Electron ‘spin’ in silicon will lead to revolutionary quantum chips

A silicon-based nanoscale system which aims to harness the 'spin' of electrons to boost the processing power of future computer systems is being developed.
Source: ScienceDaily: Latest Science News | 27 May 2010 | 12:00 pm

Macho men a liability on roads, study finds

"Catch that car!" was the instruction given to 22 men sitting in a driving simulator. The more "macho" the man, the more risks he took on the road, according to a new study.
Source: ScienceDaily: Latest Science News | 27 May 2010 | 12:00 pm

Male sex hormones in ovaries essential for female fertility

Male sex hormones, such as testosterone, have well defined roles in male reproduction and prostate cancer. What may surprise many is that they also play an important role in female fertility. A new study finds that the presence and activity of male sex hormones in the ovaries helps regulate female fertility, likely by controlling follicle growth and development and preventing deterioration of follicles that contain growing eggs.
Source: ScienceDaily: Latest Science News | 27 May 2010 | 12:00 pm

New role of molecule in the health of body's back-up blood circulation

Researchers have discovered that the abundance of collateral blood vessels in a healthy individual and their growth or remodeling into "natural bypass vessels" depends on how much of a key signaling molecule, nitric oxide, is present.
Source: ScienceDaily: Latest Science News | 27 May 2010 | 12:00 pm

Using fish to illuminate the architecture of inherited disease

A research team has developed a way to simultaneously look at the effects of 125 mutations occurring on 14 different genes. They used zebrafish as a model to analyze the function of every known mutation in an inherited syndrome called BBS, Bardet-Biedl syndrome.
Source: ScienceDaily: Latest Science News | 27 May 2010 | 12:00 pm

Palaeontologists solve mystery of 500 million-year-old squid-like carnivore

Researchers sheds new light on a previously unclassifiable 500 million-year-old squid-like carnivore known as Nectocaris pteryx.
Source: ScienceDaily: Latest Science News | 27 May 2010 | 12:00 pm

Household detergents, shampoos may form harmful substance in wastewater

Scientists are reporting evidence that certain ingredients in shampoo, detergents and other household cleaning agents may be a source of precursor materials for formation of a suspected cancer-causing contaminant in water supplies that receive water from sewage treatment plants. The study sheds new light on possible environmental sources of this poorly understood water contaminant, called NDMA, which is of ongoing concern to health officials.
Source: ScienceDaily: Latest Science News | 27 May 2010 | 9:00 am

Rheumatoid arthritis incidence on the rise in women

The incidence of rheumatoid arthritis in women has risen during the period of 1995 to 2007, according to a newly published study. The study suggests that environmental factors may be the cause of the increase.
Source: ScienceDaily: Latest Science News | 27 May 2010 | 9:00 am

First common gene found for congenital heart disease; Acting very early in development, tied to most common birth defect

Although congenital heart disease represents the most common major birth defect, scientists have not previously identified the genes that give rise to it. Now genetics and cardiology researchers, two of them brothers, have discovered a genetic variant on chromosome 5 that strongly raises the risk of congenital heart disease.
Source: ScienceDaily: Latest Science News | 27 May 2010 | 9:00 am

Astronomers discover new star-forming regions in Milky Way

Newly-discovered star-forming regions are revealing new view of Milky Way's structure and promise new clues about the Galaxy's chemical composition
Source: ScienceDaily: Latest Science News | 27 May 2010 | 9:00 am

Rich countries to give $4bln to fight deforestation (AFP)

AFP - Rich countries will bring to about 4.0 billion US dollars the amount committed to fighting deforestation by 2012, 500 million more than pledged at the UN climate summit in Copenhagen, Norway said Thursday.

Source: Yahoo! News: Science News | 27 May 2010 | 4:18 am

AP source: Obama extends stop on deepwater wells (AP)

AP - A White House aide says President Barack Obama will continue a moratorium on deepwater offshore drilling for six months while a presidential commission investigates the Gulf oil spill.

Source: Yahoo! News: Science News | 27 May 2010 | 4:14 am

Oil well plug 'going as planned'

BP says a bid to plug its leaking oil well in the Gulf of Mexico is going to plan, but it is too early to know if it will work.
Source: BBC News | Science & Environment | UK Edition | 27 May 2010 | 3:50 am

BP monitors 'top kill' attempt to plug spewing oil (Reuters)

Reuters - BP Plc faces a defining day in its five-week Gulf of Mexico oil spill disaster on Thursday when its latest attempt to seal a gushing well deep underwater will be deemed either a success or a failure.

Source: Yahoo! News: Science News | 27 May 2010 | 3:41 am

Predators Pick Body Parts for Balanced Diet

Hunger pangs probably guide meat-eating animals, including humans, to choose certain body parts of their prey over others.
Source: Discovery News - Top Stories | 27 May 2010 | 3:33 am

US oil leak cap operation on track: BP (AFP)

AFP - BP said Thursday its bid to cap the Gulf of Mexico oil leak with cement was on track as submarines toiled round the clock while fumes forced boats involved in the clean-up back to port.

Source: Yahoo! News: Science News | 27 May 2010 | 3:15 am

The nation's weather (AP)

AP - The West Coast was forecast to see another wet day, while scattered storms moved toward the East Coast on Thursday.

Source: Yahoo! News: Science News | 27 May 2010 | 3:02 am

Locust brains swell in size when they join 'the swarm'

The change from a solitary insect to a swarm "substantially" increases the size of a locust's brains, say scientists.
Source: BBC News | Science & Environment | UK Edition | 27 May 2010 | 2:53 am

Brawny Mars Robots Will Launch a New Wave of Exploration

Future Mars robotic explorers will be ever more robust and longer living.
Source: Discovery News - Top Stories | 27 May 2010 | 2:46 am

Concern raised over bird feeding

Birds given supplementary food in spring and summer have lower broods, a new study finds, raising questions over the benefits of bird feeding.
Source: BBC News | Science & Environment | UK Edition | 27 May 2010 | 2:45 am

Weird Exoplanet Orbits Could Prevent Alien Life

New simulations presented at the American Astronomical Society meeting in Miami indicate that Earth-like exoplanets in star systems with weird planetary orbits will have a tough time supporting life.
Source: Discovery News - Top Stories | 27 May 2010 | 2:29 am

Japan trial for whaling activist

An activist from New Zealand who boarded a Japanese whaling ship goes on trial in Tokyo, and denies assault charges.
Source: BBC News | Science & Environment | UK Edition | 27 May 2010 | 2:24 am

Int'l conference to save forests opens in Oslo (AP)

AP - Last December, an international conference on climate change approved global plans prevent deforestation. But those plans have not been implemented, and now a smaller meeting of nations in Oslo will try Thursday to find ways to start to put them in place — even if on a smaller scale.

Source: Yahoo! News: Science News | 27 May 2010 | 2:02 am

Making sense of climate science

The Science Museum's new gallery aims to deepen the understanding of those who accept man-made global warming and inform those who are unsure

If there were ever a subject that required calm and considered discussion, it is climate change. The stakes are so high. Is it happening? Is it really being driven by humans? Is it serious? If the threat is mild, we could needlessly waste huge effort and resources. If it is not, we could put at risk our food and water supplies, and world stability, as well as bequeathing our grandchildren a legacy of rising sea levels, shifted climatic zones and an impoverished biosphere. Respond correctly, and we could ensure a future in which both people and the planet can flourish.

Yet public comment is increasingly polarised and shrill. A tyranny is afoot, in which participating risks personal attack, whatever your viewpoint. The situation has become so bad in the United States, that 255 members of the US National Academy of Sciences recently published a letter in which they expressed deep concern about a growing wave of political assaults on scientists in general – and climate scientists in particular.

Why should this subject generate so much emotion? Given this and the inevitable uncertainties, how can we find a sensible way forward?

Like the US scientists, I am convinced that recent climate warming is real and that human activities are the most likely dominant cause. How can I be sure? The Earth is very complex, and science, after all, can only prove what is not, not what is. In fact I would be pleased to be wrong, since we could all then continue to enjoy the benefits of "business as usual". But the scientific evidence indicates otherwise. As a trained physicist, I can evaluate some of the results directly myself. After a career in the subject, I have faith in the overall integrity and competence of the research community. More fundamentally, I have confidence in the self-correcting nature of the scientific process. The organised scepticism of science, through peer review and the adversarial nature of scientific challenge, can be relied upon over time to expose imperfect execution, flaws and errors. This is despite the study of Earth's climate covering so many areas of expertise that no single individual can judge every piece of the evidence.

What about non-scientists? How can they judge what to believe and who to trust? There is evidence that reactions to climate change are often strongly influenced by people's beliefs and values. Healthy scepticism, in which claims are examined with an open mind and facts followed to their conclusion, is often replaced by a closed-minded pursuit of a prejudged position, of acceptance or denial. The situation is not helped by the discussion being framed as a debate, in which it is assumed that one "side" has the right answer, and that the purpose of the exercise is to seek out flaws and defend assumptions in order to win the argument. In a situation in which the evidence is often highly technical, and people's knowledge is very patchy, arriving at agreement can be understandably elusive.

This is where the Science Museum can play a helpful role. Our purpose is to make sense of the science that shapes our lives. Our gallery – "atmosphere: exploring climate science" – which will open in November, will provide a dedicated, immersive space for visitors to deepen their understanding of climate science in an enjoyable, engaging and memorable way. It will include purpose-built interactive exhibits and a variety of objects to explain how the climate system works, to show how scientists study the system, and to summarise the current state of knowledge. The content aims to engage and interest those who accept that man-made climate change is real, as well as those who are unsure and those who do not.

But a gallery alone has limitations. After years of experience with our Dana Centre, we know that facilitated dialogue amongst specialist and non-specialists can provide a basis for real evolution of thinking, and the ability to resolve confusion and change minds. This is why the gallery will be complemented by a three-year programme of events throughout the museum.

These will assume that we all have pieces of the answer, and will provide a means to collaborate on finding common ground, to explore and understand assumptions, and to discover new possibilities. Given the consequences to humanity of responding wrongly, the need to provide a forum for reason and wisdom could not be greater.

• Professor Chris Rapley CBE is the director of the Science Museum and University College London professor of climate science.

Source: Science news, comment and analysis | guardian.co.uk | 27 May 2010 | 2:00 am

Anti-whaling activist pleads guilty to 4 charges in Japan (AFP)

AFP - An anti-whaling activist from New Zealand who boarded a Japanese harpoon ship in Antarctic waters pleaded guilty on Thursday in a Tokyo court to four charges but denied assault using rancid butter.

Source: Yahoo! News: Science News | 27 May 2010 | 1:37 am

Hurricanes Can Snap Oil Pipelines in the Gulf

Could there be multiple leaks slowly oozing oil into the Gulf, undetected, at this very moment?
Source: Discovery News - Top Stories | 26 May 2010 | 10:27 pm

Gene Mutation Linked to Congenital Heart Disease (HealthDay)

HealthDay - WEDNESDAY, May 26 (HealthDay News) -- A team of cardiologists and geneticists have identified a genetic mutation that appears to strongly raise the risk for congenital heart disease, the most common major birth defect.
Source: Yahoo! News: Science News | 26 May 2010 | 9:48 pm

Shark Attacks Most Likely on Sunday in 6 Feet of Water (LiveScience.com)

LiveScience.com - Shark attacks are most likely to occur on Sunday in less than 6 feet of water during a new moon, a new study finds. And there's good reason: That's when a lot of surfers are in the water. Not coincidentally, surfers wearing black-and-white suits are most likely to be attacked.
Source: Yahoo! News: Science News | 26 May 2010 | 8:45 pm

Shark Attacks Most Likely on Sunday in 6 Feet of Water

Human, shark and environmental factors combine to create a perfect storm of favorable conditions.
Source: Livescience.com | 26 May 2010 | 8:40 pm

May's Full 'Milk' Moon Arrives Thursday (SPACE.com)

SPACE.com - To ancient peoples without complex calendars, the moon was probably the most important marker of the passage of time — especially at times like this Thursday, when May's full moon arrives.
Source: Yahoo! News: Science News | 26 May 2010 | 8:15 pm

Artificial life? Synthetic genes 'boot up' cell

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Scientists working to make a synthetic life form reported a major step forward Thursday, saying they had created an artificial genome and used it to bring a hollowed-out bacterium back to life.
Source: Reuters: Science News | 26 May 2010 | 6:47 pm

Toxic legacy

The political backlash following the BP oil spill
Source: BBC News | Science & Environment | UK Edition | 26 May 2010 | 5:15 pm

'Top kill' mission under way

BP attempts to stop Deepwater Horizon oil leak as rig staff accuse company of taking fatal shortcuts

• Interactive: how the top kill is meant to work
• Obama: "plug the damn hole"

BP embarked upon a high-risk "top kill" procedure using drilling mud last night to cap the catastrophic gush of oil in the Gulf of Mexico, as it faced fresh accusations of shortcuts in the hours before an explosion destroyed the Deepwater Horizon rig.

After hesitation by top BP executives as they analysed data from robot submarines at the site of the leak, and under intense pressure from the Obama administration, the US coastguard gave the go-ahead for the operation to pump a cocktail of mud and heavy fluid at high pressure into the Macondo well, 50 miles off the Louisiana shore.

Underwater TV cameras showed a live feed of oil billowing out while BP's heavy machinery moved into position. Chief executive Tony Hayward warned that the operation, never before attempted at a depth of 5,000 feet (1,500 metres), had only a 60% to 70% chance of success and could take several days. Barack Obama described the disaster as "heartbreaking" and expressed hope it would work. "If it's successful, and there's no guarantee, it should greatly reduce or eliminate the flow of oil now streaming into the Gulf from the sea floor," said the president.

After a boat trip to see the damage, Louisiana's governor, Bobby Jindal, displayed vivid photos showing that oil was killing cane plants along the state's offshore marshes, an area which he described as "the nursery of the gulf". "We've been fighting this oil nearly a month now, requesting resources. Too often, the response has been too little, too late," he said; absorbent booms to capture oil were becoming saturated. "We can't afford to wait another 24, or 48 hours."

The slick is estimated to cover 16,000 sq miles of ocean, It began on 20 April when an explosion and fire destroyed BP's rig, killing 11 people. Since then efforts by BP to stem the flow, first by placing a dome on top of the leak, have come to nothing.

David Summers, a professor at Missouri University of Science and Technology, said it would be clear within days whether the "top kill" procedure had worked. The method was straightforward and would have been started much earlier, were it not for the inaccessibility, he said: "It's relatively simple and been done many times before, but not at this depth."

In a massive operation, 22,000 people and 1,100 vessels are tackling the slick. BP's top executives are monitoring events from a control centre in Houston. But as investigations begin into the cause, BP is facing accusations of "short cuts" in the hours before the rig blew up.

In official hearings in New Orleans, several workers who survived raised questions about a decision shortly before the explosion in which rig bosses displaced heavy mud with salt water in the pipe rising from the seabed, potentially hampering the rig's ability to withstand pressure from the ocean depths.

At yesterday's hearings Truitt Crawford, a roustabout on the rig, told coastguard investigators: "I overheard upper management talking, saying that BP was taking shortcuts … this is why it blew out." Another witness, Doug Brown, chief mechanic on the rig, said there was a "skirmish" between a BP "company man", a driller and engineers: "The driller was outlining what would be taking place, whereupon the company man stood up and said 'no, we'll be having some changes to that'," Brown said.

A memo given to a congressional committee by BP reveals events as workers prepared to put a cement plug on the well in preparation for the rig to be moved. Two hours before the explosion, tests showed a buildup of pressure – and subsequent decisions to press ahead with the operation are under scrutiny. BP has pointed out that other firms were involved – it was leasing the rig from Transocean, which owned and operated it, while the US firm Halliburton was responsible for a cement plug.

A poll by CBS News found 70% disapproval of BP's handling, and 45% unhappy with the Obama administration's response. Interior secretary Ken Salazar described it as a "massive and potentially unprecedented environmental disaster", and BP would be liable for costs beyond a usual $75m (£52m) maximum liability for oil firms in clean-ups: "BP will be held accountable for costs of the government in responding to the spill and compensation for loss or damages."

As shrimpers, fishermen and tourism industry workers along the Louisiana coast see their livelihoods dwindle, BP has watched its share price slump by 28%, wiping $84bn off its market value. Some 1,200 vessels and 22,000 people are involved in the effort to temper the scale of the disaster.

The US agency overseeing oil companies is also under intense criticism. An official report found that the Minerals Management Service allowed staff at oil and gas firms to fill in inspection reports in pencil, with regulators later going over the answers in ink.

Mary Kendall, acting inspector general at the department of the interior, told a congressional committee yesterday that there were problems with "gift acceptance, fraternising with industry and pornography" at the agency. She suggested there was a problem with the closeness of ties between watchdogs and industry executives: "The individuals involved in the fraternising and gift exchange – both government and industry – have often known one another since childhood."

Source: Science news, comment and analysis | guardian.co.uk | 26 May 2010 | 5:14 pm

Iceland Volcano Ash Plume Electrified

Balloons sent into Eyjafjallajökul ash plume detect electric charge.
Source: Livescience.com | 26 May 2010 | 5:08 pm

The metabolic secrets of good runners

Chemical changes in runners linked to physical fitness.<img src="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~r/news/rss/today/~4/6NdUH8OQMeE" height="1" width="1"/>
Source: NatureNews - All articles published today - nature.com science feeds | 26 May 2010 | 4:00 pm

Bacteria Living in 'Cloud Cities' May Control Rain and Snow Patterns

Plant-eating bacteria can fly up into clouds and influence the weather. The big question is by how much.
Source: Discovery News - Top Stories | 26 May 2010 | 3:49 pm

Virulent wheat fungus invades South Africa

Mutating and migrating stem rust pathogen could soon spread across the world.
Source: NatureNews - All articles published today - nature.com science feeds | 26 May 2010 | 3:01 pm

Airport security: Intent to deceive?

Can the science of deception detection help to catch terrorists? Sharon Weinberger takes a close look at the evidence for it.
Source: NatureNews - All articles published today - nature.com science feeds | 26 May 2010 | 3:00 pm

Science funding: Science for the masses

The US National Science Foundation's insistence that every research project addresses 'broader impacts' leaves many researchers baffled. Corie Lok takes a looks at the system.
Source: NatureNews - All articles published today - nature.com science feeds | 26 May 2010 | 3:00 pm

The Science of Horror-Flick Screams

As horror-flick titles go, Night of the Living Chaos and Rosemary’s Nonlinearity aren’t the catchiest. But filmmakers know that chaos — the mathematical kind — is scary. Now scientists know it too.

Filmmakers use chaotic, unpredictable sounds to evoke particular emotions, say researchers who have assessed screams and other outbursts from more than 100 movies. The new findings, reported May 25 in Biology Letters, come as no surprise, but they do highlight an emerging if little-known area of study, says cognitive biologist W. Tecumseh Fitch of the University of Vienna in Austria, who was not involved in the study.

“The classic example would be a screaming baby on an airplane,” says Fitch, “the kind you can’t ignore and makes your life hell.”

Cries are harder to ignore when they become irregular and chaotic, recent research suggests. Scientists think that these noises, uttered or roared when an animal is really worked up, have a crucial role in communication: They frantically demand attention.

By exploring the use of such dissonant, harsh sounds in film, scientists hope to get a better understanding of how fear is expressed, says study co-author Daniel Blumstein of the University of California, Los Angeles.

“Potentially, there are universal rules of arousal and ways to communicate fear,” says Blumstein, who typically studies screams in marmots, not starlets.

Blumstein and his co-authors acoustically analyzed 30-second cuts from more than 100 movies representing a broad array of genres. The movies included titles such as Aliens, Goldfinger, Annie Hall, The Green Mile, Slumdog Millionaire, Titanic, Carrie, The Shining and Black Hawk Down.

Not unexpectedly, the horror films had a lot of harsh and atonal screams. Dramatic films had sound tracks with fewer screams but a lot of abrupt changes in frequency. And adventure films, it turns out, had a surprising number of harsh male screams.

“Screams are basically chaos,” Fitch says.

Filmmakers have long been deliberately distorting sounds for dramatic effect, says musicologist James Wierzbicki of the University of Sydney. In Hitchcock’s classic The Birds, the only true avian sounds are heard near the beginning of the movie, in a pet shop. The calls of the demented, attacking birds were all electronically generated.

A true, harsh scream “is not a trivial thing to do,” Fitch says. In fact, capturing a realistic, blood-curdling cry is so difficult that filmmakers have used the very same one, now found on many websites, in more than 200 movies. Known as the Wilhelm scream, it is named for the character who first unleashed it in the 1953 western The Charge at Feather River.

Image: deeleea/Flickr

See Also:

• Op-Ed: What Marmots Teach Us About Terrorism
• Freaky Sleep Paralysis: Being Awake in Your Nightmares

Source: Wired: Wired Science | 26 May 2010 | 2:45 pm

Brain Shrinkage in Anorexia Is Reversible

Anorexics with the eating disorder in which they lose excessive weight also have shrinking brains. But regaining the weight can also reverse the reduction in brain volume.
Source: Livescience.com | 26 May 2010 | 2:12 pm

News briefing: 27 May 2010

The week in science.
Source: NatureNews - All articles published today - nature.com science feeds | 26 May 2010 | 2:00 pm

Dinos 'island-hopped' to Europe

Horned dinosaurs - thought native to America and Asia - made it to Europe via an island route, scientists say.
Source: BBC News | Science & Environment | UK Edition | 26 May 2010 | 1:48 pm

The dig dividing Jerusalem

The search for the City of David may offer tourists a reminder of Jerusalem's ancient past. But for the Palestinians whose homes are threatened by the excavations, archaeology is merely the latest weapon being used against them

If you walk out of Jerusalem Old City through its south-eastern gate and on to the perimeter road encircling it, you will most likely see several large coaches with elderly western tourists climbing out of them. You will see them stand at the low wall at the edge of the road and peer down into the lush valley with its pretty houses that nudge and lean against each other. The tourists may notice the woman marking exercise books on her sunny terrace, they may smile to see the bright-haired four-year-old riding her tricycle round the yard. Some of them will think of a favoured grandchild back in Kansas or Ottawa.

Now, if this were a scene in Italy, Spain, or even Turkey, we might have left it there: the tourists come, stare, spend money and go. But here their effect is devastating – and most of them don't even know it. For the town that nestles here, in this valley on the southern flank of Jerusalem, is Silwan, home to some 55,000 Palestinians, annexed by Israel along with east Jerusalem in 1967, and currently one of the hottest spots in the contest between the rights of the Palestinian townspeople and the plans that Israel has for the area – plans put into effect through a series of administrative measures, clandestine coalitions, and progressive-sounding projects. None of which could work without the funding that floods into Israel from the west.

What do the tourists know of this? These gentle, grey-haired folk have come here, on their Jewish National Fund coaches, to visit the archaeological dig for Ir David, the City of David, which, it is claimed, lies below the Wadi Helweh neighbourhood in Silwan and justifies the digging, the shafts and the tunnelling going on in the belly of the hill and under the homes of the people who live here.

Maryam puts aside the exercise books: "This road, from Jerusalem all the way down the valley, was a main road. People did good business here, if you had an ice-cream shop, a cafe, a barber, food shops, souvenirs. Then Elad came, the City of David Organisation; they take the people into their centre and they never see us."

Silwan, and particularly the beautiful Wadi Helweh – the Valley of Sweet [Water] – has always welcomed strangers. Traditionally, it has been the last resting spot for travellers approaching Jerusalem from the south and a favourite recreation area for Jerusalem's residents. People would come here for picnics, and in summer the cool caves of Ein Silwan spring were a much-loved playing space for children. Even now people ask if I am visiting Silwan for a shammet hawa, a breath of air, though there is hardly air to breathe with the dust and the noise Elad is generating.

Elad is an acronym in Hebrew meaning "To the City of David". Dedicated to "strengthening Israel's current and historic connection to Jerusalem", it was founded in 1986 by David Be'eri, who, "inspired by the longing of the Jewish people to return to Zion", left his elite army unit to set it up. For a long time Elad refused to reveal the names of its funders; eventually they submitted the names but successfully requested they be kept under privilege. Lev Leviev and Roman Abramovich have been present at Elad events.

Elad set up a two-pronged strategy: to strengthen Israel's "connection to Jerusalem" they started to dig – under Silwan and into the land under the al-Aqsa mosque – for the biblical City of David and to create the Ir David tourist site. They called it "salvage excavation" to avoid getting official permits. The "salvage" has lasted for more than 10 years and Wadi Helweh's houses have started to sink into the hill.

To help "the Jewish people to return to Zion", in 1991 Be'eri started to acquire Palestinian property (supported by Ariel Sharon, then minister of construction and housing). His target was principally two Silwan neighbourhoods: Wadi Helweh and al-Bustan (the Garden).

The Abbasi family's home, with its nine apartments and two warehouses, was Be'eri's first target. Be'eri's wife, Michal, has described how he acquired it: "Davida'leh took a tour guide card and put in his picture, and for a long time he would take bogus tourists on a tour . . . and slowly he befriended Abbasi . . . Of course, it was all staged." In 1987, Elad pressured the government to declare the Abbasi house "absentee property" and in October 1991, Be'eri led a settler invasion of the house with the intruders singing and dancing and waving the Israeli flag on the roof at daybreak. The Abbasi family went to court and the Jerusalem district judge found "no factual or legal basis" for the takeover; indeed, he found it characterised by "an extreme lack of good faith". Yet still the property continues to be caught up in legal proceedings and Elad people continue to live in it – and to acquire more Palestinian property: to date Elad has gained control of a quarter of Wadi Helweh.

What is happening in Silwan is not unique; it is part and parcel of what is happening across Israel and the Occupied Palestinian Territories. Only the specific tactics are different. Before I came to Silwan, I had been travelling in the West Bank for a week, noting how every Palestinian community has its appointed settlement, its stalking "other". There is hardly anywhere you can look up and not see a settlement lowering at you: bristling with barbed wire and flags and antennae and cameras and floodlights and – although you can't see them – arms.

Most scholars agree that, to this day, no evidence of the presence of Kings David or Solomon has been found at the site. But our group of elderly American tourists are spellbound by the stories they are hearing from Elad's guides, stories which are conjecture, projection and myth .

"I found a Byzantine water pit," Professor Ronny Reich of the Israel Antiquities Authority says. "They [Elad] said it was Jeremiah's pit. I told them that was nonsense." But for a long time the guides would tell the tourists that this was the hole Jeremiah was thrown into. Close to half a million visitors come here each year and are treated to the Elad version of history. Professor Binyamin Ze'ev Kedar, chair of the Israel Antiquities Authority Council, wrote in 2008: "The Israel Antiquities Authority is aware that Elad, an organisation with a declared ideological agenda, presents the history of the City of David in a biased manner."

None of this activity would have been possible without the support of the Israeli state. An Israeli activist tells me: "If you ask the Israeli government what is happening in Silwan, they say it's not a government matter; these are private people buying and moving in legally. But now [the east Jerusalem settlement of] Nof Zion is being built. The Zoning laws permit building there only on 37.5% of a piece of land. But Nof Zion has permission to build on 125% of the land! And inside Ras el-Amoud, above Silwan, they are building five-storey apartment blocks for settlers. But they refuse to allow Palestinian families to build a third floor on their house. A settler organisation buys a police station from the government. A bus line in Ma'ale Zeitim is diverted to serve a settlement. In Silwan, the City of David Organisation is telling the archaeologists where to dig and what to look for. So one has to ask the question with regard to the City of David Organisation and the state of Israel: which is the tail and which is the dog?"

A critically important study by the independent monitoring organisation, Ir Amim, reaches the same conclusion: "Elad, which is officially a private organisation, serves as a direct executive arm of the government of Israel, and enjoys comprehensive and deep backing by the Israeli administration." More chillingly, Doron Spillman, Elad's director of development, has said: ". . . We are almost a branch of the government of Israel, but without getting buried under government bureaucracy."

The main government project right now is for Jerusalem. And in Silwan and Jerusalem, on 12 May, Jerusalem Day, the day I visit, you can see it clearly. This morning, Silwan is blockaded by the police, and it's on alert. The settler, security, police and army vehicles racing up and down the roads are quietly monitored by the neighbourhood watch people. In the cafe at the bottom of the valley, three young men wipe tables and stock the fridge while keeping an eye on the jumpy young security guard who patrols in front of them.

"These are private security for the settlers. They don't go anywhere without them. They cost around 50m shekels a year. And they're paid for by the government. Out of taxes," says one of the young men.

"And the security are protected by the police, and the army's always round the corner. Just think what it's costing."

On the eve of Jerusalem Day celebrations, prime minister Binyamin Netanyahu said: "Jerusalem is our city and we never compromised on that, not after the destruction of the First Holy Temple, nor after the destruction of the Second . . . There is no other nation that feels this deeply about a city."

Now, in the pleasant afternoon, I stand in the Solidarity Tent in al-Bustan with two men whose homes are among the 88 threatened with demolition to make way for an "archaeological garden in the spirit of the Second Temple".

"So they distribute bits of paper that say that since King David used to go for walks here, it's wrong that our houses should be here and it must just be a park. You notice that for them he is King David but for us he is el-Nabi Daoud: David the Prophet. So who holds him in higher esteem? Plus there's no evidence he ever walked here," says one.

"And what if he did? It was empty. You know, there's one thing we've held against our parents, our grandparents: that they left their land. They thought they'd be back in a couple of weeks. We don't have the excuse of ignorance. We are not leaving. And my children will not wash the dishes in their national park," says his friend.

In Silwan and Jerusalem, the conflation between settler rightwing ideology, government policy, big money, real estate interests and bad taste produces its unique blend of kitsch and nightmare. Under cover of excavation, massive infrastructure work is done in Wadi Helweh in preparation for the construction of a 115,000 sq m commercial centre, without a town plan scheme and without permits. The work stops only when it comes up against the foundations of Palestinian homes.

"The streets cave in," says one of the men. "You see that darker stretch of tarmac? We had to patch up the road. And the school: the floor of the classroom collapsed under the girls. Fourteen girls fell 2m into the tunnel they'd dug below the school. And we had to hush it up because they would have said the school was unsafe and closed it down." The Israeli military barricade continues to block Silwan's high street.

In Jerusalem earlier, I had seen thousands of young people who had been bused in from the settlements stream through the streets. Military police with guns and flack-jackets guard them. The Old City is closed – except to them. Women trying to take their children home are turned away from the gates of the city. Men carrying briefcases sit on raised pavements. More soldiers watch from the ramparts of the old city walls. From time to time the police come up to us: "You speak Hebrew?" No. "You speak English?" Yes. "Back! Move back!" A man standing next to us says maybe they want us to back off all the way to Spain. "Where are you from?" he asks me. Egypt. "Cairo?" Cairo. "May God forgive Cairo," he says.

Darkness settles. The Palestinian residents of Silwan feed their kids and hush them. They visit each other, chat, watch the news. In the cafe at the bottom of the hill the young men are courteous but not chatty. On their TV screen Alan Curbishley talks about the match that's about to start: the final of the Europa Cup. The young men keep one eye on the screen, the other, vigilant, is on their town. On the ledge above their heads, but hidden from their view, is the stage set up by Elad, with its "Lion of Zion" banners. And we can hear the amplified voices celebrating the three Israelis each being awarded the $50,000 "Lion of Zion" Moskowitz award for deeds that "deal with the challenges facing Israel in the fields of education, research, settlement, culture, security and more".

From the al-Aqsa mosque further above comes first the call for evening prayer, and then, for good measure, the Chapter of the Merciful: "Which then of our Lord's signs do you deny?" The lights in the Palestinian houses dot the hillside and the trees around the small cafe where I sit are also strung with fairy lights. In a layby 20m away an Israeli army personnel carrier stands poised, its blue lights flashing.

The Palestinians sense that Israel has moved from ihtilal to ihlal; from occupation to replacement, and that making life unlivable for Palestine's Palestinians is the prelude to transforming Palestine itself. This is what the money coming from the west will achieve. To see the future projected for Jerusalem, you need only visit the spanking new Jewish Quarter. Go into the Temple Shop and buy teatowels and doilies and puzzles featuring the Third Temple rising out of al-Haram al-Sharif in place of the Dome of the Rock. In this approaching future it will be impossible to look out at the landscape and think of continuity, or eternity.

In place of the old, mellow stone, of the interdependent structures, softened and polished by time, there will be the jagged and the new and the fake. In place of trodden paths along the valleys and children playing freely, there will be chairlifts and viewing points and fast food outlets and always, always the iron gates and the security checks and the ticket kiosks and the merchandising. In place of the thousands of stories laid down over the ages above, below and around each other, there will be one story – and it won't, actually, be the Jewish story, because the Jewish story in Jerusalem is indivisible from the Roman, the Byzantine, the Arab, the Muslim, the Christian. It will be a fake. Like the fake inscribed prayers or mezzuzas the settlers carve into the Arab houses when they take them over. Soon, in Jerusalem, if the world does not wake up, there will be one voice: the crash of the cash register.

© Ahdaf Soueif 2010. The writer is the author of Mezzaterra: Fragments from the Common Ground (Bloomsbury, £8.99)

Source: Science news, comment and analysis | guardian.co.uk | 26 May 2010 | 1:42 pm

Food Worries Linked to Weight Gain, Problem Pregnancy

Women who worry about getting enough food are almost three times as likely to develop pregnancy-induced diabetes, researchers say.
Source: Discovery News - Top Stories | 26 May 2010 | 1:28 pm

Why You Should Upgrade to Internet Explorer 8 Now

Avoid viruses and other bad things.
Source: Livescience.com | 26 May 2010 | 1:11 pm

NIH set to tighten financial rules for researchers

Conflicts of interest comes under scrutiny.
Source: NatureNews - All articles published today - nature.com science feeds | 26 May 2010 | 1:00 pm

Tuberculosis expert to head US charity's African lab

William Bishai talks about the logic of locating a Howard Hughes Medical Institute in Durban.
Source: NatureNews - All articles published today - nature.com science feeds | 26 May 2010 | 12:59 pm

Amateur Astronomers Track Military's Secret Mini-Shuttle

Amateur astronomers have glimpsed beneath a cloak of secrecy shrouding the military's miniature robotic space shuttle, which was launched last month on a trial run.
Source: Discovery News - Top Stories | 26 May 2010 | 12:36 pm

Space shuttle Atlantis lands in Florida

CAPE CANAVERAL, Florida (Reuters) - The space shuttle Atlantis landed in Florida on Wednesday, capping a 12-day mission to deliver a new module to the International Space Station before NASA retires the fleet after two more flights.
Source: Reuters: Science News | 26 May 2010 | 12:31 pm

The World's First Carnivores

A newly described 500-million-year-old carnivore has researchers wondering: what was the world's first meat eater?
Source: Discovery News - Top Stories | 26 May 2010 | 12:30 pm

Origin of Milky Way Clouds Revealed

Mysterious clouds of gas hovering above the plane of the Milky Way may be the fractured remnants of superbubbles blown by stellar winds and exploding stars.

“There’s a fundamental, interesting connection between gas far away from the Milky Way and the amount of star formation below it in the galactic plane,” F. Jay Lockman of the National Radio Astronomy Observatory told Wired Science in a phone interview. The results could provide insight into how heavy elements traverse the galaxy and get incorporated into later generations of stars, planets and, perhaps, life.

The bulk of the matter in the Milky Way, including stars, hot star-forming regions and the gas and dust between stars called the interstellar medium, lies in a relatively flat disk called the galactic plane.

“It’s a flattened system, kind of like a pierogi,” Lockman said today at the American Astronomical Society in Miami.

The Milky Way also has a gaseous halo that extends above and below the galactic pastry. For years, astronomers expected the density of that gas to get thinner as it got farther from the Milky Way, the way Earth’s atmosphere thins out at high altitudes. But earlier observations Lockman made at the Green Bank Telescope in West Virginia showed dense clouds hundreds of times more massive than the sun floating between the disk and the halo, hundreds to thousands of light-years above the galactic plane.

“This turned my whole conception of what was going on upside down,” he said. “It’s very much like seeing, all your life, a distant hillside that’s covered in green fuzz. Then one day you get a pair of binoculars and you look and say, ‘My God, there’s trees!’”

To investigate these clouds further, Lockman and colleagues used data from the Parkes Observatory radio telescope in Australia of two regions of the Milky Way, one on either side of the galactic center from Earth’s point of view.

Individual clouds in both regions looked about the same, Lockman said — on average they were 600 times the mass of the sun and spanned 30 to 40 light-years. But the region on the “northern” side, to the left of the galactic center, had three times as many clouds as the “southern” region.

“I thought we would see a difference between north and south, but I thought it would be pretty subtle,” Lockman said. “It’s not subtle at all.”

It turned out the northern region included part of the bar of the Milky Way. A new survey of hydrogen gas in the galaxy that was presented at the same meeting confirmed this region is an active stellar nursery.

“At the end of the galactic bar emanating from the galactic center, there is a huge complex of star forming regions,” said Tom Bania of Boston University.

The southern region, by contrast, fell between two spiral arms, “not particularly associated with anything at all,” Lockman said.

Lockman and his colleagues concluded that the gas clouds were blown away from the galactic plane by stellar winds from these intense star-forming regions. When the more massive of these stars die, they explode as supernovas, blowing enormous bubbles of gas “like supersonic lava lamps,” Lockman said. These bubbles pop like soap after they rise, leaving behind the mysterious clouds.

“There are still lots of questions,” Lockman said. “But I think we’ve finally solved the question of their origin.”

These clouds could also be responsible for transporting heavy elements around the galaxy. All elements heavier than hydrogen and helium are built in nuclear reactions inside stars, and are blown off into the interstellar medium when stars explode as supernovas. That material later condenses into new, metal-rich stars — and ultimately planets.

“When our galaxy formed, planets like the Earth could not form,” Bania said. “Put the Earth in a blender and you’ve got silicon, magnesium, the stuff that’s formed in supernovas.”

If the clouds are in fact the remnants of supernova bubbles, Lockman said, then “it’s quite possible that these clouds as they fall back to the Milky Way are the way that metals get mixed in through the disk, and this controls the overall evolution of the interstellar medium and the next generation of stars.”

Image: Bill Saxton, NRAO/AUI/NSF

See Also:

• Cosmic Dust Gives Milky Way a Fiery Mane
• Brilliant 360-Degree Panorama of the Milky Way
• Map of Science Looks Like Milky Way
• Milky Way 50 Percent Larger, Astronomers Discover
• New Milky Way Image Shows Best of All Spectra

Source: Wired: Wired Science | 26 May 2010 | 12:03 pm

Magic Exercise Pill Ahead?

The more we exercise, the better able we are to burn fat, a finding that could ultimately lead to a pill that could mimic the effects of exercise.
Source: Discovery News - Top Stories | 26 May 2010 | 12:00 pm

Are Electronic Medical Records Safe?

By 2014, every American will have an electronic medical record associated with their healthcare, but who's making sure that information will be secure?
Source: Discovery News - Top Stories | 26 May 2010 | 11:56 am

Obituary: Richard Gregory

Psychologist and leading figure in the scientific study of visual perception

Richard Gregory, who has died after a stroke, aged 86, was an outstanding figure in the scientific study of visual perception and an energetic, charismatic communicator in promoting the public understanding of science. His book Eye and Brain, published in five editions and translated into 12 languages since 1966, transmitted his excitement for his subject and the clarity of his thought to generations of students and general readers. He was a passionate advocate of hands-on learning about science, which led him to establish, in 1981, the Exploratory centre in Bristol, a model for many interactive science exhibitions that followed.

Richard's creativity in devising experiments and demonstrations was exceptionally diverse – from measuring neural noise in ageing to studying the apparently scanning eye of a tiny marine crustacean. His research and thinking from the 1960s onwards focused on the idea that sensory information provides only incomplete or ambiguous evidence for what we see, or believe we see. According to this view our perceptions represent hypotheses, using the analogy of a scientific hypothesis which is devised to fit with and explain the evidence available.

This approach had its roots in the idea of unconscious inference, proposed by Richard's scientific hero, the 19th-century German physicist and physiologist Hermann von Helmholtz. It implies that perception is not simply a bottom-up analysis of the pattern of light entering the eye, but intimately engages top-down information based on our implicit knowledge, experience and expectations about the world. Visual illusions, where the brain adopts an incorrect hypothesis, provide a prime source of support for this view. Richard's fascination with these phenomena, and ingenuity in developing and exploiting them, led to his books The Intelligent Eye (1970) and Seeing Through Illusions (2009).

At Cambridge University in the 1950s and 60s, Richard established a wide-ranging research programme on vision. My wife, Jan Atkinson, and I were among the many students there who were inspired into research on perception by Richard's sparkling demonstrations of visual effects. He undertook a landmark study with Jean Wallace on the visual abilities of a patient, SB, whose childhood blindness was reversed by an operation in his 50s.

Alongside his perceptual experiments, he set up a laboratory to develop his ideas for novel instruments. These included a device for using a light source to draw stereo images of 3D shapes; a scanning microscope that could image a solid block of tissue on to a whirling helical screen; and a camera that corrected the atmospheric distortion of astronomical images by selecting optically the moments of "good seeing". It is notable that these problems were all treated years later by digital computing devices.

Richard was pleased when a Cambridge team incorporated the principles of his astronomical camera into their software, but generally was happiest with solutions whose workings could be appreciated through mechanical intuition, rather than those that depended on the impenetrable magic of computer programming.

However, computing as a model for the brain's processing of information had an evident and timely appeal to Richard, who saw psychology and the brain as engineering problems. Artificial intelligence was a new and exciting prospect in the 1960s, and he was attracted to Edinburgh University in 1967 to join the computer scientist Donald Michie and the mathematical chemist Christopher Longuet-Higgins in the interdisciplinary innovation of a department of machine intelligence and perception. When W Grey Walter (a pioneer in bringing together neurology and robotics) and the biologist Gabriel Horn offered Richard the possibility of a chair and his own brain and perception laboratory in Bristol's medical school, he welcomed the opportunity. He moved to Bristol in 1970 and became professor of neuropsychology, remaining there for the rest of his scientific life.

Richard was born in London, the son of Clive Gregory and his wife Patricia. His father was a distinguished astronomer at University College London. He followed his father in being intrigued by the design and possibilities of scientific instruments and shared his intellectual curiosity for embracing and uniting science from basic physics to the nature of the mind. However, Richard admitted that he never understood the theory of O-structure, which embraced paranormal phenomena and to which his father devoted his later years.

Richard was educated at King Alfred school in Hampstead, north London. His education was interrupted by the second world war, during which he served in signals in the RAF. In 1946 the air ministry gave him the job of explaining radar to the passing public at the bombed site of John Lewis in Oxford Street. He went on an RAF scholarship to Downing College, Cambridge, in 1947, where he started to study experimental psychology through philosophy (the only route available in Cambridge at that time). Following work at the Medical Research Council's applied psychology unit under Sir Frederic Bartlett, in 1953 Richard was appointed as a demonstrator and then lecturer in the new department of experimental psychology in Cambridge. He remained at Cambridge until 1967.

His books developed broad ideas on the history of scientific ideas (Mind in Science, 1981) and the relationship between science and the visual arts (Illusion in Nature and Art, written with Sir Ernst Gombrich, 1973). His interest in art and visual perception led him to organise, with Priscilla Heard, the scientific component of an exhibition on trompe-l'oeil painting in the Palazzo Strozzi in Florence in 2009. He also edited the wide-ranging Oxford Companion to the Mind (1987). He founded and for many years edited the scientific journal Perception. In contrast to the rather pompous formality of the journal's competitors, Richard cultivated elements of diversity, quirky speculation and refreshing wit.

Richard communicated to others an inquiring spirit that looked for satisfying explanations as a source of delight. After working on the Launch Pad hands-on gallery at the Science Museum in London, he threw his energy, charm, and considerable networking skills into establishing, fundraising and directing the Exploratory centre. This was first set up on a small scale, with dedicated support from Priscilla, in the Victoria Rooms in Clifton, Bristol, in 1981, and then at a much more spacious site at Temple Meads station. The Exploratory continued until 1999 when it mutated into the more lavish Explore@Bristol.

Richard also played a key role in combining science education with astronomical heritage, promoting the development of the former Royal Observatory site at Herstmonceux, East Sussex, into a science centre. He was a prolific exponent of scientific ideas on television and radio, and in public lectures.

Among his many achievements were winning the Waverley gold medal for inventing the solid-image microscope in 1960, fellowship of the Royal Society of Edinburgh in 1969, appointment as CBE in 1989, fellowship of the Royal Society of London and the award of its Faraday medal in 1992.

Richard's Who's Who entry declares his hobbies to be pondering and punning. The puns came thick and fast, possibly a linguistic equivalent of the ambiguous perceptions he loved, excruciating or enlightening, and sometimes both together. I treasure: "Men are esteem engines; women are perpetual emotion machines," which characteristically coupled a superficial disregard for political correctness with an underlying sympathy for the frailties of both halves of the human race and allusions to the history of technology.

His enduring, boyish pleasure in paradox, ingenuity, insight and the general richness of life could always override scepticism or intellectual disagreement. As well as the heady excitement of ideas, Richard inspired affection and good humour in his friends and colleagues. This was touchingly apparent when his first wife, the experimental psychologist Margaret Muir (married 1953, divorced 1966), his second wife Freja Balchin (married 1967, divorced 1976) and his longterm companion and colleague Priscilla all sat warmly together with him in his last hours. He is also survived by a son, Mark, and a daughter, Romilly, from his marriage to Margaret.

• Richard Langton Gregory, psychologist, born 24 July 1923; died 17 May 2010

Source: Science news, comment and analysis | guardian.co.uk | 26 May 2010 | 11:40 am

Synthetic genome resets biotech goals

The assembly of a genome that can 'reboot' cells of a closely related species is one step in a much longer path.
Source: NatureNews - All articles published today - nature.com science feeds | 26 May 2010 | 11:30 am

Atlantis shuttle lands at Kennedy

The Atlantis space shuttle touches down at Kennedy Space Center in Florida after what looks to have been its final mission.
Source: BBC News | Science & Environment | UK Edition | 26 May 2010 | 11:21 am

Horror soundtracks mimic distress calls

Film-makers' manipulations of sound tap into our primal fears, say researchers

Discordant sounds used to create tension in horror films are effective because they mimic calls made by animals in the wild at times of stress, researchers have found.

The "non-linear" sounds, often created by pushing brass and wind instruments beyond their natural range by playing them too hard, exploit the human brain's natural aversion to sonics that signal fear or distress.

Reporting his findings in Royal Society journal Biology Letters, Professor Daniel Blumstein of the University of California, who led the research, said film composers used such sounds to heighten emotionally evocative moments in their movies.

"Noise is associated with horror and fear," he told the Daily Telegraph. "Abrupt frequency shifts are associated with sad dramatic scenes. Noise is associated with horror and fear.

"I would say it taps into our primal fear, which is shared with other mammals and birds. It scares us, but it also scares other animals."

The researchers examined 30-second clips from more than 100 films, including such celebrated moments as the shower scene in Psycho and the execution scene in The Green Mile. They at first studied four genres – adventure, horror, drama and war – but discovered that the rasping "non-linear" sounds were only to be found on the soundtracks of horror movies, and occasionally dramas.

"Our results suggest that film-makers manipulate sounds to create non-linear analogues in order to manipulate emotional responses," the scientists say in their paper.

Other films where non-linear sounds have been used to impressive effect include the 1933 version of King Kong, where natural animal calls were manipulated in terms of pitch and timbre to create an unnerving soundtrack, and Alfred Hitchcock's The Birds, from 1963, in which an electronic instrument, the trautonium, was used to create a terrifying avian "language".

Source: Science news, comment and analysis | guardian.co.uk | 26 May 2010 | 11:05 am

Mysterious Bug-Eyed Ancient Creature Discovered

Oldest cephalopod discovered.
Source: Livescience.com | 26 May 2010 | 11:05 am

Newfound Horned Dinosaur Probably Island-Hopped to Europe

A newly discovered species of horned dinosaur suggests its relatives island hopped their way into Europe.
Source: Livescience.com | 26 May 2010 | 11:03 am

Planet devoured by star

An exoplanet known as Wasp-12b is being roasted and ripped apart after getting too close to its parent star

In a far-away region of the galaxy, a planet is learning the lesson that Icarus taught the ancient Greeks thousands of years ago.

A planet known as Wasp-12b is passing so close to its parent star that it is being roasted and ripped apart in an extraordinary display of celestial violence.

The gravitational pull of the star is so strong it has stretched the planet into the shape of a rugby ball. The planet has reached a temperature of more than 1,500C and material has begun spilling from it onto the star.

The planet's precarious situation was revealed by observations made with a new instrument on Nasa's Hubble space telescope, the Cosmic Origins Spectrograph (Cos).

"We see a huge cloud of material around the planet which is escaping and will be captured by the star. We have identified chemical elements never before seen on planets outside our own solar system," said Carole Haswell, lead scientist at the Open University.

The planet may have only 10m years left before it is completely devoured, according to a report in the Astrophysical Journal Letters.

The star, a yellow dwarf called Wasp-12, is about 600 light years from Earth in the winter constellation of Auriga, the charioteer. The planet was spotted and named by the UK's Wide Area Search for Planets (Wasp) team in 2008.

The Wasp telescope looks for periodic dimming caused by planets moving across the faces of their parent stars. Wasp-12b is so close to its star, it completes an orbit in 1.1 days.

The Cos equipment monitors ultraviolet light coming from stars and was sensitive enough to show that the atmosphere of the planet had expanded greatly because it is so hot.

Source: Science news, comment and analysis | guardian.co.uk | 26 May 2010 | 10:34 am

Most People Google Themselves Now

The majority of American adults now keep tabs of their reputations online, according to a Pew research survey released today.
Source: Livescience.com | 26 May 2010 | 10:01 am

Man Infects Himself with Computer Virus

A researcher has become the first human known to be infected by a computer virus.
Source: Livescience.com | 26 May 2010 | 9:57 am

Who's the Tallest Man in the World?

The Guinness World Records bestowed the title of Tallest Living Man in America on Igor Vovkovinskiy of Minnesota, but he isn't the tallest in the world.
Source: Livescience.com | 26 May 2010 | 9:19 am

Plugging it

Just how do you "top kill" a leaking oil well?
Source: BBC News | Science & Environment | UK Edition | 26 May 2010 | 8:53 am

Irrational fears of synthetic life

We need to get to grips with the factors that bias our perception of risk, warns David Ropeik. Getting it wrong can lead to health scares like MMR – or a failure to exploit breakthroughs like 'synthetic life'

Sometimes the things we do when we are afraid don't make much sense. Just ask the parents of kids now getting, or even dying of, measles, because a little known UK doctor suggested that the MMR vaccine might be associated with autism. Parents of autistic kids, hungry for some explanation for their tragedy, exploded that hint into worries that have spread around the world about vaccines of all kinds. Diseases once nearly eradicated are resurgent.

The British General Medical Council's decision to strip Andrew Wakefield of his right to practise medicine is the establishment's post-hoc mea culpa: "We're embarrassed at how we didn't do enough to keep our fears from getting ahead of the facts, so now we'll punish the messenger." That's small comfort for the families affected by the resurgent diseases.

Now we face another issue where our fears might produce more danger than safety: synthetic life. The recent achievement of scientists in manufacturing the genome of a bacterium from off-the-shelf chemicals, and placing it in a related bacterium which is now happily reproducing under the control of the manmade DNA, holds fantastic promise.

It also evokes deep concern. Some of that concern is ethical – Humans Play God! – but some of it is just plain fear. Why? What is it about artificial life that makes it seems so threatening? Why, after all, did the frightened townsfolk in Mary Shelley's novel Frankenstein (or at least the movies loosely based on her book) pick up their torches and pitchforks and try to kill the manmade creature?

If we are to make wise decisions about how to reap the unimaginable benefits of synthetic biology while responsibly limiting the risks, it behoves us to understand this fear ... as it does with our worries about genetically modified food, or vaccines, or nanotechnology, or many of the other modern technologies that can help us live longer and healthier lives. Our fears limit their potential to do so.

Scientists have been studying the psychology of risk perception far longer than we've been tinkering with DNA. Research has found that the process of perceiving and responding to potential danger is not simply fact-based – the pure product of clean, Cartesian rationality. It is an affective process, a blend of fact and feeling, cognition and intuition, cortical reason and gut reaction.

Notwithstanding the facts, there are characteristics of risky situations that make them feel more or less frightening.

A key characteristic is whether the risk is natural or human-made. People are generally more fearful of human-made risks, and less so of natural ones. Nature can indeed be red in tooth and claw, but new versions of plants, animals and microorganisms that evolve via Darwinian evolution don't upset us half as much as hybridisation by genetic engineering. That a bacterium can spontaneously evolve into a new version that can resist our arsenal of antibiotics doesn't seem to bother people as much as the possibility that we can now manufacture such mutants.

For the same reason, biologically active substances can be brought to market with no testing if they are "natural", yet if we discover in nature some substance that could cure cancer and try to manufacture it as a pharmaceutical, it will be a decade and billions of dollars worth of clinical trials before it can be put to use.

There are more than a dozen of these "risk perception factors", and they powerfully influence whether we are more or less afraid. These include: trust (lack of trust in government during the BSE (mad cow disease) days fuelled vast public concern about a minimal threat); choice (parents apparently being coerced into vaccinating their children fed fears of the MMR vaccine); and control (some people feel safer driving than flying, despite the statistics).

What we need to recognise is that reacting to risk this way, as natural as it is, leads sometimes to a "perception gap". We are either too afraid or not afraid enough, relative to the true risks. So it is that for many of the biggest threats to our health, such as heart disease, we are not nearly scared enough.

That gap itself is a risk. We do have to fear fear itself ... whether it's too much fear or too little. So understanding the psychological roots of the human affective response to risk is critical for making wiser, healthier choices about the dangers we face, as individuals, and as a society.

David Ropeik is an instructor in the Harvard University Extension School and author of How Risky Is It, Really? Why Our Fears Don't Match the Facts

Source: Science news, comment and analysis | guardian.co.uk | 26 May 2010 | 7:47 am

Best Beaches: Oil Forces Florida Beach to Slip from Top 10

This year's best beaches list won't include the Florida Panhandle, due to the Gulf oil spill.
Source: Livescience.com | 26 May 2010 | 7:43 am

Northern Ireland minister calls on Ulster Museum to promote creationism

Nelson McCausland defends letter to trustees urging anti-evolution exhibits

Northern Ireland's born-again Christian culture minister has called on the Ulster Museum to put on exhibits reflecting the view that the world was made by God only several thousand years ago.

Nelson McCausland, who believes that Ulster Protestants are one of the lost tribes of Israel, has written to the museum's board of trustees urging them to reflect creationist and intelligent design theories of the universe's origins.

The Democratic Unionist minister said the inclusion of anti-Darwinian theories in the museum was "a human rights issue".

McCausland defended a letter he wrote to the trustees calling for anti-evolution exhibitions at the museum. He claimed that around one third of Northern Ireland's population believed either in intelligent design or the creationist view that the universe was created about 6,000 years ago.

"I have had more letters from the public on this issue than any other issue," he said.

The minister said he wrote a "very balanced letter" to the museum because he wanted to "reflect the views of all the people in Northern Ireland in all its richness and diversity".

Earlier in his letter to the museum's trustees McCausland said he had "a common desire to ensure that museums are reflective of the views, beliefs and cultural traditions that make up society in Northern Ireland".

His call was condemned by the evolutionary biologist Professor Richard Dawkins, who said: "If the museum was to go down that road then perhaps they should bring in the stork theory of where babies come from. Or perhaps the museum should introduce the flat earth theory."

Dawkins said it was irrelevant if a large number of people in Northern Ireland refused to believe in evolution. "Scientific evidence can't be democratically decided," Dawkins said.

McCausland's party colleague and North Antrim assembly member Mervyn Storey has been at the forefront of a campaign to force museums in Northern Ireland to promote anti-Darwinian theories.

Storey, who has chaired the Northern Ireland assembly's education committee, has denied that man descended from apes. He believes in the theory that the world was created several thousand years ago, even though the most famous tourist attraction in his own constituency – the Giant's Causeway on the North Antrim coast – is according to all the geological evidence millions of years old.

Last year Storey raised objections to notices at the Giant's Causeway informing the public that the unique rock formation was about 550m years old. Storey believes in the literal truth of the Bible and that the earth was created only several thousand years before Christ's birth.

This latest row over Darwin versus creationism in Northern Ireland comes at a delicate time for the Ulster Museum. Earlier this month it was shortlisted for the UK's largest single arts prize. The Art Fund Prize annually awards £100,000 to a museum or gallery for a project completed in the last year.

The belief that the Earth was divinely created in 4004 BC originates with the writings of another Ulster-based Protestant, Archbishop of Armagh James Ussher, in 1654. Ussher calculated the date based on textual clues in the Old Testament, even settling on a date and time for the moment of creation: in the early hours of 23 October.

Source: Science news, comment and analysis | guardian.co.uk | 26 May 2010 | 4:59 am

Infections link to bees decline

Colony Collapse Disorder (CCD) in honeybees could be caused by a "synergy" between groups of fungi and viruses.
Source: BBC News | Science & Environment | UK Edition | 26 May 2010 | 3:20 am