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Quiz: name that synonym! | Mind your languageJamie Fahey: Now you know your popular orange vegetables from your war-torn republics, can you work out what these phrases refer to? Source: Science news, comment and analysis | guardian.co.uk | 1 Jun 2011 | 5:55 am How DNA is copied onto RNA revealed through three-dimensional transcription filmResearch scientists have managed to sequence DNA transcription initiation "image by image" to show how DNA is copied onto RNA. Some of the mechanisms of this crucial stage have now been revealed.Source: ScienceDaily: Latest Science News | 19 Jun 2010 | 3:00 pm Children with home computers likely to have lower test scores, study findsAround the country and throughout the world, politicians and education activists have sought to eliminate the "digital divide" by guaranteeing universal access to home computers, and in some cases to high-speed Internet service. However, according to a new study, these efforts would actually widen the achievement gap in math and reading scores.Source: ScienceDaily: Latest Science News | 19 Jun 2010 | 3:00 pm Coffee or tea: Enjoy both in moderation for heart benefits, Dutch study suggestsBoth high and moderate amounts of tea are linked with reduced heart disease deaths. Moderate amounts of coffee are linked with reduced heart disease risk. Neither coffee nor tea consumption was associated with stroke risk in this Dutch study.Source: ScienceDaily: Latest Science News | 19 Jun 2010 | 3:00 pm Ocean changes may have dire impact on peopleThe heart and lungs of the planet, the world's oceans, shows worrying signs of ill health, concludes the first comprehensive synthesis of recent research into the effects of climate change on oceans.Source: ScienceDaily: Latest Science News | 19 Jun 2010 | 3:00 pm Circadian clock in pancreas directly linked to diabetesThe pancreas has its own molecular clock. Now, for the first time, a new study has shown this ancient circadian clock regulates the production of insulin. If the clock is faulty, the result is diabetes. The researchers show that insulin-secreting islet cells in the pancreas, called beta-cells, have their own dedicated clock. The clock governs the rhythmic behavior of proteins and genes involved in insulin secretion, with oscillations over a 24-hour cycle.Source: ScienceDaily: Latest Science News | 19 Jun 2010 | 3:00 pm Vitamin D deficiency confirmed as common across a range of rheumatic conditionsTwo separate studies have shown that vitamin D deficiency is common in patients with a range of rheumatic diseases, with over half of all patients having below the "normal" healthy levels of vitamin D (48-145 nmol/L) in their bodies. A further study assessing response to vitamin D supplementation found that taking the recommended daily dose did not normalize vitamin D levels in rheumatic disease patients.Source: ScienceDaily: Latest Science News | 19 Jun 2010 | 3:00 pm Awake sedation for brain surgery may shorten hospital stayThe recovery time and cost of brain-tumor surgery might be reduced if surgery is performed while patients are awake during part of the procedure, according to a new study. Researchers examined the records of 39 patients treated for glioma to learn if surgeries using conscious sedation had outcomes different from those using general anesthesia. The data suggest that conscious sedation can result in shorter hospital stays and lower the direct cost of treatment.Source: ScienceDaily: Latest Science News | 19 Jun 2010 | 6:00 am Fly cells flock together, follow the lightScientists report using a laser beam to activate a protein that makes a cluster of fruit fly cells act like a school of fish turning in social unison, following the lead of the one stimulated with light.Source: ScienceDaily: Latest Science News | 19 Jun 2010 | 6:00 am Rheumatoid arthritis patients face double the risk of suffering heart attack, study findsRheumatoid arthritis patients face a two-fold increased risk of suffering a myocardial infarction (MI, heart attack) versus the general population, which is comparable to the increased risk of MI seen in diabetes patients, according to results of a new study.Source: ScienceDaily: Latest Science News | 19 Jun 2010 | 6:00 am Intelligent 3-D simulation robots to compete in the Robocup 2010Researchers have developed a multiagent system and motion capture techniques for graphical animation of soccer playing robots.Source: ScienceDaily: Latest Science News | 19 Jun 2010 | 6:00 am More than a million evacuated in China over flood threat (AFP)
Source: Yahoo! News: Science News | 19 Jun 2010 | 4:10 am The nation's weather (AP)
Source: Yahoo! News: Science News | 19 Jun 2010 | 3:11 am Battered BP boss hands over oil spill duties (AFP)
Source: Yahoo! News: Science News | 19 Jun 2010 | 2:49 am I love her but the sex has diedCarole Jahme shines the cold light of evolutionary psychology on readers' problems. This week: Love, sex and masturbation From an anonymous male, aged 40+ Inevitably, however, my sexual attraction for my partner wanes to the point where we become virtually non-sexual. This can happen in less that a year after the relationship started. This condition consistently contributes to the relationship falling apart. My emotional feeling of love stays constant, and the breakup is traumatic for both of us. Add to the mix my undeniable enjoyment of and never-failing satisfaction with masturbation, and it seems to be a recipe for disaster. Is there an evolutionary take on any of this? Carole replies: Studies on the length of relationships have shown that couples in harmonious, stable and trusting long-term relationships have higher blood levels of oxytocin (a chemical that regulates attachment, promotes cooperation and facilitates sensations of joy and love) than people who are not in compatible relationships.1 These happy couples also reap other benefits in terms of longer lifespan, lower rates of alcoholism, depression and illness, and more rapid recovery after accidental injury.2,3,4 But there are conflicting chemicals at work in sexual relationships that sometimes prevent them from ever becoming long-term. Dopamine is a neurotransmitter in the limbic system – the brain's primitive reward centre. It mediates both the sex drive and addiction to drugs. Brain scans have shown that the rapid rise in dopamine levels during orgasm is similar to that seen in a heroin high.5 But dopamine falls rapidly following orgasm in both males and females and is replaced with rising levels of a hormone called prolactin. Both are part of the brain's "dopaminergic" reward system. At first, rising prolactin causes sleepy post-orgasm contentment. (Interestingly the amount of prolactin produced is far greater after sex with a partner than after masturbation. Thus there is little prolactin relief for those who masturbate.) But once this sleepy feeling of satiation has passed, prolactin may go on rising and cause problems for couples wanting to sustain a long-term sexual relationship. In both men and women excess levels of prolactin can cause loss of libido, anxiety, headaches, mood swings and depression.6 High prolactin is associated with sensations of despair. When the prolactin levels of newly caged wild monkeys were monitored, the hormone was seen to rise once the animals realised they were trapped.7 Levels of the hormone were much higher in monkeys incarcerated for months compared with wild animals that had only just been caged. Science has yet to determine how long prolactin continues to rise and remain high in humans after orgasm, so this is speculative, but in a relationship with lots of sex it could mean levels are elevated for weeks or even months. How does all this tie in with your predilection for maturbation? There have been some illuminating studies of this behaviour in non-human primates. It has been found, for example, that male monkeys who masturbate tend to be of low status, whereas high-status male monkeys are likely only to experience ejaculation during sex.8 It also seems that the frequency of masturbation is higher in captive primates than in wild animals. You can make of this what you will. The dopaminergic system varies among humans, some people exhibiting more reward-seeking behaviour than others, and this may go some way towards explaining why many relationships are burnt out after a year.9 In reproductive terms, 12 months is long enough for fertilisation to take place. It is also certainly long enough for prolactin levels to rise. Once your libido flags and anxiety sets in, the short-term reward gained from masturbating may give you a dopamine "high" without risking bringing on that post-orgasmic prolactin "low". Chemical compatibility is essential to all good relationships. Couples lucky enough to enjoy long-term partnerships may have similar sex drives (perhaps not too much sex, or even none at all?) and dopaminergic systems that don't flood their bodies with too much prolactin. Human behaviour seems to be under the control of two evolutionary programs: one that results in fertilisation, disillusionment and a series of partners, and the other that enables humans to develop the lasting relationships that lead to long, happy and healthy lives. References Terms and conditions We regret that Carole cannot answer all the mails we receive. We cannot provide urgent advice and suggest that if you need such advice you seek it immediately without waiting for a response from Carole. With regards to legal, medical or financial issues, we recommend seeking the advice of a listed professional. We will not be held liable for any loss, damage or injury you incur as a result of using this site or as a result of any advice given. We will not enter into personal correspondence via email. Carole is UK-based and as such any advice she gives is intended for a UK audience only. guardian.co.uk © Guardian News & Media Limited 2010 | Use of this content is subject to our Terms & Conditions | More Feeds Source: Science news, comment and analysis | guardian.co.uk | 19 Jun 2010 | 2:30 am Questions about who's in charge of BP oil response (AP)
Source: Yahoo! News: Science News | 19 Jun 2010 | 2:00 am Plans for Europe's largest biomedical research facilityThe UK Centre for Medical Research and Innovation aims to break down the traditional barriers between research teams as it investigates stem cells and conditions such as Alzheimer's, schizophrenia and autism Plans for Europe's largest biomedical research facility, which will study everything from stem cells to influenza when it opens in 2015, were announced yesterday by Nobel laureate Sir Paul Nurse. The UK Centre for Medical Research and Innovation (UKCMRI) is being funded to the tune of £600m by a range of government and charitable organisations including the Medical Research Council (MRC), Cancer Research UK, the Wellcome Trust and University College London. Around 1,250 scientists will work at the new complex on a 1.4 hectare (3.5 acre) site behind the iconic St Pancras railway station in central London. Biologists, clinical scientists, chemists, physicists, mathematicians and computer scientists will work alongside each other at the new facility. "UKCMRI aims to break down the traditional barriers between different research teams and different disciplines," said Nurse, who chairs the scientific planning committee for the new lab. "UKCMRI will provide the critical mass, support and unique environment to tackle difficult research questions." Initially, research at UKCMRI will consist of the combined efforts of two other institutes, the MRC National Institute for Medical Research (NIMR) and Cancer Research UK's London Research Institute. They will work with UCL scientists in physical and biological sciences. Focuses of research will include basic biological work such as stem cells and how organs work together. Scientists will also study the nervous system in a bid to understand conditions such as Alzheimer's and motor neurone disease and behavioural disorders such as schizoprenia and autism. In addition, the UKCMRI will be responsible for the scientific response to emerging infleunza pandemics, carrying out rapid genetic sequencing of viruses and helping to develop vaccines – tasks that were carried out by the NIMR during the swine flu pandemic last year. "Our single vision shows our joint commitment to beating the diseases that affect the lives of so many people in the UK each year," said Harpal Kumar, chief executive of Cancer Research UK. "By working together, UKCMRI scientists will produce cutting-edge research and help the UK keep its place as a world leader in scientific innovation. "Crucially, these advances will be translated into better treatments for diseases, including cancer. This collaboration will ultimately bring huge benefits for cancer patients in the future, who will be diagnosed, treated and cured using breakthroughs that will be made at UKCMRI." Construction at the St Pancras site will start next year and the institute will be up and running in 2015. 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 | 19 Jun 2010 | 2:00 am Video: Inside Europe's largest biomedical research institute, the UKCMRIArtist's impressions of the planned UK Centre for Medical Research and Innovation (UKCMRI) behind St Pancras in London Source: Science news, comment and analysis | guardian.co.uk | 19 Jun 2010 | 1:55 am Partner puts blame on BP as spill costs grow (Reuters)
Source: Yahoo! News: Science News | 19 Jun 2010 | 1:36 am Predictions are fine, but there are better ways to protect a populationLast year's earthquake in Abruzzo in Italy shows it is impossible to predict certain tragedies – but that hasn't stopped the seismologists being blamed On 6 April 2009, an earthquake registering 6.3 on the moment magnitude scale hit the town of L'Aquila in Abruzzo, Italy. This was a tragedy, and hundreds of people died. It would be great if we could have firm predictions about every risk whose rare but tragic outcome cannot be accurately predicted, whether it is a flu outbreak, a murder, an illness, or an earthquake. Most of us recognise that this is impossible. But some find it harder to accept. The L'Aquila prosecutor's office has now leapt into action. It has a Commissione Grandi Rischi after all – a "Commission on Big Risks" – and it's full of seismologists. If these people can't predict an earthquake, then what's the point of them? And so these seismologists are now being indicted and investigated for manslaughter, on account of their failure to warn the population that an earthquake was coming. You can join various fellows of various royal societies in protesting about this case at qurl.com/quake. Clearly the Italian government would rather be informed by scientists who are happier to throw caution to the wind and make claims in excess of the evidence. Oddly enough, though, that did actually happen, in the week before the earthquake. Gioacchino Giuliani is a laboratory technician who became convinced that he was able to predict earthquakes by measuring the emission of radon from the ground. He ignored the doubts of seismologists – he has never published his theories or evidence in an academic journal – and invested in several measuring devices to let him make his predictions. Shortly before the earthquake struck, Giuliani became convinced something serious was coming. He began desperately trying to warn the public, even posting a video on YouTube explaining his theory, and warning people to evacuate their houses urgently. Vans loaded with loudspeakers were driven around the town to spread the warning. Giuliani tried in vain to persuade the mayor that he was right. But they did not heed this warning: instead, the local government reported him to the police for spreading unnecessary panic and alarm, forced him to remove his warnings from the internet, and forbade him from telling anyone anything about the coming earthquake. In reality, of course, Giuliani made a lucky guess (and he was out by 55km). Nothing has changed, and there is still no reliable or validated way to predict an earthquake. Because of this, seismologists around the world are united in explaining that the best way to protect your population is not through an impossible early warning system, but rather by investing in preparedness, to mitigate against the damage done by one rare, unpredictable, horrific outcome. So you use seismic hazard maps to reliably work out where the risk is greatest, rather than when. You change the specifications in your building code so homes are less likely to collapse and crush people to death. You insist on retrospective modifications to existing structures. You make sure your population is educated in what to do when the worst happens, and you prepare your emergency services with enduring supplies of the appropriate equipment. If, in a political emergency, you find you have failed to do all this to universal satisfaction: then you can charge some scientists with manslaughter. But ideally this should be a last resort. 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 | 19 Jun 2010 | 1:00 am Dalai Lama criticises anti-whaling protesters (AFP)
Source: Yahoo! News: Science News | 18 Jun 2010 | 11:23 pm London's 'somewhat unusual' new research centreBritain plans £600-million biomedical facility for young investigators.<img src="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~r/news/rss/today/~4/Fb4lLCFdLZg" height="1" width="1"/>Source: NatureNews - All articles published today - nature.com science feeds | 18 Jun 2010 | 9:01 pm BP actions before blowout were "reckless": Anadarko (Reuters)Reuters - Anadarko Petroleum Corp, part owner of the well gushing oil into the Gulf of Mexico, joined in the torrent of criticism of BP Plc as it seeks to escape the huge financial liability.Source: Yahoo! News: Science News | 18 Jun 2010 | 7:59 pm Esa chief Dordain stays in postThe European Space Agency's Director General, Jean-Jacques Dordain, will continue in his post for a third term.Source: BBC News | Science & Environment | UK Edition | 18 Jun 2010 | 5:20 pm Letters: Art from the sublime to the ridiculedA lot is being made of the 400-years-since-he-died stuff on Caravaggio's bones (Report, 17 June). Artist on the run from a murder etc. As though Rome wasn't a violent city in 1600. I suppose you could walk anywhere late at night etc. The critics say he invented chiaroscuro, or dramatic shading never seen before. A lot is known about Caravaggio's studios, more than most of his contemporaries. They describe the dark walls and a hole in the ceiling (known because he was sued). A few people have made serious suggestions that optical projections were used, and as there are no known drawings, and no record he ever made one, the evidence is very strong indeed. No conventional historian has bothered to ask how these paintings were made. They think it is of little interest. It is of major interest to us now. The similarity to today's Photoshop techniques is fascinating. This seems to me to make him a more interesting artist, not less. It accounts for the new kind of space he opened (like TV close-ups), it accounts for the dark walls and the hole in the ceiling. His bones are neither here nor there because of this – a minor event compared with the implications for our time of his new techniques. Sometimes I'm not sure what "art history" really is. It ignores picture-making techniques, has never known how to deal with photography, and cannot connect the past with today very well. Look at it a little differently and there is a much bigger and more important story for us today than a bag of old bones. David Hockney London • I agree with Mark Brown (Report, 9 June) that the figure wearing a lion's head in the restored Tintoretto must represent Hercules. But Hercules frequently symbolises Fortitude (see, for example, the campanile of the Duomo in Florence) and fortitude is closely associated with magnanimity, so closely according to Aquinas that magnanimity is simply one of its subordinate parts. Seneca describes magnanimity as the most resplendent of the virtues, to which Latini adds that one leading characteristic of the magnanimous is that they are careless about small expenses. Lorenzetti, in his fresco cycle in the Palazzo Pubblico in Siena, offers a celebrated illustration of these ideas, showing the figure of Magnanimity crowned, with shining garments, ready to dispense gold coins. I wonder if this may tell us something about Tintoretto's crowned and shining figure to the right of Hercules, who is allowing gold coins to spill from the goblet at his feet? Quentin Skinner Department of history, Queen Mary, University of London • Lucy Worsley is spot-on (Comment, 18 June). Just what we need – less intellectualism in history and more sexing up of flaky evidence (cue arched eyebrow and hanging question mark). I was particularly impressed by her hard-science pig-squashing experiment to prove that Henry VIII was a complete proverbial because of a bad joust day. I intend to drop my heaviest tome on my cat this afternoon in an attempt to confirm her findings. While wearing roller-skates. Jim McDermott Woodford Halse, Northamptonshire • I have enjoyed the political caricatures created by Steve Bell and Martin Rowson for more years than I care to recall. Their cameo appearance on BBC4's excellent Rude Britannia (Last night's TV, G2, 17 June), where they discussed the history of 18th- and 19th-century English cartoon/satire, was fascinating. Why is there so little biting satire directed at the royal family today, unlike those times? Dr Paul Clements Goldsmiths College • The statue of Eadgyth (Remains confirmed as those of a Saxon princess, 17 June) is surely one of the earliest examples of Rude Britannia. She is shown lightly caressing her bosom with her right hand while her left is daintily pulling up her skirt to reveal her right leg. N Bailey Saffron Walden, Essex • Did anyone else notice the similarity between the photograph of the BP oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico (G2, 15 June) and some of Monet's "water lily" paintings? Oil or watercolour? Or both? Greg Hetherton Hove, East Sussex 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 | 18 Jun 2010 | 5:06 pm Lisa Jardine on Close Examination at the National GalleryNothing is more exciting to a biographer than the 'discovery' of a 'missing' portrait of their subject. But all too often, in their eagerness for new material, even scholars can be duped. Fortunately, scientific methods are making it easier to spot the fakes, as the National Gallery's new exhibition proves I remember as an undergraduate being impressed by the iconoclastic critic John Berger's argument that a fake old master ought to fetch as much on the open market as the real thing, since even the experts could not tell the difference between them. According to this way of looking at things, the art market ought not to care about authenticity as long as its profits remain high, and collectors are happy to hang forgeries on their living-room walls. The point is not just that the forgery passes for authentic, however. Adding spurious evidence to the store of available data on an artist also skews our understanding of their life and work, misleading us into taking as "fact" something merely conjured cunningly up by the vivid imagination of the forger. What makes this all the more historically damaging is that counterfeiters tend to feed off the public's hunger to know about particularly high-profile figures with gaps in their biographies. The more celebrated the individual, the more eagerly the public seizes on documentary evidence that purports to belong to them. Of no British public figure is this more true than William Shakespeare. In December 1794 a young man named William-Henry Ireland presented his antiquarian collector father with a manuscript he claimed to have discovered in a trunk in a country house belonging to a "gentleman of large fortune". The manuscript document was a mortgage deed for the Globe Theatre at Bankside, signed and sealed by Shakespeare himself. Since Shakespeare's death in 1616 almost nothing beyond his infamous will (leaving his wife his second best bed) had surfaced in the way of reliable documentary evidence concerning Britain's best-loved playwright. Ireland senior, who had spent his life searching for Shakespearian memorabilia, was entirely convinced that the deed his son had found was the real thing. Now Ireland junior produced a number of other official documents and literary fragments in quick succession which further fleshed out Shakespeare's hitherto shadowy life. There were letters exchanged between Shakespeare and the Earl of Southampton, and a note from Elizabeth I to Shakespeare signed in her unmistakeable hand, thanking him for the "pretty verses" he had sent her. Eventually Ireland even produced a transcript of the entire text of a lost play, laced with poetic echoes of Hamlet and King Lear. The news of young Ireland's discoveries caused a sensation. Samuel Johnson's biographer James Boswell examined the documents and pronounced them glorious and certainly authentic. So did numerous other literary luminaries. Entire chapters were added to Shakespeare's life story based on the counterfeit documents. Ireland finally overreached himself and was unmasked as a fraudster when the so-called lost play (which he had written himself) went into production and was booed off the London stage at its first performance. Today it is obvious to anyone with even a little knowledge of early manuscripts that every one of the documents Ireland produced was a clumsy forgery. They neither look nor read like genuine items from the period. Ireland had used old endpapers from second-hand books, written on them in plausibly faded ink, and attached seals filched from the law office in which he worked. Careful examination ought easily to have exposed these obvious counterfeiting devices. But for a time the literary world was convinced, because critics and the general public so badly wanted the purported finds to be genuine. Archives and documentary evidence on their own can get one only so far in deciding securely on the attribution of a painting or the identity of a sitter. In recent years, fortunately, the increasing use of a range of new scientific methods to examine paintings and documents has given a whole extra dimension both to uncovering fakes and mistakes and to turning up exciting discoveries in gallery vaults and museum archives. The exhibition Close Examination: Fakes, Mistakes and Discoveries, which opens shortly at the National Gallery in London, brings together a number of works of art whose very identity has been altered using these new scientific methods. The late 15th-century painting by an unknown northern European artist, Portrait of Alexander Mornauer, for example, was for centuries described as a work by Hans Holbein, court painter to Henry VIII. When the National Gallery acquired the painting in 1990 and subjected it to scientific analysis, it was discovered that a layer of cobalt blue paint – typical of surviving Holbein portraits – had been applied over the original brown of the background. Further examination showed that the style of the sitter's headgear had been carefully modified from a cylindrical fez-like hat to a neat cap, again more like the hat that might be worn by the sitter in a genuine Holbein. It appears in this case that the original work had been altered for an 18th-century buyer at a time when the work of Holbein was in great demand. If enough is at stake, however, even overwhelming scientific evidence will not persuade those determined to hold on to cherished beliefs about the authenticity or otherwise of cherished images. Once again, Shakespeare provides us with a striking example of such tenacity. In 2006, after three and a half years of intensive research, using all the latest scientific methods, on six portraits that were all supposed to be genuine likenesses of Shakespeare, Dr Tarnya Cooper of the National Portrait Gallery announced the experts' findings. All but one of the portraits had been conclusively shown to be inauthentic. Only the so-called Chandos portrait showed Shakespeare's true features. Even then, Cooper stressed that the attribution remained tentative: "It would be lovely to be categorical. It is certainly fairly likely we are looking at the face of Shakespeare, but we'd need a document or a signature to prove it beyond all doubt." Of the other five portraits, scrupulous analysis revealed that two were fakes. Analysis of paint samples from the Flower portrait, owned by the Royal Shakespeare Company, revealed the presence of a yellow pigment which did not come on to the market until the early 19th century. In the case of the Janssen portrait, conservation work carried out on the painting found that the sitter's hairline had been modified to make him look more "Shakespearian" and a fake inscription had been added. This has not, however, put an end to hopeful claims to have finally unearthed Shakespeare's "true" likeness, based on fairly dubious circumstantial evidence. Only last year, another contender was produced, this time a painting in the family collection of art restorer Alec Cobbe. This portrait allegedly closely resembled the engraving on the frontispiece of the first folio of Shakespeare's plays, long accepted as having been taken from a contemporary painting. The distinguished Shakespeare scholar Stanley Wells was convinced: "My excitement has grown with the amount of evidence about the provenance of the painting. I am willing to go 90% that this is the only lifetime portrait of Shakespeare." As someone who had spent an entire career in the hope of a discovery of this dramatic kind, he had let his excitement get the better of him. Cooper was more levelheaded. The National Portrait Gallery technical expert brusquely dismissed the painting as "more likely to represent the courtier Sir Thomas Overbury". Fraudsters prey upon our hopeful expectations. The honest mistakes scholars make, too, are most likely to happen where the misidentification gives them and the public at large a long-lost and much sought-after item from the oeuvre of an important individual, to whom an expert has devoted long years of patient study. I have myself had firsthand experience of "discovering" a painting that was known once to have existed, but had been "missing" for generations. And I have also had my hopes eventually dashed, when someone conclusively demonstrated that my convincing find was in fact a mistake. In 2002 I was completing a biography of the scientist, polymath and close friend of Sir Christopher Wren, Robert Hooke. Notoriously, no portrait of Hooke survives – supposedly because Sir Isaac Newton, who was president of the Royal Society when Hooke died in 1703, disliked him so heartily that he had the two existing portraits, which contemporary witnesses tell us hung in their premises, destroyed. My hunch had always been that the portraits would have been put away somewhere and "lost" rather than destroyed. So when I came upon a little-known late-17th-century portrait in the Natural History Museum, which matched descriptions I had of what Hooke looked like in middle age, it instantly caught my attention. The portrait bore the inscription "John Ray", but was clearly not of this botanist contemporary of Hooke's, since numerous other images of Ray survive and this portrait in no way resembled any of them. The records attributed the portrait to Mary Beale, whom documentary evidence shows to have executed a lost portrait of Hooke's colleague and friend Robert Boyle. My pulse began to race. I studied the painting closely, first in reproduction and then physically, with the enthusiastic help of an art-historian friend and the expert advice of the archivist at the Natural History Museum. The museum records showed that the painting was received as a bequest from Sir William Watson, a celebrated 18th-century experimentalist at the Royal Society, whose discoveries in the field of electricity were made at the same time as those of Benjamin Franklin. He left the painting to the trustees of the British Museum in 1787: "I give and bequeath my Picture of the late learned and ingenious Dr John Ray painted by Mrs Beale a Scholar of Sir Peter Lely to the trustees of the British Museum to be placed if the Trustees think proper in the Room of the said Museum wherein Ray's Bust is already placed." The Mercers' Company provided a grant for the portrait to be cleaned, which revealed that the "John Ray" inscription was indeed a later addition; several entries in Hooke's diary convinced me that he was in the right place at the right time and likely to have been the sitter. I even believed I could now detect the slightest trace of a bent back – contemporary descriptions refer to Hooke's curvature of the spine. The newly cleaned painting was displayed as part of an anniversary exhibition on Hooke at Oxford's Museum of the History of Science, and a visitor poll showed that two-thirds of those who responded judged the portrait to be of Hooke. For close to a year I bombarded everyone I could think of with photos of the painting for confirmation or otherwise of my "find". As far as I know, they were all persuaded. One Hooke expert even pointed out to me the family resemblance between my portrait and a photograph of a known descendent. Other scholars noted additional tell-tale traces which they believed supported my identification. I used the painting as the cover image for my biography of Hooke, though I cautioned in my introduction that there was always the possibility that somebody might be able to show that I had been mistaken. Two years later somebody did just that. An American historian of science identified the man in the painting as Jan Baptist van Helmont, a 17th-century Flemish alchemist, on the basis of the resemblance to an engraving of Van Helmont on the title page of his posthumous works. Since there is no surviving portrait of Van Helmont, this was a pretty exciting identification, too. Further investigation suggested that my "Hooke" portrait might have been one of a series of paintings of distinguished scientists, by an unknown artist, commissioned for the invalid intellectual Lady Conway by Van Helmont's son, Francis Mercury van Helmont. The younger Van Helmont had been her scientific mentor and personal physician in the 1670s, and lived with her on her Warwickshire estate. I publicly conceded that I had let my own enthusiasm get the better of me and been misled. However, it is embarrassing for me to have to report that a quick trawl on Google Images reveals that the portrait I discovered – now convincingly reidentified as Van Helmont – continues to be widely used on any number of websites as a portrait of Robert Hooke, to the considerable annoyance of scholars who know that my identification was mistaken. I fear that some of them consider that, however genuine my mistake was, I am now at fault for failing to stop my wrongly identified portrait from continuing to circulate. The discovery of an unknown piece of data or material about a prominent figure, be they author, artist or sitter, makes it possible to enlarge our understanding of them. With the help of modern technical research methods, new items are likely to be added to the rich remains of the past. At the same time, these resources will also eliminate as spurious some items long thought to be genuine. Among these, some will be genuinely mistaken attributions or identifications, others will be downright forgeries. In the end, those of us who look to the past for knowledge helpful to our understanding of the way things are today will go on taking the risk of the outside chance of finding something exciting and new. I am still on the lookout for that lost portrait of Hooke, just as Stanley Wells will keep looking for something more lively than the Chandos portrait to identify as the likeness of Shakespeare. As for the forgers, they will always be able to find those willing, at least for a while, to be duped. Close Examination: Fakes, Mistakes and Discoveries is at the National Gallery, London WC2, from 30 June-12 September. nationalgallery.org.uk 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 | 18 Jun 2010 | 5:06 pm Massive: The Hunt for the God Particle by Ian SampleGraham Farmelo approaches the cutting edge of particle physics Never has so much been expected of a scientific machine. The Large Hadron Collider, 30 years in the planning, promises to shed new light on nature's fundamental laws and particles, thus justifying its multi-billion-dollar price tag to the governments that have footed the bill. "If the Collider doesn't deliver some really sexy discoveries," one of the world's most illustrious experimenters recently whispered to me, "particle physicists will be fucked." He may be right. Particle physicists sometimes find their subject difficult to sell to politicians because the huge particle accelerators needed for fundamental research are extremely expensive compared with other scientific apparatus, and don't deliver immediate economic benefits. Physicists can never know in advance what they will find, and so have to guess, using theories they hope will not be found wanting. In making bids for government funding, scientists have to appeal to politicians' sense of curiosity and their sense of intellectual adventure. If all else fails, they can point to past successes of curiosity-driven research, such as quantum mechanics, which provides the theoretical underpinning of microelectronics. One of the aims of the LHC is to discover and study the particle named after the theoretical physicist Peter Higgs of the University of Edinburgh. Almost 50 years ago he studied a deceptively simple question: why do most of the most basic particles in nature have mass? Why aren't they all like particles of light, with no mass at all? Higgs and others speculated that most fundamental particles acquire part of their mass by interacting with a hitherto undetected field, as invisible as gravity and stretching across the entire universe. This mysterious field should manifest itself through the existence of a particle, but it has yet to be observed. Theoreticians predict it should be very heavy (by subatomic standards) and have only the briefest of lives: after each one is born, death should follow almost immediately, about a hundred trillionths of a trillionth of a second later when it decays into less interesting progeny. Higgs himself has proved almost as elusive as his eponymous particle. Until now. Ian Sample, a science writer on this newspaper, persevered long enough to secure an interview with him, and the results are among the highlights of Massive, a lively account of the genesis of both the LHC and its most famous particulate quarry. Higgs turns out to be an excellent interviewee. He gives a vivid account of the idea's inception. As with all really new ideas, it was firmly resisted by orthodoxy's ever-present army of defenders. Higgs says he was "gripped by a surge of panic" when driving to Princeton in the spring of 1966 to present his theory to the Institute for Advanced Study. Higgs had good reason to be afraid. At Harvard, the tough-talking theoretician Sidney Coleman was planning to have some fun, later confessing that he told his students: "You're going to tear him to shreds!" By the late 1970s, the Higgs theory was in the textbooks, even though it had not been directly supported by experiment. Higgs, a humble and likeable man, was something of a living legend among his colleagues; though, as he admits here, he was struggling to produce new ideas and to keep up with the next generation. No matter, he had done what eludes the great majority of scientists: conceived a really new idea and changed the way physicists think about the universe. Sample has interviewed quite a few other leading scientists, too, and proves adept at prising insights from them. The book's focus sometimes wanders, but we are kept hooked by its fine reportage, which makes clear the sheer achievement of the scientists and engineers who have built the LHC, the most complex machine ever made in the service of pure science. We learn, too, of the many theoretical concepts that will be probed by it. Quite apart from the Higgs particle, there are high hopes that the collider will demonstrate the existence of a special kind of symmetry, known as supersymmetry, in nature's fabric; this notion, too, has been around for years, but has yet to be confirmed or refuted experimentally. It is also just possible that the machine will give us first evidence for higher dimensions – something that has, until recently, been dismissed as impossible to prove. Most exciting of all would be the revelation of something entirely unforeseen. In the meantime, the public's imagination has been caught by the quest for the Higgs. As Sample explains, some theoreticians have already got cold feet and doubted whether the particle exists, but the majority think that the collider will reveal it, possibly in more than one variety. The leading theoretician Nima Arkani-Hamed at the Institute for Advanced Study is so confident of this that he has bet a year's salary on the outcome. If he is right, then Peter Higgs can expect to receive a prompt and well-deserved invitation to Stockholm. But what if the collider finds no Higgs particles? That would set the theoreticians a wonderfully exciting puzzle – but give the leaders of the physics community a lot of explaining to do. Either way, as Sample says, the story will be massive. Graham Farmelo is author of The Strangest Man (Faber), winner of the Costa prize for biography and the Los Angeles Times science book prize. 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 | 18 Jun 2010 | 5:06 pm The Rational Optimist: How Prosperity Evolves by Matt Ridley | Book reviewSteve Jones takes issue with the argument that self-interest and private enterprise are in our DNA "In the second century of the Christian Era, the empire of Rome comprehended the fairest part of the earth, and the most civilised portion of mankind. The frontiers of that extensive monarchy were guarded by ancient renown and disciplined valour. The gentle but powerful influence of laws and manners had gradually cemented the union of the provinces. Their peaceful inhabitants enjoyed and abused the advantages of wealth and luxury." Thus the first paragraph of The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire and thus, more or less, the entire contents of Matt Ridley's latest book. Gibbon went on, in half a dozen thick, square volumes, to chart the collapse of that earthly paradise and its replacement by barbarism. Ridley is more hopeful. The Rational Optimist is an anthem, sung by a celestial choir to the tune of the Hallelujah Chorus, of undiluted praise for the free market in cash and ideas, from the stone age to the present day, and on into a sunlit and biologically inevitable future. Its rationale comes from Self-Help, a work published in 1859. As Samuel Smiles put it in his Victorian bestseller: "The spirit of self-help is the root of all genuine growth in the individual", and Matt Ridley (once chairman of Northern Rock, albeit "under the terms of my employment there . . . not at liberty to write about it") agrees. Another volume, published on the same day as Self-Help, gives Rational Optimist a theme. The word "evolution" does not appear in The Origin of Species, but plays a large part here. In its Latin form, the term was applied to the unrolling of a scroll. Ridley examines the scroll of history and finds that all is for the best in the best of all possible worlds. In spite of the earthquakes, literal and metaphoric, that now and again perturb humankind's placid course, there is inevitability in his view of life, for the laws of nature, inscribed in our bodies and brains, have made us, and our economies, what they are. The book is – like Ridley's earlier works – beautifully written and extensively researched. It is decorated with well-chosen facts and anecdotes which will, no doubt, be pillaged by future authors, and outlines a theory of history from which historians will, no doubt, learn a great deal. Biologists may be more cautious. This Candide-like account of our past turns on the belief that what is natural must be right and what is right, natural. Free exchange, self-interest and private enterprise made us what we are, and must be coded in the recesses of our DNA. Ridley uses the origin of sex, and the spread of genes, among individuals that it promotes as an analogue of the market and of the movement of capital and of inventions. In fact, the beginnings and the rationale of sexual reproduction remain biology's biggest unsolved questions (although – like capitalism – the process is expensive, for it involves a whole class of parasites, males rather than market-manipulators, who depend on a productive or reproductive mass of workers or females to do the actual labour). Like his predecessor, the Rev William Paley, Ridley summons up an artefact – in fact two – to make his case: not a watch upon a heath but a stone axe and a computer mouse. He makes a telling case that to manufacture either involved group intelligence, an exchange of goods and ideas among hundreds or thousands of people, most of whom were unaware of the collective power of their actions. He is no doubt correct, and there is plenty of evidence that the division of labour improves productivity (for those programmed to own one, a glance at a £20 note with its quotation from Adam Smith makes that clear). True indeed, but nothing to do with Darwinism. The problem is hindsight or, worse, foresight. It easy to imagine that, if one found a computer mouse upon a heath, there must, somewhere, be a mouse-maker – and, of course, that would be correct; for that object, like all modern technology, depends on planning, forethought and design. Life does not. Darwin despised Lamarck not because the latter believed in the inheritance of acquired characters, for he himself thought the same, but because of Lamarck's insistence that there was an internal force that drove life to become more and more perfect (or, at least, French): as he wrote, "The production of a new organ in an animal body results from the appearance of a new want or need". Plastic mouses (or stone axes) certainly emerged from wants and needs, but the furry rodent did not. Darwin (check the £10 note) insisted that there was no intrinsic direction to evolution, and modern biology shows that he was right. From Moses to Macaulay and Marx – all three quoted here – politicians and economists disagree. They have produced their own grand visions of history (often, like Marx, with reference to the Sage of Downe). Ridley is in that tradition and is, like his predecessors, happy to ignore the exceptions. Russia, where male life expectancy dropped by five years after the collapse of communism, is no advertisement for the joys of free enterprise and neither, for that matter, is the USA, which lags in that measure behind Cuba. The recent accession to power of the Eton and Oxford gang, with their motto, from Samuel Smiles, of "a place for everything and everything in its place" – their place, as an immutable fact of Nature, being In Charge – is bad news for optimists, rational or otherwise. Gibbon saw history as "little more than the register of the crimes, follies, and misfortunes of mankind". I look forward, come the election of May 2015, to a second – and much revised – edition of The Rational Optimist that pays tribute to that uncomfortable truth. Steve Jones's books include Darwin's Island: The Galapagos in the Garden of England (Little, Brown). 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 | 18 Jun 2010 | 5:05 pm This column will change your life: From alief to beliefHow does even the rational mind respond to things that are not as they seem? In a famous investigation of disgust, the psychologist Paul Rozin asked people to eat fudge that had been moulded to look like dog faeces, and drink soup from a brand new, pristine bedpan. These were educated adults, raised in a rationalist culture; they knew the fudge was fudge, the bedpan clean. Still, many recoiled (maybe you did, too, just reading that) and showed a marked preference for food that less closely resembled what all food eventually becomes. Nor is disgust the only realm in which our responses blatantly contradict what we know, as visitors to Toronto discover when they step on to the glass-bottomed viewing deck of the 553m-high CN Tower. I knew the floor was secure, but my lurching stomach didn't agree. There's a good restaurant at the top of the tower, but take my advice: visit it after the viewing deck. The philosopher Tamar Gendler has coined the word "alief" to describe what's going on in our minds here. If beliefs are conscious responses to how we think things are, aliefs are more slippery: they're responses, also sometimes conscious, to how things seem. You can believe one thing while alieving another. Gendler once forgot her wallet at a conference, so borrowed cash from a colleague – then reached into her bag to find her wallet, to stash away the money. "Although I believed my wallet was several hundred miles away... I alieved something very different," she recalls. "The alief had roughly the following content: 'Bunch of money. Needs to go into a safe place. Activate wallet-retrieval motor routine now'." You can believe the fudge is fine, yet alieve that turd-shaped things are repellent. It's tempting to accuse Gendler of hairsplitting: do we really need a new word to describe what are, presumably, hard-wired or learned responses? She's not concerned with causes, though, but with capturing the state of mind involved. Our existing vocabulary leads us to think of Rozin's disgusted subjects as behaving irrationally. "Alief" allows for another possibility: that you can be absolutely, rationally convinced of something, yet also alieve – and thus behave – quite differently. This view of the mind as multifaceted, a place where rational, strongly-held beliefs can coexist with aliefs, suggests why behaviour change is so hard. Public health campaigners sometimes assume the way to get people to stop eating junk food, say, is to make sure they're convinced of – that they really believe in – its dangers. But they may already fully believe that; likewise, if you're a chronic procrastinator, you probably don't need persuading that procrastination's bad. Some kind of alief (associating Big Macs with comfort and security, perhaps, or completing your work with being judged) may be interfering. Unlike beliefs, you can't rationally argue yourself into dropping an alief. A more fruitful approach might echo "exposure therapy", used to treat phobias: stock your fridge with healthy stuff. Sit down at your desk, over and over. Chip away at the alief. Not that alief's all bad: as Paul Bloom observed in an essay drawn from his forthcoming book, How Pleasure Works, the concept might explain the pleasures of fiction. No need for tricksy notions such as the "suspension of disbelief"; we simply believe that novels and movies are imaginary, while holding aliefs that let us derive pleasure from them as though they were real. Got it? Good. Now, can I interest you in a piece of fudge? oliver.burkeman@guardian.co.uk 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 | 18 Jun 2010 | 5:03 pm Worlds Apart: A Cautionary Tale of Two Coral Atolls (LiveScience.com)LiveScience.com - Sporting snorkels and wetsuits, a team of researchers plunged into the waters off two isolated coral islands in the Pacific Ocean to take stock of the marine life. The coral islands - known as atolls - are separated from each other by only few hundred miles, but they are worlds apart in terms of the impact they feel from humans, the researchers say.Source: Yahoo! News: Science News | 18 Jun 2010 | 5:00 pm Innovation Buys Time for Stroke VictimsBrain attacks killed more than 130,000 Americans in 2009. Patients have only a few short hours to get dangerous blood clots removed before permanent brain damage sets in. Having more time means they may travel further to better facilities.Source: Livescience.com | 18 Jun 2010 | 4:54 pm Worlds Apart: A Cautionary Tale of Two Coral AtollsOverfishing near Pacific atolls is depleting large predators.Source: Livescience.com | 18 Jun 2010 | 4:50 pm Hundreds of Possible Alien Planets Discovered By NASA Spacecraft (SPACE.com)SPACE.com - NASA's Kepler spacecraft hunting for Earth-like planets around other stars has found 706 candidates for potential alien worlds while gazing at more than 156,000 stars packed into a single patch of the sky.Source: Yahoo! News: Science News | 18 Jun 2010 | 4:15 pm Amelia Earhart's Watch Reaches Space Station 82 Years After Historic Flight (SPACE.com)SPACE.com - The watch that aviatrix Amelia Earhart wore while making history on two trans-Atlantic flights was brought onboard the International Space Station (ISS) on Thursday, 82 years to the day after its historic first flight. The timepiece was among a few mementos — including a medal of honor — that flew to orbit with the outpost's three newest crewmembers.Source: Yahoo! News: Science News | 18 Jun 2010 | 4:15 pm Growing Crops Without Sun or SoilShipping containers have been redesigned to become housing, offices, and even health clinics, but now a startup in Tucson is transforming them into sun-free, soil-free greenhouses.Source: Discovery News - Top Stories | 18 Jun 2010 | 4:04 pm Going Green on the RoofA green roof is covered with a waterproof membrane, a growing medium and vegetation. Environmentalists have long touted the benefits of green roofs, which they say include cooling the environment, and helping to absorb CO2.Source: Livescience.com | 18 Jun 2010 | 3:06 pm Death Penalty By Firing Squad: How Is It Carried Out?Death by firing squad, an archaic way of carrying out the death penalty that is now banned in the United States, was requested by convicted criminal Ronnie Lee Gardner.Source: Livescience.com | 18 Jun 2010 | 2:42 pm World Cup: How Altitude Could Cause Players to OvershootWorld Cup soccer balls are affected by some strange aerodynamics because of the altitude of the Johannesburg, South Africa stadium.Source: Livescience.com | 18 Jun 2010 | 2:15 pm Dogs Sniff Out Poop of Endangered SpeciesWhat do the Eastern spotted skunk, the striped skunk, black bear and long-tailed weasel have in common? They are just four of 117 endangered species in the state of Alabama -- which ranks 3rd in the country behind Hawaii and ...Source: Discovery News - Top Stories | 18 Jun 2010 | 2:10 pm 'Miracle' Whale Survives OrdealDoom-sayers had long predicted that the lost, possibly ill whale would not live much longer.Source: Discovery News - Top Stories | 18 Jun 2010 | 2:01 pm Small Creatures Will Be Oil Spills Biggest VictimsThe Deepwater Horizon oil leak has caused significant damage to the Gulf of Mexico’s ecosystem, but certain species are in more trouble than others.Source: Livescience.com | 18 Jun 2010 | 1:35 pm Archaeologists Hot on Trail of Aztec RoyaltyArchaeologists are finding elaborate offerings at a dig site they believe will ultimately yield an elusive prize: the tomb of an Aztec emperor, the first of its kind.Source: Discovery News - Top Stories | 18 Jun 2010 | 1:35 pm Editor's Picks: Dark Lasers, Solar Flares and MoreAbove, you'll see some of the top images of the week. Click on each one to explore the story behind it. In case you couldn't get away from the beach this past week, here are five can't-miss Discovery News stories: ...Source: Discovery News - Top Stories | 18 Jun 2010 | 12:20 pm Study: Why Women Are More Sensitive to StressWomen may be more prone to psychiatric disorders such as depression due to differences in how their brain responses to certain hormones, a new study suggests.Source: Livescience.com | 18 Jun 2010 | 12:02 pm Seventh Graders Discover Martian CaveCommanding NASA's Mars Odyssey orbiter, a group of elementary school students have made an exciting discovery: a lava tube skylight punched though the Martian surface.Source: Discovery News - Top Stories | 18 Jun 2010 | 10:45 am Adults Text While Driving Just as Much as TeenagersAdults text as often while driving as teenagers and are more likely than teens to talk on the phone when behind the wheel.Source: Livescience.com | 18 Jun 2010 | 10:09 am Utah Firing Squad Execution Likely Last of its KindFive sharpshooters fired bullets through the heart of a double murderer in Utah in what was was billed as a bloody throwback to Old West-style justice.Source: Discovery News - Top Stories | 18 Jun 2010 | 10:09 am Brain Cells in Lab Dish Keep TimeRat brain cells living in a lab dish can be trained to keep time, a new study finds.Source: Livescience.com | 18 Jun 2010 | 10:01 am For Sight-Reading Music, Practice Doesn't Make PerfectA memory skill that pianists have little control over may orchestrate their performance.Source: Discovery News - Top Stories | 18 Jun 2010 | 9:50 am Congress turns scorn on BP chiefIn scathing questioning, US congressmen tell BP chief Tony Hayward his firm ignored oil well dangers in the Gulf of Mexico.Source: BBC News | Science & Environment | UK Edition | 18 Jun 2010 | 9:23 am New Yeasts Could Yield Tastier Light BeersSo far, about 1,000 species of yeasts have been identified in food labs, but at least 10,000 new species are expected to be found in the near future. Cheers!Source: Discovery News - Top Stories | 18 Jun 2010 | 8:37 am Top 7 Animatronic Beasties in FilmHere are seven of the most famous — and infamous — animatronic monsters in film history.Source: Livescience.com | 18 Jun 2010 | 8:31 am Fate of Gulf's Deep-Water Corals UnknownNo one knows just how the Gulf's corals are being affected by the spill, but scientists are worried since the organisms support an array of life.Source: Discovery News - Top Stories | 18 Jun 2010 | 8:29 am Earth WatchCelebrities' blood masks complexities of whale meetSource: BBC News | Science & Environment | UK Edition | 18 Jun 2010 | 8:17 am Church bones 'are Saxon queen'Bones found in a German cathedral are the remains of a Saxon member of the English royal family, scientists claim.Source: BBC News | Science & Environment | UK Edition | 18 Jun 2010 | 8:04 am Ant's head balancing act revealedVideo captured by scientists reveals how ants use their heads and necks to balance when carrying large objects.Source: BBC News | Science & Environment | UK Edition | 18 Jun 2010 | 6:06 am Sands of timeDating techniques verify chronology of ancient EgyptSource: BBC News | Science & Environment | UK Edition | 18 Jun 2010 | 4:25 am
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