Quiz: name that synonym! | Mind your language

Jamie 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

LCD television waste could help prevent bacterial infections

The fastest growing waste in Europe could soon be helping to combat hospital infections, according to scientists in the UK. Researchers have discovered a way of transforming the chemical compound polyvinyl-alcohol (PVA), which is a key element of television sets with liquid crystal display (LCD) technology, into an anti-microbial substance that destroys infections such as Escherichia coli and some strains of Staphylococcus aureus.
Source: ScienceDaily: Latest Science News | 20 Jun 2010 | 3:00 pm

More than just baby blues: How postpartum depression arises and how it could be prevented

Within the first week after giving birth, up to 70 percent of all women experience symptoms of the baby blues. While most women recover quickly, up to 13 percent of all new mothers suffer from symptoms of a clinical-level postpartum depression.
Source: ScienceDaily: Latest Science News | 20 Jun 2010 | 3:00 pm

Living fast and dangerously: Hormones influence the 'pace of life' of songbirds

Human beings, fish, reptiles and birds have the same hormones in their blood with very similar functions. But why does one find hormone values in some species that are ten times higher than in others? Scientists have now discovered that the differing concentrations in birds of the stress hormone, corticosterone, and the reproductive hormone, testosterone, are correlated with the "pace of life". They control whether energy is invested into reproduction, i.e. the number of eggs laid and the breeding attempts in a given season, or more into longevity, i.e. immune function or the flight response in times of danger.
Source: ScienceDaily: Latest Science News | 20 Jun 2010 | 3:00 pm

Hubble scrutinizes site of mysterious flash and missing cloud belt on Jupiter

New and detailed observations from the NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope have provided insights into two recent events on Jupiter: the mysterious flash of light seen on June 3 and the recent disappearance of the planet's dark Southern Equatorial Belt.
Source: ScienceDaily: Latest Science News | 20 Jun 2010 | 3:00 pm

New test may simply and rapidly detect Lyme disease

Researchers have developed a more sensitive test for Lyme disease that may offer earlier detection and lower cost.
Source: ScienceDaily: Latest Science News | 20 Jun 2010 | 3:00 pm

Understanding robustness in organisms -- a potential weapon against infectious diseases

"Robust" is an adjective appreciatively applied to certain vintage wines, but when describing viruses and pathogens, robustness is a property that may be much less desirable. It evokes drug resistant microbes and other superbugs that can wreak havoc as researchers struggle to deal with new pandemics. How can we undercut this robustness? A new study examines the ability of organisms to survive in the face of various kinds of change.
Source: ScienceDaily: Latest Science News | 20 Jun 2010 | 3:00 pm

Deadly effect of arsenic in drinking water measured in Bangladesh study

More than 20 percent of deaths in a study of 12,000 Bangladeshis were attributable to arsenic exposure from contaminated drinking water, new research reports. The large 10-year study is the first to prospectively measure the relationship between individual exposure to arsenic and its associated mortality risk.
Source: ScienceDaily: Latest Science News | 20 Jun 2010 | 6:00 am

Songbirds learn their songs during sleep

When zebra finches learn their songs from their father early in life, their brain is active during sleep. These findings are a further demonstration that birdsong learning is very similar to the way that children learn how to speak.
Source: ScienceDaily: Latest Science News | 20 Jun 2010 | 6:00 am

Surveillance may be suitable treatment option for patients with low-risk prostate cancer

Active surveillance or watchful waiting might be sufficient treatment for patients with prostate cancer that has a low risk of progression, according to a new study.
Source: ScienceDaily: Latest Science News | 20 Jun 2010 | 6:00 am

Retooling the ocean conveyor belt

Oceanographer are reviewing the growing body of evidence that suggests it's time to rethink the ocean conveyor belt model.
Source: ScienceDaily: Latest Science News | 20 Jun 2010 | 6:00 am

The nation's weather (AP)

AP - Showers and thunderstorms will rumble through the Plains and into the Upper Mississippi Valley on Sunday, despite few areas of active weather elsewhere in the nation. Another area of showers and thunderstorms will follow the first into the Plains later in the afternoon and evening.
Source: Yahoo! News: Science News | 20 Jun 2010 | 4:07 am

U.S. says new sanctions on Iran could impact Pakistan (Reuters)

Reuters - Pakistan should be wary of committing to an Iran-Pakistan natural gas pipeline because anticipated U.S. sanctions on Iran could hit Pakistani companies, the U.S. special representative to the region said on Sunday.
Source: Yahoo! News: Science News | 20 Jun 2010 | 1:44 am

BP chief yacht outing draws fire as oil effort slogs on (AFP)

AFP - A yacht outing has landed BP chief Tony Hayward in more hot water, unleashing fresh criticism of his handling of the Gulf of Mexico oil spill and overshadowing modest progress in containing the disaster.

Source: Yahoo! News: Science News | 20 Jun 2010 | 1:44 am

BP CEO's yacht outing infuriates Gulf residents (AP)

AP - It could have been a turnaround week in BP's campaign to convince the public that it's doing everything possible to contain the damage from the worst offshore oil spill in U.S. history.

Source: Yahoo! News: Science News | 20 Jun 2010 | 12:10 am

Gulf Coast residents brace for more oil (Reuters)

Reuters - Residents of the Gulf Coast braced for more oil from a ruptured BP Plc well to hit their beaches on Sunday as oil washed ashore at Panama City, a popular Florida tourist destination.

Source: Yahoo! News: Science News | 19 Jun 2010 | 11:08 pm

Japan whaling town dreams of glory days (AFP)

AFP - In a sushi shop in a traditional Japanese whaling town, Katsuji Furuuchi carves thin slices from a lump of minke meat and adds pieces of blubber to the tiny servings.

Source: Yahoo! News: Science News | 19 Jun 2010 | 9:36 pm

Tropical Storm Celia strengthens off Mexico (AP)

AP - Tropical Storm Celia gained strength Saturday night over the Pacific Ocean off the coast of southern Mexico. Forecasters said it was headed farther out to sea.

Source: Yahoo! News: Science News | 19 Jun 2010 | 9:17 pm

Bones from a Cheddar Gorge cave show that cannibalism helped Britain's earliest settlers survive the ice age

New carbon dating techniques reveal that 14,700 years ago humans living in Gough's Cave in the Mendips acquired a taste for the flesh of their relatives, and not just for ritual reasons

Scientists have identified the first humans to recolonise Britain after the last ice age. The country was taken over in a couple of years by individuals who practised cannibalism, they say - a discovery that revolutionises our understanding of the peopling of Britain and the manner in which men and women reached these shores.

Research has shown that tribes of hunter-gatherers moved into Britain from Spain and France with extraordinary rapidity when global warming brought an end to the ice age 14,700 years ago and settled in a cavern – known as Gough's Cave – in the Cheddar Gorge in what is now Somerset.

From the bones they left behind, scientists have also discovered these people were using sophisticated butchering techniques to strip flesh from the bones of men, women and children.

"These people were processing the flesh of humans with exactly the same expertise that they used to process the flesh of animals," said Professor Chris Stringer of the Natural History Museum in London. "They stripped every bit of food they could get from those bones."

The discovery of the speed of Britain's recolonisation after the last ice age, and the disquieting fate of some of those first settlers, is the result of two major technological breakthroughs. The first involves the development of a technique known as ultra-filtration carbon dating. Perfected by scientists based at Oxford University's radiocarbon accelerator unit, it allows researchers to pinpoint the ages of ancient bones and other organic material with unprecedented accuracy.

The second breakthrough involves the use of a machine known as the Alicona 3D microscope. Using this device, Dr Sylvia Bello of the Natural History Museum has studied the cut marks left on bones of humans and animals in Gough's Cave. Scientists already knew cannibalism had been practised in the cavern, but were unclear if it was a ritual process or involved the deliberate killing of humans. However, Bello has found humans had been butchered with the same stone tools that had been used to cut up animals. In other words, animal and human flesh was treated the same way by these early Britons.

In addition to these findings, the discovery – by Danish scientists a few years ago – that the last ice age ended with astonishing rapidity has also played a key role in reappraising the recolonisation of Britain. Far from being a gradual process, in which men and women slowly reoccupied territory that had been taken from them by spreading glaciers, the resettling of Britain now appears to have been rapid, dramatic and bloody.

For around 60,000 years the planet had shivered as ice sheets fluctuated over large parts of the northern and southern hemisphere – including Britain, then a peninsula of northern Europe, which supported a small population of humans for much of this time. However, around 24,000 years ago, the weather worsened drastically. Britain's last inhabitants either died out or headed southwards for some continental warmth in refuges in northern Spain and central France.

Britain's icy desolation ended abruptly 14,700 years ago when there was a dramatic leap in temperatures across the globe according to ice-cores found in Greenland and lake sediments in Germany. In less than three years, temperatures had soared by around 6 to 7 degrees Celsius and ice sheets began a rapid retreat throughout the world.

Such a jump in temperature brought about an astonishing change in the world's weather patterns – though the underlying cause remains unclear, scientists admit. Suggestions include the proposal that variations in the orbit of the Earth around the Sun allowed more solar radiation to bathe the planet and so warm it up. It has also been proposed that there may have been a sudden eruption of carbon dioxide from the oceans. This helped trap heat from the sun in the atmosphere and so heat up the world.

"Whatever the reason, it was good news in those days, because the world was so cold and so it heated up nicely. However, if a rise like that happened today it would be devastating," said Dr Tom Higham, deputy director of the Oxford radiocarbon unit. "The world would be scorched. That is one of the most important aspects of the story of the resettling of Britain."

Higham's work, in collaboration with his late colleague Roger Jacobi, has involved studying the ages of the bones found at Gough's Cave in the Somerset Mendips, the earliest post-ice age site at which modern human remains have been found. The bones of half a dozen people – including children, adolescents and adults – were found in the cave in the 1980s, a discovery that made national headlines when it was revealed that these remains bore patterns of cut marks that suggested they had been the victims of cannibalism.

Other sites of this antiquity, in Germany and France, have also supplied evidence that human bones had been butchered. But the Gough's Cave finds were puzzling because radiocarbon dates indicated that humans had used the cave for more than 2,000 years, including several centuries in which the country would have been covered in ice sheets.

"The problem with radiocarbon dates of this antiquity is that it only takes a tiny trace of contamination from modern organic material to distort results," said Higham. "That is why we kept getting such a range of ages from the Gough's Cave bones."

To get round this problem, Jacobi and Higham worked on a technique – known as ultra-filtration – which involves using a series of complex chemical treatments to destroy any modern contamination in samples taken from the cave. First results of dates supplied using this technique were published by the scientists in a paper in Quaternary Science Reviews last year and were based on their re-analysis of the bones of Gough's Cave. These revealed a very different picture for the ages for the bones than had previously been calculated.

Instead of dates being spread over a couple of thousand years, the new ones clustered tightly round an age of 14,700 years before present – the exact moment that the world had begun its dramatic defrosting. Within a year or two, humans had left their southern refuges and were heading north into Britain, it was revealed. In other words, the end of the ice age was almost instantaneous – and so was the manner in which we exploited it.

In those days, humans were nomadic hunter-gatherers: strong, relatively well-nourished individuals who followed the herds of wild horses that then roamed Europe. These animals provided men, women and children with their main source of protein. "The weather suddenly got warm, the horses headed north and men and women followed them," said Higham. "It would have been a very rapid business."

As for the route of this migration, it probably took these ancient hunter-gatherers across Doggerland – a now submerged stretch of land in the North Sea that is known as Dogger Bank today – and into eastern England. Within a couple of years, they had reached Gough's Cave, though the cavern would not have formed a permanent residence but would most likely have served as a refuge to which they could return on a regular basis.

Previously it had been thought that the cave had been occupied, on or off, for around 2,000 years. However, the new set of dates generated by Higham shows that these not only cluster round the date of 14,700 years before the present, but that they cover only a very narrow range of about a hundred years or less. In other words, the cave was occupied for only a few generations at that time.

However, it is the behaviour of those few generations that has perplexed scientists for the past 20 years and which led to the new investigation by Bello. "The bone fragments we have found suggest we are looking at the remains of five individuals," she said. "These remains include one young child, aged between three and four, two adolescents, a young adult and an older adult. So we have every kind of age group represented in the Gough's Cave remains."

Bello has found that each of these sets of remains is covered with marks that show they had been the subject of comprehensive butchery, with all muscle and tissue being stripped from them. But why de-flesh those bones in the first place? What triggered such an extreme act? To provide answers, scientists have put forward a number of different theories. These include suggestions that it was a form of ritual which involved the eating of small pieces of a relative's flesh, not as a source of nutrition, but as an act of homage.

Others have argued that it involved a form of crisis cannibalism in which people ate the flesh of others because all other sources of food had disappeared. "An example of that sort of cannibalism was provided by the Andes air crash in 1972 when survivors ate the flesh of those who had been killed in the accident," said Stringer.

And finally there is straightforward cannibalism in which humans hunt, kill and eat other humans because they have a preference for human flesh. This is sometimes known as homicidal cannibalism.

The new evidence that is emerging from Bello's work does not resolve the issue, though some significant pointers have been uncovered. "These people were breaking up bones to get at the marrow inside," he said. "They were stripping off all of the muscle mass. Brains seemed to have been removed. Tongues seemed to have been removed. And it is also possible that eyes were being removed. It was very systematic work." In addition, human remains appear to have been disposed of in the same way as animal bones, by being dumped in a single pit.

Such evidence suggests straightforward cannibalism was carried out in Gough's Cave. However, there are other factors to note, said Bello. "These were very difficult times and it is still quite possible people ate each other because there simply wasn't anything else to eat." The landscape – although rapidly recovering – would still have been pretty barren, particularly in winter.

In addition, Bello also pointed out that the remains of only a few individuals had been found at Gough's Cave. In other words, there is no evidence that large-scale human butchery had been practised there. "That means we cannot completely rule out the possibility that this was some form of ritual cannibalism, although I think it is unlikely," said Bello.

At present, most evidence indicates that humans were probably using the skills that they had acquired in butchering animal flesh, in particular the meat of horses as well as reindeer, another stone age favourite, in order to cut up humans who had died of natural causes.

"We don't see any traumatic wounds in these remains which would suggest violence was being inflicted on living people. This was some kind of cultural process that they brought with them from Europe," he said.

Whatever the nature of the cannibalism that was carried out by these early settlers, it did them little good in the end. Two thousand years after the ice age ended, Europe was plunged into a new, catastrophic freeze. A massive lake of glacial meltwater built up over northern America. Then it burst its banks and billions of gallons of icy water poured into the north Atlantic, deflecting the Gulf Stream. Temperatures in Britain plunged back to their ice age levels and the country was once again completely depopulated.

"This new period of intense cold lasted for more than a thousand years," said Stringer. "Only by 11,500 years did conditions start to return to their present level – and Britain was colonised by humans for the last time."

Source: Science news, comment and analysis | guardian.co.uk | 19 Jun 2010 | 5:05 pm

Why modern art is all in the mind

New book argues that taste is driven by psychological patterns and way we want world to see us

Ten years ago researchers in America took two groups of three-year-olds and showed them a blob of paint on a canvas. Children who were told that the marks were the result of an accidental spillage showed little interest. The others, who had been told that the splodge of colour had been carefully created for them, started to refer to it as "a painting".

Now that experiment – conducted by Paul Bloom, a Yale academic, and psychologist Susan Gelman – has gone on to form part of the foundation of an influential new book that questions the way in which we respond to art.

Bloom's study, How Pleasure Works, which will be out this week, argues that there is no such thing as a pure aesthetic judgment. In developing his general theory about how humans decide what they like or dislike, he lines up evidence to show that what people believe about a work of art is crucial to the way they feel about it. He goes on to suggest that modern art collectors are partly motivated by the way they wish to be seen by the rest of the world.

Publication comes at a good time for Bloom. His book will be in the shops the day after the London sale of Andrew Lloyd Webber's celebrated Picasso, The Absinthe Drinker, a work which is being offered with a pre-sale estimate of £30m-£40m. If the painting, a stylised portrait of Angel Fernandez de Soto in 1903, reaches this sum at auction at Christie's, it will be the highest price ever achieved by an artwork in Europe.

Yet just four years ago the value of the painting plummeted when doubt was temporarily cast over its history. It was quickly withdrawn from sale when it was suggested that it had previously been looted by the Nazis. The claims were disproved, but the fluctuation in the worth of the portrait on the market mirrors the way in which Bloom believes the human mind works, constantly re-evaluating art.

The book, which is subtitled The New Science of Why We Like What We Like, is not an attack on modern or contemporary art and Bloom says fans of more traditional art are not capable of making purely aesthetic judgments either. "I don't have a strong position about the art itself," he said this weekend. "But I do have a strong position about why we actually like it."

The author is neither a critic nor a lover of modern art. He simply uses this contentious area, with its sharp divisions in levels of appreciation and commercial value, to explain how the human mind operates.

"Traditional art is about what is in the world; more modern works are about the very process of representation," he writes. "An appreciation of much of modern art therefore requires specific expertise. Any dope can marvel at a Rembrandt, but only an elite few can make any sense of a work such as Sherrie Levine's Fountain (After Marcel Duchamp), and so only an elite few are going to enjoy it."

According to Bloom, someone who invests heavily in abstract art and explains that they simply love the shapes and colours is only telling half the story. He believes that the psychological patterns described in "signalling theory" apply to the purchase of modern art. In other words, a rich man or woman tries to distinguish themselves from the pack by spending money on the right thing. "Any schmoe can buy, and appreciate, a pretty painting, while spending millions of dollars on abstract art might display a combination of wealth and discernment," writes Bloom.

"I also think some people would enjoy modern art anyway," he adds. "I find myself defending modern art, although I have no great knowledge or taste for it. It is not all snobbery; it is about a learned appreciation for a specific kind of work."

Modern artists work rather like comedians, he suggests, pushing back boundaries whenever they can. "And some people hate modern art because they feel they are the butt of that joke," he said.

People also find more pleasure in artworks that seem to have taken more effort to make, Bloom argues. Using Jackson Pollock's splash paintings as an example, he wonders why "so many people are unimpressed" by them. The negative reaction is often due to the fact that there is no obvious display of skill. In the past Pollock fans have defended the artist's work by saying the paintings are technically tricky to make, while others argue that the creative process is irrelevant. Bloom points out that whether skill and effort are supposed to be important or not, contemporary art is still priced and sold according to its size. "This might reflect the intuition that it's harder to paint a large painting than a small one. More effort leads to greater pleasure," he writes.

Humans are incapable of just getting pleasure from the way something looks, he argues. "The history of an artwork is absolutely critical, although you might argue that it shouldn't be. It is just the way our minds are built."

Source: Science news, comment and analysis | guardian.co.uk | 19 Jun 2010 | 5:05 pm

Ulysses app causes Apple to blush

James Joyce's Ulysses is still causing moral panic – this time among the app approvers at Apple

Last Wednesday, 16 June, was Bloomsday, a day revered by admirers of James Joyce the world over. It's celebrated because 16 June 1904 is the day in which all the action in Joyce's novel Ulysses takes place. Readers follow the perambulations around Dublin of the book's endearing hero, a freelance advertisement-seller named Leopold Bloom, who is tactfully keeping out of the way while his wife is being unfaithful to him in the marital home at No 7 Eccles Street.

Bloomsday celebrations take many forms but usually involve readings from the novel, and often the consumption of food and drink (gorgonzola sandwiches and burgundy, for example, in honour of Bloom's lunchtime fare). This year there was an added frisson to the festivities, for it transpired that Apple, a company not hitherto noted for its interest in modernist literature, had been paying close attention to the content of Joyce's great work. Or rather, to a cartoon remix of it entitled Ulysses "Seen", an iPad app that had been submitted for approval to Apple in the usual way.

The app had its origins in an earlier Bloomsday, when a group of Joyce enthusiasts in Philadelphia had the idea of adapting Ulysses – all 700 or so pages of it – as a graphic novel. To this end they founded a company, and earlier this year, submitted chapter one of Ulysses "Seen" to Apple. So far, so predictable. Then they had a phone call from Apple.

"They asked two things of us", recalled Chad Rutkowski, who doubles as business manager and lawyer for the fledgling publisher. "Please remove the image of the bare-chested goddess on page 37 and please rate it NC-17."

In an interview with National Public radio, Rutkowski says he argued "vigorously" to keep the image of the goddess and the drawings of the character Buck Mulligan in the nude, which crop up a few pages later.

"I asked them if, you know, we could pixelate or if we could put bars over it. And he said no. What he said was that Apple was having a lot of problems with people trying to sidestep their guidelines. And they didn't want to start, you know, a slippery slope."

Quite. Reluctantly, the publishers submitted a version of the comic with the naked lady tastefully clothed. It's not clear how they dealt with the issue of Buck Mulligan's genitalia. But it doesn't matter, because rumours of Apple's censorship started to spread through the blogosphere and eventually the company changed its mind.

So the first chapter of Ulysses "Seen" is now available as a free iPad app – but only on the US iPad store. UK readers are denied its pleasures, for some reason – but they can sample it on the company's website.

What's interesting about this is not so much that Joyce's novel retains its power to outrage, but that the putative "outragee" is now a commercial company rather than a prudish state.

Ulysses has what the racing fraternity call "form" in this regard. In 1926, for example, four years after its publication, the Cambridge English don FR Leavis decided that he wanted to quote from the book – which was then banned in Britain – in his lectures. He therefore wrote to the Home Office seeking permission to import a copy. For his temerity, he was then summoned by the university's vice-chancellor, who handed him a note from the director of public prosecutions revealing that the Cambridge police had been monitoring Leavis's lectures, and concluding with a recommendation that he "should be suitably and firmly dealt with".

The publishers of Ulysses "Seen" are no doubt feeling relaxed and contented, on the grounds that if you can get round Apple's editorial control-freakery then you can get around anything. There is, however, one further possibly fly in their ointment. His name is Stephen Joyce. He is the grandson of the great man and since the 1980s has been in sole control of his grandfather's literary estate. More importantly, his desire to control the uses of his literary property makes Steve Jobs look like St Francis of Assisi.

Anyone who wants to quote from any of Joyce's works must ask his permission, and he doesn't grant it lightly. To take one example, in 2004, the centenary of Bloomsday, he threatened the Irish government with a lawsuit if it staged any Bloomsday readings. Bertie Ahern and Co were so scared of him that the scheduled readings were pulled. It will be interesting to see whether Steve Jobs will be such a pushover.

Source: Science news, comment and analysis | guardian.co.uk | 19 Jun 2010 | 5:05 pm

RoboCup Singapore: the fooball tournament for robots

As a football competition for robots kicks off in Singapore, organisers predict they'll soon eclipse real players

At corners, they pose as much threat as a Hobbit would against a team of Orcs. Their passing and shooting are laughable while their ability to keep the ball from reaching the back of the net is only mariginally better than that of an English goalkeeper. Robot footballers have a long way to go, it would seem.

Yet great things are expected of them, it transpires. According to the organisers of RoboCup, the international football competition for humanoid players which kicked off in Singapore yesterday, the skills that are being built up through the design and manufacture of robot players for the tournament are performing a vital role in helping engineers and scientists perfect a team that will have the prowess and the ability to take the official World Cup trophy away from humans.

That target has been set by RoboCup's organisers for the year 2050 and was established following the success of the artificial intelligence chess challenge that was fought out in the 90s. That clash was eventually won in 1997 when IBM's Deep Blue computer program beat world chess champion Garry Kasparov.

Now RoboCup wants to repeat that success with the beautiful game – though a quick glimpse at a few YouTube videos of robot players in action will reveal just how difficult that task is going to be. Metre-high players scuttle crabwise across the pitch. They lash out but miss the ball. Occasionally one falls over for no discernible reason. It sounds like a typical England training session, in other words, and suggests that the designers of robot footballers have a great deal of work ahead of them before they can create players that are able to beat humans.

Improvements are constantly being made, however. For example, researchers at Carnegie Mellon University in Pittsburgh have developed a program that lets robots predict where the ball will go, rather than merely reacting to its movement. Tests show that such robots outperform rivals, allowing them to bend it, not so much like Beckham, but like R2-D2. Indeed, Manuela Veloso, a computer science professor at CMU, is convinced this programme will bring success for his team at RoboCup. "I don't see any reason why we won't win," he says.

So the day of the robot football player may not be that far off. And in any case, most of them are already blessed with one major advantage over their human counterparts: they look more lifelike than Peter Crouch when they celebrate after scoring a goal.

Source: Science news, comment and analysis | guardian.co.uk | 19 Jun 2010 | 5:05 pm

New to Nature No 11: Berlinia korupensis

A rare, towering new tree species from Cameroon, with spectacular exploding seed pods

A gigantic, towering new tree species in the pea family, Leguminosae, was discovered in the lowland rainforests of Korup national park, Cameroon. Berlinia korupensis reaches a height of 42 metres with a buttressed trunk nearly one metre wide. The species produces stunningly beautiful white flowers, followed by incredibly large pods 30cm in length. The pods disperse their seeds violently for distances up to 50 metres. As the pods dry, their two halves curl in opposite directions, slowly building tension until they suddenly explode.

There are only 17 known examples and the species is critically endangered due to human pressures on the protected forest. It was named among the "250 species discovered in Kew's 250th year" and is one of more than 100 new species from Cameroon that have been described by scientists at Kew Gardens in London since 1995.

Quentin Wheeler is director of the International Institute for Species Exploration, Arizona State University

Source: Science news, comment and analysis | guardian.co.uk | 19 Jun 2010 | 5:03 pm

Study: Dogs Can Detect Prostate Cancer (LiveScience.com)

LiveScience.com - A study presented earlier this month at a meeting of the American Urological Association by a team of French researchers found that a particular dog breed, Belgian Malinois shepherd dogs, can be trained to detect prostate cancer.
Source: Yahoo! News: Science News | 19 Jun 2010 | 4:50 pm

Robots Could Hunt for Fossils on Europa (SPACE.com)

SPACE.com - If extraterrestrial life exists on Jupiter's moon Europa, instead of deploying probes to drill past its ice shell to look for aliens in the ocean below, one might just go fossil-hunting on the icy surface.
Source: Yahoo! News: Science News | 19 Jun 2010 | 1:45 pm

Telescope Takes Sharpest Pictures of Space Yet From Earth (SPACE.com)

SPACE.com - A telescope in Arizona has taken the sharpest pictures yet of deep space from Earth with a new system that provides a level of clarity never seen before.
Source: Yahoo! News: Science News | 19 Jun 2010 | 1:45 pm

Stopping Desertification in Africa With a 'Great Green Wall'

To halt encroaching desertification, a group of African nations wants to plant a "Great Green Wall" of trees extending from Senegal to Ethiopia.
Source: Discovery News - Top Stories | 19 Jun 2010 | 11:20 am

Magma Plume Discovered Under Southern Africa

Molten rock linked to volcanic eruptions.
Source: Livescience.com | 19 Jun 2010 | 10:54 am

People More Dangerous Than Sharks

Sharks threatened with extinction from fishing and finning.
Source: Livescience.com | 19 Jun 2010 | 10:17 am

I love her but the sex has died

Carole Jahme shines the cold light of evolutionary psychology on readers' problems. This week: Love, sex and masturbation

From an anonymous male, aged 40+
I have been in several very loving, amorous, "serious" relationships as an adult, none frivolous and none (at least on a conscious level – who the hell knows what's going on with me subconsiously) with the intention of being short-term.

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:
Trying to sustain a long-term relationship that is also sexual presents humans with a chemical catch-22.

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
1. Carter, SC (1998) Neuroendocrine perspectives on social attachment and love. Psychoneuroendocrinology; 23(8): 779-818.
2. DeVries, C, Glasper, ER (2005) Social structure influences effects of pair-housing on wound healing. Brain, Behavior, and Immunity; 19(1): 61-68.
3. Coan, JA et al (2006) Lending a hand: social regulation of the neural response to threat. Psychological Science, A Journal of the Association for Psychological Science; 17(12): 1032-1039.
4. Holden, AEC et al (2008) The influence of depression on sexual risk reduction and STD infection in a controlled, randomized intervention trial. Journal of Sexually Transmitted Diseases; 35(10): 898-904.
5. Holstege, G et al (2003) Brain activation during human male ejaculation. The Journal of Neuroscience; 23(27): 9185-9193.
6. Heaton, JPW (2003) Prolactin: An integral player in hormonal politics. Contemporary Urology; 15: 17-25.
7. Suleman, BVM, Mbaruk, A et al. (2004) Physiologic manifestations of stress from capture and restraint of free-ranging male African green monkeys (Cercopithecus aethiops). Journal of Zoo and Wildlife Medicine; 35(1): 20-24.
8. Thomsen, R, Soltis, J (2004) Male masturbation in free-ranging Japanese macaques. International Journal of Primatology; 25(5): 0164-0291.
9. Guo, G, Tong, Y et al (2007) Dopamine transporter, gender, and number of sexual partners among young adults. European Journal of Human Genetics; 15: 279–287.

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Source: Science news, comment and analysis | guardian.co.uk | 19 Jun 2010 | 2:30 am