Memory links to 40 winks

When it comes to executing items on tomorrow's to-do list, it's best to think it over, then "sleep on it," say psychologists. The researchers have shown that sleep enhances our ability to remember to do something in the future, a skill known as prospective memory.
Source: ScienceDaily: Latest Science News | 6 Jul 2010 | 12:00 pm

Watch while an asteroid eats a star

In a rare event on July 8, 2010, skywatchers will be able to see an asteroid briefly block out the light from a star as it passes in front. It may be the only asteroid 'occultation' this century observable with the naked eye.
Source: ScienceDaily: Latest Science News | 6 Jul 2010 | 12:00 pm

Revolutionary therapy slows tumor growth in advanced breast cancer, research reports

A novel therapy designed to attack tumors in patients with a genetic mutation in either BRCA1 or BRCA2, slowed tumor growth in 85 percent of advanced breast cancer patients treated in a small study, researchers report.
Source: ScienceDaily: Latest Science News | 6 Jul 2010 | 12:00 pm

Doctors to treat septic patients with hypothermia

Mild hypothermia can reduce the effects of sepsis on oxygen transport around the body and may be a valuable tool in the treatment of human sepsis patients. Sepsis is an inflammatory response to infection and will often result in septic shock, which is the biggest cause of death in intensive care units.
Source: ScienceDaily: Latest Science News | 6 Jul 2010 | 12:00 pm

Thermal-powered, insect-like robot crawls into microrobot contenders' ring

Engineers have built an insect-like robot with hundreds of tiny legs. Compared to other such microrobots, this new model excels in its ability to carry heavy loads -- more than seven times its own weight -- and move in any direction.
Source: ScienceDaily: Latest Science News | 6 Jul 2010 | 12:00 pm

More fish than thought may thrive in the ocean's depths, study suggests

A study of the occurrence of fishes in the ocean's deepest reaches -- the hadal zone, below 6000 meters -- has provided evidence that some species of fishes are more numerous at such depths than experts had thought.
Source: ScienceDaily: Latest Science News | 6 Jul 2010 | 12:00 pm

Environmental toxins affect the body's hormone systems

Individual variants of the environmental pollutants PCB and PFC can affect several of the body's hormone systems in a more complex way than previously supposed. Humans and animals are constantly exposed to these toxins through the food they eat and the air they breathe.
Source: ScienceDaily: Latest Science News | 6 Jul 2010 | 9:00 am

New key to corneal transplant success

Although already one of medicine's most successful transplant procedures, doctors continue to seek ways to improve corneal transplants. Now, for the first time, a team of German and British researchers have confirmed that failure and rejection of transplanted corneas are more likely in patients whose eyes exhibit abnormal vessel growth, called corneal neovascularization, prior to surgery. The findings also suggest a new treatment approach that could improve transplant success rates.
Source: ScienceDaily: Latest Science News | 6 Jul 2010 | 9:00 am

Bridge to the quantum world: Darwinian concept of natural selection figures into theory about core of physical reality

Researchers propose an answer to one of the long-running questions in the study of quantum physics: the mystery of how the world of our sensory experience emerges from the cloudy realm of atoms.
Source: ScienceDaily: Latest Science News | 6 Jul 2010 | 9:00 am

Antioxidants do help arteries stay healthy

Long-term supplementation with dietary antioxidants has beneficial effects on sugar and fat metabolism, blood pressure and arterial flexibility in patients with multiple cardiovascular risk factors. Researchers report these positive results in a randomized controlled trial of combined vitamin C, vitamin E, coenzyme Q10 and selenium capsules.
Source: ScienceDaily: Latest Science News | 6 Jul 2010 | 9:00 am

Texas tar balls found as oil hits all Gulf states (AP)

AP - More than two months after oil gushing from a blown-out well on the ocean floor first reached Louisiana, the relentless spread of crude has now washed up on every Gulf state after a bucket's worth of tar balls hit a Texas beach.

Source: Yahoo! News: Science News | 6 Jul 2010 | 3:50 am

Where Would Space Aliens Come From?

If flying saucers are real, why don’t we know where the visitors come from among the stars?
Source: Discovery News - Top Stories | 6 Jul 2010 | 3:36 am

BP shares rise as company says no plan to issue stock (Reuters)

Reuters - Stock in BP rose on Tuesday as the British oil major ruled out a share issue and talk persisted of sovereign wealth fund interest, while its Gulf of Mexico oil slick spread to the Texas coast.

Source: Yahoo! News: Science News | 6 Jul 2010 | 3:28 am

The nation's weather (AP)

AP - A relatively mild weather was expected day over the nation Tuesday as a ridge built in the East and a low pressure system took a northerly track through Canada.

Source: Yahoo! News: Science News | 6 Jul 2010 | 2:44 am

Snake skinned

Scientists take a journey inside a python
Source: BBC News | Science & Environment | UK Edition | 6 Jul 2010 | 2:07 am

Badger cull order may be amended

A controversial order for a badger cull is expected to be amended following an appeal hearing last week.
Source: BBC News | Science & Environment | UK Edition | 6 Jul 2010 | 1:53 am

Greenpeace names, shames companies over deforestation (AFP)

AFP - Greenpeace on Tuesday accused foreign firms like Walmart, Carrefour and Tesco of contributing to forest destruction and species loss in Indonesia by buying from paper and palm oil giant Sinar Mas.

Source: Yahoo! News: Science News | 6 Jul 2010 | 1:32 am

Spaceman

Norway resorts to ship-watching from space
Source: BBC News | Science & Environment | UK Edition | 6 Jul 2010 | 1:20 am

The world of celebrity is in a sub-prime crisis

A surge of low-grade stars has thrown the celebrity world into a sub-prime crisis. Now where's Mervyn King?

Going by this weekend's headlines, setting next year's citizenship test should be a doddle. First question for foreigners keen to make Britain their home: whose wedding had a cage-fighter for a groom, ferried bridesmaids to the church in a Transit van bearing the name of the event's security firm, and climaxed in a brawl with newspaper photographers? Second question: which little-watched digital channel paid a six-figure sum in a deal to film the entire affair?

Any newbie from Kandahar or the Cook Islands who volunteered, respectively, Jordan and Alex Reid, and ITV2, would be well on the way to a burgundy passport. And if those Home Office examiners were properly to reflect what the British read in papers and magazines, they would pose more questions about Ashley and Cheryl or Danny and Kelly, than Palmerston, Douglas-Home or Callaghan.

Is this unusual? Anxious bishops, thought-for-the-day moralists and others who worry about celebrity typically assume that it is a recent phenomenon; and that fame-seeking is a minority pursuit, taken up only by those with grotesque character deformations. Both assertions are wrong.

Think of Byron, who in 1819 boasted of being "a species of popular idol". Charging off to defend Greece against the Turks, he took with him specially made Albanian court attire and philhellene military helmets, while his womanising in Athens and London was greedily reported in the aptly named Tatler.

Byron was one of the first products of the alloy of glamour and publicity that we refer to as celebrity. In his new book, A Short History of Celebrity, Fred Inglis traces the phenomenon back to late 18th-century London. It was there, he argues, with its convergence of theatre and journalism and new opportunities to shop, that celebrity began.

As for the assertion that fame is sought only by a desperate few wannabes, think again. Extrapolating from surveys, the developmental psychologist Orville Gilbert Brim estimates that 4 million American adults (out of a total of 200 million) describe fame as their most important life goal. The proportions are only slightly lower in Germany and urban China.

Nor are these people all queuing up for auditions on The X Factor. In his new book Look At Me!, Brim confesses that his own academic career has been largely driven by a desire for fame. And he notes a recent poll of 10,000 members of the American Sociological Association showing that 2,000 believed they would be, after death, among the most-famous sociologists of all time. Which sounds like an awful lot of disappointed faculties.

So if the history of celebrity stretches back centuries, and the desire for it spread widely, what's different now is the amount and kind of media attention it generates.

If you define fame as being known by strangers, then newspapers, cinema and especially TV have always driven the spread of celebrity. Yet, until very recently, that attention has customarily been at a gradient: the public used to look up to their stars; now they are minded to look down.

Here is Joan Didion on how she thought of John Wayne "riding through my childhood, and perhaps through yours . . . [he] determined for ever the shape of certain of our dreams". And here are two researchers at the University of Chicago, Donald Horton and Richard Wohl, writing in 1956 on how the new medium of television had created a new kind of star "considered by his audience as a friend, counsellor, comforter and model".

Now look at Closer or Heat or, as often as not, any of the tabloids. Cheryl is close to cracking up, they tell us, or Ulrika is dangerously gaunt. These are not the dream figures described by Didion. No, what they represent is the sub-prime crisis of the celebrity industry.

Think back to Wall Street's sub-prime crisis. That was a story of lenders so desperate for market share and quick profit that they were chucking big sums at people who didn't warrant it. The tale is very similar in the celebrity-media industry.

Your TV used to be the equivalent of a rating-agency, exposing you only to AAA-rated talent. Now however, it asks you to keep up with the Kardashians; watch a Hilton or an Osborne muddle through the real world, and, yes, be a guest at Katie Price's latest wedding. The fundamentals of all these celebs are, frankly, ropey, and yet viewers are invited to invest time and emotional equity in them.

"Celetoids" is what the sociologist Chris Rojek calls them: famous people created by and for the tabloids. But just as financiers lumped the sub-prime loans in with the high-grade stuff and couldn't tell them apart, so these new celebs are now mixed up with the more conventional stars. Jennifer Aniston would have been a well-liked comic actor in any era: but it is only in this one that her alleged torment over Brad and inability to snap up a decent man would be pored over by the glossies.

Just as the sub-prime crisis eventually led to a collapse in the entire market, the sub-prime celeb boom threatens much the same. Inglis rightly describes celebrity as "a social adhesive" giving colleagues and schoolkids something to talk about. But surely no one would ever want to discuss Michelle Heaton (unless she did something really interesting). No, this market is in dire need of a regulator. The question is: where is the Mervyn King, the top watchdog, to bring some order to the fame industry?

Source: Science news, comment and analysis | guardian.co.uk | 6 Jul 2010 | 12:00 am

Forecasters eye new storm brewing over Gulf (Reuters)

Reuters - An area of disturbed weather over the southeastern Gulf of Mexico could strengthen into a tropical storm later this week, the U.S. National Hurricane Center said on Monday.
Source: Yahoo! News: Science News | 5 Jul 2010 | 7:13 pm

Close encounters with giant eagle

Among a series of close encounters with a family of giant eagles, a BBC film crew survives a flyby attack.
Source: BBC News | Science & Environment | UK Edition | 5 Jul 2010 | 6:13 pm

Tar balls washing up on beaches in Texas: coast guard (AFP)

AFP - The US Coast Guard said Monday tar balls were spotted this weekend along the Texas shore and said tests were underway to determine if they were from the massive BP oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico.

Source: Yahoo! News: Science News | 5 Jul 2010 | 5:48 pm

Ancient Hunting Weapon Discovered in Melting Ice

As warming temperatures melt away patches of ice, archeologists are finding a trove of ancient artifacts, including a 10,000-year-old hunting tool.
Source: Livescience.com | 5 Jul 2010 | 4:33 pm

Delaying School Start Times Benefits Teens (LiveScience.com)

LiveScience.com - Pushing back high school start times could have benefits for typically sleep-deprived teens, both physically and mentally, a new study suggests.
Source: Yahoo! News: Science News | 5 Jul 2010 | 4:30 pm

Delaying School Start Times Benefits Teens

Delaying school start by just a half hour may have many payoffs for teens, a new study suggests.
Source: Livescience.com | 5 Jul 2010 | 4:27 pm

Spanish science spending lockdown

Young researchers and new projects will take brunt of cuts.<img src="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~r/news/rss/today/~4/9VmAxwHbpJ0" height="1" width="1"/>
Source: NatureNews - All articles published today - nature.com science feeds | 5 Jul 2010 | 4:25 pm

Tips for Seniors to Prevent Falls

Falls are the leading cause of injury deaths. Here are some techniques to avoid falls.
Source: Livescience.com | 5 Jul 2010 | 4:18 pm

Few fishy facts found in climate report

Dutch investigation supports key warnings from the IPCC's most recent assessment.
Source: NatureNews - All articles published today - nature.com science feeds | 5 Jul 2010 | 4:03 pm

Incredible New Microwave Map of the Entire Sky

The Planck satellite released its first microwave radiation map of the entire sky. The image is made from ten months of data and will be followed by three more all-sky surveys by the end of the European Space Agency’s mission in 2012.

Astronomers will use the data to study the early universe and how stars and galaxies form.

“This single image captures both our own cosmic backyard — the Milky Way galaxy that we live in — but also the subtle imprint of the Big Bang from which the whole Universe emerged,” David Parker of the UK Space Agency said in a press release July 5.

The Milky Way galaxy dominates the center of the image, the blue light is the dust in the galaxy and the red is hot gas. The yellow-spotted areas are the Cosmic Microwave Background radiation, which the oldest light in the universe. It was emitted 400,000 years after the Big Bang and reveals information about how galaxies first began to form.

The mottled look of the Cosmic Microwave Background radiation is the result of differences in temperature and density. The light from the Milky Way will be digitally removed from the image so that astronomers can study the most precise picture yet of the entire CMB. Planck records microwave radiation in nine different frequency bands, which will help scientists separate the light from the galaxy and the light from the early universe.

“Just looking at the pictures you can tell we’re seeing new things about the structure of our galaxy,” David Clements of Imperial College London said in a press release. “Once we’ve done that, and stripped away these foregrounds, then it’s on to the Cosmic Microwave Background and the glow of the Big Bang itself!”

Image: ESA, LFI, HFI Consortia. Higher resolution version.

See Also:

• Astronomers Make 5-Gigapixel Image of Milky Way
• New NASA Sky Mapper to Hunt Stars, Galaxies, Near-Earth Asteroids
• Cosmic Dust Gives Milky Way a Fiery Mane
• Origin of Milky Way Clouds Revealed

Source: Wired: Wired Science | 5 Jul 2010 | 3:47 pm

Journals step up plagiarism policing

Cut-and-paste culture tackled by CrossCheck software.
Source: NatureNews - All articles published today - nature.com science feeds | 5 Jul 2010 | 2:39 pm

Dutch agency admits mistake in UN climate report (AP)

AP - A leading Dutch environmental agency, taking the blame for one of the glaring errors that undermined the credibility of a seminal U.N. report on climate change, said Monday it has discovered more small mistakes and urged the panel to be more careful.

Source: Yahoo! News: Science News | 5 Jul 2010 | 2:12 pm

Japanese probe saw deep Moon rock

Olivine rocks that may have originated deep within the Moon were spied on its surface by a Japanese probe, scientists report.
Source: BBC News | Science & Environment | UK Edition | 5 Jul 2010 | 1:21 pm

First-Hand Look: One Family's Unforgettable Zero Gravity Holiday (SPACE.com)

SPACE.com - Like many American families across the country, the Stern family of Colorado celebrated the Fourth of July holiday together on Sunday. But instead of a traditional barbecue or picnic, the family took to the skies for a novel weightless daytrip on a Zero Gravity Corporation (Zero-G) aircraft.
Source: Yahoo! News: Science News | 5 Jul 2010 | 1:01 pm

Review backs climate panel report

A Dutch inquiry into the UN climate science panel backs its main findings, but calls for more transparency.
Source: BBC News | Science & Environment | UK Edition | 5 Jul 2010 | 12:23 pm

Doctors need to make up their minds about placebos

Doctors have made their views about homeopathy clear, but their position on whether placebos should be knowingly prescribed is distinctly vague

Last week we were treated to the sight of hundreds of British doctors voting on whether homeopathy has a place in the NHS – a surreal spectacle on a par with watching a geologists' union arguing what their position on the likelihood of a flat Earth should be. Naturally BMA members voted overwhelmingly in favour of the motion that homeopathy should not be provided on the NHS, but many among their ranks were sceptical of the move, and not all of them were believers in 18th century magic.

In fact their arguments weren't really about homeopathy at all, but made a compelling case for a wider debate about British medicine's elephant in the room – the placebo. I talked to one of those who spoke at the BMA debate, Dr John Garner. "Though we are all in favour of evidence-based medicine, all GPs know that there are patients who don't have evidence-based symptoms," said Dr Garner. "These patients after full investigation do not respond to conventional medicine and some find benefit in homeopathic treatments."

Garner made three points to me: that we shouldn't be withdrawing treatments that work for patients (whether this is a placebo effect or not); that the medicines these patients might otherwise be given, such as painkillers, SSRI antidepressants or antibiotics, may have side effects or be more expensive; and that by catering to their whims "we keep the patients in contact with conventional medicine so if their symptoms change they are not alienated from mainstream medicine".

Before we continue, let's be clear, an argument for placebos is in no way an argument for homeopathy. For one thing, homeopathy is a rip-off – why should the NHS pay a fiver a time for magic sugar pills when a tube of Smarties costs 50p, comes in lots of different colours and has pretty much the same evidence base?

And as happy as many people are to believe that medical training can be replaced by Google and a DVD box set of House MD, the fact is that homeopaths are not trained in the same way that doctors are to make diagnoses or give out prescriptions. Nobody claims that all real doctors are perfect either, but with the best will in the world, giving homeopaths responsibility for front-line medicine is like letting toddlers fix your car because they can drive a go-kart and make "vroom vroom" noises.

But the inconvenient truth for me, the BMA and for sceptics who backed the recent 10:23 campaign against homeopathy is that those who opposed the motion actually have a bit of a point. A fact nobody disputes is that for some patients, homeopathy works, just as any sugar pill would. Is there therefore a case for allowing placebos – and by extension alternative medicine – to be used in treating patients?

The science and technology select committee's "evidence check" on homeopathy earlier this year specifically tackled the issue of placebos and gave them short shrift. In its written conclusions, it quoted the comment from NHS West Kent's medical director Dr James Thallon that, "When doctors prescribe placebos, they risk damaging the trust that exists between them and their patients."

But the committee's discussion of placebos focused on ethics rather than pragmatism, and in the real world the ethics may not be as clearcut.

When questioned by Liberal Democrat MP Evan Harris during the evidence check, the then minister for health Mike O'Brien highlighted this dilemma: "I would not be happy to be misled and I suspect most patients would not. However, that was not the question you asked me. What you were asking me ... was whether it would be unethical for a doctor ever to prescribe a placebo ... I thought about it and I took the view that there might be circumstances, but would you generally do it? Of course you would not."

Dr Ben Goldacre took a similarly nuanced view at the hearing, with an argument that echoes Dr Garner's: "There are often situations where an individual may want treatment, for example, but where medicine has little to offer – lots of back pain, stress at work, medically unexplained fatigue, and most common colds, to give just a few examples. Going through a 'theatre' of medical treatment, and trying every medication in the book, will only risk side-effects. A harmless sugar pill in these circumstances may seem to be the sensible option."

Mention placebos to the General Medical Council, the doctors' disciplinary body, and the response is somewhat muted. Several times in the past year, I and others have asked the GMC to clarify its stance on both homeopathy and the placebo effect, and in each case I've been referred back to the same guidance, which reads as follows, but could be interpreted in many ways depending on your definition of "benefits":

"We do not require doctors to use only evidence-based treatments, in any form of medical care, but we do expect doctors to do their best to ensure that any treatment they offer is in the patient's best interests. This will generally mean that any known risks of the treatment are outweighed by the potential benefits to the patient."

There are no easy answers here, and with existing guidance as vague as this doctors are left to make their own judgement calls about the use of placebos.

I believe homeopathy should be consigned to the history books, so I'm happy to see doctors standing up to ignorance and calling for a ban. But a bigger debate should be had about the role of placebos in healthcare, because at the moment they're being used anyway, and simply banning them one by one on an ad hoc basis probably doesn't constitute an effective health policy.

Source: Science news, comment and analysis | guardian.co.uk | 5 Jul 2010 | 11:34 am

US climate scientists receive hate mail barrage in wake of UEA scandal

Vitriolic campaign targets American scientists following leak of climate unit emails

• Read the hate emails sent to climate scientists
• Hacked email climate scientists receive death threats

Climate scientists in the US say police inaction has left them defenceless in the face of a torrent of death threats and hate mail, leaving them fearing for their lives and one to contemplate arming himself with a handgun.

The scientists say the threats have increased since the furore over leaked emails from the University of East Anglia began last November, and a sample of the hate mail sent in recent months and seen by the Guardian reveals the scale and vitriolic tone of the abuse.

The scientists revealed they have been told to "go gargle razor blades" and have been described as "Nazi climate murderers". Some emails have been sent to them without any attempt by the sender to disguise their identity. Even though the scientists have received advice from the FBI, the local police say they are not able to act due to the near-total tolerance of "freedom of speech" in the US.

The problem appears less severe in the UK but, Professor Phil Jones, the UEA scientist at the centre of the hacked email controversy, revealed in February he had been receiving two death threats a week and had contemplated suicide. "People said I should go and kill myself," he said. "They said that they knew where I lived. They were coming from all over the world." The third and final independent review into the issues raised by the hacked UEA emails is due to be published on Wednesday when Sir Muir Russell presents his panel's conclusions.

Professor Stephen Schneider, a climatologist based at Stanford University in California, whose name features in the UEA emails, says he has received "hundreds" of violently abusive emails since last November. The peak came in December during the Copenhagen climate change summit, he said, but the number has picked up again in recent days since he co-authored a scientific paper last month which showed that 97%-98% of climate scientists agree that mankind's carbon emissions are causing global temperatures to increase.

Schneider described his attackers as "cowards" and said he had observed an "immediate, noticeable rise" in emails whenever climate scientists were attacked by prominent right-wing US commentators, such as Glenn Beck and Rush Limbaugh.

"[The senders] are not courageous people," said Schneider. "Where are they getting their information from? They just listen to assertions made on blogs and rightwing talkshows. It's pathetic."

Schneider said the FBI had taken an interest earlier this year when his name appeared on a "death list" on a neo-Nazi website alongside other climate scientists with apparent Jewish ancestry. But, to date, no action has been taken.

"The effect on me has been tremendous," said Schneider. "Some of these people are mentally imbalanced. They are invariably gun-toting rightwingers. What do I do? Learn to shoot a Magnum? Wear a bullet-proof jacket? I have now had extra alarms fitted at my home and my address is unlisted. I get scared that we're now in a new Weimar republic where people are prepared to listen to what amounts to Hitlerian lies about climate scientists."

Dr Kevin Trenberth, head of the climate analysis section at the National Center for Atmospheric Research in Colorado, said he has also been receiving similar emails since last November when a private email of his was released into the public domain in which he had said: "The fact is that we can't account for the lack of warming at the moment and it is a travesty that we can't." Trenberth has gone on to repeatedly defend his email and explain its context, but says he has now sent a file of abusive emails totalling "19 pages of text at about 10pt font" to his university's security officials. He said the response of the US police had been "pathetic", but also blamed it on freedom-of-speech legislation.

Professor Michael Mann, director of the Earth System Science Center at Pennsylvania State University and leading proponent of the "Hockey Stick graph", said his experiences of hate mail were "eerily similar" to those described by Schneider. "I'm not comfortable talking about the details, especially as some of these matters remain under police investigation," he said. "What I can say is that the emails come in bursts, and do seem to be timed with high-profile attack pieces on talk radio and other fringe media outlets."

Last month, Mann told ABC News in the US that the following message was typical of the emails he has been receiving: "Six feet under with the roots is where you should be. I was hoping I would see the news that you'd committed suicide. Do it, freak." Another climate scientist, who wished to remain anonymous, said he had had a dead animal dumped on his doorstep and now travels with bodyguards.

Dr Gavin Schmidt, a climatologist at NASA's Goddard Institute for Space Studies in New York and co-author of the RealClimate website, said he had chosen to adopt a different strategy and now largely ignores the abusive emails he receives. "I learned a while ago that there is no way to prevent people who have no idea who you are, or what you think, or what you do, using your name to project their problems onto," he said. "Should I be offended and get annoyed, or should I just look upon my interlocutor with bemusement and pity?"

UK-based climatologists working outside of UEA report they have received far fewer abusive emails compared to their US counterparts. Dr Myles Allen, head of the climate dynamics group at University of Oxford's Atmospheric, Oceanic and Planetary Physics Department, said he only tends to get such emails when he writes an article in the press and that they "tend to start off 'Dear Communists, know that you will fail.'"

"I suspect part of the reason people feel they have to attack climate scientists is that politicians and environmentalists have a tendency to hide behind the science," he said. "In the run-up to Copenhagen, we often heard the phrase 'the science dictates' - that we need a 40% cut in rich-country emissions by 2020, for example - when in fact only a very specific, and politically loaded, interpretation of the science implied any such thing. If people who claim to be on the side of the science use scientists as human shields, it is hardly surprising that the scientists end up getting shot at."

Dr Peter Stott, head of climate monitoring and attribution at the Met Office's Hadley Centre, said he had had "mercifully few" abusive emails or letters compared to scientists in the US. "I do get letters and emails accusing me of being wrong and stupid, but I have received few really abusive ones. I got one accusing me of being a communist, but so far at the Met Office at least we haven't been on the receiving end of the types of hate mail the US scientists have apparently been getting. Also in Australia, I hear."

Source: Science news, comment and analysis | guardian.co.uk | 5 Jul 2010 | 10:25 am

Study: Extreme Longevity May Be More Genes Than Lifestyle (Time.com)

Time.com - How long you live has a lot to do with your environment and lifestyle, but exceptional longevity may have even more to do with your genes
Source: Yahoo! News: Science News | 5 Jul 2010 | 9:50 am

EEG may help predict schizophrenia

Information from an EEG (electroencephalography) test could allow doctors to identify people at high risk of a particular mental disorder, such as schizophrenia

An EEG test could one day be used to identify people at risk of developing mental illnesses such as schizophrenia before they show any symptoms.

Scientists have found that a type of EEG (electroencephalography) brain wave is slightly different in people who have siblings with schizophrenia, compared with that seen in the general population. The researchers believe the information could be used to identify those at highest risk and pre-emptively treat them before they develop a full-blown mental disorder.

"Unlike in general medicine where we have lots of reliable [biological] markers, such as blood sugar for diabetes, in psychiatry we still rely very much on the behaviours and symptoms a person reports when they go to see a clinician," said Maddie Groom of the University of Nottingham, who led the work.

She said markers of mental illness would not only help predict who was likely to be at risk but also how severe someone's condition is and how well they are responding to medication. "[Markers] would give us a really big handle not only on what's causing the disorder but also how best to treat and diagnose it," she said.

In her study, she took EEG recordings from 30 teenagers whose siblings had developed schizophrenia and compared these with EEGs from 36 controls. Schizophrenia is thought to be at least partly inherited, so the siblings of people who have the condition have a slightly increased risk of also developing the disorder.

"Their risk is still very small but, nonetheless, when you compare them with people with siblings who don't have schizophrenia, their risk is still greater than in the general population," said Groom.

The volunteers were asked to perform a task where they had to press a button every time they saw a particular image on a computer screen. They then had to inhibit that response and not press the button when a different stimulus appeared on the screen in its place.

"This is a really difficult test to do and people without any mental health problems find it difficult," said Groom. "But when we measured the brain activity of the siblings of the people with schizophrenia, their brain activity was reduced at the time when they needed to pay attention towards the stimulus and also when they needed to inhibit their response to that stimulus."

While they performed the task, a particular electrical signal known as the P300 wave was significantly reduced in the siblings of schizophrenia patients and in the patients themselves whenever the stimulus they had to ignore appeared on the screen.

The p300 marker is thought to reflect attentional and inhibitory control aspects of brain processing. When someone needs to focus on something that is particularly important, and when that something requires an inhibition of a motor response, the P300 marker tends to be larger in people with good mental health.

However, Groom stressed that the brain activity of the siblings was not radically different from healthy people and that the marker may be related to the risk of the disorder rather than the disorder itself.

"The difference on a case-by-case basis from our healthy group was very small and you wouldn't be able to pick them out from a crowd, measure their P300 and say that this person is related to someone with schizophrenia," said Groom.

The researchers are also investigating P300 in people with ADHD (attention deficit hyperactivity disorder). Groom presented her work today at the Forum of European Neuroscience (Fens) conference in Amsterdam.

Barbara Sahakian, a professor of clinical neuropsychology at the University of Cambridge, said: "If we could identify [people at risk of mental disorders] early with biomarkers and treat them early, we could probably get in there before any damage is done and they become relapsing and chronic."

In a separate study, also presented today at Fens, Seth Grant of the Wellcome Trust Sanger Institute in Cambridge created a catalogue that linked brain disorders to malfunctions in genes involved in making synapses, the junctions between nerve cells.

"What we found, in terms of disease, was quite striking – defects in the genes that encode these human synapse proteins are really a major cause of disease," he said. "There are over 135 nervous system diseases, psychiatric and neurological, that arise because of defects in these synaptic proteins. These are common and rare diseases – schizophrenia, bipolar disorder, autism."

He added: "We recognise that these synapse proteins are the molecular basis for many brain diseases. We know no other molecular structure that is responsible for more brain diseases ... Clinically, there is a wide spectrum of brain diseases and it is unclear how some of those are related to one another and if they are related at all. We can now see that many of them are related to one another because the molecular underpinnings of those diseases are in the synapse proteins which are physically binding to one another. There is a unifying mechanism that underpins a large number of brain diseases."

The findings will help target drugs for mental conditions more accurately in future, said the scientists. When the synapses and their role in disease are fully understood, said Grant, scientists will have scores of new targets to develop drugs against. In addition, a drug would no longer be used to treat, say, only schizophrenia or autism, but would instead treat individual characteristics related to the malfunction of particular genes, which might be common to several diseases.

Source: Science news, comment and analysis | guardian.co.uk | 5 Jul 2010 | 9:40 am

Review of questioned IPCC report says conclusions 'well-founded'

Dutch government finds minor inaccuracies in contested paper, but reasserts that 'climate change poses "substantial risks" to most parts of the world'

The first major independent review of criticisms of the global assessment of climate change led by the United Nations declared today that it found "no errors that would undermine the main conclusions" of the panel of international scientists that climate change will have serious consequences around the world.

However the Dutch panel of experts claims it found 12 errors - from a criticism of the number of people in Africa at risk of water shortages to mistakes in references or typing. It also suggested the summary version of the report had portrayed an over-dramatic picture by putting the emphasis on negative impacts of climate change, and it failed to explain some of the threats were not only driven by climate change.

Among several recommendations, it said the UN's Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, paid for by governments including the UK and Netherlands, should in future pay researchers to review the report in more detail.

The report was officially welcomed by the IPCC and scientists who worked on the last assessment report, published in 2007, however only a small number of the "errors" have been corrected. The remaining errors were not accepted by the scientists, said Professor Martin Parry, who was co-chair of the section of the report that was under scrutiny.

"The conclusions are not undermined by any errors, and we'd like that to be the message the world will take," said Parry. "[They found] a very small number of near-trivial errors in about 500 pages [and] probably 100,000 statements. I would say that's pretty good going."

The scientists also rejected the potentially more damaging complaint that the IPCC's Summary for Policy Makers report, which condenses eight chapters on regional impacts to a single page of 32 statements, ignored positive impacts such as the ability to grow new crops in some parts of the world, or opening of shorter Arctic sea routes.

The summary, vetted "line by line" by governments, highlights the biggest impacts on humans and the environment which need political attention, said Parry. Positive benefits tended to be local and relatively small, said Professor David Vaughan of the British Antarctic Survey, a lead coordinating author of the next IPCC assessment.

The agency was asked to examine eight chapters about the regions in the 500-page section on global impacts put together by Working Group II, which itself formed half of the full 1,000-page IPCC assessment.

One "minor inaccuracy" the Dutch panel said it found was an estimate of people in Africa who could be exposed to water stress, which they said should be narrowed from 75m-250m to 90m-220m. However Professor Nigel Arnell, the source of the data, said although the underlying models could have been added differently, to recalculate the total would be to "over-interpret" the data by suggesting a level of accuracy the IPCC does not claim.

As well as the 12 errors, the Dutch reviewers made 23 criticisms of the "quality" of statements. These ranged from failure to explain that forecast water stress and heat deaths also had other causes such as population growth, to pointing out a link to underlying research did not work. Arnell said the IPCC report "repeatedly stresses" its estimates of numbers are a comparison to what would happen if forecast climate change did not happen.

Despite rejecting many criticisms in the Dutch report, the IPCC has employed more reviewers for the fifth assessment, and should consider other changes, including paying scientists to make sure every line of the report is scrutinised before it is published, said Parry.

The Dutch government asked the environment agency to investigate the IPCC report after international controversy about two mistakes in the 2007 assessment: the date by which Himalaya glaciers were expected to melt, and a claim that 55% of the Netherlands is below the sea level. The agency report admits this mistake was based on information it provided and says the real figure was 29%.

Source: Science news, comment and analysis | guardian.co.uk | 5 Jul 2010 | 9:09 am

Planck sends back postcard of universe

This image from the Planck telescope is a first instalment from its survey of the universe's hidden structure

Giant clouds of interstellar gas and dust light up this panoramic view of the sky recorded by the European Space Agency's Planck telescope.

The space telescope was launched in May last year on a mission to survey the "cosmic microwave background" – ancient light left over from the big bang.

The bright streak across the middle of the picture is our own galaxy, the Milky Way, viewed edge-on. The intense light comes not from stars but from the radiation released by the dust and gas clouds that stretch between them.

"We are opening the door to an El Dorado where scientists can seek the nuggets that will lead to deeper understanding of how our universe came to be and how it works now. The image itself and its remarkable quality is a tribute to the engineers who built and have operated Planck," said David Southwood, director of science and robotic exploration at the European Space Agency (Esa).

The blue and white wisps that reach above and below our own galaxy are streamers of cold dust that trace out the "galactic web" where new stars are born.

The speckles at the top and bottom of the image are caused by microwave background radiation, the remnants of the first light that appeared 380,000 years after the big bang flung the universe into being 13.7bn years ago.

The Planck telescope observes the sky in nine wavelengths from the microwave to the vary-far-infrared region of the spectrum. This image is a composite of pictures taken at several different wavelengths.

The pictures beamed back by Planck will give astronomers insights into the structure of the universe and hopefully shed light on dark energy, which is believed to drive the expansion of the universe, and dark matter, the invisible substance that seems to cling to galaxies.

"This image is just a glimpse of what Planck will ultimately see," said Jan Tauber, Planck project scientist at Esa.

Source: Science news, comment and analysis | guardian.co.uk | 5 Jul 2010 | 9:09 am

Global emissions targets will lead to 4C temperature rise, say studies

Studies predict major extinctions and collapse of Greenland ice sheet with temperatures rising well above UN targets

The world is heading for an average temperature rise of nearly 4C (7F), according to analysis of national pledges from around the globe. Such a rise would bring a high risk of major extinctions, threats to food supplies and the near-total collapse of the huge Greenland ice sheet.

More than 100 heads of state agreed in Copenhagen last December to limit the rise in global temperatures to 1.5C-2C (2.7-3.6F) above the long-term average before the industrial revolution, which kickstarted a massive global increase in the greenhouse gases blamed for warming the planet and triggering climate change.

But six months on, a major international effort to monitor the emissions reductions targets of more than 60 countries, including all the major economies, the Climate Interactive Scoreboard, calculates that the world is on course for a rise of nearly double the stated goal by 2100.

Another study by Climate Analytics, at the Potsdam Institute in Germany, suggests there is "virtually no chance" world governments will keep the temperature rise to below 2C, and the rise is likely to be 3.5C (6.3F) by the end of the century.

In both analyses the current commitments suggest a much better outcome than the estimated business-as-usual temperature rise of 4.8C (8.6F), but are well above the 2C maximum the UN hoped would be agreed at the next major meeting this December in Cancún, Mexico – and even further from the 1.5C target many developing nations argue is needed to stop the worst impacts of climate change in their countries.

In its last assessment of the problem in 2007, the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) forecasts that a rise of more than 2C would lead to potential increases in food production, but an increasingly high risk of extinction for 20-30% of species, more severe droughts and floods, and a unstoppable "widespread to near total" loss of the Greenland ice sheet over very long time periods. However, at 4C it predicted global food production was "very likely" to decrease, "major extinctions around the globe", and near-total loss of Greenland's ice, precipitating 2-7m of sea-level rise in the long term. As temperatures rose, the severity of floods, erosion, water pollution, heatwaves, droughts and health problems such as malnutrition and diarrhoea diseases would also increase, said the IPCC.

"We're looking at a level which is much more extreme and profoundly dangerous," said Ruth Davis, chief policy adviser for Greenpeace. "It's arguable the UN process has become dangerously cut adrift from the science of climate change."

The Department of Energy and Climate Change said that, based on national offers of emissions reductions made in Copenhagen, the United Nations Environment Programme (Unep) and other bodies had calculated that it was possible to meet the 2C target, although this would depend on the targets set beyond 2020.

"There's more work to do if we're going to avoid a 2C temperature rise which is why we're pushing the EU to cut its emissions by 30%," said a DECC spokesman. "Keeping below 2C is still possible from the high end Copenhagen accord offers, but will require steeper action after 2020."

However, many experts said the much higher temperature-rise estimates were a cause for serious concern that emissions cuts proposed for Cancún were too low and not enough was being done to prepare for further cuts beyond 2020, even though there are still nearly six months of negotiations before the talks.

"We've made progress but we're clearly not headed where we need to be," said Andrew Jones, co-director of Climate Interactive, which is backed by several universities including MIT. "No one is talking about changing any of the 2020 proposals, so we should be worried." Climate Interactive's model is also backed by a panel of experts including Prof Bob Watson, chief scientific advisor to the UK's Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs (Defra), and a former head of the IPCC.

The Climate Interactive Scoreboard, for which researchers check daily for updates in emissions or other targets which would reduce pollution such as reductions in energy intensity or increases in renewable energy, makes a medium-range prediction of a 3.9C increase in temperatures, with a range of 2.3-6.2C (4.2-11.1F), based on committed targets, and a more encouraging 2.9C (5.2F) average, with a range of 1.7-4.6C (3.1-8.5F) based on "potential" commitments suggested but not enacted by many nations.

One of the major barriers to setting higher emissions cuts was a great many countries, including Canada and the EU, have said they do not want to increase their targets until the US sets significant reductions, which is proving hard for President Obama to achieve, said Davis.

Climate Analytics and Ecofys, under the banner of Climate Action Tracker, estimate a range of 2.8-4.3C.

The principal differences between the two calculations are that they use different models, and made different assumptions about what countries will do after their current targets expire, said Jones.

In both cases, there has been no improvement to the forecast outcome since the experts assessed the prospects immediately after the Copenhagen conference.

The predictions will be particularly worrying for many watchers because the 2C target was based on research which suggested that at that level there was only a low to medium risk of key changes to the conditions in which humans survive; however an update of the "burning embers diagram" by the authors, published last year by the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences in the US, suggested that at 2C there greater risk in all categories, including a significant to high risk to unique and threatened ecosystems, of extreme weather events and a global distribution of the worst threats.

Climate Interactive Scoreboard

Source: Science news, comment and analysis | guardian.co.uk | 5 Jul 2010 | 8:58 am

Three-Legged Dogs Help Robot Research

Studying how dogs adapt to losing a leg can help researchers understand how to build robots that deal with unexpected conditions.
Source: Discovery News - Top Stories | 5 Jul 2010 | 8:55 am

The next trailblazer of Australian science

Suzanne Cory is the first woman to take on the top job at the Australian Academy of Science.
Source: NatureNews - All articles published today - nature.com science feeds | 5 Jul 2010 | 8:12 am

Russian cargo docks with space station on 2nd try

MOSCOW (Reuters) - An unmanned Russian cargo ship docked successfully Sunday at the International Space Station (ISS) on its second attempt after missing it Friday due to a faulty radio link, a Russian space official said.
Source: Reuters: Science News | 5 Jul 2010 | 7:30 am

Harrabin's notes

The unanswered questions from 'climategate'
Source: BBC News | Science & Environment | UK Edition | 5 Jul 2010 | 7:20 am

Horses Understand Humans, Sort Of

Although horses can't talk (with the exception of Mister Ed naturally), they are able to pick up on subtle eye and body movements.
Source: Discovery News - Top Stories | 5 Jul 2010 | 5:00 am

Europe's Planck space telescope reveals 'spectacular sky'

Europe's Planck space telescope produces its first full-sky image, a key step in its quest to decode the "oldest light" in the Universe.
Source: BBC News | Science & Environment | UK Edition | 5 Jul 2010 | 4:55 am

Linking nationality to IQ is wrong

A study claiming people who live in countries where disease is rife have lower IQs is flawed on many levels

The idea of a link between nationality and intelligence has a long pedigree – certainly as ancient as slavery and colonialism. And in its faux-scientific form, well, Darwin dabbled, Churchill embraced and Hitler implemented.

The latest burst comes from Randy Thornhill of the University of New Mexico, who once proposed the idea that men evolved with a genetic predisposition to rape (raising the question of why these genes are so much more prevalent in, say, Serbia or South Africa, than Tanzania or Sweden).

He and his team are back with their latest idea: a direct link between levels of infectious disease and average national IQ.

Their underlying case is perfectly valid – when children devote energy to fighting infection, brain development is sometimes sacrificed. But their evidence at a national level is more dubious, based on comparing World Health Organisation data with average IQ scores. The obvious point is that correlation is not the same thing as causation. In other words, there might be a range of other reasons why people in disease-ridden countries don't excel in IQ tests.

And it is also worth pointing out that it has been warmer countries (some in malaria zones – a key disease highlighted by Thornhill) that have been the catalyst for civilisation: Mesopotamia, China, Egypt, Greece.

But a more profound objection relates to Thornhill's obdurate belief that IQ is a true measure of "crystallised general intelligence" rather than just a measure of ability to perform in IQ tests.

The killer blow was delivered more than 20 years ago by the New Zealand academic Jim Flynn, who proved that average IQ test scores increased progressively in most countries (now known as the "Flynn effect"). If American children of a century ago took IQ tests of today their average score would be well below 70. In Britain, the average IQ has risen by 27 points since the war.

The reason has nothing to do with evolution. In fact, there is an emerging scientific consensus that human intelligence is unlikely to have evolved over the last 45,000 years, and perhaps more (for example, an engraved ochre plaque found near Cape Town, containing intricate symbolic designs, was carbon-dated at more than 70,000 years).

According to Flynn, generational rises are prompted by increased exposure to abstract logic. Other reasons might include nutrition levels, time spent in school, environmental stimuli and familiarity with aptitude testing. It makes no sense to compare average IQ scores of different populations because they are unlikely to have identical exposure to all of these factors.

So while it might be true that, on average, Ashkenazi Jews or Chinese people have higher average IQs than Ethiopians or Caucasian Britons, this does not mean that one group is innately more intelligent than another.

Yet this is precisely what Richard Lynn (quoted in the article) and other evolutionary psychologists such as Steven Pinker have argued – a perspective based on combining a discredited view of IQ with a faulty grasp of evolutionary theory.

Thornhill's disease-based hypothesis is less objectionable, but he is indulging in just-so story logic when he extends this to speculating that whole nations have adapted their immune systems at the expense of their brains: a modern version of a horribly ancient conclusion.

Source: Science news, comment and analysis | guardian.co.uk | 5 Jul 2010 | 4:10 am

Road pricing 'inevitable' for UK

Charging motorists per mile travelled is "inevitable" if future traffic gridlock is to be avoided, a charity suggests.
Source: BBC News | Science & Environment | UK Edition | 5 Jul 2010 | 3:59 am

BP oil spill costs pass $3bn mark

The oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico has cost BP a total of $3.12bn to date, the company says, up $500m from last week.
Source: BBC News | Science & Environment | UK Edition | 5 Jul 2010 | 3:46 am