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Stroke risk temporarily increases for an hour after drinking alcohol, study findsThe risk for stroke doubles in the hour after drinking beer, wine or liquor, according to a small study. Researchers note, however, that moderate alcohol consumption (less than two drinks a day) appears to be protective over the long-term which may outweigh this temporary rise in immediate risk.Source: ScienceDaily: Latest Science News | 16 Jul 2010 | 9:00 am Human sperm gene is 600 million years old, scientists discoverThere is one sex-specific gene so vital, its function has remained unaltered throughout evolution and is found in almost all animals, according to new research. The gene, called Boule, is responsible for sperm production and appears to be the only gene exclusively required for sperm production from an insect to a mammal. All animal sperm production likely comes from a common prototype.Source: ScienceDaily: Latest Science News | 16 Jul 2010 | 9:00 am Reinventing the wheel -- naturallyHumans did not invent the wheel. Nature did. While the evolution from the Neolithic solid stone wheel with a single hole for an axle to the sleek wheels of today's racing bikes can be seen as the result of human ingenuity, it also represents how animals, including humans, have come to move more efficiently and quicker over millions of years on Earth, according to an expert.Source: ScienceDaily: Latest Science News | 16 Jul 2010 | 9:00 am Meditation helps increase attention spanIt's nearly impossible to pay attention to one thing for a long time. A new study looks at whether Buddhist meditation can improve a person's ability to be attentive and finds that meditation training helps people do better at focusing for a long time on a task that requires them to distinguish small differences between things they see.Source: ScienceDaily: Latest Science News | 16 Jul 2010 | 9:00 am Hungry cells, on a binge, know their own limitsCells that consume parts of themselves can stop this process autonomously as well, according to new research. The self-cannibalism is part of the normal digestive process of the cell, but also a survival mechanism in times of famine. This is what makes it difficult for doctors to 'starve out' cancer cells, for instance.Source: ScienceDaily: Latest Science News | 16 Jul 2010 | 9:00 am Researchers cut years from drug development with nanoscopic bead technologyNew research confirms that a revolutionary technology will slash years off the time it takes to develop drugs -- bringing vital new treatments to patients much more quickly. Lab-on-Bead uses tiny beads studded with "pins" that match a drug to a disease marker in a single step, so researchers can test an infinite number of possibilities for treatments all at once. When Lab-on-Bead makes a match, it has found a viable treatment for a specific disease -- speeding up drug discovery by as much as 10,000 times and cutting out years of testing and re-testing in the laboratory.Source: ScienceDaily: Latest Science News | 16 Jul 2010 | 9:00 am Human nature: Superpower psychologyIn the last of our series on human nature, primate expert Frans de Waal describes what happens when power is concentrated in the hands of an individual - or a nation Source: Science news, comment and analysis | guardian.co.uk | 16 Jul 2010 | 7:32 am DNA discovery opens new door to develop tools, therapies for hereditary cancersResearchers have revealed new avenues to develop assessment tools and alternative treatments for people living with hereditary colorectal cancers.Source: ScienceDaily: Latest Science News | 16 Jul 2010 | 6:00 am Toward making 'extended blood group typing' more widely availableScientists are reporting an advance toward enabling more blood banks to adopt so-called "extended blood group typing," which increases transfusion safety by better matching donors and recipients.Source: ScienceDaily: Latest Science News | 16 Jul 2010 | 6:00 am Global warming slows coral growth in Red SeaIn a pioneering use of computed tomography (CT) scans, scientists at Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution (WHOI) have discovered that carbon dioxide (CO2)-induced global warming is in the process of killing off a major coral species in the Red Sea.Source: ScienceDaily: Latest Science News | 16 Jul 2010 | 6:00 am Skin cells could help discover cause of Parkinson's diseaseResearchers are applying new stem cell technology to use skin samples to grow the brain cells thought to be responsible for the onset of Parkinson's disease.Source: ScienceDaily: Latest Science News | 16 Jul 2010 | 6:00 am 25,000 new asteroids found by NASA's sky mapping (AP)
Source: Yahoo! News: Science News | 16 Jul 2010 | 4:04 am BP halts Gulf oil flow for first time since April (AFP)
Source: Yahoo! News: Science News | 16 Jul 2010 | 3:38 am Cave of marsupial fossils discovered in Outback (AP)
Source: Yahoo! News: Science News | 16 Jul 2010 | 3:24 am A love affair with lifeIn E O Wilson's autobiography Naturalist we learn of the great ant man's enchanted childhood and development into one of the patron saints of conservation Edward O Wilson is one of the architects of that bleak philosophy called sociobiology. In his 1978 classic On Human Nature, Wilson describes the human mind as a device for survival and reproduction, with reason as just one of its various techniques. "The first dilemma, in a word, is that we have no particular place to go. The species lacks any goal external to its own biological nature." He spells it out: all the drive, wit, love, pride, anger, hope and anxiety that characterise the species Homo sapiens are simply there to perpetuate the biological cycle. All of which makes it even more fun to discover that this seemingly austere nihilism flowered from an enchanted childhood enriched by a passion for the fauna of the old American South, and then – only notionally – impoverished by the loss of an eye to a spine from a poisonous little fish; by a grateful experience of ramrod military education; by compulsive achievement in the Boy Scout movement; by a sincere investment in the hymns and passions of the Southern Baptist Church; and by an old-fashioned Tom Sawyer faith in the ideals of honour, duty, courage and standing up to bullies. The story could as easily have been an exculpation of failure: a sorry chronicle of a lonely boy, child of divorced parents, son of an ultimately suicidal depressive alcoholic, farmed out to strangers, bullied at school, left to his own devices, allowed to play with guns and knives, dragged from town to town and school to school, increasingly obsessed with insects, snakes and amphibians. But nothing in Wilson's telling makes it seem unhappy, or at least not for very long: here is a resourceful, resilient child who makes the best of his surroundings. It is a sunlit story of the warm south: Mark Twain rather than Tennessee Williams, complete with drive, wit, love, pride, hope and so on. And it is beautifully written. The story opens with the memories of a seven-year-old on Paradise Beach in Florida, mesmerised by a medusa, which he describes with delicacy and precision. Somehow this early fascination with life's prodigality, with wet, slimy or creepy-crawly things, becomes systematised and methodical. The young Wilson learns quite early on that he wants to be a scientist. He is in luck: he meets people who encourage him; he works his way through college; he becomes what he dreamed of becoming, a myrmecologist (specialising in ants); he ends up at Harvard and his increasing expertise in the ant world of the Americas and the Pacific somehow enables him to begin to see the big picture: the puzzle of life on Earth. It isn't clear, despite the clarity of the memoir, quite how the dreamy child turns into the focused scientist – some dreamy children just become dreamy adults - but these steps from daydream to determined endeavour usually involve a mix of random encounter, enthusiasm and opportunism. Wilson becomes more than just a great ant man. He extends the lessons of the ant heap to the panorama of evolution. He becomes a theorist of biodiversity, evolutionary biology and biogeography, and one of the patron saints of conservation science. Ironically, as he becomes a scientist, he begins increasingly to write like one. "I believed deeply in the power of reductionism, followed by a reconstitution of detail by synthesis," he declares in his chapter on island biogeography, and in the same paragraph a colleague becomes "enamoured of" a subject. On the other hand, who could not applaud a Harvard don who writes of another Harvard don, his contemporary the double helix discoverer James Dewey Watson: "I found him the most unpleasant human being I had ever met." But such episodes are just turbid pools in the limpid stream of memoir. Wilson goes around the world, grubbing for ants in Mexico, New Caledonia, the New Hebrides and Australia, makes ant history in Sri Lanka, marries happily, wins academic awards, writes great books, and wins a Pulitzer prize. He gets involved in furious ideological debate about genetic determinism. On a public platform somebody literally pours cold water on him and his arguments – one forgets how polarised the politics of biological science then seemed – but he says, "I received almost no hate mail, and never a death threat." Right to the end, he maintains the old-fashioned courtesy of the South. He concludes that he would do it all over again, but this time as a microbial ecologist, and begin his research not in the jungles of the Pacific but rather cut his way "through clonal forests sprawled across grains of sand" and travel in "an imagined submarine through drops of water proportionately the size of lakes". Naturalist is an unfinished story about a profound and increasingly thoughtful love affair with life itself: all life. It isn't obvious that this literary biophilia – the word is Wilson's own coinage – somehow enhances my chances of reproductive survival, but it certainly enhanced my summer. Thanks for several ideas for books to debate (and I know that at least two of you suggested another Wilson title). But club member Hypocorpse got in promptly with a request for Gaia: A New Look at Life on Earth by James Lovelock (1979). It's not a big book, but it certainly punched above its weight. guardian.co.uk © Guardian News & Media Limited 2010 | Use of this content is subject to our Terms & Conditions | More Feeds Source: Science news, comment and analysis | guardian.co.uk | 16 Jul 2010 | 3:16 am Red Sea coral 'feeling the heat'A species of coral in the Red Sea could stop growing by 2070 if the current warming trend continues, say scientists.Source: BBC News - Science & Environment | 16 Jul 2010 | 3:10 am The nation's weather (AP)
Source: Yahoo! News: Science News | 16 Jul 2010 | 2:49 am The Large Hadron Collider, Now in Comic FormA new comic has been published, written by actor LeVar Burton (of Star Trek fame), chronicling the adventures of a time traveling super hero... and the LHC.Source: Discovery News - Top Stories | 16 Jul 2010 | 2:41 am Britons urged to count trees to fight climate change (Reuters)Reuters - A British museum is urging the public to record trees in parks, streets and gardens as part of a three-year survey to uncover how climate change is affecting the environment.Source: Yahoo! News: Science News | 16 Jul 2010 | 2:40 am BP awaits crucial well test dataBP is awaiting test results from the blown-out oil well in the Gulf of Mexico, a day after it staunched the flow.Source: BBC News - Science & Environment | 16 Jul 2010 | 2:31 am Southern China braces for Typhoon Conson landfall (AP)
Source: Yahoo! News: Science News | 16 Jul 2010 | 2:29 am Gulf geyser stops gushing, but will it hold? (AP)
Source: Yahoo! News: Science News | 16 Jul 2010 | 2:23 am FTSE 100 climbs at open (AFP)
Source: Yahoo! News: Science News | 16 Jul 2010 | 1:50 am New Clues to How Cancer Patients' Genes Influence Treatment (HealthDay)HealthDay - THURSDAY, July 15 (HealthDay News) -- Scientists are releasing the first results from a major study looking at how cancer patients' genes influence the success of the therapies they receive.Source: Yahoo! News: Science News | 15 Jul 2010 | 9:48 pm Why is the Moon Bigger at the Horizon?Is it an astronomical phenomenon or is your brain being duped by an optical illusion?Source: Discovery News - Top Stories | 15 Jul 2010 | 7:19 pm Certain genes linked to kidney disease in blacks (Reuters)Reuters - A gene that appears to protect people from sleeping sickness in Africa also appears to make black Americans four times more likely to develop kidney disease, U.S. and Belgian researchers reported on Thursday.Source: Yahoo! News: Science News | 15 Jul 2010 | 6:26 pm Bionic Devices Let Injured Animals Roam AgainThe artificial limb technology that has let disabled people walk again has been revolutionizing veterinary medicine in recent years.Source: Livescience.com | 15 Jul 2010 | 6:21 pm High Heels Reshape Leg Muscles, Create Pain When Not WornA new study suggests why some women actually experience discomfort when they walk around sans stilettos.Source: Livescience.com | 15 Jul 2010 | 4:59 pm Breath of fresh air for brain 'glue' cellsAstrocytes may have an important role in regulating breathing.Source: NatureNews - All articles published today - nature.com science feeds | 15 Jul 2010 | 4:00 pm Mystery RNA spawns gene-activating peptidesShort peptides that regulate fruitfly development are produced from 'junk' RNA.<img src="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~r/news/rss/today/~4/RIBGYAR9V0k" height="1" width="1"/>Source: NatureNews - All articles published today - nature.com science feeds | 15 Jul 2010 | 4:00 pm Primordial Sperm Gene Found
The finding suggests the ability to produce sperm arose just once, 600 million years ago, and has been conserved through all subsequent animal evolution.
“People have thought that there was a single common ancestor because we see sperm reproduction in many animals, but previously there was no conclusive evidence that sperm production has a single common origin in all animals,” said geneticist Eugene Xu from Northwestern University, co-author of the study being published July 15 in PLoS Genetics. Renee Reijo Pera, director of stem cell research at Stanford University, said the result is interesting because sperm cells have so much in common, but also need to be different enough to be specific to each species. “If a human could produce an egg that could be fertilized by a monkey it would be really bad,” she said. “I think this gene and its derivatives have contributed to the specificity while maintaining the conserved function.”
To confirm the presence of the gene, called BOULE, across different evolutionary lineages, Xu and his team looked for its presence in the sperm of a sea anenome, a sea urchin, a fruit fly, a rainbow trout, a rooster and a mouse. The presence of BOULE in the sea anemone, one of the most primitive animals on earth, as well as all the others, pointed to the gene’s ancient origin. BOULE is the only gene known to function only for the production of sperm, said Xu. This makes it an ideal target for designing a male contraceptive drug or agents that halt the reproduction of infectious parasites or the carriers of germs, he said, because knocking it out wouldn’t harm other bodily processes. “We’d found genes before that were involved in sperm production but also in other functions in the body like hormonal regulation.” BOULE is not the first gene to be found that is shared among all animal groups. Some genes are shared in eye and heart development, for example. Plants and fungi lack BOULE, which means the production of plant sperm, or pollen, most likely arose independently of animal sperm. Image: 1) Sea Anemone, Creativity+Timothy K Hamilton/Flickr. 2) Various animal sperm/Eugene Xu. See Also:
Follow Jess McNally on Twitter @jessmcnally, and Wired Science @wiredscience.
Source: Wired: Wired Science | 15 Jul 2010 | 3:12 pm Sperm in All Animals Originated 600 Million Years AgoThe ability to produce sperm originated 600 million years ago, a new study suggests.Source: Livescience.com | 15 Jul 2010 | 3:01 pm Malaria-Proof Mosquito CreatedThe discovery is a major breakthrough that could prevent millions of people from being infected with the life-threatening disease.Source: Discovery News - Top Stories | 15 Jul 2010 | 3:00 pm Behind Mel’s RantsThere may be more to Mel Gibon's latest embarrassing rants than meets the eye.Source: Discovery News - Top Stories | 15 Jul 2010 | 2:21 pm New Plan For NASA Keeps Shuttles On The Job (For Now)A NASA oversight committee has unanimously passed a plan to postpone the space shuttles' retirement and build a new U.S. launch system while helping to develop commercial space taxis.Source: Discovery News - Top Stories | 15 Jul 2010 | 2:14 pm Grief Over iPhone 4 Reception Problems GrowsApple calls press conference as a senator wags a finger and rumors circulate that the problem was known a year agoSource: Livescience.com | 15 Jul 2010 | 2:13 pm BP Reports No More Oil Flowing into GulfAlthough the tests are still ongoing, the new cap appears to be preventing oil from gushing into the Gulf.Source: Discovery News - Top Stories | 15 Jul 2010 | 2:00 pm Woolly mammoth hunters helped change climateANCHORAGE, 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 | 1:58 pm Senate plan puts off space shuttle retirementWASHINGTON (Reuters) - A U.S. Senate oversight committee unanimously passed a plan on Thursday to postpone retirement of the space shuttle as part of a job-saving compromise to the Obama administration's wish to end NASA's program to return astronauts to the moon.Source: Reuters: Science News | 15 Jul 2010 | 1:43 pm Polar Species Leap 9,000 MilesHow exactly are some polar species able to find homes at opposite ends of the world?Source: Discovery News - Top Stories | 15 Jul 2010 | 1:15 pm A Mud-Loving, Iron-Lunged, Jelly-Eating Ecosystem Savior
Meet the bearded goby, a six-inch-long fish that lives in toxic mud, eats jellyfish, lasts for hours without oxygen, and has saved a coastal African ecosystem from a nightmare fate. Over the last several decades, as other fish populations off the coast of the Namibia collapsed, jellyfish and bacteria populations exploded — a condition widely considered to be ecological an dead end, incapable of supporting rich webs of life. But amidst this turmoil, the goby has thrived. It circulates nutrients that would otherwise be lost, feeds animals who lost their historic prey, and provides that rare thing: a happy, or at least not-so-bad, ending to an environmental disaster story. The goby “has the ability to consume what were considered dead-end resources and convert them into bite-sized chunks for higher trophic levels,” said Mark Gibbons, a University of the Western Cape biologist. “Gobies have become anything but a dead-end resource. The gobies are now sustaining the rest of the ecosystem.” Half a century ago, the bearded goby was just one of many species living in what’s known as the Benguela Large Marine Ecosystem, about 7,000 square miles of continental shelf off the coast of southwest Africa. The region supported a prosperous commercial fishing industry, but overfishing depleted the northern Benguela’s keystone species, the sardine. By eating plankton and being eaten by larger fishes, sardines had provided a direct conduit between the bottom and top of the Benguela’s food chain. Now that link was gone. Adding to the upheaval, naturally occurring upwellings of deep, cold water in the Benguela deliver nutrient loads that feed enormous plankton blooms, which feed oxygen-gobbling, dead zone-creating bacteria and eventually fall to the ocean floor, forming a toxic sludge. Methane gathers in the mud, belching out in fish-killing gas eruptions. Without sardines to eat the extra plankton, the effects of this natural feature became more pronounced. Such radical stresses produced what ecologists call a regime shift. The web of life didn’t simply adjust a bit, but took a whole new form, one that didn’t require a rich assortment of fishes to circulate energy and nutrients. In this lowest-common-denominator system, there were only a few opportunist fish species, bacteria and, at the top of the food chain, giant jellyfish. Giant jellies have no natural predators, and aren’t even eaten by humans. In the systems they dominate, nutrients and energy go from plankton to jelly, with little between. “The massive increase in jellyfish biomass after the collapse has been regarded as a trophic dead end,” wrote Gibbons and colleagues in a study published July 15 in Science. The same has happened in China’s Bohai Sea, the Sea of Japan, and the northwest Mediterranean. But unlike those ecosystems, the northern Benguela has the bearded goby.
In recent years, fishermen and researchers noticed more bearded gobies than before. Gobies were showing up in the bellies of seals, penguins and the remaining large fish, such as horse mackerel and hake. But nobody quite knew what they were doing, so Gibbons, along with University of Bergen biologists Anne Utne-Palm and Anne Salvanes, decided to find out. They measured oxygen content and chemical composition throughout the northern Benguela’s waters and across its floors. They used radar to track the movements of goby populations, and conducted a series of aquarium experiments on individual fishes. What they found is a fish extraordinarily well-suited to its new environment. During the day, gobies live on and in the Benguela’s toxic sea sludge. They do fine without oxygen: After spending hours in aquariums filled with oxygen-free water, gobies are still alert. Given the choice between toxic mud and sand, they picked the sludge. The gobies feed on the mud, scooping it up and waiting until evening, when they swim into the higher-oxygen water column, to digest it. While in the water column, they prefer to stay among giant jellyfish, whose stinging tentacles discourage predators from following. And the gobies have developed a taste for the jellies: The researchers’ autopsies found that jellyfish can form up to 60 percent of a bearded goby’s diet. These adaptations are likely rooted in the gobies’ evolution in the Benguela, where they dealt with toxic mud and low-oxygen waters, albeit in lower quantities than now, for millions of years. “This ‘pre-conditioning’ allowed them to capitalize on changes to the system,” said Gibbons. For many, the Benguela’s current state is still far from ideal. Philippe Cury, a fisheries biologist at France’s Institute of Research for Development, called it a “ghost ecosystem” for fisheries. “So tell your kid, ‘Eat your gobies with your jellyfish!’” he said. But without the goby to feed other species — and, critically, to keep nutrients in circulation during particularly extreme years, when other fish can’t survive — the situation would be far worse. “There would be less hake, less seabirds, seals and cetaceans and all those other organisms that feed on gobies,” said Gibbons. “That would be a desert.” Whether other jellyfish-dominated systems will prove to have their own versions of the bearded goby remains to be seen. But at least the northern Benguela has avoided total catastrophe. “Fortunately for the Benguela, they had the goby,” said Utne-Palm. “It’s a lucky end to something that could have been more of a disaster.” Images: 1) Benguela goby./Hege Vestheim. 2) Benguela goby and jellyfish./Kim Andreassen. See Also:
Citation: “Trophic Structure and Community Stability in an Overfished Ecosystem,” By Anne C. Utne-Palm, Anne G.V.Salvanes, Bronwen Currie, Stein Kaartvedt, Göran E. Nilsson, Victoria A. Braithwaite, Jonathan A.W. Stecyk, Matthias Hundt, Meganvander Bank, Bradley Flynn, Guro K. Sandvik, Thor A. Klevjer, Andrew K. Sweetman Volker Brüchert, Karin Pittman, Kathleen R. Peard, Ida G. Lunde, Rønnaug A.U. Strandabø, Mark J. Gibbons. Science, Vol. 329 No. 5989, July 16, 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 | 15 Jul 2010 | 12:42 pm High heels 'shrink muscle fibres'UK researchers say they have found why women who often wear high heels can find it painful to wear flat shoes.Source: BBC News - Science & Environment | 15 Jul 2010 | 12:39 pm Top 3 Causes of Workplace Stress RevealedHealth care costs, workplace safety and the rate of absenteeism among fellow employees are the top three causes of work-related stress.Source: Livescience.com | 15 Jul 2010 | 12:28 pm Mercury's youngest volcano foundScientists analysing data from Nasa's Messenger spacecraft say they have located some of Mercury's most recent volcanic activity.Source: BBC News - Science & Environment | 15 Jul 2010 | 12:03 pm Mercury's dynamic pastBeautiful images and scientific surprises from the planet closest to our SunSource: BBC News - Science & Environment | 15 Jul 2010 | 12:03 pm Brain Cells That Help Us Breathe RevealedStar-shape brain cells called astrocytes might play a key role in controlling breathingSource: Livescience.com | 15 Jul 2010 | 12:02 pm Giant Underwater Volcano Discovered in IndonesiaA deep sea exploration voyage discovered one of the world's largest underwater volcanoes off the coast of Indonesia.Source: Discovery News - Top Stories | 15 Jul 2010 | 12:00 pm Mercury Flyby Maps New Territory
The results from the Messenger spacecraft’s third and final flyby of Mercury are finally in and cover ground never before mapped. But they leave scientists wanting more. NASA’s orbiter swung around Mercury on Sept. 29, 2009 to get a gravitational boost before settling into orbit in March 2011. The snapshots it took as it flew past provide tantalizing glimpses of young volcanic vents, violent magnetic storms and mysterious concentrations of calcium in the atmosphere. But the view was cut short by the spacecraft going into safe mode just before its closest approach. Planetary scientists are now anxious for the main event. “It will be so great when we go into orbit,” said planetary scientist Brett Denevi of Arizona State University, co-author of a new paper describing the new view of Mercury’s surface. “This is all just a teeny snapshot. Going into orbit will be like two flybys every day.” Three papers published online July 15 in Science Express describe what Messenger saw on its last flyby. Scientists have now mapped 98 percent of the planet by combining the new observations with the first two flybys in January and October 2008, plus the Mariner 10 mission in the ’70s, Denevi said. The latest flyby filled in a 360-mile-wide gap that had never been imaged before. “It wasn’t a huge amount of real estate, but there was a lot of really interesting stuff there,” Denevi said. The most exciting features include a 180-mile-wide basin filled with hardened lava, and a crooked bowl surrounded by glass and magma that may be the largest volcanic vent ever identified on Mercury. Together, these features suggest that Mercury had active volcanoes later in its history than scientists had suspected.
“After Mariner 10, it was thought that if Mercury had volcanism at all, it probably shut off really early in the planet’s history, earlier than the other planets,” Denevi said. Earlier flybys showed this view to be totally wrong: 40 percent of Mercury’s surface was formed by volcanoes, some of it recently. And the new basin, dubbed Rachmaninoff, shows that Mercury may have been volcanically active well into the second half of its life. The smooth plains that fill Rachmaninoff were likely once molten magma that welled up from below. Although Denevi says we can’t be certain exactly how old the terrain is without analyzing samples, it could be less than a billion years old, “which is young on a planetary scale.” To Rachmaninoff’s north is an irregular depression surrounded by bright material that looks yellow in false color images (right). This feature was spotted from Earth-based telescopes, but had been labeled an impact crater. It wasn’t until the third flyby that scientists recognized the bowl for what it is: a volcanic vent. That was surprising. Because Mercury is so close to the sun, scientists expected all the volatile gases that could burst out in explosive volcanism would have been driven off. But at least in this one spot, there were enough gases to drive fiery plumes of magma to the surface. There’s still more to see of Mercury’s surface, and better angles to see it from, Denevi said. “We’ll have to wait until orbit to get a really good look.” Another surprise came from Mercury’s magnetosphere, the region above the planet’s surface where the magnetic field butts against charged particles and plasma from the solar wind. Besides Earth, Mercury is the only terrestrial planet that has a magnetic field generated by a liquid core. Both planets’ magnetospheres are deformed by the solar wind, leaving a bulge of magnetic field on the planet’s sunward side and a long tail like a comet’s extending away from the sun (below, left). On Earth, the solar wind sometimes breaks the lines of magnetic force on the sunward side and pulls them back into the tail, resulting in a massive buildup and subsequent dissipation of energy (below, center and right). This “loading” and “unloading” of the tail causes space weather disturbances called magnetic substorms, which last around an hour on Earth. The energy from these storms accelerates charged particles through the Earth’s upper atmosphere, creates the Northern Lights and wreaks havoc on communications satellites.
Mercury’s weak magnetic field supports substorms, too — 10 times stronger and 20 times faster than Earth’s. Messenger recorded four storms, each of which took only two or three minutes. On Earth, the amount of energy in the tail increases by only 10 or 20 percent, but on Mercury, the energy doubled or tripled. “The loading and unloading was extreme, it was huge,” said NASA space physicist James A. Slavin, lead author of a paper describing the magnetic observations. But weirdly, despite the intensity of the substorms, Messenger didn’t detect a single accelerated particle. “It’s a conundrum,” Slavin said. “For some reason in this little magnetosphere, none of that energy is making it into energetic particles.” The only solution is to wait for more data. “We’re really looking forward to the orbit phase,” Slavin said. “It might be quite a treasure trove.” The link between the surface and the magnetic field is Mercury’s tenuous and changeable atmosphere, called the exosphere. Everything in the exosphere was knocked off the surface by ions, photons or dust. “You get definitive fingerprints of things coming off the surface,” said planetary scientist Ron Vervack of Johns Hopkins’ Applied Physics Lab, lead author of the paper that deals with the exosphere. “It gives the best picture of composition until we can have hard samples in the lab.” And charged particles in the exosphere can be carried around and away from the planet by the magnetic field. “Our extreme tail loading may be important for maintaining Mercury’s exosphere,” Slavin said. The third flyby made the first detailed measurements of sodium, calcium and magnesium over Mercury’s poles. Messenger also made the first measurement of an ion, positively charged calcium, in the exosphere. These measurements can help understand how materials move around the planet, Vervack said. The strangest thing found in the exosphere was a persistent smear of neutral calcium near the edge of night and day. This extra clump of calcium was in the same spot in all three flybys, which, in an ever-changing exosphere, is profoundly weird. “We don’t understand where it’s coming from, or why it’s so consistent,” Vervack said. Concentrations of magnesium and sodium both changed between the flybys, so some unknown surface process must work on calcium alone. Like the rest of the Messenger team, “we need more observations at this point,” Vervack said. “It’s a puzzle, but we don’t have all the pieces yet.” Images: NASA/Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Laboratory/Carnegie Institution of Washington See Also:
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Source: Wired: Wired Science | 15 Jul 2010 | 12:00 pm Bionic legs allow NZ man to walk againInventors in New Zealand have come up with what they say is a unique device which allows paraplegic people to walk again.Source: BBC News - Science & Environment | 15 Jul 2010 | 11:21 am A Puzzling Collapse of Earth's Upper AtmosphereResearchers are puzzling over a sharper-than-expected collapse of Earth's upper atmosphere during the deep solar minimum of 2008-09.Source: Science@NASA Headline News | 15 Jul 2010 | 10:56 am A Way to Play Brain-Controlled Games on AirplanesPractice your golf swing at 35,000 feet.Source: Discovery News - Top Stories | 15 Jul 2010 | 10:29 am Brightest star explosion seen blinds satelliteWASHINGTON (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 | 15 Jul 2010 | 10:29 am T-Ray Tech Spots Bombs, Drugs from a Mile AwayScientists have replicated Superman's X-ray vision to see through clothing or packages in order to spot security threats.Source: Discovery News - Top Stories | 15 Jul 2010 | 10:15 am Illegal logging in declinePreventing illicit cutting is a cheap way to reduce carbon emissions.Source: NatureNews - All articles published today - nature.com science feeds | 15 Jul 2010 | 9:00 am 'Climategate' debate: less meltdown, more well-mannered argumentPolemical and partisan characterises the climate debate online - but at last night's Guardian debate there was courteousness and a distinct warmth in the air Something remarkable happened last night in the polarised world of "warmists" versus "sceptics": a candid but not rancorous public debate. I'm sure you'll correct me if I'm wrong but, to my knowledge, never before have all sides of this frequently poisonous debate shared a stage. The outcome was illuminating. With no little effort, I had persuaded a star panel to convene to discuss the fall out from the "Climategate" affair which followed the exposure of 1,000 private emails between climate scientists at the University of East Anglia's Climatic Research Unit and their international colleagues. Three inquiries had emphasised that the science of global warming remained clear and that the scientists had not fiddled their data but also that there had been serious shortcomings in the transparency with which they worked and in how they dealt with freedom of information requests. So almost 300 people squeezed into Riba in London last night, ready to witness a fight. Instead, they were treated to a heated argument, in the best sense of that word, with my colleague George Monbiot, who chaired magnificently, only having to threaten one heckler with ejection (yes, Piers Corbyn, it was you). There's a news story here, but here's my take on the panellists and the debate: • Professor Trevor Davies, ex-head of CRU and now pro-vice chancellor for research at UEA: Davies had the toughest brief, given the lurid nature of some of the emails, which he said had initially "shocked" him, as well as the pounding UEA has taken in the media. But he was clear and calm, if a little stiff, backing the researchers' science while fully acknowledging the need to work more openly and be more helpful in responding to FOI requests. Inevitably, he failed to woo a sceptical chunk of the audience, who jeered when he failed to recall the exact date when the last inquiry panel was set up, but all were glad he was there. • Steve McIntyre, editor of ClimateAudit: It was hard to reconcile the much-demonised McIntyre with the open and avuncular Canadian on the stage. Despite being the highest-profile critic of CRU, he pointed out none of the three enquires had asked him to give evidence. He ducked a question on how much the Earth was warming – "I don't know" – he was convincing in saying his motive had always been wanting the temperature data only because he felt it was important and should be available. He noted that if he was running a government, he would be taking action on climate change. Hardly a classic sceptic. • Professor Bob Watson, chief scientific advisor at Defra, visiting professor at the University of East Anglia and former head of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change: Watson took a twin-track approach: bluntly unequivocal that human activities are warming the planet but also genuine and insistent that sceptical views must be reflected in reports such as that by the IPCC: "We must not hide minority views", when based on "evidence, not ideology". But he added, reflecting on his work in the Clinton White House and the current UK government, that: "Evidence is a necessary but not sufficient condition for good policymaking." • Fred Pearce, environmental journalist and author of The Climate Files: Pearce was passionate in arguing that 'Climategate' was a very human tragedy, in respect of scientists feeling under siege and becoming fiercely defensive – which only spurred on the sceptics, who thought there must be something to hide. But he thought many CRU critics were not sceptics at all: "They are actually data libertarians, rather than climate sceptics, still less climate deniers. It turned into data wars." Pearce's conclusion was that at this turning point for climate science, more "candour" was needed from all. • Doug Keenan, independent researcher and blogger, was focused and feisty, and did not hold back from his central theme that scientists of all stripes remain unacceptably unaccountable for the probity of their work: "Scientists are human and the prerequisite for integrity in human affairs is transparency." He made allegations of fraud in climate science but revealed his true interests were not in climate change at all, but in the founding of early civilisations, archeo-astronomy and carbon dating. The audience played a big part too, and was mixed with both warmist and sceptic points getting loudly cheered and booed. More than one suggested the media had hyped the "Climategate" tale beyond all reason, though none of the panel fully endorsed this view. In the bar later, the extraordinary events continued, with Bob Watson and Doug Keenan swapping contact details and promising to stay in touch. Will the friendliness that broke out at the Guardian debate prove a mere holiday romance? Or will it be the start of a new way of conducting and communicating the science, especially online, that will shape how the world lives for centuries, as demanded by many? I'm cautiously optimistic. • The Climate Files: The Battle for the Truth About Global Warming by Fred Pearce is available for £8.99 (RRP £11.99) from Guardian Books. To order visit guardianbooks.co.uk or in the UK call 0845 606 4232. guardian.co.uk © Guardian News & Media Limited 2010 | Use of this content is subject to our Terms & Conditions | More Feeds Source: Science news, comment and analysis | guardian.co.uk | 15 Jul 2010 | 8:50 am Cigarette Smoke Jolts Hundreds of Genes, Researchers SayA new study shows lighting up a cigarette changes a person’s gene activity across the body. The findings may be a clue to why smoking affects overall health.Source: Livescience.com | 15 Jul 2010 | 7:48 am Fossil Bones Suggest Ancient Marsupials Plunged to DeathThe cave revealed remains of galloping kangaroos, primitive bandicoots and wombat-like marsupials.Source: Livescience.com | 15 Jul 2010 | 7:45 am Heat-ray gun in AfghanistanA heat-ray gun that causes "intolerable heating" but doesn't kill is now with US troops in Afghanistan.Source: BBC News - Science & Environment | 15 Jul 2010 | 7:27 am Illegal Logging Down, New Report RevealsMany tropical areas still facing deforestation.Source: Livescience.com | 15 Jul 2010 | 7:19 am 'Resilient growth' for renewablesThe building of new renewable energy sources outstrips new fossil fuel power plants in EU and US during 2009, a report says.Source: BBC News - Science & Environment | 15 Jul 2010 | 7:10 am Anti-whaling activist on his court caseActivist Pete Bethune talks about his suspended sentence for boarding a Japanese whaling ship, his reception in Japan and being 'disowned' by Sea Shepherd.Source: BBC News - Science & Environment | 15 Jul 2010 | 6:47 am The cost of gasA pipeline bringing gas from Russia to Europe could damage a nature reserveSource: BBC News - Science & Environment | 15 Jul 2010 | 6:19 am 'Ugly Beast' Found in Texas: Another Chupacabra?The mysterious hairless creature was described as "ugly, real ugly."Source: Livescience.com | 15 Jul 2010 | 6:12 am Scientists create improved CO2-absorbing crystalsHONG KONG (Reuters) - Chemists in South Korea and the United States have improved the design of a type of artificial crystal, doubling the amount of carbon-dioxide they can absorb and store.Source: Reuters: Science News | 15 Jul 2010 | 4:44 am Prince attacks climate change scepticsPrince 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." guardian.co.uk © Guardian News & Media Limited 2010 | Use of this content is subject to our Terms & Conditions | More Feeds Source: Science news, comment and analysis | guardian.co.uk | 15 Jul 2010 | 4:17 am Ever-increasing circlesThe 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. guardian.co.uk © Guardian News & Media Limited 2010 | Use of this content is subject to our Terms & Conditions | More Feeds Source: Science news, comment and analysis | guardian.co.uk | 15 Jul 2010 | 3:00 am
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