money and food parcels that you send are only perpetuating the problem. You've got to get her professional help. I would suggest you go with your daughter to her GP and ask for a referral to the local Child and Adolescent Mental Health Services (CAMHS) department. Insist that your daughter and grandchildren are assessed by a clinical psychologist/psychiatrist with expertise in this domain. An application for sheltered accommodation and re-housing may be justified. The multidisciplinary staff found at a CAMHS department can help negotiate this and also offer other therapies. Change will, in the short term, cause stress, but eventually if your daughter and her children stick together and make a break from this man they will not remain as victims of violence. Instead, over time and with help, the children will develop into the people they should have been had they lived in a stable and harmonious environment from birth. Once re-settled your daughter should get a part-time job, or volunteer at her children's school, or re-train, so long as the hours suit her children's needs.11 This will help raise her self-esteem and stop her from remaining isolated at home. It's not too late for any of these changes to be successfully implemented, but the time is now. You can contact the excellent charity Women's Aid for further advice. References Email your questions to Carole by clicking here. Please put "Ask Carole" in the subject line.
We regret that Carole cannot answer all the mails we receive. We cannot provide urgent advice and suggest that if you need such advice you seek it immediately without waiting for a response from Carole. With regards to legal, medical or financial issues, we recommend seeking the advice of a listed professional. We will not be held liable for any loss, damage or injury you incur as a result of using this site or as a result of any advice given. We will not enter into personal correspondence via email. Carole is UK-based and as such any advice she gives is intended for a UK audience only. 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 | 11:34 am Synthetic Life May Reveal Origins of Natural LifeThe first synthetic genome was created, which could let scientists uncover the very origins of life on Earth.Source: Livescience.com | 24 May 2010 | 11:32 am Mysterious 'Monster' Washes Up on Canadian ShoreA mysterious "monster" that washed onto a Canadian shore was actually ...Source: Livescience.com | 24 May 2010 | 11:24 am Mediterranean Sea Getting Saltier, HotterWestern Mediterranean Sea deep water temperature and salt levels have risen since the 1940s.Source: Livescience.com | 24 May 2010 | 10:28 am Atlantis set for 'final' returnThe US shuttle and its crew heads back to Earth, wrapping up the craft's 32nd - and probably final - space voyage.Source: BBC News | Science & Environment | UK Edition | 24 May 2010 | 10:24 am Photo: WISE Telescope Captures Heart Nebula
A new mosaic from NASA’s newest infrared observatory captures the Heart and Soul nebulae, so named because of their resemblance to hearts — both the Hallmark-card and the blood-pumping variety. “One is a Valentine’s Day heart, and the other is a surgical heart that you have in your body,” said Ned Wright of the University of California, Los Angeles, who presented the image May 24 at a meeting of the American Astronomical Society. Since its launch Dec. 14, 2009, the Wide-Field Infrared Survey Explorer has been circling the Earth in a polar orbit and snapping images every 11 seconds. As of Sunday, it has captured 953,880 frames and mapped about 75 percent of the sky, Wright said.
The new image is stitched together from 1,147 individual frames. The exposure took a total of 3½ hours spread over 11 days in February to complete. The nebulae are located in the constellation Cassiopeia, about 6,000 light-years away from Earth. The image is color-coded to make sense to human eyes, which are blind in the infrared. Blue and cyan represent the shortest wavelengths WISE is sensitive to — 3.4 and 4.6 micrometers — and highlight places where stars are being born. Green light shows small grains of dust that have been heated by starlight and glow at the 12-micrometer band. The longest wavelength, 22 micrometers, is shown in red, capturing larger dust grains. The bright spot at the top right of the image is an active star-forming region called W3, which Wright studied with a 4-pixel balloon-borne telescope for his Ph.D. thesis in the 1970s. Wright marveled at the difference between the sketched-out contour map he made then and the glowing portrait captured by WISE. “It’s been an amazing progress in IR astronomy, with cameras growing by a factor of a million in power in just a few decades,” he said. Image: NASA. Full-size 26-megabyte version available. See Also:
Source: Wired: Wired Science | 24 May 2010 | 9:52 am Why Is the Gulf Oil Slick Red?The vivid red color of the Gulf oil slick puzzles scientists.Source: Livescience.com | 24 May 2010 | 9:32 am Creeping crisis?Will Salt Lake evaporation ponds harm waterfowl?Source: BBC News | Science & Environment | UK Edition | 24 May 2010 | 8:23 am Thermal imaging project aims to cut carbon from 10,000 homesA project which will see homes across Scotland scanned to show heat loss is unveiled as part of a new focus on housing policy.Source: BBC News | Science & Environment | UK Edition | 24 May 2010 | 8:02 am
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