New skeletons from the age of dinosaurs answer century-old questions about prehistoric reptile Typothorax

More than 100 years ago, paleontologist E. D. Cope of "Dinosaur Wars" fame found a few fragmentary bones of a reptile in the deserts of New Mexico. He named the reptile Typothorax. A century later, Typothorax -- which belongs to a group of reptiles called aetosaurs -- remained something of a mystery, known mainly from pieces of armor, a few limb bones, and some sections of tail. Now, thanks to two remarkably complete skeletons, paleontologists are finally revealing what Typothorax really looked like.
Source: ScienceDaily: Latest Science News | 31 May 2010 | 9:00 am

Surgery outperforms drug therapy in treatment of benign prostatic hyperplasia, research finds

A 17-year-long community study looking at symptoms of enlarged prostate in over 2,000 men age 40 to 79 years suggests that surgery for benign prostatic hyperplasia offers more relief from incontinence and obstruction symptoms than treatment from drug-based therapy, according to a new study.
Source: ScienceDaily: Latest Science News | 31 May 2010 | 9:00 am

Reforestation may lower the climate change mitigation potential of forests

Scientists in the U.S. and China have found that reforestation and afforestation -- the creation of new forests -- may lower the potential of forests for climate change lessening.
Source: ScienceDaily: Latest Science News | 31 May 2010 | 9:00 am

Natural self-repair mechanisms that kick in after spinal cord injury identified

University of Alberta researchers have identified one of the body's natural self-repair mechanisms that kick in after spinal cord injury which could lead to the development of more effective treatments.
Source: ScienceDaily: Latest Science News | 31 May 2010 | 9:00 am

Genetic makeup of Hispanic/Latino Americans influenced by Native American, European and African-American ancestries

A new study finds that the imprint of European colonialism and imperialism is evident in the genetic makeup of today's Hispanic/Latino American populations. Scientists discovered that Europeans, Native Americans, as well as West Africans brought to the US and Latin America by the trans-Atlantic slave trade, have influenced the genes of the current Hispanic/Latino populations. However, a large variation in genes among individuals within each population were still found to exist.
Source: ScienceDaily: Latest Science News | 31 May 2010 | 9:00 am

Air traffic poised to become a major factor in global warming, scientists predict

The first new projections of future aircraft emissions in 10 years predict that carbon dioxide and other gases from air traffic will become a significant source of global warming as they double or triple by 2050.
Source: ScienceDaily: Latest Science News | 31 May 2010 | 9:00 am

Circulating tumor cells correlate with poorer survival in pancreatic cancer patients

Researchers have found that pancreatic cancer patients who have circulating tumor cells tend to have worse outcomes than patients without circulating tumor cells. Additionally, the team has uncovered evidence that not all circulating tumor cells are the same, and some may predict worse outcomes than others.
Source: ScienceDaily: Latest Science News | 31 May 2010 | 6:00 am

Acupuncture's molecular effects pinned down: New insights spur effort to boost treatment's impact significantly

Scientists have identified the molecule adenosine as a central player in parlaying some of the effects of acupuncture in the body. Building on that knowledge, scientists were able to triple the beneficial effects of acupuncture in mice by adding a medication approved to treat leukemia in people.
Source: ScienceDaily: Latest Science News | 31 May 2010 | 6:00 am

Faulty gene stops cell 'antennae' from transmitting

Researchers have identified the genetic cause of an inherited condition that causes severe fetal abnormalities. The work should allow couples at risk of conceiving babies with the profoundly disabling Meckel-Gruber and Joubert syndromes to be identified beforehand through genetic screening.
Source: ScienceDaily: Latest Science News | 31 May 2010 | 6:00 am

NASA's airborne infrared observatory sees 'first light'

The Stratospheric Observatory for Infrared Astronomy (SOFIA), a joint program by NASA and the German Aerospace Center, achieved a major milestone May 26, with its first in-flight night observations.
Source: ScienceDaily: Latest Science News | 31 May 2010 | 6:00 am

Israel: At least 10 killed on Gaza flotilla (AP)

AP - Israeli commandos on Monday stormed six ships carrying hundreds of pro-Palestinian activists on an aid mission to the blockaded Gaza Strip, killing at least 10 people and wounding dozens after encountering unexpected resistance as the forces boarded the vessels.

Source: Yahoo! News: Science News | 31 May 2010 | 4:10 am

China pushes supercomputer power

China ramps up efforts to become a supercomputing superpower, as one of its machines is ranked second fastest in the world.
Source: BBC News | Science & Environment | UK Edition | 31 May 2010 | 4:01 am

Deepwater mystery: Oil loose in the Gulf (AP)

AP - Streaming video of oil pouring from the seafloor and images of dead, crude-soaked birds serve as visual bookends to the natural calamity unfolding in the Gulf of Mexico.

Source: Yahoo! News: Science News | 31 May 2010 | 3:58 am

Acupuncture Releases Natural Painkiller

When they get acupuncture, mice release a natural pain-relieving molecule that scientists have never linked with the treatment before.
Source: Discovery News - Top Stories | 31 May 2010 | 3:30 am

BP's Top Kill Fails as Gulf Coast Oil-Spill Worries Grow (Time.com)

Time.com - With BP's latest attempt to plug its massive oil spill a failure, Louisiana's coastal residents face an uncertain future
Source: Yahoo! News: Science News | 31 May 2010 | 3:30 am

Computing power

How do the world's fastest computers stack up?
Source: BBC News | Science & Environment | UK Edition | 31 May 2010 | 3:28 am

The nation's weather (AP)

AP - Several areas of active weather were forecast to develop throughout the nation on Memorial Day.

Source: Yahoo! News: Science News | 31 May 2010 | 2:58 am

Antimatter Matters: Fermilab Glimpses 'The Toe of God'

Did you miss the big news from Fermilab last week? It seems that a bunch of proton-anti-proton collisions exhibit a slight asymmetry in the number of muons produced compared to anti-muons.
Source: Discovery News - Top Stories | 31 May 2010 | 2:46 am

Hopes for breast cancer vaccine

US scientists say they have developed a vaccine which prevents breast cancer in mice. and they plan trials in humans.
Source: BBC News | Science & Environment | UK Edition | 31 May 2010 | 2:36 am

Attacking cancer

Genetic research paves way to new approach
Source: BBC News | Science & Environment | UK Edition | 31 May 2010 | 2:35 am

Ghost hunters

Researchers set off on an expedition to the Dominican Republic to track down an elusive 'living fossil'.
Source: BBC News | Science & Environment | UK Edition | 31 May 2010 | 2:32 am

NZ anti-whaling activist on trial in Japan (AFP)

AFP - A New Zealand anti-whaling activist on trial in Japan denied Monday a charge of assault, saying that rancid butter stink bombs he threw at harpoon ships were no more acidic than orange juice.

Source: Yahoo! News: Science News | 31 May 2010 | 1:45 am

Oil complicates forecasts on hurricane season eve (AP)

AP - As hurricane season approaches, the giant oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico takes weather forecasters into nearly uncharted waters.

Source: Yahoo! News: Science News | 31 May 2010 | 1:44 am

BP rushes new plan to stem Gulf oil leak (AFP)

AFP - BP engineers scrambled Monday to implement another high-risk plan to stem the devastating Gulf oil spill now being described as likely the worst environmental disaster in US history.

Source: Yahoo! News: Science News | 31 May 2010 | 1:42 am

Storm Agatha kills more than 100 in C.America (AFP)

AFP - The first tropical storm of the season killed at least 101 people across Central America, triggering flash floods and mudslides that swept away homes and destroyed roads, officials said.

Source: Yahoo! News: Science News | 31 May 2010 | 1:27 am

Genius Of Britain and I'm In A Rock'n'Roll Band! | TV review

There was no voting for our favourite boffin: this was serious scientific history, writes Sarah Dempster

Here they come, walkin' down the street. Hey, hey they're the polymaths, and their extraordinary cerebellums and groundbreaking discoveries are at the heart of Genius of Britain (C4). Presented by a relay team of celebrity brainiacs, the first of five nightly episodes on Britain's biggest ever brains focused on the early members of the Royal Society.

David Attenbrilliant dealt with the 17th century theories and passions of Christopher Wren, Richard Dawkins did the same with pioneering microbiologist Robert Hooke. There was James "Hoover" Dyson on Robert Boyle, theoretical physicist Jim Al-Khalili on Isaac Newton, and physicist Kathy Sykes on comet-naming prodigy Edmond Halley.

There was a pleasantly gossipy tinge to proceedings. We learned that Newton was aloof and temperamental. Hooke had a "meagre aspect", a "large forehead" and was "probably a hunchback". Boyle once blew up a pig's bladder while experimenting with an air pump. Wren was quite interested in bees. Envy, ambition and opportunism bubbled volcanically under the Royal Society's bewigged carapace. Hooke considered Newton a braggart and believed him to have nabbed all his best ideas. Newton – "the greatest genius of them all", according to narrator Stephen Hawking - disliked Hooke so intensely he (allegedly) had all portraits of his learned colleague destroyed. Forsooth!

Still, Genius of Britain resisted the temptation to analyse the power games. It also proved admirably oblivious to the lure of other prevailing televisual fads. There were no dramatic reconstructions. There were no attempts to sauce things up by drafting in a member of the ubiquitous "hot boffin" brigade (Brian Cox, the one with the eyebrows from How To Grow Your Own Drugs, etc). The soundtrack complemented the action rather than wrestling it to the ground and shoving a brass section in its face. We were not asked to vote for our favourite scientist at the end of the programme; nor were we asked which one we wanted to see win a place in the final by taking part in a studio boffin-off in which they did sums at each other until one of them dropped his equinoctial dial.

Instead, this was a serious attempt to do scientific history justice, an intelligent but accessible account of the lives of men and women who had shaped the course of history, presented by men and women who had spent their lives studying them. Or at least more than 10 minutes Googling them on their Blackberry in the cab on the way to the studio. More power to its leather elbow patch.

I've been wondering about the exclamation mark affixed to the title of I'm in a Rock'n'Roll Band! (BBC2). Is it an ironic, pop-art thing? Is it a genuine, artless display of enthusiasm – a sort of punctuative air-punch? Or is it a well-meaning if palpably desperate attempt to pump enthusiasm into something that's obviously a bit duff, like a mother doing manic helicopter arms and comedy engine noises in the hope baby won't notice he's being fed pureed turnip? The sheer volume of pureed turnip in the penultimate episode brought the gavel down on the latter theory.

The series' studded, marblewash-denim gilet is growing increasingly frayed. The OMG quotient – surely a vital component of a series that re-examines a subject that has been re-examined to the point of near-extinction – has flatlined. All that's left is Gene Simmons drawling about how Kiss weren't a band, they were a brand for the 489,758th time, and a clip of Emerson, Lake and Palmer getting off a plane.

After episodes focusing on the respective role of the singer, drummer, guitarist and bassist, this instalment concerned the band as a whole, and an insight, it promised, into what it is like to "look out from the inside". Sting told us through a hedgerow (or was it a beard?) that being in a band is "like marriage without the sex". Bob Geldof said something about money. Was being in a rock group all it was cracked up to be? All: "Yes." Was it also quite hard work and tiring and often really boring and liable to make you fall out with your bandmates? All: "Yes." Ho-hum. Next week: the results of an online poll to decide the "ultimate rock'n'roll band"!

Source: Science news, comment and analysis | guardian.co.uk | 31 May 2010 | 1:00 am

Gulf Coast warned oil may leak until August (Reuters)

Reuters - U.S. government and BP officials are warning that the blown-out oil well causing an environmental disaster on the Gulf Coast may not be stopped until August as the company begins preparations on a new attempt to capture the leaking crude.

Source: Yahoo! News: Science News | 30 May 2010 | 11:07 pm

Battling Bots in Saturn's Biggest Ring

In an entertaining effort to communicate why Saturn's outermost ring can only be seen in the infrared, NASA's Spitzer team have released a video of battling robots trying to gain the secrets of this "cloaked" ring.
Source: Discovery News - Top Stories | 30 May 2010 | 7:12 pm

Stem cell strategy

As you report (28 May), the potential for haemopoietic stem cell transplants (commonly known as bone marrow transplants) to treat a range of conditions is enormous. The Anthony Nolan Trust currently provides life-saving stem cell transplants for leukaemia patients every day, and scientists have identified potential to treat conditions such as heart problems as well as mental illnesses.

Such research further underlines the need for a UK stem cell strategy. Stem cells for transplant come from donations by adults on bone marrow registers and umbilical cord blood banked for this purpose. We are already unable to meet transplant demand from these sources within the UK and regularly import stem cells for transplant from abroad, often at great expense. As the number of transplants increases, so does our need for a fully resourced UK programme.

Earlier this year the government initiated a project bringing together expertise from the Anthony Nolan Trust, the NHS and the international transplant community, to address these issues. It is vital that this work continues to build momentum.

Henny Braund

Chief executive, The Anthony Nolan Trust

Source: Science news, comment and analysis | guardian.co.uk | 30 May 2010 | 5:05 pm

What makes a genius?

They let us out of the studio to spend a night in the museum...

It was our first ever recording in front of a live audience, taking over part of London's Science Museum to discuss the nature of genius.

Making his first appearance on this podcast was genius personified Stephen Hawking, who opened a debate on The Genius of Britain at the museum's IMAX cinema earlier in the evening.

The theoretical physicist features in Channel 4's new TV series Genius of Britain: Scientists Who Changed the World which began on 30 May. You'll be able to catch up with any episodes you miss on 4oD.

We spoke to someone who could be considered a modern day genius, a man estimated to be worth more than a billion pounds, entrepreneur-inventor Sir James Dyson.

Our guest for the night, and helping us to nail the nature of genius, was psychologist Dr Kevin Dutton. Kevin is an expert on social influence. His new book Flipnosis is out now.

On our panel of Guardian genii were Nell Boase and science correspondent Ian Sample. Earlier we sent them roaming around the museum's Lates event: Nell tested her IQ, and Ian watched as the Babbage difference engine came to life.

We also handed the mic over to our audience to nominate their favourite genius and ask questions of the panel.

If you came along, thanks so much. We would love to get your feedback on the night. We hope you enjoyed it. You can add your comments below or tweet @iansample, @alokjha or @scienceweekly. Relive the night by keying #swlive.

View our pictures and upload your own to our Flickr photostream.

Finally, our thanks to the wonderful staff at London's Science Museum.

WARNING: contains strong language.

Follow the podcast on our Science Weekly Twitter feed and receive updates on all breaking science news stories from Guardian Science.

Email scienceweeklypodcast@gmail.com.

Join our Facebook group.

Listen back through our archive.

Subscribe free via iTunes to ensure every episode gets delivered. (Here is the non-iTunes URL feed).

Source: Science news, comment and analysis | guardian.co.uk | 30 May 2010 | 5:01 pm

Mexico heroes' bones paraded

MEXICO CITY (Reuters) - Mexican soldiers on Sunday paraded the bones of the heroes of the country's Independence War down the capital's most famous street before scientists begin trying to solve a century-old mystery by identifying the bones.
Source: Reuters: Science News | 30 May 2010 | 3:48 pm

Spill 'is worst US eco-disaster'

The Gulf of Mexico oil spill is the worst environmental disaster the United States has faced, a senior official says.
Source: BBC News | Science & Environment | UK Edition | 30 May 2010 | 2:49 pm

Acupuncture: unregulated therapy that took off in 70s Britain

Evidence for efficacy of 19th-century import hard to establish

The first known British acupuncturist was John Churchill who, in 1821, published a series of results on the treatment of tympany [ear infections or deafness] and rheumatism with acupuncture.

Acupuncture has become increasingly popular since the early 1970s when travel restrictions between the east and west were eased.

It is hard to estimate the number of acupuncturists in Britain as the practise is unregulated. The British Acupuncture Council, the UK's largest body of professional acupuncturists, has about 3,000 members.

The NHS offers limited acupuncture and most patients pay for private treatment. Currently, the National Institute for Health and Clinical Excellence (Nice) only recommends acupuncture as a treatment option for lower back pain.

Conclusive evidence of its effectiveness has proved hard to establish. Some studies suggested that acupuncture can slightly improve the chances of a woman become pregnant during IVF treatment. But others found it made no difference.

There have been similarly mixed results on the affects of acupuncture on arthritis. Two studies on osteoarthritis of the knee found that the procedure helped, but more recent research found there wasn't much difference between people having acupuncture or sham (placebo) acupuncture.

Trials on treatment for headaches took into account the placebo effect by comparing authentic acupuncture to a sham procedure. Overall traditional acupuncture produced slightly better results.

Source: Science news, comment and analysis | guardian.co.uk | 30 May 2010 | 12:01 pm

New genes found in 'Cantonese cancer' (AFP)

AFP - Flaws in three genes could help explain why parts of southern China have extraordinarily high rates of a type of nose-and-throat cancer, scientists said on Sunday.

Source: Yahoo! News: Science News | 30 May 2010 | 11:09 am

Acupuncture may ease pain by triggering release of natural painkiller

Study in mice suggests that acupuncture relieves pain not just through the placebo effect but also by stimulating cells to pump out the body's own painkiller

Scientists have performed acupuncture on mice with sore paws to pinpoint how the ancient Chinese medical practice might alleviate pain in humans.

After a half-hour session, the mice felt less discomfort in their paws because the needles triggered the release of a natural painkiller, say the researchers. The needles stimulated cells to produce adenosine, an anti-inflammatory and painkilling chemical, that was effective for up to an hour after the therapy was over.

The discovery challenges a widely held view among scientists that any benefit patients feel after having acupuncture is purely due to the placebo effect.

"The view that acupuncture does not have much benefit beyond the placebo effect has really hampered research into the technique," said Maiken Nedergaard, a neuroscientist at the University of Rochester Medical Centre in New York, who led the study.

"Some people think any work in this area is junk research, but I think that's wrong. I was really surprised at the arrogance of some of my colleagues. We can benefit from what has been learned over many thousands of years," Nedergaard told the Guardian.

Acupuncture was developed in China around 4,000 years ago. The procedure involves inserting fine needles at specific points around the body and then heating, twisting or even electrifying them.

Traditional practitioners claim acupuncture works by improving the flow of "qi energy" along "meridians", but the latest research, published in Nature Neuroscience, points to a less mystical explanation.

"I believe we've found the main mechanism by which acupuncture relieves pain. Adenosine is a very potent anti-inflammatory compound and most chronic pain is caused by inflammation," Nedergaard said.

The scientists gave each mouse a sore paw by injecting it with an inflammatory chemical. Half of the mice lacked a gene that is needed to make adenosine receptors, which are dotted along major nerves.

The therapy session involved inserting a fine needle into an acupuncture point in the knee above the sore foot. In keeping with traditional practice, the needles were rotated periodically throughout the half-hour session.

To measure how effective the acupuncture was, the researchers recorded how quickly each mouse pulled its sore paw away from a small bristly brush. The more pain the mice were in, the faster they pulled away.

Writing in the journal, Nedergaard's team describe how acupuncture reduced pain by two thirds in normal mice, but had no effect on the discomfort of mice that lacked the adenosine receptor gene. Without adenosine receptors, the chemical will have no effect on the mice when it is released in their bodies.

The acupunture had no effect at all in either group if the needles were not rotated.

Nedergaard said that twisting the needles seems to cause enough damage to make cells release adenosine. The chemical is then picked up by adenosine receptors on nearby nerves, which react by damping down pain. Further tests on the mice revealed that levels of adenosine surged 24-fold in the tissues around the acupuncture needles during and immediately after each session.

One of the long-standing mysteries surrounding acupuncture is why the technique only seems to alleviate pain if needles are inserted at specific points. Nedergaard believes that most of these points are along major nerve tracks, and as such are parts of the body that have plenty of adenosine receptors.

In a final experiment, Nedergaard's team injected mice with a cancer drug that made it harder to remove adenosine from their tissues. The drug, called deoxycoformycin, boosted the effects of acupuncture dramatically, more than tripling how long the pain relief lasted.

"There is an attitude among some researchers that studying alternative medicine is unfashionable," said Nedergaard. "Because it has not been understood completely, many people have remained sceptical."

Although the study explains how acupuncture can alleviate pain, it sheds no light on any of the other health benefits that some practitioners believe it can achieve.

Source: Science news, comment and analysis | guardian.co.uk | 30 May 2010 | 11:00 am

Breast cancer vaccine trials set to start

Researchers say GPs could offer vaccine to healthy women before they reach their mid-40s when risk of disease starts to rise

Clinical trials of a vaccine designed to protect healthy women against breast cancer could begin within the next two years.

The jab is still under development, but its effectiveness has impressed doctors who tested it on animals prone to the disease.

If the vaccine works on human patients, researchers say GPs could offer it to women before they reach their mid-40s, when the risk of breast cancer starts to rise steeply.

"We think it will provide substantial protection," Vincent Tuohy, an immunologist at the Cleveland Clinic, in Ohio, US, said.

"Our view is that breast cancer is a completely preventable disease."

Effective cancer vaccines have proved notoriously difficult to make, not least because tumour cells are strikingly similar to healthy tissues.

A poorly-designed cancer vaccine could easily turn the immune system against other parts of the body and cause more harm than good, while another problem is that many cancers weaken the immune system as they grow.

Tuohy's vaccine makes the immune system attack a particular protein found in most breast cancer cells and the mammary tissues of breastfeeding women. As such, it would only be given to women who are not going to breastfeed in the future.

"The frequency of women who breastfeed in their early 40s and above is very low, so we are looking at vaccinating women against the disease from this stage of life onwards," Tuohy said. Details of the vaccine are reported in the Nature Medicine journal.

Breast cancer is the most common form of cancer in Britain. In 2007, nearly 45,700 women and 277 men were diagnosed with the condition. Among women, breast cancer rates have risen by 50% in the past 25 years. Around 80% of cases are diagnosed in women aged 50 and over.

Although the disease kills around 12,000 British women each year, national screening programmes and other public health measures have helped cut death rates by nearly one-third from their peak in the late 1980s.

The causes of breast cancer are not fully understood, but hormonal changes, genetic factors, a family history of the condition, smoking and drinking alcohol are all known to affect the risk of developing the disease.

Obesity and hormone replacement therapy (HRT) increase a woman's chances of developing breast cancer, while bearing children reduces the risk.

Tuohy's team tested the vaccine on mice bred to be prone to breast cancer. Usually, such mice develop large breast tumours within 10 months of being born.

The researchers injected six mice with a vaccine made from the target protein, alpha-lactalbumin, and a chemical called an adjuvant, which boosts the immune system response to the vaccine.

Six other mice were given a sham vaccine. All the mice were two months old and clear of cancer when they had their jabs.

After 10 months, all mice that received the sham vaccine had developed serious breast tumours. None of the mice given the real vaccine showed any signs of tumours in their breast tissue.

"Over the duration of the study, it was completely effective," Tuohy said. The vaccine was far less effective when administered to mice that already had breast cancer.

Previous studies show half to 70% of human breast cancer cells carry the alpha-lactalbumin protein the vaccine targets – figures that suggest the jab would not destroy all of a patient's breast cancer cells.

But the Cleveland Clinic group suspect far more cancer cells produce the protein temporarily as they grow. If they are right, the vaccine could be more effective than expected. Researchers hope to begin human trials within two years, Tuohy said.

"This research could have important implications for how we might prevent breast cancer in the future," Dr Caitlin Palframan, the policy manager at Breakthrough Breast Cancer, said.

"However, this is an early stage study, and we look forward to seeing the results of large-scale clinical trials to find out if this vaccine would be safe and effective in humans.

"Crucially, there are already things that women can do to reduce their breast cancer risk including reducing alcohol consumption, maintaining a healthy weight and taking regular exercise."

Source: Science news, comment and analysis | guardian.co.uk | 30 May 2010 | 10:59 am

Baseball Science: Perfect Baserunning Path Revealed

The best baserunning path is curved, not straight.
Source: Livescience.com | 30 May 2010 | 9:29 am

Where Did the Flu Go? It's Hiding

The flu may seem to die out. But the flu virus just hides.
Source: Livescience.com | 30 May 2010 | 8:38 am

Better Diet and Exercise Help Prevent Diabetes

Dieting is not enough to stave off diabetes. It is also important to exercise.
Source: Livescience.com | 30 May 2010 | 8:17 am

Suicide Hotline Takes Two-Millionth Call

The National Suicide Prevention Lifeline helps people who are contemplating suicide.
Source: Livescience.com | 30 May 2010 | 8:00 am

Enlarged Prostate: Surgery Better Than Drug Therapy

Surgery works best for benign prostatic hyperplasia (BPH), or enlarged prostate.
Source: Livescience.com | 30 May 2010 | 7:48 am

Scrutiny of Personal Gene Tests Increases

Direct-to-consumer gene tests have long been controversial, with many bioethicists worried they could mislead people about their disease risks.
Source: Livescience.com | 30 May 2010 | 6:29 am

Stripes may not be bees' defence

UK researchers have found that birds avoid bumblebees even when the insects do not have the classic black-and-yellow stripes.
Source: BBC News | Science & Environment | UK Edition | 30 May 2010 | 5:50 am

BP to Try New Way to Cap Oil Leak

BP will now attempt to place a box over the seafloor pipe to capture the oil and pump it to the surface.
Source: Discovery News - Top Stories | 30 May 2010 | 5:25 am

A life of science and delight

The Bristol University psychologist combined rigorous inquiry with boundless curiosity in a long career celebrated today

Richard Gregory, who died last week aged 86, was one of those brilliant scientists who are driven more by delight and curiosity, than by the measurable outcomes that oppress us all today.

Like so many psychology undergraduates of the 1960s and 1970s, I first knew of him through his breakthrough 1966 book Eye and Brain (my copy cost 14 shillings and I later despaired of marking student's essays referring to "Iron Brain"). His argument was that we can learn how the brain's visual system works by looking at the mistakes it makes – from simple illusions such as the Muller-Lyer illusion to a rotating spiral that seems to expand forever without changing size (that's weird).

He could take the simplest thing (a page of closely spaced black-and-white lines for example), make a mystery out of it (why do they jiggle about on the page?), and go on experimenting to make new discoveries (the effects of redundancy, eye movements, errors of the movement system and more).

He came to Bristol in 1970 after moving from Cambridge, and worked there for the rest of his life – indeed right up until his death. At the bottom of the hill near the university, there's a little cafe, its grubby walls tiled with an odd pattern. The rest of us would walk past without a second glance but it was typical of Gregory to stop and ask why the design makes the tiles look the wrong shape.

This phenomenon is now known as the "cafe wall illusion", and although the cafe has been through many changes, that wall is still there. In our lab Gregory built a wooden replica with sliding "tiles" and "mortar" and so discovered how and why the colour of the mortar and the alignment of the tiles combines to create the illusion.

I say "our lab" and this is a bit of an exaggeration, but it was at the "Brain and Perception laboratory" in the medical school at Bristol University that I first worked with Gregory. This was purely serendipitous – and typical of Gregory's enthusiasm and generosity of spirit.

Back in 1978 I was finishing my PhD on parapsychology (ESP, Tarot cards, poltergeists and the like) and my then husband, Tom Troscianko, was looking for a job. He wrote to every vision department in every UK university (there were, I believe, only 58 universities altogether in those days and only a few studied vision). Everyone else said a more or less polite "no" but Gregory invited us along to meet him.

As Tom tells the story, Gregory took more interest in me than him. I don't think that's true, but I do remember a whirlwind tour of an early flight simulator made of plaster and bits of wood, a 3D drawing machine with metal arms and joints, and a spinning bowl of mercury which he was hoping to use as some kind of reflecting telescope (imagine that being allowed today).

"Isn't this fun?" Gregory would gasp as he went from one quirky and interesting question to another.

Tom became his research assistant but I had no job. My work on the paranormal certainly did not qualify me for any real job in a university. So Gregory made me an unpaid "visiting research fellow", let me share Tom's room, use the lab equipment there, and access the library. It didn't bother him that my work was beyond the scientific pale. I think he enjoyed my crazy hunt for elusive phenomena and my attempts to explain outrageous psychic claims. When I eventually concluded there were no paranormal phenomena I don't think he was surprised, but had I found something I think he'd have been the first to jump into the investigation.

Over the years he let us bring babies and then toddlers into the lab, even letting them use a huge cardboard box as a playpen while I worked (health and safety?).

If you want to know more about Gregory and his work there are lots of sites dealing with his scientific work, the Exploratory science centre which he founded, or describing his life and work. All this and more is to be celebrated on Sunday 30 May in Bristol and anyone is welcome. I'm sure Gregory would approve that its being called a FUNeral.

There will never be anyone quite as wacky, inventive, eclectic, brilliant, or engaging as Gregory, but I hope there will be many more scientists who have his playful curiosity, his delight in science – and whose enthusiasm can survive our current culture of targets, measurement, and obsession with usefulness.

Source: Science news, comment and analysis | guardian.co.uk | 30 May 2010 | 5:00 am