Supercharged proteins enter biology's forbidden zone

Scientists are reporting discovery of a way to help proteins such as the new generation of protein-based drugs -- sometimes heralded as tomorrow's potential "miracle cures" -- get past the biochemical "Entrance Forbidden" barrier that keeps them from entering cells and doing their work. The new technique represents a new use for an engineered form of green fluorescent protein, the topic of the 2008 Nobel Prize in Chemistry.
Source: ScienceDaily: Latest Science News | 15 Jul 2010 | 9:00 am

Fast food chains have significantly decreased trans fats in cooking oils, study finds

Five major fast food chains have significantly decreased trans fats in the oils they use to cook food, according to new research.
Source: ScienceDaily: Latest Science News | 15 Jul 2010 | 9:00 am

Those who exercise when young have stronger bones when they grow old

The positive effects of exercise while growing up seem to last longer than previously believed. New findings suggest that physical activity when young increases bone density and size, which may mean a reduced risk of osteoporosis later in life.
Source: ScienceDaily: Latest Science News | 15 Jul 2010 | 9:00 am

Footloose glaciers crack up: New detailed observations of what happens when glaciers float on ocean surface

Glaciers that lose their footing on the seafloor and begin floating behave very erratically, according to a new study. Floating glaciers produce larger icebergs than their grounded cousins and do so at unpredictable intervals, researchers find.
Source: ScienceDaily: Latest Science News | 15 Jul 2010 | 9:00 am

Fossil find puts a face on early primates

When paleontologist Iyad Zalmout went looking for fossil whales and dinosaurs in Saudi Arabia, he never expected to come face-to-face with a significant, early primate fossil.
Source: ScienceDaily: Latest Science News | 15 Jul 2010 | 9:00 am

Arsenic shows promise as cancer treatment, study finds

Miss Marple notwithstanding, arsenic might not be many people's favorite chemical. But the notorious poison does have some medical applications. Specifically, a form called arsenic trioxide has been used as a therapy for a particular type of leukemia for more than 10 years. Now researchers have shown that it may be useful in treating a variety of other cancers.
Source: ScienceDaily: Latest Science News | 15 Jul 2010 | 9:00 am

Human nature: The effect of inequality

In the third of our video series on human nature, primate expert Frans de Waal explores the effect of unequal rewards on behaviour

Source: Science news, comment and analysis | guardian.co.uk | 15 Jul 2010 | 7:31 am

Toward room-temperature superconductors: Key advance in understanding 'pseudogap' phase in high-T_c superconductors

Scientists have discovered a fundamental difference in how electrons behave at the two distinct oxygen-atom sites in a copper-oxide superconductor. Understanding this broken symmetry in the non-superconducting pseudogap phase may lead to new approaches to understanding the pseudogap, long hypothesized as a key hurdle to achieving room-temperature superconductivity.
Source: ScienceDaily: Latest Science News | 15 Jul 2010 | 6:00 am

Finding cancer 'cold spots' can help minimize radiotherapy side-effects

Fine-tuning radiotherapy to take into account which parts of a patient's tumor are growing fastest could improve control of cancer while subjecting patients to lower doses of radiation
Source: ScienceDaily: Latest Science News | 15 Jul 2010 | 6:00 am

Major Alzheimer's risk gene causes alterations in shapes of brain protein deposits

Researchers have used a newly discovered class of biomarkers to investigate the possibility that the shape of brain protein deposits is different in people with Alzheimer's who have the highest-risk gene type than in those with the condition who have a neutral risk gene type.
Source: ScienceDaily: Latest Science News | 15 Jul 2010 | 6:00 am

Blind mice can 'see' thanks to special retinal cells

A new study shows mice without rods and cones function can still see -- and not just light, but also patterns and images -- thanks to a third kind of photosensitive cell in the retina.
Source: ScienceDaily: Latest Science News | 15 Jul 2010 | 6:00 am

Prince Charles attacks climate change sceptics

Prince of Wales accuses those who question whether human activity is causing global warming of 'peddling pseudo science' and blocking action

The Prince of Wales last night launched an attack on climate sceptics, deriding them for peddling "pseudo science".

In a speech to world business leaders at a climate change seminar, Charles criticised such sceptics for apparently intimidating people from "adopting the precautionary measures necessary to avert environmental collapse".

Charles, speaking yesterday at the event staged by the Cambridge Programme for Sustainability Leadership at St James's palace, did not mention any sceptics by name but said: "People have heard the climate sceptics and attempted to listen to the kind of pseudo science they are peddling ... I have endlessly been accused of peddling pseudo science, in one way or another, for most of my life - just think about the strange irony."

During the last few decades Charles has attempted to influence public opinion by speaking about the threat climate change poses and setting up his Prince's Rainforest project to try to safeguard the world's rainforests.

He has also delivered a number of high-profile speeches on the subject , speaking at last year's UN climate negotiations in Copenhagen.

During his address today, Charles said: "I have already alluded to the problem of climate scepticism.

"It appears to be on the rise again with more and more people prepared to listen to those siren voices that say that everything is okay, there is no need to worry and that we can all carry on as before as all this fuss about climate change and environmental collapse is merely part of a sinister attempt to undermine the entire foundations of the market-based capitalist system.

"Well, ladies and gentlemen, I believe the urgency of the situation is too great simply to sit back and do nothing."

A small group of commentators dispute global predictions for climate change, including former Conservative chancellor Lord Lawson and environmentalist and broadcaster David Bellamy.

Lord Lawson is the chairman of the Global Warming Policy Foundation, a climate sceptic thinktank.

In an interview with the Telegraph last month the former chancellor acknowledged the increase in the planet's temperature during the past 100 years and that CO2 gases have "played a part". But he claimed cutting carbon emissions would threaten the economy.

The serialisation of Peter Mandelson's book this week also revealed that the former cabinet minister described Prince Charles's remarks on GM crops as "irresponsible". He wrote: "Like Tony [Blair], I felt his remarks were becoming unhelpful. I thought they were anti-scientific and irresponsible in the light of food shortages in the developing world."

Source: Science news, comment and analysis | guardian.co.uk | 15 Jul 2010 | 4:17 am

BP prepares for key oil-well test

Preparations for a key pressure test of the blown-out Gulf of Mexico oil well are under way following a 24-hour delay, BP says.
Source: BBC News - Science & Environment | 15 Jul 2010 | 4:02 am

Leak forces new delay to BP oil cap test (AFP)

AFP - Oil giant BP detected a leak Thursday in equipment to seal the catastrophic Gulf of Mexico gusher, forcing another delay to the start of crucial tests on a new tighter-fitting cap.

Source: Yahoo! News: Science News | 15 Jul 2010 | 4:01 am

BP lobbied UK over Libyan prisoner transfer case (Reuters)

Reuters - BP confirmed on Thursday it had lobbied the British government in late 2007 over a Prisoner Transfer Agreement with Libya because it was concerned a slow resolution would impact an offshore drilling deal with Libya.
Source: Yahoo! News: Science News | 15 Jul 2010 | 3:29 am

BP works to fix valve leak before choking oil flow (AP)

AP - BP engineers working to choke the flow of oil into the Gulf of Mexico found a leak on a line attached to the side of the new well cap and were trying to fix it Thursday before attempting to stop the crude.

Source: Yahoo! News: Science News | 15 Jul 2010 | 3:09 am

Woolly mammoth hunters helped change climate (Reuters)

Reuters - Ancient hunters who stalked the world's last woolly mammoths likely helped warm the Earth's far northern latitudes thousands of years before humans began burning fossil fuels, according to a study of prehistoric climate change.
Source: Yahoo! News: Science News | 15 Jul 2010 | 3:09 am

Woolly mammoth hunters helped change climate

ANCHORAGE, Alaska (Reuters) - Ancient hunters who stalked the world's last woolly mammoths likely helped warm the Earth's far northern latitudes thousands of years before humans began burning fossil fuels, according to a study of prehistoric climate change.
Source: Reuters: Science News | 15 Jul 2010 | 3:09 am

Ever-increasing circles | Adam Rutherford

The domain of knowledge amenable to science has only ever changed in one direction: at the expense of all others

The question: Can science explain everything?

Atom is a word whose origin is paradoxically unscientific. It's derived from the Greek atomos meaning "uncuttable" or "indivisible". (Also, word fans, it's the same stem as an extremely useful word, tmesis: the act of inserting an emphasis in the middle of another word, as in "fan-bloody-tastic").

The atom was, for a time, the smallest unit of matter. And then, my unrelated namesake Ernest Rutherford worked out that it wasn't uncuttable, and was made up of distinct smaller parts. Later still, protons and neutrons, which comprise the mass of atoms, were determined to be composed of quarks, which come in silly names, such as "strange" and "charm". These revelations were scientific answers to scientific questions, not the metaphysical assertion of indivisibility. At this point, you get into the fuzzy boundary between science and maths: the much sought subatomic particle known as the Higgs boson is required to exist for the current theory to work. Quarks, along with other so called fundamental particles, currently appear to have no substructure, and thus currently fit the description of being indivisible much better than the atom. The mis-naming of the atom reflected an unscientific view of one of the most basic of scientific questions: "What is stuff made of?"

There are limits to what the process of observation, experimentation, prediction and falsification can tell us. Until we invent time-travel and really get a handle on the multiverse, science tells us little about history, for example. Science may be able to tell us why we like music, why certain types of sound appeal more than others, but not why Bach is the best. Taking this line in arguments leads to two things. The first is the view encapsulated by Wittgenstein, that one should only discuss things that one is kitted out to discuss. Science can only elucidate truths that can be framed in a testable, predictable and falsifiable scenario. The problem with expressing that view is that detractors look smug, and then reel off a bunch of things that are perfectly answerable in a scientific framework: "But what about love, or consciousness?" Well, these are real phenomena, and thus subject to scientific scrutiny. The answers will no doubt be complex and I expect quite boring. But they will be answers.

The question "Does God exist?" is not a metaphysical question and is not outside the boundaries of science. It should be perfectly testable. If God has ever interacted with the physical world, then he should be bound by its rules, or the rules are wrong. The absolute absence of scientific evidence for his existence is good enough for rationalists to conclude that he does not exist. But if you assert that God is by his nature beyond the natural, is supernatural, then you are simply roadblocking the question. You are stubbornly framing rationality out of the question, and science has no comment on that. But it's a dodge. There is no reason to think that the question of God's existence should not be a scientific question.

The second thing that happens in championing the scientific pursuit of truth is that opponents make accusations of "scientism": that pejorative term levelled at those who claim rational thought as the best way of pursuing truth. The accusation of scientism is a pain, because mostly it's also employed when the question at stake could perfectly well be answered by science. Accepting that science does have boundaries as to what truths it is capable of addressing, bears no statement on the scope of those boundaries. Throughout history, the domain of knowledge amenable to science has only ever changed in one direction: at the expense of all others. To assume that an atom was indivisible was a metaphysical error, corrected by experimentation. I am not qualified to comment on the potential fundamental nature of quarks, nor how they fit into the all important standard model in its attempts to describe the behaviour of all matter. But I am confident that any elucidation of the nature of quarks will come from science not metaphysics. More specifically, it will come from particle physics experiments such as those at the Large Hadron Collider.

Science may not tell us much about history, or aesthetics, or metaphysics. But to underestimate the boundaries of what it can say is a fallacy committed only by those who misunderstand or deny the power of the scientific method. When the comedian Dara O'Briain hears the facile maxim "science doesn't know everything" his response is, of course it doesn't, otherwise it would stop. As a way of knowing, there are limits to what science can reveal, but those limits are ever decreasing. Is there a sensible reason why it can't tell us about love, or psychology, or God or the composition of quarks? Abso-bloody-lutely not.

Source: Science news, comment and analysis | guardian.co.uk | 15 Jul 2010 | 3:00 am

The nation's weather (AP)

AP - Unsettling weather activity was forecast to persist throughout portions of the Central U.S. on Thursday as a strong low pressure system in southern Canada dragged a cold front through the Midwest.

Source: Yahoo! News: Science News | 15 Jul 2010 | 2:54 am

BSkyB in talks over 24-hour Arabic news channel (AFP)

AFP - British pay-TV giant BSkyB has said it is in talks with an Abu Dhabi-based private investor about setting up a 24-hour Arabic language satellite news channel.

Source: Yahoo! News: Science News | 15 Jul 2010 | 2:46 am

China faces worst floods in years (Reuters)

Reuters - Heavy rains and powerful winds battered East Asia on Thursday, pressing authorities to evacuate hundreds of thousands of people from their homes in Japan and putting China on alert for its worst floods in years.
Source: Yahoo! News: Science News | 15 Jul 2010 | 12:26 am

Armchair Astronauts Can Take a High-Def 3D Mars Tour

NASA has teamed up with Microsoft’s WorldWide Telescope (WWT) website to offer armchair astronauts an opportunity to barnstorm the Red Planet in 3D.
Source: Discovery News - Top Stories | 14 Jul 2010 | 10:58 pm

NASA Spacecraft 'Beefed-Up' Against Jupiter's Radiation

In preparation for a future mission to Jupiter, NASA is doing some preparation work to defend against the gas giant's wrath.
Source: Discovery News - Top Stories | 14 Jul 2010 | 10:49 pm

Brightest star explosion seen blinds satellite

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - The brightest explosion of a star ever seen temporarily blinded a satellite set up to watch such events, astronomers said on Wednesday.
Source: Reuters: Science News | 14 Jul 2010 | 8:37 pm

Forces and turbines 'can co-exist'

The Ministry of Defence says it will be consulted on any plans for new offshore wind farms off Scotland's coast.
Source: BBC News - Science & Environment | 14 Jul 2010 | 6:09 pm

Your Poop Is Unique: Gut Viruses Different in Every Person (LiveScience.com)

LiveScience.com - Like a fingerprint, the virus communities in the human gut are unique to each individual, a new study on poop DNA suggests. Even identical twins have very different collections of viruses colonizing their lower intestines.
Source: Yahoo! News: Science News | 14 Jul 2010 | 5:35 pm

What could go wrong in oil cap tests?

BP will proceed with a key pressure test of the blown-out Gulf of Mexico oil well, after safety concerns delayed the tests.
Source: BBC News - Science & Environment | 14 Jul 2010 | 4:51 pm

Record-Breaking X-Ray Blast Blinds Space Observatory Briefly (SPACE.com)

SPACE.com - A violent cosmic explosion has unleashed the brightest blast of X-rays ever detected from distant space, a signal so bright it temporary blinded the NASA space telescope assigned to spot it.
Source: Yahoo! News: Science News | 14 Jul 2010 | 4:31 pm

Navigation Technology Tracks People Indoors

TRX navigation technology picks up where GPS leaves off – safeguarding personnel indoors, underground, and in other GPS-denied areas.
Source: Livescience.com | 14 Jul 2010 | 4:16 pm

Rosetta Discovers Haunting Beauty in Deep Space

The European Space Agency's Rosetta probe is beaming back hauntingly beautiful images of mysterious asteroid Lutetia.
Source: Science@NASA Headline News | 14 Jul 2010 | 3:50 pm

Computer Translates Ancient Language

A computer can decipher ancient languages that have gone unused for centuries and translate them into modern Hebrew.
Source: Discovery News - Top Stories | 14 Jul 2010 | 3:34 pm

12 horses now dead from Nev. roundup; hearing set (AP)

AP - Twelve wild horses have now died in a Nevada roundup directed by the U.S. Bureau of Land Management, half of them colts and mares.
Source: Yahoo! News: Science News | 14 Jul 2010 | 3:17 pm

Happiness and Sadness Spread Just Like Disease

There may be a literal truth underlying the common-sense intuition that happiness and sadness are contagious.

A new study on the spread of emotions through social networks shows that these feelings circulate in patterns analogous to what’s seen from epidemiological models of disease.

Earlier studies raised the possibility, but had not mapped social networks against actual disease models.

“This is the first time this contagion has been measured in the way we think about traditional infectious disease,” said biophysicist Alison Hill of Harvard University.

Data in the research, in the July 7 Proceedings of the Royal Society, comes from the Framingham Heart Study, a one-of-a-kind project which since 1948 has regularly collected social and medical information from thousands of people in Framingham, Massachusetts.

Earlier analyses found that a variety of habits and feelings, including obesity, loneliness, smoking and happiness appear to be contagious.

In the current study, Hill’s team compared patterns of relationships and emotions measured in the study to those generated by a model designed to track SARS, foot-and-mouth disease and other traditional contagions. They discounted spontaneous or immediately shared emotion — friends or relatives undergoing a common experience — and focused on emotional changes that followed changes in others.

In the spread of happiness, the researchers found clusters of “infected” and “uninfected” people, a pattern considered a “hallmark of the infectious process,” said Hill. “For happiness, clustering is what you expect from contagion rates. Whereas for sadness, the clusters were much larger than we’d expect. Something else is going on.”

Happiness proved less social than sadness. Each happy friend increased an individual’s chances of personal happiness by 11 percent, while just one sad friend was needed to double an individual’s chance of becoming unhappy.

Patterns fit disease models in another way. “The more friends with flu that you have, the more likely you are to get it. But once you have the flu, how long it takes you to get better doesn’t depend on your contacts. The same thing is true of happiness and sadness,” said David Rand, an evolutionary dynamics researcher at Harvard. “It fits with the infectious disease framework.”

The findings still aren’t conclusive proof of contagion, but they provide parameters of transmission rates and network dynamics that will guide predictions tested against future Framingham results, said Hill and Rand. And whereas the Framingham study wasn’t originally designed with emotional information in mind, future studies tailored to test network contagion should provide more sophisticated information.

Both Hill and Rand warned that the findings illustrate broad, possible dynamics, and are not intended to guide personal decisions, such as withdrawing from friends who are having a hard time.

“The better solution is to make your sad friends happy,” said Rand.

Image: Morgan/Flickr.

See Also:

• Loneliness May Be Contagious
• Kindness Breeds More Kindness, Study Shows
• How to Stop Yourself From Staring

Citation: “Emotions as infectious diseases in a large social network: the SISa model.” By Alison L. Hill, David G. Rand, Martin A. Nowak and Nicholas A. Christakis. Proceedings for the Royal Society B, Published online before print, July 7, 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 | 14 Jul 2010 | 3:17 pm

Fossil skull fingered as ape–monkey ancestor

Find in Saudi Arabia sheds light on primate lineage.<img src="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~r/news/rss/today/~4/TcF1_CtNrKs" height="1" width="1"/>
Source: NatureNews - All articles published today - nature.com science feeds | 14 Jul 2010 | 3:16 pm

Diving Archaeologists Explore a Sunken Shipwreck

Montana ship frozen in time since 1914.
Source: Livescience.com | 14 Jul 2010 | 3:02 pm

The gut's 'friendly' viruses revealed

DNA sequencing reveals a new world of bacterial viruses in our intestines.
Source: NatureNews - All articles published today - nature.com science feeds | 14 Jul 2010 | 3:01 pm

Topological insulators: Star material

A new class of materials is poised to take condensed-matter physics by storm. Geoff Brumfiel looks at what is making topological insulators all the rage.
Source: NatureNews - All articles published today - nature.com science feeds | 14 Jul 2010 | 3:00 pm

Who should pay for the police?

The punishment of antisocial behaviour seems necessary for a stable society. But how should it be policed, and how severe should it be? Game theory offers some answers, Philip Ball finds.
Source: NatureNews - All articles published today - nature.com science feeds | 14 Jul 2010 | 3:00 pm

Seismology: The secret chatter of giant faults

An imminent swarm of tiny quakes beneath western North America could help seismologists prepare for a big one — but only if they can learn to interpret the tremors, finds Naomi Lubick.
Source: NatureNews - All articles published today - nature.com science feeds | 14 Jul 2010 | 3:00 pm

More Blood Through Science?

Engineering blood from stem cells could make traditional blood donations a thing of the past.
Source: Discovery News - Top Stories | 14 Jul 2010 | 2:00 pm

News briefing: 9–15 July 2010

The week in science.
Source: NatureNews - All articles published today - nature.com science feeds | 14 Jul 2010 | 2:00 pm

What a Headache! Why Modern Life Hurts So Much

The stress and sensory overload of modern life can be a pain -- literally.
Source: Livescience.com | 14 Jul 2010 | 1:37 pm

The lost legacy of the last great oil spill

Some ecosystems bounced back after the 1979 Ixtoc I oil spill, but research quickly withered.
Source: NatureNews - All articles published today - nature.com science feeds | 14 Jul 2010 | 1:00 pm

Poop Study: People Have Friendly Gut Viruses

It’s not just the bugs in our guts that are surprisingly friendly. It’s our viruses, too.

After slowly coming to appreciate the importance of symbiotic bacteria for running our bodies, scientists have wondered whether viruses also help. Now a gene-hunting expedition in the gut has found it teeming with highly personalized viral communities.

“Viral diversity and life cycles are poorly understood in the human gut and other body habitats,” wrote researchers led by Washington University microbiologist Jeffrey Gordon in a study in the July 14 Nature. Unlike gut bacteria, these viruses — our “virome” — appear uniquely individual, differing even between identical twins.

The study is a natural extension of research on internal bacteria, which outnumber each body’s human cells by a factor of 10. Collectively called the microbiome, they perform digestive and metabolic tasks our bodies can’t accomplish unaided. In a way, the microbiome is as much a part of us as any organ. It just happens to come from another order of life.

Gordon’s lab, which specializes in the links between gut bacteria and obesity, has been at the forefront of microbiome research. That’s led them to question whether, just as scientists once failed to appreciated the importance of bacteria, they’ve overlooked viruses.

“The idea was that having a virus, under any circumstance, is basically bad. Sometimes it causes disease, sometimes not, but having viruses present is abnormal,” said Andrew Gewirtz, an Emory University microbiologist not involved in the study. “As the complexity of the microbiota became appreciated, people have wondered whether that is really true, or if there’s a normal population of viruses. This is the first paper to look in a systematic way.”

Because intestinal tracts are difficult to study directly, Gordon’s team sampled DNA from the stool samples of four identical-twin pairs and their mothers. They identified which sequences came from bacteria, and which from viruses.

Unlike stomach bacteria, which are relatively consistent between siblings, viral profiles varied markedly. The pattern’s significance isn’t yet evident, but it’s striking.

Samples taken at later dates showed that viral communities were stable, rather than fluctuating as would be expected if competing with bacteria. Virome and microbiome coexist peacefully, and may even cooperate.

More than 4,000 different viral strains were ultimately identified, 80 percent of which hadn’t been seen before. Despite the novelty, the researchers could match individual genes to known functions. This doesn’t show the targets of those functions, but it’s possible that “viral genes are just providing that little something that bacteria don’t have,” said Gewirtz.

Gordon’s team next intends to see what happens when human virome samples are added to mice engineered to contain human microbiomes. Other scientists will further explore the virome’s role.

“Human microbiome projects have been initiated throughout the world,” wrote Gordon’s team. “Our results indicate that these metagenomic studies should also include” the virome.

Images: Left: the human colon against a background of virus-like particles. Right: functional associations of genes from friendly stomach viruses and bacteria./Alejandro Reyes, Vamsi Narra, Laura Kyro, and Jeffrey Gordon.

See Also:

• Gut Bacteria Give Super Seaweed-Digestion Power to Japanese
• You’re Leaving a Bacterial Fingerprint on Your Keyboard
• Your Spit Is Special

Citation: “Viruses in the faecal microbiota of monozygotic twins and their mother.” Reyes A, Haynes M, Hanson N, Angly FE, Health AC, Rohwer F and Gordon JI. Nature, Vol. 466 No. 7304, July 15, 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 | 14 Jul 2010 | 12:42 pm

Discovering Earth's Hidden Diamonds Just Got Easier

A new study may help diamond prospectors focus their search a bit more closely, and also reveals a new understanding of the Earth's mantle.
Source: Livescience.com | 14 Jul 2010 | 12:40 pm

Meditation Boosts Attention Span

Having trouble focusing on one thing at a time? Meditation may be the answer.
Source: Livescience.com | 14 Jul 2010 | 12:37 pm

Fossil Links Apes, Monkeys

A slope-faced, big-toothed creature from the distant past reveals much about the ancient evolutionary split between apes and Old World monkeys.
Source: Discovery News - Top Stories | 14 Jul 2010 | 12:37 pm

Apes, Old World Monkeys May Have Split Later Than Thought

A slope-faced, big-toothed creature from the distant past has inspired scientists to recalibrate the ancient evolutionary split between apes and Old World monkeys.

Discoverers of a partial apelike skull in western Saudi Arabia say that it now appears that a poorly understood parting of major primate groups occurred between 29 million and 24 million years ago. A 2004 analysis of DNA from living apes and monkeys in Africa and Asia had estimated an earlier divergence, between 34.5 and 29.2 million years ago.

An intriguing mosaic of features on the newly unearthed fossil, which dates to between 29 million and 28 million years ago, suggests that it lived shortly before a common ancestor that gave rise to hominoids — a primate lineage that includes apes and humans — and the monkeys of Africa, Asia and Europe. A team led by anthropology graduate student Iyad Zalmout of the University of Michigan in Ann Arbor reports the find in the July 15 Nature.

Zalmout and his colleagues assign the skull to a new primate genus and species, Saadanius hijazensis.

“This is wonderful discovery, a real missing link that fills in a gap in our understanding of the timing and pattern of anatomical change involved in the evolution of Old World monkeys and apes,” remarks anthropologist John Fleagle of Stony Brook University in New York.

Zalmout, working with members of the Saudi Geological Survey in Jeddah, found the partial Saadanius skull on Feb. 17, 2009, in a section of Saudi Arabia’s Shumaysi Formation framed by previously dated volcanic ash layers. Based on the specimen’s size and shape, the researchers estimate that Saadanius weighed 15 to 20 kilograms (33 to 44 pounds), making it a medium-sized primate for its time.

Saadanius sports a projecting snout, a relatively tall face with long, narrow nasal bones, broad cheek teeth and other traits resembling those of older primates previously unearthed at a geological formation on the edge of Egypt’s Sahara Desert. Researchers estimate that those creatures lived between 35 million and 30 million years ago.

But a few critical anatomical features, including a long, tube-shaped ear canal, distinguish Saadanius from its primate predecessors, the scientists say. And unlike Old World monkeys and hominoids that evolved after about 24 million years ago, Saadanius — which Zalmout’s group identifies as a male based on dental characteristics — lacked nasal sinuses and large canine teeth typical of later ape and monkey males.

For that reason, the researchers use 24 million years as the most recent estimate of when Old World monkeys diverged from apes.

Anthropologist Brenda Benefit of New Mexico State University in Las Cruces proposed in 1993 that a common ancestor of Old World monkeys and apes, or its close relative, would look much like the new fossil find. “Saadanius strikingly matches her prediction,” says Michigan’s William Sanders, a co-author of the new study.

Saadanius apparently lived not long before Old World monkeys and apes diverged from a common ancestor, Fleagle says. Unfortunately, a 5-million-to-10-million-year gap separates Saadanius from the earliest known Old World monkeys and hominoids, so key pieces of the evolutionary transition are still missing.

That makes it difficult to narrow down the timing of an ape–Old World monkey divergence, says anthropologist Elwyn Simons of Duke University in Durham, North Carolina. But the new fossil “fits in exactly as it should” in primate evolution, he holds.

Although additional fossil finds are needed, the Saudi specimen offers a more reliable age estimate for a crucial shift in primate evolution than can be gleaned from DNA studies of living apes and monkeys, comments anthropologist David Begun of the University of Toronto.

Image: Partial cranium of the discovered Saadanius specimen./Zalmout and Sanders.

See Also:

• Stunningly Preserved 165-Million-Year-Old Spider Fossil Found
• 67 Million-Year-Old Snake Fossil Found Eating Baby Dinosaurs
• 2-Billion-Year-Old Fossils May Be Earliest Known Multicellular
• ‘Lucy’s Grandfather’ Fossil Makes Humanity’s Ancestor Seem More
• Fossil Antelope Teeth Hold Clues to Europe’s Missing Apes
• Fossil Turtle Had Extra-Thick Shell to Fend Off World’s Largest

Source: Wired: Wired Science | 14 Jul 2010 | 12:30 pm

World view: ERA of austerity

The economic crisis is a setback to the European Research Area, warns Colin Macilwain — and the research community is ill-placed to respond.
Source: NatureNews - All articles published today - nature.com science feeds | 14 Jul 2010 | 12:00 pm

Old Fighter Jets to Be Destroyed in Target Practice

Boeing is converting retired Lockheed-Martin F-16 fighter jets into QF-16 Drones for Air Force target practice. The USAF awarded Boeing the contract the convert the retired Fighting Falcon combat aircraft for aerial target practice.
Source: Livescience.com | 14 Jul 2010 | 11:40 am

No appeal for stopped badger cull

The Welsh Assembly Government says it will not appeal against a decision by judges to quash a proposed badger cull.
Source: BBC News - Science & Environment | 14 Jul 2010 | 11:19 am

Deep Tremor Shakes the Earth

Rumblings not linked to volcanoes.
Source: Livescience.com | 14 Jul 2010 | 11:07 am

Big Baby Star Spotted in Dusty Womb

Scientists have taken a picture of a huge baby star cocooned in a disk of dust, the first observational evidence in a 20-year debate about whether massive stars form the same way as smaller, sun-like stars.
Source: Discovery News - Top Stories | 14 Jul 2010 | 11:07 am

Fossil links humans and monkeys

Scientists find the skull of a 29m-year-old primate, shedding light on when our evolutionary line diverged from monkeys.
Source: BBC News - Science & Environment | 14 Jul 2010 | 11:06 am

Your Poop Is Unique: Gut Viruses Different in Every Person

Like a fingerprint, the virus communities in the human gut are unique to each individual
Source: Livescience.com | 14 Jul 2010 | 11:00 am

Ape ancestors brought to life by fossil primate skull

The skull of a creature dubbed Saadanius helps to explain how ancient primates split into two groups – the Old World monkeys and the great apes, including chimpanzees, gorillas and humans

A fossilised, battle-scarred skull belonging to a previously unknown species of primate has been unearthed that sheds light on the evolutionary origins of apes, including humans.

The creature was no bigger than a baboon and lived in the canopy of a warm, damp forest near what is now the Red Sea in western Saudi Arabia, between 28m and 29m years ago.

The remains, which include a partial skull and teeth, were recovered from ironstone sediment during an expedition to the site in February 2009, but only now has a detailed description of the fossil been published.

The discovery, reported in Nature, is being hailed as one of the most significant finds in decades because it illuminates a critical moment in evolution when ancient primates split into two separate lineages.

One group of primates gave rise to the Old World monkeys, which include baboons and macaques, while the other led to the great apes and, ultimately, Homo sapiens.

The skull and teeth show that the animal, named Saadanius hijazensis, had similar teeth to Old World monkeys. Unlike apes, it lacked a frontal sinus (which is responsible for the feeling of "brain freeze" sometimes caused by eating ice-cream).

By comparing the remains of Saadanius with other ancient primates, the researchers put the date of the evolutionary split at between 29m and 27m years ago.

"The roots of apes, humans and monkeys go back a long way. We were interested to know when these ancient primates diverged because, in a way, that's when we got our start," said William Sanders, an author on the paper at the University of Michigan's Museum of Palaeontology.

"Knowing the date is important because you can then look at what the conditions were like at that time and place and get some idea of what was driving their evolution," he added.

The Red Sea had yet to form when Saadanius was alive and the landscape was changing with the arrival of animals and plants from Eurasia.

Iyad Zalmout, lead author of the study, spotted the damaged skull of Saadanius lying upside down in the sediment with its teeth glinting in the sun.

Serious wounds on the front of the skull suggest the creature met a violent end. "He got in the way of a big carnivore and died in a horrible way," Zalmout said. "The puncture marks in the skull suggest he was seized by the head, got chewed around a bit, and was then thrown away."

Brenda Benefit, professor of biological anthropology at New Mexico State University, said: "For me this discovery is one of the most significant in my lifetime. Until now we have not had a very perfect fossil ancestor for the Old World monkeys and apes."

"Some palaeontologists, inlcuding myself, thought that this is exactly what the common ancestor to Old World monkeys and apes would look like, based on resemblances between Miocene fossil Old World monkeys and apes, whereas others thought they would be shorter snouted and more round-headed like modern gibbons.

"Saadanius resolves this debate and demonstrates the importance of the fossil record for knowing what our ancestors looked like."

Source: Science news, comment and analysis | guardian.co.uk | 14 Jul 2010 | 11:00 am

New Species Changes Idea on When Humans, Monkeys Split

The primate lived alongside husky cats and large-fanged dogs in what was then a lush forest.
Source: Livescience.com | 14 Jul 2010 | 10:59 am

Tigers Facing Global Extinction

Just 3,200 tigers are thought to be left in the wild. WWF is organizing a global campaign, Tx2, to pull the animals back from the brink of extinction.
Source: Discovery News - Top Stories | 14 Jul 2010 | 10:56 am

Medici Family Cold Case Finally Solved

Malaria, not murder, was responsible for the deaths of two members of the clan that dominated the Florentine Renaissance.
Source: Discovery News - Top Stories | 14 Jul 2010 | 10:35 am

Gillian McKeith: You are what you tweet

Celebrity nutritionist Gillian McKeith is embroiled in an online identity crisis as her spat with Bad Science writer Ben Goldacre hots up

Oh Gillian.

Gillian, Gillian, Gillian.

An almighty brouhaha has arisen over on Twitter. And it appears we could yet be at the calm before the storm. Here's the story (for the history see here):

Gillian McKeith, of You Are What You Eat fame, appears to have taken umbridge umbrage at a relatively innocuous tweet from Rachel E Moody:

McKeith, currently promoting – ahem – a new book, was incensed – or at least the person operating what has previously been described as her official Twitter feed was. Scienceblogs caught the reaction before the angry missives were taken down:

Note the word "lies" in reference to Ben Goldacre's Bad Science. Enter Mr Goldacre, who tweeted: "hi @gillianmckeith, i'm writing a piece about you libelling me in the context of #libelreform, can you pls contact ben@badscience.net thnks".

And that's when the whole situation turned plain weird. Evolving miraculously into third-person mode – just days after a first-person verification – the McKeith feed sought to take apart those questioning her qualifications.

But it wasn't long before the collection of McKeith tweets were taken down, replaced with an odd volte face: "Do you actually believe this is real twitter site for the GM?" Er, yes? In large part because it was linked from your official website:

As it stands, McKeith is trending alongside Raoul Moat and Thierry Henry. As with everything on the internet, trending topics can't be deleted – so how do you solve a PR problem like McKeith?

Source: Science news, comment and analysis | guardian.co.uk | 14 Jul 2010 | 10:11 am

Taliban Training Monkey Terrorists?

Is the Taliban in Afghanistan training monkeys to use machine guns and trench mortars against U.S. military forces?
Source: Discovery News - Top Stories | 14 Jul 2010 | 10:10 am

The Curious Case of the Flying Barnacles

Barnacles native to West Africa are showing up in Scandanavia. Researchers think they flew there.
Source: Discovery News - Top Stories | 14 Jul 2010 | 10:05 am

Our Eavesdropping-on-ET Strategy Not Likely to Work

Bad news for SETI: Even with the most sensitive radio telescopes yet designed, humans probably won’t find intelligent aliens by listening in on their phones and televisions, a new study finds.

“Eavesdropping on ET is very hard, even with the latest radio telescopes,” said astronomer Duncan Forgan of the University of Edinburgh, a coauthor of the study. “If we don’t try any other ways of searching for aliens, then we may never find them.”

Forgan and astronomer Robert Nichol of the Institute of Cosmology and Gravitation in the U.K. set out to test the suggestion that rather than building expensive telescopes dedicated exclusively to listening for signals from aliens, SETI — the search for extra-terrestrial intelligence — could be done on the cheap by piggy-backing on other astronomy missions.

Some astronomers hoped SETI searches could ride on the coattails of the planned Square Kilometer Array, which will probe the history of the universe with thousands of small antennas spread out either Australia or South Africa.

“We focused on the SKA because it will be an incredible advancement in radio astronomy,” Forgan said. “It will be the most powerful radio telescope ever built.”

The SKA will also be sensitive in the same frequency range that cellphones, radio and television operate in. If the aliens out there are anything like us, that frequency range is exactly where we should expect to find them, astronomers have suggested.

In 2007, astrophysicists Abraham Loeb and Matias Zaldarriaga of the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics calculated that signals similar to those used in human military radar could be detected from more than 160 light-years away using a telescope in the Netherlands called LOFAR, and more than 650 light-years away using the SKA.

But assuming these aliens have technology like ours, there won’t be enough time to find them, Forgan and Nichol argue. Humans, the only intelligent civilization we know of, have been communicating using radio waves for only about 100 years — and we’re beginning to go quiet. Advances in technology mean less power is needed to broadcast, and digital communication is starting to replace radio altogether.

Forgan and Nichol randomly generated about 500,000 alien civilizations based on current theories of planet formation, and an optimistic guess as to how many would develop life. They then assumed that each civilization broadcasts in radio for 100 years, and they can hear each other from up to 300 light-years away.

“All communication disappears,” the team wrote. Even with a telescope like the SKA, the odds of eavesdropping on another civilization are one in 10 million. The results were posted in a paper on the astronomy preprint website arxiv.org and accepted for publication in the International Journal of Astrobiology.

A more fruitful strategy would be to target our searches, Forgan suggests. We may not be able to hear leaked signals, but we could still pick up a deliberate beacon from a civilization that wanted to announce its presence. A telescope dedicated to searching for such a beacon, like the Allen Telescope Array in northern California, would improve the odds to one in 10 thousand.

Jill Tarter of the SETI Institute thinks Forgan underestimates the usefulness of the SKA. “The SKA is being built with a large field of view and many simultaneous beams, so that there should in fact be significant observing time available for SETI,” she said.

Whatever the odds, Loeb thinks we should eavesdrop, anyway. “Rather than speculate about how generic is our own evolution and whether others will be the same, we should just search,” he said. He points out that a lot of technological advances are driven by social forces. For example, Earth gave off the most radio waves during the Cold War, when radar ballistic missile searches were common.

“Politics are impossible to predict, they don’t follow laws of physics,” he said. “We should just explore the sky, and try to set as strong limits as we can.”

Forgan agrees. “We should always continue to eavesdrop as it is a cheap search method, especially if we piggy-back,” he said. “If you don’t listen, you won’t hear anything.”

Image: SKA

See Also:

• The Surprising Spirituality of SETI
• Building a Better Alien-Calling Code
• When Intelligent and Natural Design Collide
• 70 Years of Telescopes Tuned to Cosmic Radio
• Silence! The Last of the Giant Radio Telescopes Is Listening to …

Follow us on Twitter @astrolisaFor and @wiredscience, and on Facebook.

Source: Wired: Wired Science | 14 Jul 2010 | 10:01 am

African Parks Face Staggering Decline in Large Mammals

Africa's large mammals are dying off within the borders of protected areas. Parks need funding if the species are to be saved.
Source: Livescience.com | 14 Jul 2010 | 9:08 am

Comics put patients in the picture

Graphic novels and medical comics are proving powerful communication tools for patients and medical professionals

Brian Fies started drawing his webcomic Mom's Cancer when his mother was diagnosed with metastatic lung cancer. "I wanted to share my family's story," he told me. "I thought of it as drawing a map so that other people following along behind us and having similar experiences would know what to expect."

He discovered that comics were the perfect medium to tell his story. "I accompanied my mother to chemotherapy one day and drew a little sketch of her in the chair getting her chemotherapy. I decided that in that one sketch I'd somehow captured something essential to that day and to that moment that I wouldn't have been able to any other way. Something about the combination of one picture with a few words told more than either the picture or the words alone would have been able to."

Fies uses the tools of comics to illustrate metaphors in a literal way. He drew his mother drowning in medical jargon, for example, and walking the tightrope that was balancing her medication. "In comics I'm able to apply these metaphors literally ... a unique application of a unique medium."

Doctors, nurses and patients are increasingly using graphic art to unpack their experience of medicine and disease.

I attended the first ever academic conference on the subject Comics and Medicine: Medical Narrative in Graphic Novels last month at the University of London, where doctors, nurses, patients and comic book artists shared their experiences of medical themes in comic books.

Paul Gravett, a historian and promoter of comics, told me doctors have been playing roles in comics for a long time. "One of the first that came out was called Rex Morgan, M.D., one of these long-running, continuity, serialised daily strips in the American papers." It was created in 1948 by psychiatrist Nicolas P. Dallis under the pseudonym Dal Curtis.

In the 1950s, two comic books about doctors stood out: Psychoanalysis and MD, published by EC Comics.

In 1955, when the two titles were first published, they were charting new territory for comics. Until then no comic had dealt soberly and realistically with the medical profession and psychoanalysis. They tapped into the public's feeling of respect – bordering on awe – for doctors in 1950s America, and the hope that new areas of medicine could bring miracle cures.

"Right back when comics began over a hundred years ago, the envisaged readers were adults rather than children," said Ian Williams, a GP and comic book artist who helped organise the conference. "Then somewhere along the line they've been kind of hijacked by people writing for teens and adolescents or children, and that has stuck."

He said comics have had to battle for years against unfortunate stereotypes. "But there was a watershed in the 1980s when serious, long, graphic novels started being produced, which have had great critical acclaim. And over the last 10 years graphic novels have been reviewed in broadsheet newspapers and academic journals. Now there's a huge cohort of comics scholars who are looking at all forms of graphic narrative."

At Penn State University Medical School, Michael Green teaches medical students how to make and appreciate comics. "I think comics are relevant to medicine in a number of ways," he said. They can help students learn about the doctor-patient relationship, how to communicate bad news, informed consent, empathy and the experience of illness from a patient's perspective.

"There's a growing number of adult-themed graphic stories which address medically relevant themes," he said. He singles out three that have recently been published: Mom's Cancer; Cancer Vixen, about a woman's experience with breast cancer; and Stitches by David Small, about recollections of a childhood experience with cancer.

"Each of these illustrates and writes about an important aspect of the illness experience."

In 2005, Mom's Cancer won an Eisner award – the comic book industry's equivalent of an Oscar – for "best digital comic". Fies said this professional recognition was "amazing" and the reaction from the medical community equally heart-warming.

"I got notes from nursing instructors in Australia who said they were using Mom's Cancer to train their students," said Fies. "I got an email from a cancer physician in Arizona who invited me to come speak to his group, some of whom said they would change the way they did their jobs because of what I'd written. That's immensely gratifying. That's huge! That's more impact than I expected to have on anything in my life."

The web is spearheading a revolution in comics, allowing creators to reach a global readership. MK Czerwiec, an HIV and hospice care nurse, was one of the first medical practitioners to publish her work, Comic Nurse, online, and collections are also published periodically in print.

Czerwiec has encouraged medical students to follow her lead and reflect on their experiences through comics. "We did an exercise in which we asked students to draw a diagnosis as if they were a patient receiving it, and we also asked them to draw a different diagnosis as if they were a doctor giving it," said Czerwiec. "When they drew diagnoses as a doctor, they drew disembodied body parts, but when they drew as a patient they drew embodied experiences of illness, with reference to an emotional reaction and to their whole families and lives."

She believes comics give the opportunity to tap into both the right and left sides of the brain for insight into an experience. "Words can access one thing, but when you challenge yourself to make images you access something totally different. It's very powerful to put those two things together."

Comic artists aren't restricting themselves to physical illnesses, either. Williams recommends a graphic novel by Justin Green about obsessive compulsive disorder. "I must admit, it seems a little strange to tell a room full of doctors they should be reading Binky Brown meets the Holy Virgin Mary," he said, "but I think the tide is turning."

He believes medical comics are a valuable resource for educating healthcare professionals. "I think they can be used as a window into the experience of that patient," he said. "I see healthcare professionals reading comics to get an idea of the 'patient experience' – what it's like to go through these illnesses."

And their entertainment value should not be forgotten. "I think these works are so superbly complex and subtle, I think they can be enjoyed over and over again; they can be dissected or enjoyed; read purely for the artwork or enjoyed on so many levels," said Williams.

Gravett points out that not every kind of graphic novel is suitable for patients or family members. "But there are graphic novels that are really going to be useful. Something like Mom's Cancer really does answer a lot of key questions that people have when they first have cancer in the family."

Adults' instinctive aversion towards comics as a serious medium will change, he believes, "as people realise they simply aren't automatically kids' stuff or humorous – that they can deal with [medical issues] very powerfully, and very effectively ... It's an extraordinarily rich language which we're only just discovering and inventing, and learning to really exploit to its fullest."

Do you know of any medical graphic novels I've missed? Later this week I'll be posting a list of my favourites on this blog. You can see more examples on Ian Williams' excellent website.

Source: Science news, comment and analysis | guardian.co.uk | 14 Jul 2010 | 8:45 am

Plants 'can think and remember'

Plants are able to remember and respond to information contained in light, according to researchers in Poland.
Source: BBC News - Science & Environment | 14 Jul 2010 | 5:20 am

'Killer mushroom' found in China

A tiny mushroom little know to scientists is to blame for more than 400 sudden deaths in Yunnan province, experts say.
Source: BBC News - Science & Environment | 14 Jul 2010 | 4:51 am

Solar plane set for record flight

A UK unmanned solar-powered plane called Zephyr will soon attempt to fly non-stop, day and night, for a record two weeks.
Source: BBC News - Science & Environment | 14 Jul 2010 | 4:49 am

Raid nets Malaysian police huge haul of rare wildlife

Police in Malaysia inadvertently uncover a massive haul of endangered wildlife during a raid on a warehouse in search of cars.
Source: BBC News - Science & Environment | 14 Jul 2010 | 3:07 am