New preimplantation genetic screening method can predict chromosomal abnormalities, study shows

The efficacy of preimplantation genetic screening (PGS) has been one of the most hotly disputed subjects in assisted reproduction over the past few years. A new study has now shown, in its groundbreaking proof of principle study, that screening of polar bodies (small cells that are the by-product of egg development), is a reliable method to analyze the chromosomal status of an egg.
Source: ScienceDaily: Latest Science News | 13 Jul 2010 | 3:00 pm

Why you should never arm wrestle a saber-toothed tiger

Saber-toothed cats may be best known for their supersized canines, but they also had exceptionally strong forelimbs for pinning prey before delivering the fatal bite, says a new study.
Source: ScienceDaily: Latest Science News | 13 Jul 2010 | 3:00 pm

Avatars as lifelike representations and effective marketing tools

It is predicted that 80 percent of active Internet consumers and Fortune 500 companies will have an avatar or presence in a virtual community, including social networks, by the end of 2011. A new article investigates the role avatars play in the virtual and consumer environment, how well avatars reflect the personality of their creators, the psychology behind self-representation, and how these virtually made identities are perceived by other members of the virtual community.
Source: ScienceDaily: Latest Science News | 13 Jul 2010 | 3:00 pm

Magnets trump metallics: Magnetic fields can turn highly conductive nanotubes into semiconductors

Physicists have been studying the Aharonov-Bohm effect -- the interaction between electrically charged particles and magnetic fields -- and how it relates to carbon nanotubes. While doing so, they came to the unexpected conclusion that magnetic fields can turn highly conductive nanotubes into semiconductors.
Source: ScienceDaily: Latest Science News | 13 Jul 2010 | 3:00 pm

Salmon in hot water

Rearing juvenile salmon at the relatively high temperature of 16 C causes skeletal deformities in the fish. Researchers investigated both the magnitude and mechanisms of this effect, which occurs when salmon farmers use warmed water to increase fish growth rates.
Source: ScienceDaily: Latest Science News | 13 Jul 2010 | 3:00 pm

Larger head size may protect against Alzheimer's symptoms

New research shows that people with Alzheimer's disease who have large heads have better memory and thinking skills than those with the disease who have smaller heads, even when they have the same amount of brain cell death due to the disease.
Source: ScienceDaily: Latest Science News | 13 Jul 2010 | 3:00 pm

New system to reduce heating costs in cold climates

A new type of heat pump under development could allow residents in cold climates to cut their heating bills in half.
Source: ScienceDaily: Latest Science News | 13 Jul 2010 | 12:00 pm

Mice essentially 'cured' of mild diabetes with enzyme

Nutrition experts have essentially "cured" laboratory mice of mild, diet-induced diabetes by stimulating the production of a particular enzyme.
Source: ScienceDaily: Latest Science News | 13 Jul 2010 | 12:00 pm

Fly's brain -- a high-speed computer: Neurobiologists use state-of-the-art methods to decode the basics of motion detection

The minute brains of flies process visual movements in only fractions of a second. Just how the brain of the fly manages to perceive motion with such speed and precision is predicted quite accurately by a mathematical model.
Source: ScienceDaily: Latest Science News | 13 Jul 2010 | 12:00 pm

Gene mutation that causes rare form of deafness identified

Researchers have identified a gene mutation that causes a rare form of hearing loss known as auditory neuropathy.
Source: ScienceDaily: Latest Science News | 13 Jul 2010 | 12:00 pm

Badger cull halted after appeal

A cull of around 1,500 badgers in south-west Wales has been halted after protestors won their legal challenge to stop it.
Source: BBC News | Science & Environment | UK Edition | 13 Jul 2010 | 4:11 am

Losing battle

Efforts to protect biodiversity could make things worse
Source: BBC News | Science & Environment | UK Edition | 13 Jul 2010 | 4:04 am

Hubble Captures Cosmic Cauldron

The churning clouds of dust and gas in this colorful new Hubble image of star-forming region NGC 2467 speak to the violent, tumultuous youthfulness of the region’s stars. The hot infant stars that were brewed in the cloud are emitting fierce ultraviolet radiation, sculpting and eroding the surrounding gas and making it glow in visible wavelengths.

Most of the radiation comes from the single hot, massive star just above the center of the image. Its radiation has pushed aside so much of the gas that a new generation of stars has started forming in the denser regions around the edge. Many more young stars inhabit this region than are visible in this image, but they are hidden by gas and dust.

NGC 2467 lies in the southern constellation Puppis, the Latin name for the poop deck of a ship. It is part of a larger constellation representing the Argo, Jason’s ship in Greek mythology. NGC 2467 is thought to lie about 13,000 light-years from Earth.

The picture was created from images taken with the Advanced Camera for Surveys through three different filters, shown in blue, green and red. The data were taken in 2004.

Higher resolution versions are available.

Image: NASA, ESA and Orsola De Marco (Macquarie University)

See Also:

• Wow! Celebrate Hubble’s 20th With Best Space Image Ever
• Hubble Captures Surprising Star Motions
• Hubble Captures Fireworks in the Starburst Cluster
• Hubble Snaps New Star Birth Photos During 100000th Orbit
• New High-Res Images of Luminous Star-Forming Region
• Hubble Finds Crystal-Clear View of Young Star Cluster

Source: Wired: Wired Science | 13 Jul 2010 | 4:00 am

BP hopes new cap will end Gulf oil nightmare (AFP)

AFP - Oil giant BP hoped Tuesday to finally stem the catastrophic flow of toxic crude in the Gulf of Mexico as it tested a new tighter-fitting cap attached to the gushing well.

Source: Yahoo! News: Science News | 13 Jul 2010 | 3:53 am

Counting the cost

How much damage has Gulf oil spill done?
Source: BBC News | Science & Environment | UK Edition | 13 Jul 2010 | 3:45 am

BP installs new cap on oil well

BP places an improved cap on a ruptured Gulf of Mexico well, raising hopes that all leaking oil could soon be captured.
Source: BBC News | Science & Environment | UK Edition | 13 Jul 2010 | 3:42 am

BP Oil Spill: How Thad Allen Is Tackling the Disaster (Time.com)

Time.com - The Coast Guard admiral has fervent admirers but he may also have been given responsibility for a mess from which no one can emerge unstained
Source: Yahoo! News: Science News | 13 Jul 2010 | 3:15 am

Florida banks seek reprieve from new capital rules: report (Reuters)

Reuters - Banks in Florida are requesting that U.S. federal regulators exempt them from mandatory higher capital requirements because they are struggling to cope with the BP oil spill, the Wall Street Journal said.
Source: Yahoo! News: Science News | 13 Jul 2010 | 3:03 am

Businesses 'profit from nature'

Companies as well as governments will reap dividends from paying for nature, a UN-sponsored report concludes.
Source: BBC News | Science & Environment | UK Edition | 13 Jul 2010 | 3:02 am

The nation's weather (AP)

AP - A cold front was forecast to slowly make its way toward the East Coast on Tuesday, spreading showers and thunderstorms from New England southward to the Southeast.

Source: Yahoo! News: Science News | 13 Jul 2010 | 2:52 am

Stealthy striker

The UK unveils its unmanned combat aircraft prototype
Source: BBC News | Science & Environment | UK Edition | 13 Jul 2010 | 2:43 am

In pictures

Simple ways of helping Indians water their crops
Source: BBC News | Science & Environment | UK Edition | 13 Jul 2010 | 2:38 am

Storm kills 11 in Delhi, disrupts Games work (AFP)

AFP - Heavy rains in New Delhi killed 11 people and flooded construction sites for the Commonwealth Games as the Indian capital races to be ready for the October event, officials said on Tuesday.

Source: Yahoo! News: Science News | 13 Jul 2010 | 2:37 am

'Red hot' arrivals at seed vault

Seeds from some of the hottest food crops arrive in the Arctic to be stored in a "doomsday" seed vault.
Source: BBC News | Science & Environment | UK Edition | 13 Jul 2010 | 2:35 am

What’s the Next Big Step in Solar System Exploration?

Which proposed planetary mission offers the best chance of providing conclusive evidence for life off the Earth?
Source: Discovery News - Top Stories | 13 Jul 2010 | 1:18 am

Homo sapiens: A species torn between love and war

In a series of four short films released on guardian.co.uk this week, Steven Pinker, Frans de Waal and Richard Wrangham grapple with human nature. Carole Jahme introduces the films and the sponsor whose values they epitomise, the Leakey Foundation

In 1968 – four years before he died – the infamous, maverick palaeoanthropologist Louis Seymour Bassett Leakey set up the L.S.B. Leakey Foundation. Its mission then, as now, was to investigate the origins and evolution of humankind, our behaviour and our survival, and to promote the public understanding of human evolution.

Like Charles Darwin, Leakey was a highly creative and independent thinker. Indeed, during his own lifetime he was known as "the Darwin of prehistory". In 1926, aged 23, Leakey left Cambridge University with the intention of proving that Africa, not Asia, was the cradle of humanity. The orthodox view at the time was that modern humans originated in Asia.

Leakey chose to dig for the fossilised remains of our ancestors in East Africa – in Olduvai Gorge, Tanzania. Today, he has been proved right many times over.

For the Leakeys, palaeoanthropology has always been a family affair, with Louis' wife Mary, their son Richard, his wife Meave, Louis' granddaughter Louise and other extended family members all world-class fossil hunters. Between them they have discovered Proconsul africanus, Austrolopithecus (Zinjanthropus) boisei, Homo habilis, the footprints of Australopithecus afarensis, Homo erectus "Turkana Boy", Kenyanthropus platyops.

These are just a few of the significant fossils the Leakeys have presented to the world.

Richard Leakey told me his father had "a prescient mind" – and not just with regard to the location of his own digs, but also in deciding which palaeontologists to back and what comparative studies to initiate to "bring the bones alive". Leakey senior is quoted as saying the length of a man's life "is just a wink in terms of man's evolution". Certainly he was in a hurry throughout his life to understand the lives of the fossilised species he unearthed and one way to do this was by using our ape cousins as models.

Apes in their natural habitat

Captive apes had been studied, but field primatology – where a researcher establishes a long-term field site with the intention of watching natural behaviour unfold – was unheard of before 1960. It is fair to say that without Leakey and his foundation the science of primatology as we know it today would not exist.

It was Leakey who, 50 years ago, sent Jane Goodall to Gombe, Tanzania, to study chimpanzees in their natural habitat. For the first few decades of Goodall's work the scientific community poured contempt on her research. But many years later, esteemed Harvard evolutionary biologist and historian of science Stephen J Gould would comment that, "Jane Goodall's work with the chimpanzees represents one of the Western world's great scientific achievements."

Leakey also had a "gorilla girl", the tragic Dian Fossey, who against the odds established the mountain gorilla study in Rwanda in 1967 (the work with gorillas is ongoing whenever the war-torn area is safe) and an "orang-utan girl", Biruté Galdikas. Thirty-nine years ago, before dispatching Galdikas to Borneo, Leakey had tried to persuade her to have a clitorectomy as a way of dissuading her from getting pregnant and disrupting his research plans. Galdikas declined the suggestion, and today – as a mother of three – she remains committed to orang-utan research and conservation in the face of devastating deforestation in Borneo. The foundation continues to support her work.

These comparative ape studies delighted Leakey as they yielded new and vital information, such as Goodall's observation that wild chimps made and used tools. At the time "man the toolmaker" was practically a scientific edict: humans were defined as having a greater intelligence than "the beasts" because we could make tools. Leakey had dug up tonnes of stone tools at Olduvai. But when it was realised that chimps also made tools Leakey declared: "Now we must redefine man, redefine tool or accept chimps as humans!"

This process of reassessing our position in the natural order of things is ongoing. The foundation supported Jill Pruetz's research in Senegal, where she observed in 2008 chimps making and using spears to hunt animals for meat.

The jigsaw of human evolution

In 1973 the Leakey Foundation also supported Don Johanson's expedition that unearthed the famous Australopithecus afarensis fossil, 3.2m year old "Lucy". The Foundation were also involved in the 1994 (announced in 2009) research that identified Ardipithecus ramidus, the "Ardi" fossil. More than a million years older than Lucy, Ardi was bipedal when on the ground but anthropoidal when in the trees. The fossil was discovered only 49 miles away from Lucy's final resting place.

The Ardi and Lucy fossils combine ancestral ape and ancestral human characteristics and are highly significant pieces in the jigsaw of human evolution.

Since 1987 the Leakey Foundation has funded a Ugandan chimpanzee project led by Harvard anthropologist Richard Wrangham.

The work supported by the Leakey Foundation has consistently contributed to the closing of the "us and them" gap between man and the other apes. Continuing this enterprise, the Leakey Foundation sponsored a series of short films produced this year by The Department of Expansion, a US-based film company, and in return the Leakey Foundation, traditionally coy of publicity, is receiving some long-overdue media exposure.

The films present to the viewer contextualised evolutionary theory: the present global recession is covered, as is the threat of war. "What we're trying to do is take provocative ideas out of the ivory tower and into the public debate," producer Kristina Robbins told me.

To further this debate she chose to include the wisdom of three controversial scientists: the films feature Wrangham; psychologist and author of The Blank Slate Steven Pinker; and primatologist Frans de Waal.

Challenging the boundaries of humanity

Last month I met up with de Waal and Robbins at the Wellcome Trust in London for de Waal's lecture, "Humans and other animals: challenging the boundaries of humanity". In his lecture de Waal reminded us of the ape ability (also seen in humans) spontaneously to give appropriate help to others in times of need. This pro-social, "targeted helping" form of altruism is only seen in species that are capable of self-reflection.

De Waal illustrated his point with an account of a playful juvenile chimp that had become entangled in wire. The panicking youngster was tightening the tourniquet around its neck and would surely die. A high-ranking male came to the rescue, lifted up the juvenile to stop the youngster from struggling and then carefully unravelled the wire, saving the youngster's life.

Behaviour such as this requires complex, empathic cognition and de Waal is now researching pro-social behaviour in elephants, dolphins and dogs. Previous studies suggest that these very diverse species are all wired for cooperative behaviour, which would mean that the origins of virtue are as ancient as the fossils Leakey unearthed.

At a little over seven minutes The Bi-polar Ape is the longest of the Department of Expansion films. Wrangham takes a bleak, misanthropic view, theorising that the behavioural default button in humans is one of aggression. As soon as resources become scarce a switch in our minds is flipped and people attack.

In war situations where there is a stark imbalance of power, the attackers may actually take pleasure in the pain and destruction they inflict.

De Waal is more optimistic. A great admirer of the "make love not war" bonobo, he believes humans are "bi-polar apes". De Waal states that while we have something in common with the bonobo, who do not murder unknown individuals they come across but instead have sex with them, we also have xenophobic tendencies, like our murderous chimpanzee cousins.

Pinker, meanwhile, addresses the hard-wired cognition that drives both aggression and altruism in humans. He hedges his bets on whether humans are aggressors or hippy-peacemakers and instead reflects upon our human ability to "mind-read", suggesting that if we can empathise with our kin, perhaps we can extend that to non-kin, and if we can reflect on the devastating consequences of retaliation, perhaps we can consider conflict resolution.

And where there is cooperation there is hope and where there is hope there is peace. The Bi-polar Ape cleverly transforms arcane evolutionary theory into resonant insights on the fragility of the human condition.

The three other Department of Expansion films – which will be aired by the Guardian over the next three days – are shorter but equally thought-provoking. They deal with the human problems of overcrowding, inequality and superpowers.

In all these films comparisons are made between our ape relatives and ourselves. The underlying message is that once we have gained a better understanding of our evolved natures we can modify our behaviour for the better. So these films could be viewed as self-help aids: by learning about your evolved self you can override your basic instincts and consciously change your behaviour.

The Department of Expansion series of films are perfect, bite-sized lessons on our evolved, ape natures. Louis Seymour Bassett Leakey would have loved them.

Carole Jahme is the author of Beauty and the Beasts: Woman, Ape and Evolution. She writes the Ask Carole column for guardian.co.uk

Source: Science news, comment and analysis | guardian.co.uk | 13 Jul 2010 | 1:10 am

BP to test oil spill cap (Reuters)

Reuters - BP prepared on Tuesday to try sealing off its runaway well with a new cap that it says could for the first time in 12 weeks finally arrest the flow of oil spewing from the floor of the Gulf of Mexico.

Source: Yahoo! News: Science News | 13 Jul 2010 | 12:11 am

Coping Therapies Unlikely to Ease Kids' Stem Cell Treatment: Study (HealthDay)

HealthDay - MONDAY, July 12 (HealthDay News) -- For children undergoing stem cell transplantation, complementary therapies such as massage and humor therapy don't seem to reduce their distress, researchers found.
Source: Yahoo! News: Science News | 12 Jul 2010 | 9:48 pm

Down the Lunar Rabbit-hole

Newly-discovered pits on the Moon could be entrances to a geologic wonderland of underground caves and tunnels. Researchers discuss the possibilities in today's story from Science@NASA.
Source: Science@NASA Headline News | 12 Jul 2010 | 7:44 pm

Comet Probe Visits An Asteroid

Europe's comet-bound Rosetta spacecraft did a little sight-seeing over the weekend, snapping pictures of an asteroid known as Lutetia, located in the Main Asteroid Belt between Mars and Jupiter.
Source: Discovery News - Top Stories | 12 Jul 2010 | 5:43 pm

Ancient Italian artefacts get the blues

Scientists accuse officials of neglect as chemicals discolour stored relics.<img src="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~r/news/rss/today/~4/TEiLa8qwNg0" height="1" width="1"/>
Source: NatureNews - All articles published today - nature.com science feeds | 12 Jul 2010 | 5:17 pm

Start-up model patently flawed

Study shows more US professors go into business as consultants than as inventors.
Source: NatureNews - All articles published today - nature.com science feeds | 12 Jul 2010 | 5:12 pm

Infrared Map Shows Home Insulation Slackers

I see London, I see France, I see Belgium's buildings' underpants. A new searchable thermographic map shows which houses in neighborhoods across the country are going commando.
Source: Discovery News - Top Stories | 12 Jul 2010 | 4:51 pm

Norwegian ship-tracker launched

Norway launches the innovative AISSat-1 spacecraft to monitor shipping in its economically vibrant territorial waters.
Source: BBC News | Science & Environment | UK Edition | 12 Jul 2010 | 4:48 pm

Harnessing Microbes to Clean Water and Create Energy

An environmental engineer harnesses microbes in fuel cells that can create clean water and sustainable energy.
Source: Livescience.com | 12 Jul 2010 | 4:40 pm

Typhoons carry carbon out to sea

Tropical cyclones have a previously unsuspected role in the carbon cycle.
Source: NatureNews - All articles published today - nature.com science feeds | 12 Jul 2010 | 4:33 pm

Tiny shard bears oldest script found in Jerusalem (AP)

AP - Archaeologists say a newly discovered clay fragment from the 14th century B.C. is the oldest example of writing ever found in antiquity-rich Jerusalem.
Source: Yahoo! News: Science News | 12 Jul 2010 | 4:04 pm

Sun-Stirred Lunar Dust Could Wear Down Moon Machines (SPACE.com)

SPACE.com - A recent study has revealed that light-reflecting scientific instruments placed on the moon by astronauts 40 years ago have mysteriously degraded. The findings suggest that equipment placed on the barren, weatherless lunar surface can in fact suffer performance problems in the long term.
Source: Yahoo! News: Science News | 12 Jul 2010 | 4:00 pm

Higgs Boson Discovered? Not So Fast.

The particle physics community is buzzing about a rumor suggesting that the Higgs boson has been discovered by Fermilab's particle accelerator, the Tevatron. Is there any truth behind these whisperings?
Source: Discovery News - Top Stories | 12 Jul 2010 | 3:38 pm

California Condors Learn Wild Ways from Older Birds (Time.com)

Time.com - Researchers discover that social learning just might be the only way to save the extremely endangered species
Source: Yahoo! News: Science News | 12 Jul 2010 | 3:25 pm

World Cup Octopus: Did It Really Predict the Future?

We've heard of cats that can predict deaths and toads that can predict earthquakes, but none of these animals had the fate of a nation sitting squarely on its (many) shoulders like Paul, the World Cup-predicting octopus. This seemingly psychic ...
Source: Discovery News - Top Stories | 12 Jul 2010 | 3:15 pm

Human Evolution Recapped in Kids’ Brain Growth

For a quick summary of the last 25 million years in human brain evolution, just watch how our brains change between infancy and adulthood.

Over its first few decades, the human cerebral cortex — the brain’s wrinkled outer tissue — evolves in ways that parallel its evolution since we last shared a common ancestor with macaque monkeys.

It’s not an absolute one-to-one correlation, but the overlap is so striking that it’s hard to ignore, said neurobiologist David Van Essen of Washington University in St. Louis.

In a study published July 12 in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, Van Essen’s team compared brain scans of infant and adult humans. The resulting differences were then mapped against a comparison of cortex shape differences in adult humans and macaques, with whom our species last shared a common ancestor 25 million years ago.

Since then, the human brain has gone into overdrive, becoming extraordinary large and complex. Not all changes involve size and shape — we’ve also got new gene networks operating in novel ways — but they’re certainly part of the human equation. And at infancy, the brain that will someday be big is small and relatively unformed.

According to Van Essen, this pattern of brain development may represent a virtue made from evolutionary necessity.

In the new study, the areas that change least — between baby and adult, human and macaque — are those related to core senses like vision, which are ostensibly necessary right from birth. If other, less immediately important faculties were also mature, babies’ heads might be so large as to cause difficulties during pregnancy.

This in turn allows undeveloped brain regions to “benefit from the experiences of childhood,” said Van Essen. Extra-large helpings of social and cultural knowledge customize the infant brain, making both babies and the species more adaptable and allowing for complex social institutions to develop.

“Childhood is an extended period for humans, compared to other primates,” said Van Essen. “We learn an enormous amount, but it takes us a very long time to do it.

Image: Top row, a comparative map of cortical differences between the average adult macaque and human; middle row, a comparison between the infant and adult human brain; bottom, a comparison of human developmental and evolutionary changes./PNAS.

See Also:

• Monkeys Fall Into ‘Uncanny Valley,’ Just Like Humans
• Evolution Shrank Some Primates’ Brains
• Beauty Affects Men’s and Women’s Brains Differently
• Religious Experience Linked to Brain’s Social Regions

Citation: “Similar patterns of cortical expansion during human development and evolution.” By Jason Hill, Terrie Inder, Jeffrey Neil, Donna Dierker, John Harwell, David Van Essen. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, Vol. 107. No. 28, July 13, 2010.

Brandon Keim’s Twitter stream and reportorial outtakes; Wired Science on Twitter. Brandon is currently working on a book about ecological tipping points.

Source: Wired: Wired Science | 12 Jul 2010 | 3:05 pm

Can the Gulf Oil Spill Harm Babies in the Womb?

Currently, pregnant women don't need to worry about chemicals from the oil spill harming their unborn children, the CDC says.
Source: Livescience.com | 12 Jul 2010 | 2:36 pm

Practice Makes Perfect … If You Make it Hard

If you want to perfect a chip shot, constant drills with your wedge may not help. Find out what will.
Source: Livescience.com | 12 Jul 2010 | 2:27 pm

New Technology Turns Water Drops into 3-D Display

A new display “screen” made out of water droplets creates 3-D images that can be viewed without special glasses.
Source: Livescience.com | 12 Jul 2010 | 1:58 pm

When 500 Million Trees Fall in the Rainforest...

A single storm killed 500 million trees in the Amazon, adding a new timescale to the mix of events that can impact global climate change.
Source: Discovery News - Top Stories | 12 Jul 2010 | 1:20 pm

Terahertz Detectors Could See Through Your Clothes From a Mile Away

Someone may soon be able to tell what types material are in your pockets from tens, and possibly thousands, of feet away.

Using terahertz remote sensing, detectors could see through walls, clothing and packaging materials and immediately identify the unique terahertz waves of the materials contained inside, such as explosives or drugs.

Until now, detecting terahertz waves — the portion of the electromagnetic spectrum between infrared and microwave light — hasn’t been possible from distances more than inches because the waves are absorbed by ambient moisture in the air, killing the signal.

“A lot of other researchers thought that terahertz remote sensing was mission impossible,” said physicist Jingle Liu of Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute, lead author of the study published July 11 in Nature Photonics.

Liu’s team solved the problem by not relying on the terahertz waves themselves to generate or carry the signal back to the detector. Instead, they used the reflection created by lasers pointed at the target.

Two lasers at different frequencies aimed at the target together generate a plasma (basically excited, or ionized air). This plasma emits a florescence that is scattered in characteristic ways by the terahertz radiation of the material it hits. The reflection of the florescence is detectable from remote distances

The researchers have tested hundreds of different substances and created a library of terahertz spectra to compare to the signal from the target and instantly identify the material that was hit.

The researchers demonstrated that they could detect the signal from 67 feet away, the length of their laboratory space, but theoretically they could identify materials hundreds of feet or even miles away, Liu said.

“Homeland security and military agencies have been struggling for years to get technology like this,” said terahertz expert Abul Azad at Los Alamos National Laboratory. “I think the approach they have revealed is really, really unique.”

The first application of this technology will likely be for the remote detection of roadside bombs, also known as improvised explosive devices (IEDs) by the military. Homeland Security and the Defense Department were the primary funders of the research.

Terahertz detectors could also be used for airport security to detect illegal substances hidden in people’s clothes. The approach would be less invasive than x-rays, Liu said, because terahertz waves are much lower in energy. It would not reveal anything concealed inside the body, because the terahertz signals cannot go through water, or metal.

Theoretically, Liu said, terahertz remote sensing could also be used identify the composition of an unknown toxic spill in the environment, or the composition of objects in space.

Image: 1) Schematic of the terahertz wave remote sensing technique/Zhang. 2) Wikipedia/Tatoute.

See Also:

• Army’s Self Driving Trucks Let the Humans Watch for Bombs
• Building a Better Alien-Detection System
• First Direct Measurement of an Exoplanet’s Light Spectrum
• Crack New Scanner Looks for Bombs Inside Body Cavities
• Journalist Uses Rum To Expose Airport Security Loophole

Source: Wired: Wired Science | 12 Jul 2010 | 1:16 pm

Baby Brain Growth Reflects Human Evolution

Watching human baby brains grow is a little like watching evolution in action
Source: Livescience.com | 12 Jul 2010 | 1:11 pm

Belly Button Key to Sports Success

The placement of the navel, the body's center of gravity, could separate winners from losers.
Source: Discovery News - Top Stories | 12 Jul 2010 | 1:05 pm

Plants Are Key to Climate Change Outlook

New research on how microscopic leaf pores respond to sunlight reveals some of the first universal relationships between plants and climate.
Source: Discovery News - Top Stories | 12 Jul 2010 | 1:01 pm

Gulf's Artificial Islands Already Failing

Aerial pictures show an artificial sand berm designed to prevent oil from entering coastal marshes is already crumbling into the sea.
Source: Discovery News - Top Stories | 12 Jul 2010 | 12:49 pm

Longevity Gene May Boost Memory, Too

The gene could one day be used to turbocharge memory and brain function.
Source: Discovery News - Top Stories | 12 Jul 2010 | 12:25 pm

Big Chunk of Ice Breaks Off of Greenland Glacier

Warmer ocean waters could've played a part.
Source: Livescience.com | 12 Jul 2010 | 10:11 am

A dose of regulation will keep the health food industry regular

In the long run, says Martin Robbins, both consumers and the health food industry will benefit from the high-fibre regulation introduced by the European Union

"Beans beans good for your heart, beans beans make you fart." So went the popular if admittedly unsophisticated playground rhyme we sang at Horndean Middle School some 18 years ago. Back then it only irritated our teachers, but if I were to sing it now, in an advert, then I'd probably be in trouble with those pesky Eurocrats that so annoy the Daily Mail.

In an inspired moment back in 2006 the European Union introduced a regulation that means all of the many thousands of health food claims made in the EU have to be backed up with scientific evidence. Although the new rules came into force four years ago, it is only now – as the European Food Safety Authority begins to clear the backlog of tens of thousands of claims submitted for evaluation – that the food industry has woken up to the reality that actually most of these claims can no longer be made.

The scale of the problem that the food industry faces is huge. So far a massive 80% of the first 900 claims evaluated by the EFSA have been rejected. If you're a proper science nerd like me you can have a lot of fun browsing the judgements, which have been posted on a website that reads like a rogues' gallery of dodgy health food claims. Already today I've learned that there's no evidence that the domestic prune keeps you regular, although so far I've not found anything on beans and flatulence.

With judgements on hundreds more cases expected by the end of the year, the frustration of companies such as Danone and Power Health has boiled over. One of the more vocal critics is Ioannis Misopoulos of the International Probiotics Association, who told the BBC: "It can take three years to get these kinds of human studies together but in the meantime the claims are going to be wiped away. The regulation is killing this industry and the job losses are already being felt."

Misopolous's statement is a damning indictment of the industry he represents, inadvertently suggesting that specious claims are endemic in the industry to the extent that it would collapse without them. It's a bold gambit, akin to proponents of pyramid schemes claiming that anti-fraud laws will damage their profits, but is unlikely to sway the EFSA.

Yorkshire-based Power Health – a company that markets among other things Royal Gellee, the "only food consumed by Queen Bees" – came up with a more sophisticated argument, suggesting that if the EFSA didn't allow EU companies to make their claims, people might just buy their vitamins and yoghurt from less regulated markets further afield: "People will probably start buying in from unregulated countries especially via the internet and we could well end up with customers less protected than they were right at the start of this process."

Power Health's point received surprising support over the weekend in this newspaper from Ben Goldacre, who seemed to be arguing for the futility of his own Bad Science column: "You'll never stop companies making these claims. You'll never stop people enjoying their claims. This game is at least 200 years old. The best solution I can see is an EU-mandated bullshit box, where people can say what they want about their product, consumers can join in, but the game is clearly labelled."

I'll admit, the idea of a bullshit box is appealing, and should be extended to the cosmetics industry immediately. Who wouldn't enjoy watching Jennifer Aniston chirpily announcing midway through her latest shampoo commercial: "Here comes the bullshit!"

As tempting as this new world sounds, though, I can't help but feel that Ben lets the health food industry off lightly. For a start, while the argument may work for vitamin pills and food supplements, it's hard to imagine individual consumers going to the trouble of importing batches of, say, yoghurt from the ends of the Earth.

More to the point, no one is stopping Power Health or any other company from continuing to sell the same products. All this regulation means is that they need to come up with some more honest slogans that stand up to a little scientific scrutiny and don't make misleading claims.

In theory, this could benefit both European industry and science. With EFSA approval so elusive, it could provide an enormous boost to companies who can meet the stringent standards and show to the public that their claims have been independently backed up.

And in achieving this, major corporations like Danone and Unilever will have to invest more heavily in scientific research, benefiting academia at a time of uncertain funding prospects.

In the meantime, marketing departments everywhere have been left scratching their heads and wondering how exactly you go about marketing an unappealing tube of brown powder if you can't call it Slim-Fast. I'm sure you all share my sympathy for them.

Martin Robbins writes for The Lay Scientist

Source: Science news, comment and analysis | guardian.co.uk | 12 Jul 2010 | 9:10 am

Huge underwater volcano found off Indonesia

Research team calls for further exploration after stumbling upon 3,000m volcano

Scientists on a deep-sea expedition off the coast of Indonesia have discovered an underwater volcano that towers 3,000 metres (10,000 feet) above the ocean floor, yet remains far from sight beneath the water's surface.

The volcano was discovered by a group of US and Indonesian researchers who are using a powerful sonar system and a robotic vehicle with high-definition video to explore marine ecosystems off Sulawesi island.

"This is a huge undersea volcano, taller than all but three or four mountains in Indonesia," said Jim Holden, the chief US scientist for the first leg of the joint expedition.

The researchers hope the maps and video produced from the journey will pave the way for others to follow up on their preliminary findings.

"The more we understand these undersea features and the communities of life they support, the better we can manage and protect the ocean and its resources," said Holden, a microbiologist at the University of Massachusetts in Amherst.

Sugiarta Wirasantosa, the chief Indonesian scientist for the project, said the research could contribute to protecting ecosystems that support fisheries.

The expedition concludes on 14 August.

Source: Science news, comment and analysis | guardian.co.uk | 12 Jul 2010 | 8:31 am

Superstitions Bring Real Luck, Study Reveals

Crossing your fingers and squeezing your lucky charm might actually help bring you good fortune, a new study shows.
Source: Livescience.com | 12 Jul 2010 | 8:17 am

Middle-Age Women Sexually Adventurous as Fertility Dwindles

Women in their 30s and 40s are more willing to engage in a variety of sexual activities to capitalize on their remaining childbearing years
Source: Livescience.com | 12 Jul 2010 | 7:30 am

Close-up of battered Lutetia

Images from the Rosetta spacecraft's weekend flyby of the asteroid Lutetia reveal its violent past

Asteroid Lutetia has been revealed as an irregular chunk of battered rock by the European Space Agency's Rosetta spacecraft.

Rosetta approached to within 3,162km of the enigmatic asteroid at 18:10 CEST (Central European Summer Time) on Saturday and returned the first close-up pictures soon afterwards, each image taking around 15-20 minutes to download (view an animation of the approach).

The images reveal Lutetia's violent past, which dates back to our solar system's formation 4.5 billion years ago. The surface is now strewn with boulders and grooves, the meaning of which will be unpicked in the coming months.

"These are a few images from just one of the instruments we have had working tonight," says Rita Schulz, Rosetta project scientist at the European Space Agency.

The breathless flyby lasted just a minute or so as the spacecraft passed by at a speed of 15km/s. But the cameras and other instruments had been turned on hours or even days ago, and were taking data continuously.

Rosetta took 400 images during its approach, closest approach and farewell. Other instruments measured Lutetia's density and its surface composition, and searched for any possible magnetic field and atmosphere. Other experiments attempted to scoop up dust grains in Rosetta's path.

All of this data is now stored on the spacecraft and will be downloaded in the coming week or two.

Lutetia is the largest of the nine asteroids to have been visited by spacecraft so far. During the flyby it was found to be around 130km long – a little larger than expected. It is elongated in shape and a mass of craters.

One particularly large crater stretching across most of the asteroid rotated into view as Rosetta passed (above).

Images received earlier in the day, when Rosetta was still almost a hundred thousand kilometres away from its target, revealed it to be a wedge-shaped object. There was some shadowing on its surface, hinting at surface features.

Asteroids are leftovers from the formation of the solar system 4.6 billion years ago. They are mostly found populating a wide belt between Mars and Jupiter, stretching for hundreds of kilometres across space.

Lutetia is a puzzle. Ground-based observations have suggested that it is both a primitive carbon-bearing asteroid and a metallic fragment of a once larger asteroid. "It can be one or the other, but it can't be both," says Schulz. With the flyby completed, Rosetta should solve this mystery. The first scientific results will be presented in September.

The flyby was a staging post on Rosetta's journey to comet Churyumov-Gerasimenko, which it will reach in 2014. In 2008, it encountered the smaller asteroid Steins.

Stuart Clark is an astronomy journalist and author of The Big Questions: The Universe (Quercus, 2010). His Twitter name is @DrStuClark

Source: Science news, comment and analysis | guardian.co.uk | 12 Jul 2010 | 6:40 am

Earth could be 70 million years younger than previously estimated

Planet Earth could be 70 million years younger than previously estimated, according to a new geological study.
Source: BBC News | Science & Environment | UK Edition | 12 Jul 2010 | 6:15 am

Squirrel at risk from hand that feeds it

Mammals may be picking up potentially deadly bacteria from hands and skin of people putting out food for them

Animal lovers may be accidentally killing one of the UK's best-loved mammals with their kindness, scientists believe. Red squirrels may be picking up potentially deadly bacteria from the hands and skin of people putting out food for them.

The wildlife specialists are far from proving a definite link but the presence of puzzling lesions on the animals' bodies and infection often linked to human disease has prompted further investigations.

Red squirrels are already under severe pressure from more competitive greys, introduced to Britain from America in the 19th century, and the squirrelpox virus, which greys can carry with no symptoms.

The emerging possibility of the new human threat comes from the Isle of Wight, one of the few parts of Britain where there are no grey squirrels at all. The concerns arise in a scientific paper and letter to their professional journal, the Veterinary Record.

The paper reports on lesions found on 11 red squirrels found dead in 2007 and 2008 on the Isle of Wight and Jersey. This "exudative dermatitis" is thought to have been the main cause of death for the Isle of Wight squirrels and for two from Jersey. It may have been a contributory factor in the other six.

Similar lesions have been reported in previous studies linked to squirrelpox, but these made no direct connection to bacteria also found in the squirrels. This means the new hyphothesis has hardly been explored, let alone tested.

The latest study established the presence of staphylococcus aureus (staph A) in two of the three Isle of Wight squirrels, although Vic Simpson, of the private Wildlife Veterinary Investigation Centre in Cornwall, stressed this did not establish exactly what happened to the squirrels.

But in a comparison to a fourth isle of Wight squirrel found dead last year, Simpson and other colleagues report in a letter to the journal that three had the same type of staph A, ST49, which has previously found in human isolates, according to a national database based at Imperial College, London.

Staph A is found naturally in humans, normally in the nose or on the skin. But related illnesses can run from the harmless to life-threatening, including food-poisoning, pneumonia and toxic shock. Types resistant to some common antibiotics are a prime cause of infections caught in hospitals.

The scientists' letter continues: "It is common practice for people on the Isle of Wight to provide the squirrels with supplementary food, and this raises the possibility that feeding stations may be contaminated by staphylococci of human origin."

The scientists are now trying to determine whether the type of staph A is part of red squirrel's normal bacterial make-up or picked up from people or other sources.

Simpson said: "We have to tread very very carefully. We are examining further samples from apparently normal squirrels – ones that have been run over – to see whether they have the same strain of staphylococcus aureus."

It was still possible, he said, that the dermatitis was caused by an underlying condition, such as a viral infection, a plant or chemical allergen or some other irritant.

Red squirrels traditionally eat seeds, nuts, flowers and fungi. Helen Butler,of the Wight Squirrel Project, one of the co-authors of the paper, said that when natural resources are scarce, people can help by putting out unsalted peanuts, hazel or walnuts, sunflower seeds, apple and carrot.

"Don't feed just peanuts, offer a mixed diet, keep the feeders clean and keep the food fresh," she said.

Source: Science news, comment and analysis | guardian.co.uk | 12 Jul 2010 | 3:46 am

Can science explain everything?

The experience of consciousness seems incommunicable and ineffable. Yet science can hope to explain how it arises

The question: Can science explain everything?

When Andrew Brown first posed this week's question to me he asked "Can science describe everything?". My instant, unreflective reply was "No". He implied that this might be a less restrictive question than "Can science explain everything" and yet my instant reaction to this one was "Yes". I'd like to explore this curious difference.

Science can (potentially at least) explain everything because its ways of trying to understand the universe by asking questions of it should not leave any areas off-limits. The methods of openness, inquiry, curiosity, theory building, hypothesis testing and so on can be adapted and developed to explore and try to explain anything.

But what is "everything"? I look out of my window and see green trees and grass and grazing cows, a river, a pond, birds, sky, clouds …. but everything? This is where description becomes so hard. There is just so much stuff in the universe and it's all so complicated. Let me give two examples, a simpler one and a really tough one.

Let's take those cows, or my black and white cat lying here on a comfy chair. There's no way we can even aspire to precisely describing every black and white pattern on every cow and cat in the world. There are billions of them and each is unique. Even if everybody in the world devoted themselves to the task, they could never capture them all. Yet we can explain how genetic information codes for the construction of pigments, and developmental variations lead to the individual patterns.

To take a second example, closer to my heart and my research, there's the "hard problem" of consciousness, of subjectivity, of private experiences, of "what it's like" to be me.

Here I am, sitting at my desk, experiencing all sorts of sounds, sights, touches and smells, but I cannot adequately describe them to anyone else. This is the very essence of subjective experience – that it seems to be private to me. To raise old philosophical conundrums, I cannot know whether my experience of the greenness of the grass is anything like yours. What if my green experience were like your beige, and your black and white like my mauve and purple? I cannot describe my sensations (or qualia) of greenness in any other way than to say "it looks green", implicitly comparing it with other colours in the world and using agreed names to do so. In this sense colour experiences (and smells, and noises, and tastes) are ineffable.

Ineffability is even more acute when we come to special states or transcendent experiences. What can I say, for example, about my spontaneous mystical experiences? That I became one with the universe, that I glimpsed another realm, that I seemed to be guided by something I can neither describe nor name? What can I say about states I have reached through meditation? That I could see the nature of arising experiences and stare into the indescribable ground of being? What can I say about deep states reached through taking LSD? That the world was alive and flowing through a me that was no longer me? I can say all these things, and some people will say "Oh yeah, I know what you mean". But we will probably agree that nothing we say really does justice to those experiences.

Science cannot describe these experiences, but will it ever? Those who think the hard problem is real claim that the nature of experience will always remain beyond the grasp of both description and explanation. But those who think it's a "hornswoggle problem", a "non-problem" or an illusion, argue that when we really understand the workings of the brain the hard problem will have gone the way of caloric fluid or the élan vital which was once sought so assiduously to explain the essence of life.

A subtler possibility is that we explain the ineffability itself. One example of this is a framework for thinking about natural and artificial information processing systems developed by Aaron Sloman and Ron Chrisley. They want to explain "the private, ineffable way things seem to us" by explaining how and why the ineffability problem arises at all. Their virtual machine (the CogAff architecture) includes processes that classify its own internal states. Unlike words that describe common experiences (such as seeing red in the world) these refer to internal states or concepts that are strictly not comparable from one virtual machine to another – just like qualia. If people protest that there is "something missing"; the indefinable quality, the what it's like to be, or what zombies lack, their reply is that the fact that people think this way is what needs explaining, and can be explained in their model.

This and other competing theories suggest a new possibility – that conscious experiences may remain ineffable even when science thoroughly understands how and why. In this case I would be right in my intuition that science cannot describe everything but may well be able to explain that which it cannot describe.

Source: Science news, comment and analysis | guardian.co.uk | 12 Jul 2010 | 3:25 am