Epilepsy surgery can have beneficial effect on memory, research suggests

Patients with drug-resistant epilepsy run the risk of gradual deterioration in their cognitive abilities. Surgical treatment generally puts an end to seizures but can have a negative effect on memory. However, there is no further deterioration in memory, and some patients may even recover some of their memory capacity, new research from Sweden reveals.
Source: ScienceDaily: Latest Science News | 1 Jun 2010 | 12:00 pm

Particle chameleon caught in the act of changing

Researchers on the OPERA experiment at the Gran Sasso laboratory in Italy have announced the first direct observation of a tau particle in a muon neutrino beam sent through the Earth from CERN, 730 kilometers away. This is a significant result, providing the final missing piece of a puzzle that has been challenging science since the 1960s, and giving tantalizing hints of new physics to come.
Source: ScienceDaily: Latest Science News | 1 Jun 2010 | 12:00 pm

Will we succeed? The science of self-motivation

Can you help you? Recent research has shown that those who ask themselves whether they will perform a task generally do better than those who tell themselves that they will.
Source: ScienceDaily: Latest Science News | 1 Jun 2010 | 12:00 pm

Revealing the ancient Chinese secret of sticky rice mortar

Scientists have discovered the secret behind an ancient Chinese mortar made from sticky rice, that delicious "sweet rice" that is a modern mainstay in Asian dishes. They also concluded that the mortar -- a paste used to bind and fill gaps between bricks, stone blocks and other construction materials -- remains the best available material for restoring ancient buildings.
Source: ScienceDaily: Latest Science News | 1 Jun 2010 | 12:00 pm

Student uses pedal power to create novel machine

An innovative bicycle-powered water pump, created by a student in the UK, has proved a huge success and is now in regular production in Guatemala, transforming the lives of rural residents.
Source: ScienceDaily: Latest Science News | 1 Jun 2010 | 12:00 pm

Bone marrow plays critical role in enhancing immune response to viruses, researchers find

Researchers for the first time have determined that bone marrow cells play a critical role in fighting respiratory viruses, making the bone marrow a potential therapeutic target, especially in people with compromised immune systems. They have found that during infections of the respiratory tract, cells produced by the bone marrow are instructed by proteins to migrate to the lungs to help fight infection.
Source: ScienceDaily: Latest Science News | 1 Jun 2010 | 12:00 pm

Natural selection for moderate testosterone surprises scientists

A field study of the relationship between testosterone and natural selection in an American songbird, the dark-eyed junco, has defied some expectations and confirmed others. Scientists report that extreme testosterone production -- high or low -- puts male dark-eyed junco at a disadvantage in both survival and reproduction outside their semi-monogamous breeding pairs.
Source: ScienceDaily: Latest Science News | 1 Jun 2010 | 9:00 am

Inflammasome increases muscle damage in muscular dystrophy, study finds

In a new study, researchers demonstrate that affected muscle may directly contribute to inflammation in muscular dystrophy.
Source: ScienceDaily: Latest Science News | 1 Jun 2010 | 9:00 am

Animal study reveals new target for antidepressants

Antidepressants such as Prozac are not instant mood-lifters. But researchers have found clues to the delayed response and common return of depressive symptoms when taking serotonin-related antidepressants. Rather than activating all of the brain's serotonin receptors, as current drugs do, their study suggests there's just one critical serotonin receptor important to relieving depression and anxiety. It opens the door to more effective treatment for the 20.9 million Americans with depressive disorders.
Source: ScienceDaily: Latest Science News | 1 Jun 2010 | 9:00 am

Powerful genome barcoding system reveals large-scale variation in human DNA

Genetic variation on the order of thousands to hundreds of thousands of DNA's smallest pieces -- large swaths varying in length or location or even showing up in reverse order -- appeared 4,205 times in a comparison of DNA from just four people, according to a new study.
Source: ScienceDaily: Latest Science News | 1 Jun 2010 | 9:00 am

Obama to meet spill probe leaders, slick moves north (Reuters)

Reuters - President Barack Obama will meet with the leaders of a panel he created to probe the worst oil spill in U.S. history on Tuesday, as a giant slick from BP's blown-out Gulf of Mexico well poses a new threat to the coasts of Mississippi and Alabama.

Source: Yahoo! News: Science News | 1 Jun 2010 | 4:05 am

Harsh drought hit American colony

A study of discarded oyster shells reinforces the idea that the first British colonists in America faced an unusually severe drought.
Source: BBC News | Science & Environment | UK Edition | 1 Jun 2010 | 3:40 am

Let's play space

Why six men are putting life on hold for a pretend trip
Source: BBC News | Science & Environment | UK Edition | 1 Jun 2010 | 3:32 am

Australia sues Japan over controversial whaling (AP)

AP - Japan said Tuesday it would staunchly defend its research hunt that kills hundreds of whales per year, a day after Australia filed an international lawsuit arguing that the cull does not qualify for a scientific exemption to a 1986 ban.

Source: Yahoo! News: Science News | 1 Jun 2010 | 3:12 am

Inside the cave of bones: A story of survival

Could a cave hold some of the answers to how a bizarre venomous mammal has managed to survive 76 million years?
Source: BBC News | Science & Environment | UK Edition | 1 Jun 2010 | 3:01 am

The nation's weather (AP)

AP - The Eastern U.S. was forecast to see another active day Tuesday, while the West remained under mild weather conditions.

Source: Yahoo! News: Science News | 1 Jun 2010 | 2:49 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 | 1 Jun 2010 | 2:39 am

Acupuncture's painkilling secret revealed: it's all in the twist action

Twist of a needle damages cells and triggers release of anti-inflammatory chemical adenosine, US scientists find

Ever since Chinese doctors first poked their patients with sharp objects 4,000 years ago, and charged them for the pleasure, acupuncture has been shrouded in mystery.

Tradition has it that the procedure works by improving the flow of "qi" along invisible energy channels called meridians, but research published today points to a less mystical explanation for the painkilling claims of acupuncture.

The answer, according to a team of scientists in New York, follows an extraordinary study in which researchers gave regular acupuncture sessions to mice with sore paws.

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

Modern acupuncture involves inserting fine needles into the skin at specific points around the body. The needles are pushed in a few centimetres, and then heated, twisted or even electrified to produce their claimed medical effects.

Acupuncture has spread around the world since originating in China but conventional western medicine has remained steadfastly sceptical. Although there is now good evidence that acupuncture can relieve pain, many of the other health benefits acupuncturists claim are on shakier ground.

The latest research gives doctors a sound explanation of how sticking needles into the skin can alleviate, rather than exacerbate, pain. The discovery will challenge the view , widely held among scientists, that any benefits a patient feels after acupuncture are due purely to the placebo effect.

"The view that acupuncture has little 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 state, 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 said.

"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."

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 found on major nerves.

The therapy session involved inserting a fine needle into an acupuncture point in the knee above each mouse's 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, Nature Neuroscience, 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 mice were unable to respond to the adenosine released when cells were damaged by acupuncture needles.

Acupuncture had no effect in either group of mice if the needles were not rotated, suggesting that the tissues had to be physically damaged to release adenosine.

Nedergaard said that twisting the needles seems to cause enough damage to make cells release the painkilling chemical. This 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 longstanding 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 acupuncture 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 the other health benefits that some practitioners believe the procedure can achieve.

Josephine Briggs, the director of the national centre for complementary and alternative medicine at the US National Institutes of Health, said: "It's clear that acupuncture may activate a number of different mechanisms … It's an interesting contribution to our growing understanding of the complex intervention which is acupuncture."

Source: Science news, comment and analysis | guardian.co.uk | 1 Jun 2010 | 2:06 am

'Noise pollution' threatens fish

Fish are being threatened by rising levels of underwater man-made noise pollution, a scientific review finds.
Source: BBC News | Science & Environment | UK Edition | 1 Jun 2010 | 1:04 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 | 11:35 pm

Obama to meet spill probe leaders as oil heads north (Reuters)

Reuters - President Barack Obama will meet with the leaders of a panel he created to probe the worst oil spill in U.S. history on Tuesday, as a giant slick from BP's blown-out Gulf of Mexico well poses a new threat to the coasts of Mississippi and Alabama.

Source: Yahoo! News: Science News | 31 May 2010 | 11:15 pm

Massive Hydrogen Clouds Surround the Milky Way

Astronomers have discovered the origin of mysterious hydrogen clouds that lie outside the Milky Way's disk.
Source: Discovery News - Top Stories | 31 May 2010 | 9:30 pm

BP warns of long effort to cap spill (AFP)

AFP - BP officials warned they may not be able to stop the Gulf of Mexico oil leak until August, as Louisiana residents warned the spill could wipe out dozens of fish species.

Source: Yahoo! News: Science News | 31 May 2010 | 9:03 pm

Foucault's Pendulum Snaps, Crashes Through Paris Museum Floor

Leon Foucault's original 1851 pendulum has been irreparably damaged after the heavy brass bob's cable snapped, sending a piece of physics history crashing through the Musee des Arts et Metiers floor.
Source: Discovery News - Top Stories | 31 May 2010 | 8:59 pm

40,000 may be evacuated in Philippine floods (AFP)

AFP - Up to 40,000 people may be forcibly evacuated after torrential rains caused heavy flooding in the southern Philippines, an official said Tuesday.

Source: Yahoo! News: Science News | 31 May 2010 | 8:13 pm

West Poised for Worst Grasshopper Outbreak in 30 Years (LiveScience.com)

LiveScience.com - The worst grasshopper outbreak in decades may envelop the western states this summer, scientists warn.
Source: Yahoo! News: Science News | 31 May 2010 | 5:20 pm

Hadron Collider hit by power cut

The Large Hadron Collider (LHC) is recovering from a general power cut which occurred at the weekend.
Source: BBC News | Science & Environment | UK Edition | 31 May 2010 | 4:12 pm

Japan's returning asteroid probe 'on home straight'

A Japanese space probe designed to return samples from an asteroid completes an important step on its journey home.
Source: BBC News | Science & Environment | UK Edition | 31 May 2010 | 4:09 pm

BP prepares new bid to curb spill

Oil firm BP begins preparations for a new attempt to cap the huge flow of oil from its leaking well in the Gulf of Mexico.
Source: BBC News | Science & Environment | UK Edition | 31 May 2010 | 3:19 pm

Scientists warn of unseen deepwater oil disaster (AP)

AP - Independent scientists and government officials say there's a disaster we can't see in the Gulf of Mexico's mysterious depths, the ruin of a world inhabited by enormous sperm whales and tiny, invisible plankton.

Source: Yahoo! News: Science News | 31 May 2010 | 3:11 pm

Missing piece found in particle puzzle: scientists

GENEVA (Reuters) - Research scientists announced on Monday they had identified the missing piece of a major puzzle involving the make-up of the universe by observing a neutrino particle change from one type to another.
Source: Reuters: Science News | 31 May 2010 | 2:28 pm

Risk of giant quake off American west coast goes up

A magnitude 8 or greater earthquake has a one in three chance of hitting in the next 50 years.<img src="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~r/news/rss/today/~4/Q6thMyUy-Es" height="1" width="1"/>
Source: NatureNews - All articles published today - nature.com science feeds | 31 May 2010 | 1:00 pm

Hay festival: 'Climate change is a long struggle' | John Harris

Global warming has always energised Hay audiences – but this year the mood is much more sober

For the past four or five years, one theme burned through discussions at Hay more than most: climate change, and the large and small things human beings might do to tackle it. Politicians – including, most famously, Al Gore – arrived here to talk up their ecological credentials, green authors warned the crowds of the doom that may await us, and everyone lapped it up.

Moreover, with the Copenhagen summit coming into view, last year's environmental sessions had an infectious mixture of trepidation and momentum, as they focused on The Big Question: whether the governments of the world would congregate and resolve to actually do something.

And then look what happened. Copenhagen turned out to be a grim, acrimonious affair, and the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change process now looks dangerously close to stalling. Just before the summit took place, the so-called "Climategate" affair (when emails at the University Of East Anglia's Climatic Research Unit were hacked, leading to a flurry of accusations about data manipulation) allowed the sceptics a field day. Immediately afterwards, a dispute about the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change's work on melting Himalayan glaciers gave them even more encouragement. Recession and the crisis in public finances, too, seemed to hoof climate change well down the world's list of political priorities – while even this year's bitter winter gave the voices of climate-change denial yet another boost.

As a result, this year's green Hay sessions have an ever-so-slightly tortured kind of atmosphere, translatable as "What are we going to do now?", and are largely devoid of the spurts of tentative optimism that preceded Copenhagen.

On Saturday afternoon, the former Energy and Climate Change Secretary – and much-tipped Labour leadership contender – Ed Miliband delivers one of this year's big eco-hits: a video-link conversation with the president of the Maldives, the cluster of islands in the Pacific Ocean that's already dealing with the grim effects of an overheating planet. Mohamed Nasheed, 43, came to office after long years of torture and imprisonment; now he's keen to talk about rising sea and freshly-evacuated islands, and tell people in the Northern Hemisphere what's required of them. "What we need is large-scale, 60s-style direct action: dynamic street activity," he says. "We need to act very quickly." The words rouse the crowd, but there's an uneasiness in the air: right now, are large amounts of "dynamic street activity" a realistic possibility?

An hour after the event, I meet Miliband. "When I was here last year," he says, "I did an event with Franny Armstrong [director of the climate change film The Age Of Stupid]. There was high expectation then. Now, there's a sense of" – he slows down, so as to pick his words carefully – "sober reality. But I don't think there's a despair. People don't think it's all hopeless. Copenhagen was the crest of a wave, and you inevitably have a bit of a sense of disappointment, and people wanting to gear themselves up again. I think they realise you've got to dig in for a long struggle. That's what it felt like today: people were talking about education, and how we get lots of different people involved – they were taking a long view."

One all-important question, though: how will people like him once again put jump-leads on the public mood?

"It's a struggle," Miliband admits. "Look: President Nasheed didn't despair. From 1991 to 2008, he was jailed on 13 separate occasions. And as he told us today, he didn't say, 'Oh, I'm giving up now.' You've got to always realise that there is a sense of possibility, and that you do have setbacks on the road. But just because it isn't easy, doesn't mean you give up."

The day's next green talkfest is a conversation between Rosie Boycott and Nicholas Stern, the economist and life peer who authored 2006's Stern Review, which made the case for cutting our emissions on the basis of hard-headed logic: to do so now would take a tiny fraction of the world's cash and resources, whereas sitting back and then trying to cope with a boiling planet would almost literally cost the Earth. His specialism is a forensic, inevitably rather wonk-ish take on what to do next – underpinned by an optimism that defines just about all his answers.

When I suggest that the recession seems to have turned people – and, more importantly, countries – inwards, and squashed the kind of collective thinking we're surely going to need if our emissions levels are even to start coming down, he claims that an economic downturn is the ideal time to push economies in a greener direction.

"This is a special opportunity," Stern says. "If you've got idle resources, the right thing to do is to invest in the growth story of the future – not just reflate the economy in a business-as-usual way. The Koreans' reflation package was about 70% into green activities. With China, it was 25 or 30%. This was an argument that went round the world, and in a few cases, people acted on it."

So why has climate change apparently disappeared from the political agenda? Again, more glass-half-full stuff: "It wasn't ever prominent in the election campaign. But one of the reasons for that was that the parties are actually in quite close agreement. It was all there in their manifestos. When David Cameron was putting the coalition together, he said, 'Let's start with what we agree on.' And this was point number two."

Stern is surely sounding too optimistic for his own good, not least when he chews over Copenhagen's deadening aftermath. "Life is full of ups and downs. People didn't see, because it was so chaotic and acrimonious, that the Copenhagen accord turned out to be a strong platform for going forward. It was much less fragile than many of us feared. The submissions to Copenhagen now cover 120 countries, and 80% of emissions. If everybody delivers, it will give you emissions levels in 2020 that are the same as we have now. And we'll have peaked. That's really worth having."

By way of an antidote, I pitch up at an admirably eco-minded hotel in nearby Kington, to meet 91-year-old Professor James Lovelock, on his third trip to the festival. He cuts a fascinating figure here: thanks to the brilliant Gaia Hypothesis (whereby the Earth is seen as a self-regulating system, akin to a living organism), he was one of the first intellectuals to embrace what we now know as green thinking, yet he calmly makes the kind of arguments that send many environmentalists over the edge. At his afternoon event, all is ambivalence: he's received as a hero, but then spends a good deal of his allotted hour taking questions – and mini-speeches – from irate members of the audience.

To boil down any of Lovelock's thoughts to a few sentences is to do him a serious disservice, but here goes. As he sees it, climate change is now all but out of control. We should certainly cut our greenhouse-gas emissions, but focus most of our efforts on adapting to a world that, sooner or later, will turn troublesome beyond words. As part of that, he has long claimed the only sustainable method of generating the electricity Britain needs is nuclear power – and that in large swathes of the world, solar and wind power are already proving to be a dangerous distraction. From time to time, he dispenses optimism, of a sort: he's not having the standard-issue predictions of steadily-rising global temperatures, and thinks that though the Earth could suddenly heat up in a way that few models have so far predicted, we might also have longer to prepare than some people think.

"Who knows? Everybody might be wrong," he says. "I may be wrong. Climate change may not happen as fast as we thought, and we may have 1,000 years to sort it out."

If that sounds comforting, bear in mind that the subtitle of his latest book, The Vanishing Face of Gaia, is "the final warning" – and when it comes to the kind of climate change-related schemes that dominate the headlines, he tends to sound withering, to say the least. Copenhagen, he tells me, was not just "futile" but "a monumental extravagance – I'm never convinced that big people-gatherings like that can solve the truly important issues." His most dismissive words, however, are reserved for the Stern Review: "If you mix up some science that's incomplete with some economics which is almost as bad, you're going to get an absolutely dreadful progeny."

In the context of Hay, Lovelock's most sobering point takes on a grim hilarity. The argument is simple enough: even if the public were to get newly excited, and politicians were united by fresh resolve, the human race might face an insurmountable problem – that even the kind of great minds who come to Hay might not have the IQ required for such a massive challenge.

"The main problem is that we're not really clever enough as a species," he says, with a wry look. "We haven't developed far enough. The Earth's evolving, and we're evolving with it – but it's a damn slow process. It's taken us a million years to change from being semi-intelligent animals to what we are now: still animals, and still semi-intelligent. I don't think we can handle big problems like the Earth."

Source: Science news, comment and analysis | guardian.co.uk | 31 May 2010 | 12:59 pm

Huge Model of New Space Telescope Takes on New York (SPACE.com)

SPACE.com - NEW YORK - A life-size model of a huge new space observatory billed as the successor to the Hubble Space Telescope is taking on the Big Apple this week at the World Science Festival.
Source: Yahoo! News: Science News | 31 May 2010 | 12:30 pm

'God made animals for testing ‎'

Malacca state chief defends plan to build testing lab saying animals are for benefit of humans

A Malaysian minister today defended plans to build an animal testing medicine lab in his state, saying God created monkeys and rats for experiments to benefit humans.

Malacca chief minister Mohamad Ali Rustam said the lab had been approved, and animal testing was necessary to make drugs. "We cannot test on human beings," he said. "God created monkeys, and some have to be tested."

The plans by Indian firm Vivo BioTech to set up a lab in Malacca has come under fire from activists who say test subjects could be abused because Malaysia has no regulations on animal research.

Mohamad Ali said Malaysian agencies, such as the wildlife department, could monitor that the animals were not abused and proper procedures followed. He said eating animals could also be seen as cruel, and yet it was widely accepted.

Vivo signed a 450 million ringgit (£97m) joint-venture deal in January to build the biotechnology centre, including laboratories where trial medicines will be tested on animals. Its partners are state government-owned Melaka Biotech Holdings and local firm Vanguard Creative Technologies.

Malaysia's Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals criticised Mohamad Ali's statement, saying it had not been scientifically proven that animal testing was necessary to develop medicine.

"Our primates will be snatched from the forests to be tested for what? Animal testing really leads to nowhere," group representative Christine Chin-Radford said."We are not confident at all that ... their welfare will be looked at properly. We are concerned about this exportation of cruelty to Malaysia."

SPCA, together with European animal rights groups, submitted a protest letter to the government last month, urging it to halt the project. Chin-Radford said animal cruelty is against Malaysian law, and there are no separate guidelines to govern the treatment of test animals.

Animal rights activists say companies are increasingly outsourcing animal testing to Asia, where regulations are more lax and costs are lower than in the West. India also has strict rules concerning animal testing, Chin-Radford said.

Vivo has said previously it may import beagles from the Netherlands and try to obtain domestic primates for testing.

Last year a French pharmaceutical research company proposed building an animal testing laboratory in southern Johor state using imported macaques, but the project was suspended amid an outcry from environmental groups.

Source: Science news, comment and analysis | guardian.co.uk | 31 May 2010 | 12:15 pm

Alice Miller obituary

Psychoanalyst who wrote The Drama of the Gifted Child

Alice Miller, who has died aged 87, was an influential and controversial figure in the world of psychoanalysis and psychotherapy. Her first book, The Drama of the Gifted Child (1979), sold millions worldwide. A Freudian analyst, she described how a child's need for love was often exploited by parents in order to meet the parent's own unmet needs. Unable to express their true feelings, these children grow up unhappy and depressed, out of touch with their real selves.

In For Your Own Good (1980), she introduced the concept of "poisonous pedagogy" to describe the child-rearing practices that were so prevalent in Europe, especially before the second world war. She believed that the pain inflicted on children – "for their own good" – was unconsciously the parent re-enacting the trauma that had been inflicted on them when they were children. Thus the cycle of trauma continued down the generations.

She analysed the childhoods of several famous figures in order to prove her point, the best known being Adolf Hitler. In her view, all Hitler's atrocities could be explained by the brutal persecution and abuse he experienced as a child. It is here that Miller was at her most powerful. She brought the reality of child abuse to the foreground in a way that many found compelling. She described how children protect their parents in order to salvage some hope of having their needs fulfilled and in the process have to repress their true needs.

Long-term suffering could be avoided only, in her opinion, if the child had an adult in his or her life who could acknowledge the reality of their experience. She called these adults "empathic witnesses" and this acknowledgment, she said, not interpretation, should be the role of psychotherapists with their clients. She attacked psychotherapy, especially psychoanalysis, because she saw it as a system of thought that denied the reality of those treated.

Sigmund Freud claimed that he had initially believed in the reality of childhood sexual abuse and that it was only later that he came to think of his patient's stories as fantasies. Miller condemned Freud's change of mind as an act of cowardice and a betrayal of children; and, distancing herself from these ideas, in 1988 resigned from the International Psychoanalytic Association, which represented Freudian thinking.

I first met Miller in 1984 when I was a young psychotherapist working in Paris. She appeared frail, but she was an uncompromising character, and even fellow professionals that she had admired failed to meet her demanding standards. She told me that psychoanalysts such as John Bowlby, Donald Winnicott and Heinz Kohut modified their views on childhood trauma in order not to be cast out by their fellow professionals.

Her refusal to compromise was both her strength and weakness. Her sense of certainty led her into a personal cul de sac. She came under the influence of a Swiss psychotherapist called J Konrad Stettbacher, who was the only therapist she believed to be on the side of the child. Later, she had to withdraw her support when allegations against him of professional misconduct emerged.

Miller rarely revealed details of her personal life. She was born in Lwów in Poland to the middle-class, Jewish Rostovski family. The Drama of the Gifted Child, though essentially her own story, found resonance with the experience of her many readers. She told Jane Islay, her first publisher in the US, that her parents had managed to smuggle her out of the Warsaw ghetto and she had lived with a Catholic family under an assumed name. Sometimes she would manage to sneak back in to the ghetto bringing food for her family, but she could not save them. She later told me that it was only when she started spontaneous painting in the early 1970s that she began to remember the destruction she had witnessed. Miller left Poland in 1946 to study for a doctorate in psychology and sociology at the University of Basel. She subsequently trained as a psychoanalyst in Zurich and started to practise in 1960. During this time she married the sociologist Andreas Miller and had two children, Martin and Julika. Her marriage did not survive. After her first books were published she no longer worked as a therapist and devoted the rest of her life to her writings.

She was a passionate supporter of children's rights, fighting to the end to abolish the smacking of children, which she saw as an abuse of power. She wrote open letters to the Pope, George W Bush and Tony Blair asking them to outlaw physical punishment.

Miller attracted a worldwide following and until the last weeks of her life communicated through her website, www.alice-miller.com. Parents and psychotherapists owe Miller a huge debt. Ever alert to the abuse of power, she reminded us to question whether we do "know best" and, above all, never to humiliate those who depend on us. She is survived by her son and daughter.

• Alice Miller, psychoanalyst, born 12 January 1923; died 14 April 2010

Source: Science news, comment and analysis | guardian.co.uk | 31 May 2010 | 11:28 am

Richard Firn obituary

My friend Richard Firn, who has died of cancer aged 65, was a plant biologist whose questioning of orthodoxy made him an inspiring teacher and colleague, and a scientist of the utmost rigour.

In his latter years, he turned his scientific attention to natural products, the chemical compounds in plants that are often very useful to humans – as drugs, for example – but many of which bring no obvious benefit to the plant. His "screening hypothesis" explained how such vast numbers of natural products have evolved. His hypothesis is novel, far-reaching and probably still not understood by the more conservative practitioners in this field.

His book Nature's Chemicals: Natural Products That Changed Our World, published last year, is a mine of originality. In it, he quotes the scientist Albert Szent-Györgyi: "Research is to see what everybody else has seen, and to think what nobody else has thought." This is a fitting epitaph for Richard himself.

He was born in Newcastle and moved to Edinburgh aged five when his father took a tenancy of a mixed farm. He attended the Edinburgh Rudolf Steiner school, and went to Edinburgh University in 1961, where he became its first student of agricultural science. He did a master's in agriculture at the Waite Institute in Adelaide; a PhD in plant biochemistry at Wye College, Kent; and postdoctoral research on plant phototropisms at the Plant Research Laboratory of Michigan State University. In Michigan, he met Ulla and they married in 1973.

For most of his professional life, from 1973 until 2009, he was a member of York University's biology department, which he helped to develop into a world-class centre of plant biology. He was a member of the Society of Experimental Biology, acting as its botanical secretary for many years. His social conscience was apparent from his years as the chair of the Brunswick Organic Nursery, a registered charity that offers work and training to people with learning disabilities. He is survived by Ulla.

Source: Science news, comment and analysis | guardian.co.uk | 31 May 2010 | 10:58 am

Snails yield drug addiction clue

In an unusual behavioural experiment, scientists use pond snails to study the effects of methamphetamine on the brain.
Source: BBC News | Science & Environment | UK Edition | 31 May 2010 | 10:40 am

Sack Tapping: Parents’ Threat Du Jour

"Sack tapping" is the latest supposed threat that parents should be worried about. But is the danger real or hyped?
Source: Discovery News - Top Stories | 31 May 2010 | 10:37 am

Why teenagers can't concentrate

UK research into teenagers' brains shows their mental processes are like those of younger children

Parents who despair over their teenagers' lack of concentration in class, inability to sit still long enough to finish homework or plan ahead, should take solace. Their children are not being lazy or careless – they are hapless victims of neurobiology.

New research has found that teenagers' brains continue developing far longer into adulthood than previously thought. Adolescents may look like young adults but their brain structure resembles that of much younger children, according to the study to be published in the Journal of Neuroscience on Wednesday.

"It is not always easy for adolescents to pay attention in class without letting their minds wander, or to ignore distractions from their younger sibling when trying to solve a maths problem," said Dr Iroise Dumontheil of University College London's Institute of Cognitive Neuroscience, one of the authors of the research. "But it's not the fault of teenagers that they can't concentrate and are easily distracted. It's to do with the structure of their brains. Adolescents simply don't have the same mental capacities as an adult."

Using MRI scans, the brain activity of adolescents were monitored as they tried to solve a problem in their heads while ignoring environmental distractions.

The scans revealed an unexpected level of activity in the prefrontal cortex, a large region at the front of the brain involved in decision-making and multitasking. This indicated that the brain was working less effectively than that of an adult.

"We knew that the prefrontal cortex of young children functioned in this chaotic way but we didn't realise it continued until the late 20s or early 30s," said Dr Sarah-Jayne Blakemore, who led the study. "What we discovered was that the part of the brain needed to complete this sort of process is still very much developing throughout adolescence. This means it continues to do a lot of needless work when making these sorts of decisions."

Chaotic thought patterns are a result, she said, of teenagers' brains containing too much grey matter – the cell bodies and connections which carry messages within the brain. As we age, the amount of grey matter in our brains decreases.

"What our research has shown is that there is simply too much going on in the brains of adolescents," said Blakemore. "The result is that their brain energy and resources are wasted and their decision-making process negatively affected."

Adults, on the other hand, have less grey matter, said Blakemore. "This means that neural transmissions travel more efficiently from the cells to the brain, so the brain works far more effectively."

Source: Science news, comment and analysis | guardian.co.uk | 31 May 2010 | 10:06 am

Anatomist Gunther von Hagens sells off dead bodies a slice at a time

Mail order business based in Germany will supply human or animal body parts

For sale: a smoker's lung, a slice of human head, a piece of hand.

A mail-order service has been set up by a controversial German anatomist offering these and many more human and animal body parts, including preserved slivers of duck and cross-sections of giraffe neck and crocodile jaw.

Gunther von Hagens, inventor of a system known as plastination in which fluids are removed from dead humans or animals and replaced with hardened silicon, allowing body parts to be preserved indefinitely, said his aim was to open access to the samples to a wider audience.

The body parts store, which has been dubbed a supermarket of horrors by opponents, has opened in the German town of Guben, near the Polish border, on the same site as the factory or "plastinarium" where Von Hagens converts dead beings into plastinated objects.

Body part prices range from around €600 (£507) for a cross-section of a fish to €1,500 for a sliver of human head or €15,000 for a section of the entire length of a human body. Smokers' lungs are available for €3,600 and a slice of human hand for as little as €185. The objects will be dispatched by post and can be sent around the world.

Von Hagens, 65, collects his specimens from body donors who sign a contract allowing him to plastinate their bodies after their deaths.

Among the most controversial tableaus of specimens he has produced are a copulating couple, a woman in the eighth month of pregnancy – complete with foetus – and aborted foetuses. An investigation was carried out several years ago into claims that Von Hagens had made use of the bodies of execution victims from China and prisoners from Russia.

Tens of millions of people around the world have visited Von Hagens's touring Body Worlds exhibition. The shop's opening was delayed for two years following severe criticism from body donors and religious groups, which have been at loggerheads with the so-called plastinator for years over his repeated claims that "corpses have no souls".

Source: Science news, comment and analysis | guardian.co.uk | 31 May 2010 | 10:02 am

Computing power

How do the world's fastest computers stack up?
Source: BBC News | Science & Environment | UK Edition | 31 May 2010 | 9:29 am

Genes Linked to Birth Defects Found

The genetic cause of an inherited condition that causes severe foetal abnormalities is found.
Source: Livescience.com | 31 May 2010 | 8:13 am

Study Suggests Why Acupuncture Might Work

Scientists don't know if or why acupuncture works. A new study show how it might relieve pain.
Source: Livescience.com | 31 May 2010 | 8:09 am

Is joining Mensa a smart move? | Kia Abdullah

I took Mensa's IQ test to fight preconceptions about big-eyed petite women, but I ended up feeling cringingly self-indulgent

Being a petite 5ft1in has its advantages: I always have plenty of leg room on long-haul flights; I can buy clothes from the cheaper teenage ranges on the high street; and I can usually extricate myself from difficult situations with a well-placed smile.

On the other hand, people often assume that I'm young, dumb, or a bit of both. First glances show long hair and big eyes, not the first-class computer science degree or the two published novels. First glances prompt people to ask if I want a child ticket at the cinema, or if I have a young persons railcard on the Gatwick Express; they don't show a 28-year-old woman who can lead or command.

Thankfully, those initial perceptions change once people talk to me, but there is usually a prevailing sense that I need to be protected more than respected. A previous manager called me "little one" on almost a daily basis while another took great pleasure in highlighting a survey which said that, on average, petite women earn £5,000 less per year than their taller counterparts. I wanted to point out that the correlation could be due to ethnicity rather than height (Chinese, Pakistani and Bangladeshi women generally being shorter than their white British counterparts), but I knew it would appear to be defensive.

The need to prove my smarts isn't due to a Napoleon complex, as one might suspect, but more to do with the superwoman complex; a hyper-feminist need to continuously prove my independence and ability.

In the latest complex-induced bout of madness, I decided to sit a Mensa supervised IQ test. If I passed, I would get a conversation-friendly way to broadcast my genius, and if I failed, then maybe I could finally get rid of the chip on my shoulder. The test came back with a score of 150 and an invitation to join the "top 2% of the population".

Instead of feeling smug, I immediately felt embarrassed. The whole exercise suddenly felt cringingly self-indulgent. Intelligence may be a more respectable pursuit than beauty but I felt as uncomfortable about joining this smart-people's club as I would joining one for beautiful people.

British Mensa says its purpose is three-fold: to provide a stimulating intellectual and social environment for its members; to identify and foster human intelligence for the benefit of humanity; and to encourage research into the nature, characteristics and uses of intelligence.

There isn't much of the latter two happening from what I can see on Mensa's News page, and in this internet age where anyone can find a group of likeminded individuals, surely the former is redundant? I wanted a way to broadcast my genius, yes, but not by membership of an organisation whose only real purpose is to allow members to broadcast their genius.

This brings me to my second issue: just how accurate are these tests as a measure of intelligence? Even the narcissist in me refuses to believe that I'm more intelligent than 98 people in a random group of 100. And if I am, why on earth aren't I a big-shot executive doing something smart rather than sitting cross-legged on my bedroom floor, merely writing about being smart?

I may have already answered my own question, but is Mensa really worth joining? Is membership respected and impressive or is it a surefire way to lose friends and alienate people?

Source: Science news, comment and analysis | guardian.co.uk | 31 May 2010 | 7:01 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

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