|
|
|
|
Crayfish brain may offer rare insight into human decision makingCrayfish make surprisingly complex, cost-benefit calculations, finds a new study, opening the door to a new line of research a new line of research that may help unravel the cellular brain activity involved in human decisions. Researchers conclude that crayfish make an excellent, practical model for identifying the specific neural circuitry and neurochemistry of decision making. Currently, there's no direct way to do this in humans or other primates.Source: ScienceDaily: Latest Science News | 16 Jun 2010 | 9:00 am Patchwork-like image of developing zebrafish sensory organUsing an electron microscope, scientists in Europe have captured a snapshot of the beginnings of an organ which plays a central role in how zebrafish perceive the world around them -- the lateral line.Source: ScienceDaily: Latest Science News | 16 Jun 2010 | 9:00 am Insomniacs have different brains, researcher saysThe brains of older adults with chronic sleep problems look different from those of adults who have enjoyed enough sleep. Yet the older adults function well despite their lack of sleep. They switch to a continuous form of mild stress, as a result of which they sometimes even perform better than contemporaries who enjoy a good night's sleep, according to a Dutch researcher.Source: ScienceDaily: Latest Science News | 16 Jun 2010 | 9:00 am Tumor target suggests personalized treatment for melanomaIKK-beta, a component of a pathway involved in melanoma development, may offer new leads for developing targeted melanoma therapies, researchers at Vanderbilt-Ingram Cancer Center report.Source: ScienceDaily: Latest Science News | 16 Jun 2010 | 9:00 am Topical treatments provide effective local pain relief, review findsGels, creams and sprays containing painkillers such as ibuprofen, diclofenac, ketoprofen and piroxicam are safe and effective treatments for local pain, according to researchers. A new systematic review they have conducted shows that topical non-steroidal anti-inflammatory drugs are more effective than placebos for treating short-term pain and have few side effects.Source: ScienceDaily: Latest Science News | 16 Jun 2010 | 9:00 am NASA Releases Kepler Data On Potential Extrasolar PlanetsNASA's Kepler Mission has released 43 days of science data on more than 156,000 stars. These stars are being monitored for subtle brightness changes as part of an ongoing search for Earth-like planets outside of our solar system.Source: ScienceDaily: Latest Science News | 16 Jun 2010 | 9:00 am IUDs reduce pregnancy rates compared to hormonal contraceptives, review findsWomen who have had intrauterine devices fitted as contraceptives are less likely to become pregnant than those who have hormone injections, a new review by researchers has found. The review, which focused on women in developing countries, also found a possible link between contraceptive method and disease progression in HIV.Source: ScienceDaily: Latest Science News | 16 Jun 2010 | 6:00 am Carnivorous mammals track fruit abundanceThe scientific community already knew that many carnivores eat fruit, but had thought this was something purely anecdotal. Now researchers have shown that carnivorous animals such as foxes and martens play an important role in helping fruiting plants to reproduce and disperse their seeds.Source: ScienceDaily: Latest Science News | 16 Jun 2010 | 6:00 am Scientists find hormone influences sensitivity to sweetnessA hormone that helps to regulate blood sugar levels may also influence a person's sensitivity to sweet-tasting foods, according to a new study. Researchers found that blocking the tongue's ability to respond to the hormone known as glucagon decreases the taste system's sensitivity to sweetness. That is, changing the actions of the hormone glucagon could control how foods taste.Source: ScienceDaily: Latest Science News | 16 Jun 2010 | 6:00 am Heart attack: Could giving oxygen be doing more harm than good?There is no evidence that the common practice of giving patients oxygen to inhale during a heart attack is beneficial, according to a new review by researchers. Until further research is carried out, the researchers say the possibility that giving oxygen may actually increase a patient's risk of dying cannot be ruled out.Source: ScienceDaily: Latest Science News | 16 Jun 2010 | 6:00 am Oil spill: Obama to 'make BP pay'President Obama vows to "make BP pay" for the Gulf oil spill, and says the US must end its fossil fuel "addiction".Source: BBC News | Science & Environment | UK Edition | 16 Jun 2010 | 4:16 am Mini-camera pictures solar sailA small free-floating carmera returns images of Japan's solar sail, Ikaros, in flight.Source: BBC News | Science & Environment | UK Edition | 16 Jun 2010 | 4:15 am Water CO2 calculator goes onlineA website that allows people to calculate how much CO2 is being emitted as a result of their water use goes online.Source: BBC News | Science & Environment | UK Edition | 16 Jun 2010 | 4:13 am Obama to demand BP pay for oil spill damage (Reuters)
Source: Yahoo! News: Science News | 16 Jun 2010 | 3:53 am Obama vows to make 'reckless' BP pay (AFP)
Source: Yahoo! News: Science News | 16 Jun 2010 | 3:53 am Gulf Coast welcomes Obama's pledge to restore land (AP)
Source: Yahoo! News: Science News | 16 Jun 2010 | 3:45 am Flash floods leave 11 dead in southern France (AFP)
Source: Yahoo! News: Science News | 16 Jun 2010 | 2:49 am How sperm whale poo helps the world's oceans absorb CO2Southern Ocean sperm whales help the oceans absorb carbon dioxide from the atmosphere - through their faeces.Source: BBC News | Science & Environment | UK Edition | 16 Jun 2010 | 2:43 am The nation's weather (AP)
Source: Yahoo! News: Science News | 16 Jun 2010 | 2:40 am Obama to meet Wednesday with BP oil executives (AP)AP - President Barack Obama is following his prime-time speech on the massive Gulf of Mexico oil spill with a sit-down meeting Wednesday morning with executives from the BP oil company.Source: Yahoo! News: Science News | 16 Jun 2010 | 2:01 am Petroleum industry objects to polar bear plan (AP)AP - Advocates for the petroleum industry in Alaska told the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service that the agency's polar bear critical habitat plan is seriously flawed.Source: Yahoo! News: Science News | 16 Jun 2010 | 12:22 am The National Geographic Archive: Antarctica's underwater algae forestsHuge mats of algal growth on the western of coast of Antarctica are being studied by marine biologists for their potential to treat cancer Source: Science news, comment and analysis | guardian.co.uk | 16 Jun 2010 | 12:00 am Why Lithium Can't Save AfghanistanThe country has been called "the Saudi Arabia of lithium," but the label is just plain wrong, for a number of reasons.Source: Discovery News - Top Stories | 15 Jun 2010 | 9:53 pm Russian, US astronauts blast off to ISS: television (AFP)
Source: Yahoo! News: Science News | 15 Jun 2010 | 9:49 pm World's Oldest Fig Wasp Discovered (LiveScience.com)LiveScience.com - The world's oldest known example of a fig wasp has been identified from the Isle of Wight. Dating back 34 million years, the fossil wasp looks almost identical to the modern species, suggesting the specialized insect has remained virtually unchanged for at least that long.Source: Yahoo! News: Science News | 15 Jun 2010 | 8:50 pm Kepler Exoplanet Controversy EruptsAs excitement builds for an upcoming announcement about the discovery of hundreds more exoplanet candidates, why is the Kepler team holding back some data from other scientists?Source: Discovery News - Top Stories | 15 Jun 2010 | 7:07 pm New science GCSE papers rejectedExam boards are told by the exams watchdog to redraft new science GCSE papers because they are not tough enough.Source: BBC News | Science & Environment | UK Edition | 15 Jun 2010 | 6:22 pm Zooming In On Newborn StarsUsing the Keck Observatory, astronomers have spotted the material falling onto a star a few hundred light years away.Source: Discovery News - Top Stories | 15 Jun 2010 | 5:33 pm Americans, Russian blast off for space stationCAPE CANAVERAL, Florida (Reuters) - Two U.S. astronauts and a Russian cosmonaut blasted off aboard a Russian Soyuz rocket from Kazakhstan on Tuesday for a two-day trip to the International Space Station.Source: Reuters: Science News | 15 Jun 2010 | 5:29 pm Can You Really Pass Out from Jet Lag?Jet lag really can wreak havoc on the body, both immediately after a person travels and, for those who experience jet lag frequently, in the long-term.Source: Livescience.com | 15 Jun 2010 | 5:10 pm Enigmatic star could emerge from its gassy cocoonA dramatic drop in Eta Carinae's stellar winds could herald a bright future.<img src="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~r/news/rss/today/~4/kKjCjwoTyzg" height="1" width="1"/>Source: NatureNews - All articles published today - nature.com science feeds | 15 Jun 2010 | 5:09 pm World's Oldest Fig Wasp DiscoveredThe world's oldest known fig wasp fossil was identified from the Isle of Wright.Source: Livescience.com | 15 Jun 2010 | 5:03 pm Unplanned Pregnancies More Common in Obese WomenObese women are less likely to use certain types of birth control and more likely to have unintended pregnancies, according to a new study on a French population.Source: Livescience.com | 15 Jun 2010 | 5:02 pm Diarrhea-Like Whale Waste Cleans the EnvironmentWhale waste is rich in iron so it stimulates the growth of phytoplankton, which then serve as carbon traps.Source: Discovery News - Top Stories | 15 Jun 2010 | 5:00 pm New Space Station Crew Blasts Off on Soyuz Spaceship (SPACE.com)SPACE.com - A Russian Soyuz spacecraft lit up the sky above Central Asia today as it soared into space to ferry two Americans and one Russian cosmonaut to the International Space Station.Source: Yahoo! News: Science News | 15 Jun 2010 | 4:45 pm Cord blood transplants a viable option in leukemiaCHICAGO (Reuters) - Adult patients with leukemia fare just as well when they get stem cell transplants taken from a cord blood bank as they do from a well-suited adult donor, U.S. researchers said on Tuesday.Source: Reuters: Science News | 15 Jun 2010 | 4:40 pm Exoplanet Hunter’s First Data Withholds the Good Stuff
The planet-hunting space telescope, Kepler, released its first big batch of data today. That should be exciting, but the team held back the good stuff until February 2011, wanting to analyze and follow up on the early observations themselves. Kepler is trying to find Earth-like planets that exist at just the right distance from their home stars to retain water in liquid form. Of the 156,000 target stars in the telescope’s field of vision, the 43 days of observations found 706 possible extrasolar planets from Earth size up to a bit bigger than Jupiter. Today, the NASA Ames Research Center crew, led by William Borucki, released data on the 306 targets they’re least excited about. Their top 400 candidates to investigate as possible Earth twins will not be announced for eight more months. “Many of the candidates are likely to be false positives and the brighter stars, and those with the small-size candidates … are among the 400 withheld targets and are thus not among those considered here, biasing the results toward the dimmer stars and larger candidates,” Borucki wrote in an article posted to arXiv.org.
The data release plan was approved earlier this year by a special NASA advisory board, but has recently touched off controversy over its fairness and wisdom. Without all the data in hand, it’s hard to answer the question that Kepler was built to answer: How common are planets like Earth? Though we now know hundreds of exoplanets, most of them are big, hot Jupiters around very bright stars that could not sustain any kind of life that we recognize. It’s easy to detect the bigger planets that orbit close to their stars because their gravity makes the star “wobble” more noticeably and their size dims its light more. So, the data we’ve collected on extrasolar planets over the last two decades is muddied by observation bias. Borucki’s mission, which he pushed for over decades before finally getting funding, is like a stellar census that may reshape our notions about the prevalence of life and the habitability of the universe. By figuring out how many Earth-like planets exist, we will have a much better idea about some key variables in the Drake equation, which attempts to describe the likelihood of finding intelligent life. The mission is complicated by the fact that it finds planets by monitoring stars that periodically dim when planets cross in front of them. For us to see that happening from our solar system, we have to be very precisely aligned with the other star and planet. And we may have to wait a very long time for a planet like Earth to orbit its star twice: Alien astronomers would have to wait two years to observe our planet transiting the sun twice. “If we were to assume that every star had an Earth-like planet in an Earth-like orbit, the likelihood we could see it is half of a percent,” said Charles Sobeck, a systems engineer at NASA Ames and the deputy project manager of the Kepler mission. “You not only have to have it lined up, the star has to be bright enough too.” Image: NASA. See Also:
WiSci 2.0: Alexis Madrigal’s Twitter, Tumblr, and forthcoming book on the history of green technology; Wired Science on Twitter and Facebook.
Source: Wired: Wired Science | 15 Jun 2010 | 4:37 pm Mr Smits goes to BrusselsEnthusiastic welcome for new European research chief.Source: NatureNews - All articles published today - nature.com science feeds | 15 Jun 2010 | 4:00 pm First Impressions of Nintendo 3DS: The 3-D Really Works!During its E3 press conference today, Nintendo officially unveiled its latest 3-D capable handheld gaming device, the Nintendo 3DS.Source: Livescience.com | 15 Jun 2010 | 3:00 pm MRI set to win reprieve from EU banDirective that limits workers' electromagnetic exposure aims for a compromise.Source: NatureNews - All articles published today - nature.com science feeds | 15 Jun 2010 | 2:50 pm Anti-Vuvuzela Software AppearsIf you've seen one minute of the World Cup matches, you know what a vuvuzela is. If you're watching without sound, the video below is a primer on what they are and why they'll eventually annoy you: Since vuvuzelas are ...Source: Discovery News - Top Stories | 15 Jun 2010 | 2:11 pm Intensive farming may ease climate changeLand saved from cultivation offsets carbon emissions.Source: NatureNews - All articles published today - nature.com science feeds | 15 Jun 2010 | 2:11 pm Why Belgians Can't Stand Other BelgiansIf Dutch speakers and francophones can't get along, what hope is there for the rest of us?Source: Discovery News - Top Stories | 15 Jun 2010 | 12:58 pm PCs Persist as Mobile Computing Devices ProliferateSmartphones and iPad-style devices may point to the future of portable computing, but analysts and researchers say that laptops and desktops don't face extinction just yet.Source: Livescience.com | 15 Jun 2010 | 12:33 pm Solar plane set for night flightA fully solar-powered plane is getting ready to head for the skies once again - this time, at night.Source: BBC News | Science & Environment | UK Edition | 15 Jun 2010 | 12:32 pm Swine Flu Lacks Killer Molecule
BOSTON — The H1N1 swine flu just doesn’t have what it takes to be a real killer, a new study of the 1918 Spanish flu suggests.
The Spanish flu virus had a killer combination of surface proteins called neuraminidase (the N in H1N1) and hemagglutinin (the H in H1N1), and another protein called PB1-F2, says Peter Palese, a virologist at Mount Sinai School of Medicine in New York City. The combination of those three proteins made the virus a million times more virulent than an average seasonal influenza virus, he and his colleagues found. While the two surface proteins are important, it’s really PB1-F2 that gave the Spanish flu its punch, Palese told scientists gathered June 14 for Genetics 2010: Model Organisms to Human Biology, a meeting of the Genetics Society of America. Now, he and his colleagues have discovered that the viral protein prevents the body from making an important antiviral compound called interferon. Without interferon to hold it back, the virus is able to replicate quickly and completely overwhelm the body’s defenses by three days after infection, Palese reported. Other vicious pandemic influenza strains, such as those of 1957 and 1968, also possessed PB1-F2. But the 2009 H1N1 swine flu virus lacks the protein. “It’s telling us that this virus is not as virulent as other pandemic influenza viruses,” Palese says.
Image: An emergency hospital in Camp Funston, Kansas, housed patients during 1918 influenza epidemic./National Museum of Health and Medicine. See Also:
Source: Wired: Wired Science | 15 Jun 2010 | 12:31 pm Likeliest Hours for Summer Rains RevealedTimes of daily peaks in rain pinpointed around U.S.Source: Livescience.com | 15 Jun 2010 | 12:11 pm Strange Hole-Punch Clouds Explained
Airplanes can punch holes in clouds and make it rain, new research shows. As propeller or jet airplanes pass through the right atmospheric conditions, they make liquid water droplets freeze and immediately drop as snow, leaving a circular fissure behind. Odd clouds can sometimes elude explanation for decades, and these mysterious gaps in the sky, aptly called hole-punch clouds or channel clouds, have been puzzling sky gazers and scientists alike since the 1940s. A 1968 article in the magazine Weatherwise called them “A Meteorological Whodunit?” As recently as October 2009, headlines touted a “Mystery UFO Halo Over Moscow.” Earlier studies had suggested a link between hole-punch clouds and airplanes, though the mechanism was unclear. Previous research also suggests that propeller planes could make snow fall when they flew through supercooled clouds, where water droplets remain liquid despite subfreezing temperatures. But until recently, a direct connection between airplanes, hole-punch clouds and snowfall was missing. Now, a team of atmospheric scientists report observing all three in the June Bulletin of the American Meteorological Society.
Andrew Heymsfield of the National Center for Atmospheric Research and colleagues flew a research plane through the snow produced by a hole-punch cloud west of Denver International Airport in 2007. The plane was loaded with instruments for studying how ice forms in clouds. Radar from the ground picked up a strange echo in their wake, indicating oddly-shaped snowflakes. “We didn’t know it, but we went right through this precipitation feature that was spotted from the ground,” Heymsfield said. Video from the flight showed a hole in a patch of altocumulus clouds (see below), and two inches of snowfall directly below the hole.
Heymsfield and colleagues examined flight records for the nearby airport and linked the hole and the snow to two commercial turboprop aircraft that had taken off about an hour before. The movement of supercooled water droplets over the planes’ propellers cooled them enough to make them freeze and plunge to Earth as snowflakes, Heymsfield said. Normally, snowflakes or raindrops need a speck of dust or another imperfection to form around. But supercooled water can freeze instantly, if it cools quickly to around minus 35 degrees Fahrenheit. To confirm this idea, the researchers compared the snowflakes that fell on either side of the hole-punch cloud to the ice crystals that fell directly beneath it. The snowflakes that fell from the hole were more plate-like and simple than those that originated in the surrounding clouds. The more-complicated snowflakes had accumulated drops of liquid water as they fell, Heymsfield said. But in the middle of the hole, all the liquid had either frozen or evaporated. “This phenomena removes the droplets, so these crystals as they fell were not collecting any droplets,” he said. “My initial impression is that it’s reasonable,” commented Patrick Chuang, a cloud expert at the University of California, Santa Cruz, who was not involved in the new work. The researchers then linked satellite images of hole-punch clouds to flight schedules to show that jet aircraft, not just propeller planes, can also punch holes and produce snow. The supercooled droplets freeze after passing over the jet planes’ wings, Heymsfield said.
“We know exactly which aircraft produced the holes,” he said. “Researchers had previously linked a lot of snow to propeller aircraft, but they hadn’t made the connection to jet aircraft.” “There are a lot more jets flying around than there are propeller aircraft, so there’s much more opportunity to generate this effect,” he added. Not all flights through banks of clouds will produce snow. About 7.8 percent of the Earth’s surface is covered with clouds at the right elevation for supercooled droplets to form. And because jet aircraft don’t generally cruise at those altitudes, they may only form hole-punch clouds when they take off or land. The extra precipitation left by airplanes punching holes in clouds is probably not enough to change global climate patterns, Heymsfield added. But “regionally, it could certainly enhance snowfall.” Image: 1) Alan Sealls, chief meteorologist, WKRG-TV. 2) Jeff Schmaltz, NASA. See Also:
Follow us on Twitter @astrolisa and @wiredscience, and on Facebook.
Source: Wired: Wired Science | 15 Jun 2010 | 12:02 pm BP’s ‘Nightmare’ Well: Internal Documents Uncover Negligence
In an e-mail written six days before the Deepwater Horizon explosion, a BP engineer called the well a “nightmare.” The e-mail was released Monday by the House Committee on Energy and Commerce, and it’s one of many company documents describing the risky, cost-cutting decisions that preceded the disaster. “This has been a nightmare well which has everyone all over the place,” wrote BP engineer Brian Morel to a colleague. Morel wanted the company to use a “liner,” or sheath around the well that would keep gas from surging up the pipes and possibly exploding. One such surge caused the Deepwater Horizon to temporarily shut down in early April, but BP opted against installing the liner, which would have cost an extra $7 million to $10 million. “BP appears to have made multiple decisions for economic reasons that increased the danger of a catastrophic well failure,” wrote committee chairs Henry Waxman (D-California) and Bart Stupak (D-Michigan) in a letter to BP CEO Tony Hayward. “In several instances, these decisions appear to violate industry guidelines and were made despite warnings from BP’s own personnel and its contractors. In effect, it appears that BP repeatedly chose risky procedures in order to reduce costs and save time.” In addition to BP’s decision not to use a liner, the committee’s letter describes four other examples of risky negligence.
Halliburton, the company responsible for cement in the well shaft, recommended using 21 “centralizers” to position the metal tube that ran down the center of the well. An off-center tube would cause cement to harden at different rates, producing gaps and channels that could weaken its structure and increase chances of failure. BP used just six centralizers. A mid-April review of the well said “it is unlikely to be a successful cement job,” but BP declined to run a “cement bond log,” a day-long evaluation of the cement’s integrity. A crew that arrived expecting to perform the evaluation was sent home. BP also failed to circulate muds that filled the well as it was drilled. That allowed mud that stayed on the bottom to absorb gas and debris, further weakening cement at the well’s base. BP then decided not to use a “lockdown sleeve,” which would have secured the top of the well, where it emerged from the seafloor. The full list of documents is located on the House committee’s website. BP’s Hayward testifies before the panel Thursday. “We ask that you come prepared,” wrote Waxman and Stupak. See Also:
Brandon Keim’s Twitter stream and reportorial outtakes; Wired Science on Twitter. Brandon is currently working on a book about ecological tipping points.
Source: Wired: Wired Science | 15 Jun 2010 | 11:42 am Data hint at 'five God particles'There may be more than one version of the elusive "God particle" - or Higgs boson - according to a new study.Source: BBC News | Science & Environment | UK Edition | 15 Jun 2010 | 11:24 am Drastic measureCould a bomb seal off the Gulf of Mexico oil leak?Source: BBC News | Science & Environment | UK Edition | 15 Jun 2010 | 11:20 am Oil Dispersants' Effects on Wildlife Remain MurkySome studies suggest that creatures at the base of the food chain in the Gulf could be devastated by the oil-dispersing chemicals.Source: Discovery News - Top Stories | 15 Jun 2010 | 10:35 am Finally! 3D Without the GlassesThose annoying 3D glasses will soon be obsolete, as you can watch 3D movies in your own living room without the glasses.Source: Discovery News - Top Stories | 15 Jun 2010 | 10:26 am Study of Dominant-Looking Men Yields Surprising ResultSomething in the faces of brown-eyed white men makes them appear more dominant than their blue-eyed peers.Source: Livescience.com | 15 Jun 2010 | 9:43 am New Giant Horned Dinosaur A Triceratops RelativeA more than 30-year-long case of mistaken identity has just been resolved.Source: Discovery News - Top Stories | 15 Jun 2010 | 9:25 am Zap of UV Light May Have Triggered LifeHow guanine, one of the four building blocks of RNA, came to exist has long been a mystery. The answer may be ultraviolet light.Source: Discovery News - Top Stories | 15 Jun 2010 | 9:02 am Seven Sci-Fi Weapons from Tomorrow Are Here TodayA number of weapons and weapons systems now on active duty or in the prototype stage seem to have been ripped straight out of the overwrought imagination of a sci-fi writer.Source: Livescience.com | 15 Jun 2010 | 8:50 am Diseased cells fail to win approvalConsent form signed by clinic's donors falls short of 'high ethical standards' set by the NIH.Source: NatureNews - All articles published today - nature.com science feeds | 15 Jun 2010 | 8:47 am FDA Cracks Down on Commercial Genetic TestingThe FDA has sent warning letters to companies selling gene test kits directly to consumers. The real reason: The tests are expensive and useless.Source: Livescience.com | 15 Jun 2010 | 8:23 am What's the Most Dangerous Move in Karate?Martial arts have formalized moves for everything from disarming an attacker to drawing a sword, but which move is the most deadly?Source: Livescience.com | 15 Jun 2010 | 7:43 am Companies pledge to make more trial data publicVoluntary agreement by drug firms calls for all large clinical trial results to be published.Source: NatureNews - All articles published today - nature.com science feeds | 15 Jun 2010 | 6:27 am Mosquito spray affects bird reproductionHouse martin numbers hit by 'environmentally friendly' insect control.Source: NatureNews - All articles published today - nature.com science feeds | 15 Jun 2010 | 6:08 am In deep water?The high-risk, high-reward hunt for offshore oilSource: BBC News | Science & Environment | UK Edition | 15 Jun 2010 | 6:07 am Invest in science and engineering to cut the deficitImran Khan: The government must throw its weight behind sectors that deliver economic growth to reduce the huge budget deficit. That means spending more – not less – on science and engineering The prime minister has said that cuts in public funding are needed to give investors confidence in the UK economy. David Cameron may have a point. But when it comes to science and engineering, the story is more complicated. Research and development (R&D) in Britain's private sector relies heavily on public support for education, research and industry. It's the highly skilled graduates and technicians in our workforce, the knowledge infrastructure of our universities and labs, and support for R&D in our tax system that make corporate investment happen. So although public sector cuts may improve investor confidence generally, the opposite is true in science and engineering. Faced with a shortage of skills and a worsening commercial environment, it's hard to see how industries could avoid looking elsewhere. Business leaders from some of Britain's biggest high-tech companies – whose total R&D spend is more than twice the government's science budget – came together yesterday to underline that point in a letter coordinated by the Campaign for Science and Engineering (CaSE). Cuts would obviously be bad news for scientists and engineers, with the prospect of a double whammy – less government support and fewer jobs in the private sector. But the consequences for the nation as a whole might be even greater. Yesterday the Office for Budget Responsibility revised the projected economic growth rate downwards. This growth is key to cutting the budget deficit, so what the government needs to do is support sectors that can deliver growth. Imagine a sector that employs more than 180,000 people and attracts foreign students to these shores; that gives you 30p a year in perpetuity for every £1 of public or charity money spent in it; that delivered a £1.7bn trade surplus in 2007, when the overall current account deficit was £37.7bn. Imagine a sector that specialises in employing highly skilled people, instead of the low-skilled jobs that the UK is increasingly uncompetitive in; and that improves the health of our society and our technological infrastructure, benefiting the entire economy. Science and engineering offer all of this, but we spend remarkably little on it. The UK invested just 1.8% of its GDP on R&D in 2007. That figure compares poorly with the last government's target of 2.5%, and is around two thirds of what countries like the US and Germany spend, and just over half of what genuinely high-tech countries such as Finland and Japan spend. Yesterday CaSE published a pre-budget briefing arguing that if your aim is to cut the budget deficit, you need to spend more on education, research and development – and certainly not less. To make the most of our scientific and engineering potential, and to use that potential to fight the deficit, the government needs to set out a clear, long-term plan for investment in this sector. Efficiency savings can be made, just as in other sectors. But the headline figure of how much we value science and engineering will be watched carefully by industry, so it is vital that any savings are reinvested in them. The UK now has an extraordinary opportunity to become a knowledge-intensive economy and fix our public finances at the same time. We must seize it. Imran Khan is the director of the Campaign for Science and Engineering guardian.co.uk © Guardian News & Media Limited 2010 | Use of this content is subject to our Terms & Conditions | More Feeds Source: Science news, comment and analysis | guardian.co.uk | 15 Jun 2010 | 6:03 am Seal whiskers sense faraway fishSeals can detect fish 100m away using their whiskers.Source: BBC News | Science & Environment | UK Edition | 15 Jun 2010 | 5:30 am There's more water on the moon than anyone thoughtWASHINGTON (Reuters) - There is far more water on the moon than just about anyone thought and it is likely widespread deep under its surface, according to a report released on Monday.Source: Reuters: Science News | 15 Jun 2010 | 5:27 am
|
