Making virtopsies a reality: New research project to develop reliable and cost-effective virtual autopsies

A new research project is set to play a vital role in continuing research into viable alternatives to invasive autopsies, which many families find to be unpleasant.
Source: ScienceDaily: Latest Science News | 18 Jul 2010 | 6:00 pm

Remarkable fossil cave shows how ancient marsupials grew

The discovery of a remarkable 15-million-year-old Australian fossil limestone cave packed with even older animal bones has revealed almost the entire life cycle of a large prehistoric marsupial, from suckling young in the pouch still cutting their milk teeth to elderly adults.
Source: ScienceDaily: Latest Science News | 18 Jul 2010 | 6:00 pm

Fungi's role in the cycle of life discovered

The nitrogen cycle is the natural process that makes nitrogen available to all organisms on earth. Scientists have discovered that one of the world's most common and ecologically important groups of fungi plays an unsuspected role in this key natural cycle.
Source: ScienceDaily: Latest Science News | 18 Jul 2010 | 6:00 pm

Anti-cancer effects of broccoli ingredient explained

Light has been cast on the interaction between broccoli consumption and reduced prostate cancer risk. Researchers have found that sulforaphane, a chemical found in broccoli, interacts with cells lacking a gene called PTEN to reduce the chances of prostate cancer developing.
Source: ScienceDaily: Latest Science News | 18 Jul 2010 | 6:00 pm

Novel microfluidic HIV test is quick and cheap

Biomedical engineers have developed a "lab on a chip" device for HIV testing. The test integrates an antibody microarray with a lensfree holographic imaging device that takes only seconds to count the number of captured T-cells and amount of secreted cytokine molecules. The test returns results six to 12 times faster than traditional approaches and tests six parameters simultaneously, based on a small blood sample.
Source: ScienceDaily: Latest Science News | 18 Jul 2010 | 6:00 pm

Researchers find way to make cancer cells more mortal

Researchers have discovered a way to help cancer cells age and die, creating a promising avenue for slowing and even stopping the growth of tumors.
Source: ScienceDaily: Latest Science News | 18 Jul 2010 | 6:00 pm

New recommendations issued for use of cetuximab in colon cancer therapy

New recommendations on the use of the drug cetuximab have been issued after officials halted enrollment in a phase III clinical trial in patients with spread of colon cancer into regional lymph nodes whose tumors had been surgically removed. ongoing analysis during the clinical trial found that patients receiving the combination therapy had no significant improvement in survival compared to standard therapy.
Source: ScienceDaily: Latest Science News | 18 Jul 2010 | 12:00 pm

Concentration, timing and interactions are key when it comes to dietary compounds

Chemists who specializes in cancer prevention research have reported evidence that for some dietary compounds, length of exposure over time may be key to whether or not ingestion leads to a beneficial, or detrimental, effect.
Source: ScienceDaily: Latest Science News | 18 Jul 2010 | 12:00 pm

How memory is disrupted in those with disease linked to learning disabilities

Imagine if your brain lost its working memory -- the ability to hold and manipulate information in your mind's eye. That's the plight faced by millions of people with neurofibromatosis type 1, or NF1. Now a UCLA research team has uncovered new clues about how NF1 disrupts working memory. Their findings suggest a potential drug target for correcting NF1-related learning disabilities.
Source: ScienceDaily: Latest Science News | 18 Jul 2010 | 12:00 pm

Are teen binge drinkers risking future osteoporosis?

Binge-drinking teenagers may be putting themselves at risk for future osteoporosis and bone fractures, according to new research.
Source: ScienceDaily: Latest Science News | 18 Jul 2010 | 12:00 pm

BP extends tests on oil well structure as cap holds (AFP)

AFP - Engineers monitored a newly-capped oil well in the Gulf of Mexico Sunday amid cautious optimism the months-long spill behind the worst environmental disaster in US history has been finally contained.

Source: Yahoo! News: Science News | 18 Jul 2010 | 1:11 am

China's CNPC seeks to contain oil spill after pipe blast (Reuters)

Reuters - China's largest oil company, China National Petroleum Corp (CNPC), sought to contain ocean pollution and other impacts from an explosion of two crude oil pipelines in the northeastern port of Dalian, state media reported on Sunday.
Source: Yahoo! News: Science News | 18 Jul 2010 | 12:58 am

Scientists get another day to study Gulf spill cap (AP)

AP - Scientists got an extra day to evaluate whether the giant cork bottling BP's busted well in the Gulf of Mexico will hold, while officials overseeing the disaster pondered their next step.

Source: Yahoo! News: Science News | 18 Jul 2010 | 12:39 am

Tail end of Typhoon Conson hits Vietnam; 8 missing (AP)

AP - Eight people were missing in Vietnam on Sunday as the tail end of Typhoon Conson blew ashore after battering the Philippines and China and killing dozens.

Source: Yahoo! News: Science News | 17 Jul 2010 | 10:16 pm

BP extends test of Gulf of Mexico oil well (Reuters)

Reuters - BP Plc extended for another 24 hours a critical test of its blown-out Gulf of Mexico well that so far has shut off the huge oil leak, the top U.S. official overseeing the spill response said on Saturday.

Source: Yahoo! News: Science News | 17 Jul 2010 | 9:33 pm

Idaho man accused of keeping rattlers in apartment (AP)

AP - An Idaho man who authorities say had 25 Western rattlesnakes in a five-gallon bucket in his apartment has been issued two misdemeanor citations by the state's Department of Fish and Game.
Source: Yahoo! News: Science News | 17 Jul 2010 | 9:12 pm

BP extends capped oil well test

Testing of BP's newly capped Gulf of Mexico oil well is extended as plans to collect up to 80,000 barrels of crude a day by ship are announced.
Source: BBC News - Science & Environment | 17 Jul 2010 | 7:30 pm

FDA cites quality problems at NY brain-imaging lab (AP)

AP - A respected brain-imaging center run by Columbia University has halted some research after federal officials repeatedly complained that patients were getting drugs that failed purity tests.

Source: Yahoo! News: Science News | 17 Jul 2010 | 5:11 pm

Scientist leading GM crop test defends links to Monsanto

Research professor Jonathan Jones says his verdict on a potato trial in Norfolk will not be influenced by his past commercial ties to Monsanto

The scientist in charge of a taxpayer-funded trial that may determine whether genetically modified crops will be grown in the UK has been attacked for his close links to the US biotech giant Monsanto.

Professor Jonathan Jones, head of the Sainsbury Laboratory at the John Innes Centre, the UK's leading plant research centre, has shrugged off the controversy, insisting he has never tried to hide his business relationship with Monsanto or the GM industry.

But as the scientist overseeing the first UK trials of a GM potato, Jones has found himself at the centre of a storm after anti-GM campaigners used social networking sites such as Twitter to highlight the close links between a company he founded, Mendel Biotechnology, and Monsanto.

Mendel's website states: "Mendel's most important customer and collaborator for our technology business is Monsanto, the leading agricultural biotechnology company in the world."

Jonathan Matthews, spokesman for GM Watch, which campaigns against the technology, said: "The frontman for the latest GM push in the UK is being portrayed as a dedicated public servant doing science in the public interest, but it now appears he not only has vested interests in the success of GM but even commercial connections to Monsanto."

Helen Wallace, of GeneWatch UK, a scientific campaign group critical of Monsanto, said the US company's "PR strategy relies on seemingly independent scientists making empty promises about the future benefits of GM crops".

Jones made no reference to the links in an article he wrote recently for the BBC website that attacked anti-GM campaigners as "fussy eaters". He wrote: "Some fear the domination of the seed industry by multinationals, particularly Monsanto. We need smart, sustainable, sensitive science and technology, and we need to use every tool in our toolbox, including GM."

In a statement to the Observer, Jones insisted: "It is not true to suggest I have attempted to hide my role as co-founder and science advisory board member of Mendel Biotechnology, which has contracts with Monsanto, Bayer and BP. The information that I am co-founder… of Mendel has been in the public domain on the Mendel website for at least 10 years." He also defended the GM trial in Norfolk, aimed at creating varieties of potato that would not need to be sprayed with fungicides to protect them from blight.

Critics claim the trial, the results of which are likely to be used to "sell" GM technology to the British public, is a waste of money because blight-resistant potatoes have already been produced through other techniques. "Given the availability of viable alternatives, the GM potato trial increasingly looks like nothing more than a PR stunt," Matthews said.

But Jones said it would be for the government to decide whether the trial had been a success. "At the end of the trial we will be able to tell you whether the blight resistance genes we are trialling work," Jones said. "I will not be (and do not want to be) in a position to dictate whether or not that affects UK policy towards the technology."

Friends of Jones said that it was unfair to attack him for not stating his links to the GM industry. "If he doesn't restate any links every time he writes a piece, that doesn't mean he hasn't highlighted them," said one, pointing to the close links between the organic food lobby and anti-GM campaigners. "It is frustrating for scientists that journalists only look at scientists' links and don't look at other vested interests."

Experts said there was little alternative for those researching GM crops to work with the likes of Monsanto because the Plant Breeding Institute, the public body that used to research new crops, was privatised under the Thatcher government, meaning scientists working in the field had to develop relationships with the private sector.

It has been claimed that the first GM potatoes could be available to commercial UK growers within five years, if the Norfolk trial is successful.

Source: Science news, comment and analysis | guardian.co.uk | 17 Jul 2010 | 5:05 pm

The chicken came first - apparently

The 'which came first' conundrum has been solved at last. Or has it?

Last week, it was claimed that one of the oldest conundrums known to man had been laid to rest, when scientists at the universities of Sheffield and Warwick announced they'd found evidence that the chicken really did come before the egg. A study into how chicken eggs are formed discovered that a protein found in the chicken's ovaries, ovocledidin-17, is vital for shell production. According to the researchers, this means the chicken must have come first.

Is there anything more to this than an entertaining news story? Perhaps not because, as one of the scientists involved in the study conceded, there were other types of egg-laying species that pre-dated chickens, and these didn't necessarily produce their eggs the same way. Just because a hen is needed to produce a chicken egg, this doesn't mean a dinosour egg couldn't once have existed without a tyrannosaurus. Besides, the theory of evolution has long since rendered the chicken-egg dilemma something of a non-mystery anyway: once you allow species adaption to enter the equation, it is fairly straightforward to see how a new egg-laying species might come about.

Yet the fact that the puzzle, understood literally, is a non-mystery doesn't really matter, because its true significance has always been more metaphorical than scientific. As the ancient philosophers who first formulated it understood, it was a way of pointing to the mystery of first causes – of what created the universe, and how that entity might have come into being. And the puzzle remains useful today as a shorthand for any type of situation in life where causes can't be disentangled.

For instance, many people might reasonably ask: "Is my life a mess because I am unhappy, or am I unhappy because my life is a mess?" Where such uncertainties remain, we'll always have recourse to the chicken-and-egg conundrum, whatever the latest scientific research says.

Source: Science news, comment and analysis | guardian.co.uk | 17 Jul 2010 | 5:05 pm

Dogs in space

A space suit for canine adventurers is one of the highlights in a new exhibition at the National Space Centre in Leicester

One day you're sniffing a lamppost behind the Kremlin, the next you're an integral part of a top-secret programme sending dogs to boldly go where no dogs have gone before.The search criteria weren't strict. No particular breed was targeted, instead placid mongrels were rounded up from Moscow's streets. There was one stipulation however; the stray had to be female. That would ensure that designing the suit would be "simpler".

But simple it isn't. "It's a very strange-looking contraption," admits Kevin Yates, space communications manager at the National Space Centre in Leicester. "The clear helmet is shaped like a dog's head, with laces to tie it up like a giant boot around the body."

This canine high-altitude pressure suit was created by the Soviets in the late 50s at the height of the space race. Dogs were strapped into the nose of a rocket before being fired 80km up, then returning to earth by parachute. "After being released from their suits, film footage shows the dogs running around, excited to see their owners," says Yates, "whereas it'd scare the living daylights out of most people."

Alas, Laika, the mongrel who became the first animal to orbit Earth, died during that mission on 3 November 1957, but such tests continued up to March 1961, when the successful return of the life-size mannequin "Ivan Ivanovich" and a canine crewmate gave Yuri Gagarin the green light for the first manned spaceflight a month later.

This is believed to be the first suit of its kind to go on display in the UK. It is the standout feature in the epic Space Race exhibition that opens at the National Space Centre this weekend.

Source: Science news, comment and analysis | guardian.co.uk | 17 Jul 2010 | 5:05 pm

New to Nature No 14: Utricularia regia

These beautiful flowers use small, bladder-like structures to trap unsuspecting invertebrates

The beautiful, orchid-like flowers of Utricularia regia disguise its carnivorous habits. This plant, endemic to the Sierra Madre del Sur region of the state of Guerrero, Mexico, uses small, bladder-like structures to trap unsuspecting invertebrates that are subsequently digested. Unlike pitcher plants or Venus flytraps, these bladders capture invertebrates underground or underwater. This is the latest of more than 200 species of a genus prized by and cultivated by hobbyists.

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

Source: Science news, comment and analysis | guardian.co.uk | 17 Jul 2010 | 5:04 pm

Tutankhamun goes online

Howard Carter spent years documenting the thousands of artefacts from Tutankhamun's tomb. Now, thanks to the efforts of an Oxford archaeologist, this remarkable archive of pictures and notes can be viewed online

From the circular main hall of the Sackler Library in Oxford, an unassuming corridor leads to a staircase that takes you down below street level. Through a door marked "archive", office ceiling tiles and fluorescent lights stare down on a cheap blue carpet and a row of grey rolling stacks.

The hum of the air-conditioning lets slip that this ordinary-looking room is hiding something special. The temperature is held at 18.5C (65F), several degrees cooler than the sunny July day outside, while a humidifier keeps the moisture level tightly controlled. For those grey stacks contain the forgotten secrets of the most famous find in Egyptology, if not all of archaeological history: the tomb of Tutankhamun.

This is the Griffith Institute – arguably the best Egyptology library in the world. One of its most prized collections incorporates the notes, photographs and diaries of the English archaeologist Howard Carter, who discovered Tutankhamun's resting place in 1922. The only intact pharaoh's tomb ever discovered, it contained such an array of treasures that it took Carter 10 years to catalogue them all. Yet despite the immense significance of the discovery, the majority of Carter's findings have never been published, and many questions surrounding the tomb remain unanswered.

Jaromir Malek is the soft-spoken keeper of the archive whose own Tutankhamun project is nearing completion. By making all of Carter's notes available online, Malek wanted to ensure that the public would have access to the full extent of the discovery – and to spur Egyptologists into finishing the job of studying the tomb's contents. He has ended up creating a model that other researchers hope will transform the field of archaeology.

The effort has taken even longer than Carter's gruelling excavation. It began in 1993, when Malek says he realised that fewer than a third of the artefacts from Tutankhamun's tomb had been properly studied and published, a situation he describes as "unacceptable".

A total of 5,398 objects were found in the tomb, covering every aspect of ancient Egyptian life, from weapons and chariots to musical instruments, clothes, cosmetics and a treasured lock of the royal grandmother's hair. A few, like Tutankhamun's gold burial mask, are instantly recognisable, but many are not well known, even to experts.

Part of the reason is that Carter died in 1939, just seven years after his excavation ended, and before he could fully publish his findings. "He started working on the final publication, but he was physically and mentally exhausted after a very hard 10 years," says Malek. By all accounts a difficult man to work with, Carter had no collaborators left to continue his work when he died. And while the artefacts themselves are held in the Museum of Egyptian Antiquities in Cairo, Carter's notes were donated to the Griffith Institute, where they have lain largely undisturbed ever since.

The sheer size and importance of Carter's haul seems to have discouraged scholars from tackling it. "I often say that the real curse of Tutankhamun is that Egyptologists have tended to shy away from working on the material," says Marianne Eaton-Krauss, an expert who has written three books about objects from the tomb. "These pieces are beautifully made. To study them takes a lot of work, and requires expertise not only on the symbolism, but also the technology."

So Malek decided that the best way to ensure that Carter's discoveries saw the light of day was to post the entire archive online. "We can't make Egyptologists work on the material if they are not inclined to do so," he says. "But we could make sure that all of the excavation records are available to anyone who is interested. Then there will be no excuse."

A simple idea, but still a daunting task, particularly as a lack of funding meant that Malek and his handful of staff had to carry out the entire project in their spare time. Carter recorded his finds on more than 3,500 densely written cards, with additional notes by Carter's chemist and conservator Alfred Lucas, and more than 1,000 images taken by his photographer Harry Burton. There are also around 60 maps and plans of the excavation site, plus hundreds of fragile pages from Carter's journals and diaries.

A succession of secretaries scanned and transcribed Carter's notes in between other work, then Malek proofread the results at evenings and weekends. Jonathan Moffett, head of IT at the affiliated Ashmolean Museum, built a database that could hold images of the original material as well as transcripts, so the text could be easily searched. In 1995 the team started posting the records in one of the first websites dedicated to Egyptology. They called it Tutankhamun: Anatomy of an Excavation .

More than 15 years later, the internet has been transformed: a Google search for Egyptology now returns more than 3 million results. And Malek's project is almost complete. Around 98% of the material is available, with the last pages to follow within the next three months.

Among the highlights is Carter's diary from the period in which he discovered Tutankhamun's tomb. When I ask to see it, Malek's assistant Elizabeth Fleming pulls the yellowed notebook from a stiff cardboard case, and with white-gloved hands settles it on a pillow on the table in front of me.

Funded by the Egypt enthusiast Lord Carnarvon, Carter had been searching the Valley of the Kings – ancient Egypt's royal burial ground – for seven years. A few objects bearing Tutankhamun's name had been found in the area and the two were convinced that his tomb lay somewhere beneath thousands of years' worth of limestone rubble. Yet season after season of arduous digging, during which their workmen cleared large areas of the valley down to bedrock, produced nothing.

Then on Saturday 4 November 1922, the dig revealed a step cut into the rock of the valley floor, beneath the foundations of a group of huts. It was the beginning of a stairway that led to a walled-up doorway: Tutankhamun's resting place had been found. Fleming shows me two words from the next day's entry – "seals intact" – the crucial sign that the tomb had lain undisturbed since the second millennium BC.

Carter's handwriting, in small, neat pencil, suggests a disciplined, down-to-earth man, not inclined to florid outbursts. A typical diary entry reads simply "two donkeys" – a reference to the transportation that Carter and his assistant took to the dig site each day.

On Sunday 26 November, however, after his first glimpse inside the 3,300-year-old antechamber, Carter could no longer contain himself. As he peeped through a newly burrowed hole, he later wrote in his journal that "the hot air escaping caused the candle to flicker". As his eyes became accustomed to the light, "the interior of the chamber gradually loomed before one, with its strange and wonderful medley of extraordinary and beautiful objects heaped upon one another". Strange ebony-black effigies of the king, gilded couches, exquisitely painted caskets, flowers, shrines, chests, chairs and chariots glinting with gold gave the appearance of "the property room of an opera of a vanished civilisation".

Elizabeth Fleming also shows me one of Carter's plans – the valley's contours, neatly conveyed in sparse yet graceful black-ink lines. The dig site was located in the deepest point of the valley, where floodwater dumps debris when it rains. This, along with the fact that the later tomb of Ramses VI was built almost on top of it, kept Tutankhamun hidden from robbers over the centuries, and from the wholesale dismantling of royal tombs by Ramses XI in the 11th century BC.

The real meat of the archive, however, is in the notes and photographs that record every item found in the tomb in painstaking detail. Any other archaeologist working in the 1920s might have bundled the treasures out of the tomb in a matter of hours, but Carter worked methodically and meticulously.

Burton's black-and-white photographs show the team's progress through the tomb, and these too are available online. Despite the difficult lighting conditions, these images – acknowledged as some of the best in archaeology – capture the eerie stillness of the tomb when it was first opened. Chairs and chariot wheels have been casually propped against the wall, while statues stand in their linen shawls as if placed there hours before.

I'm struck by how messy and jumbled the objects look. This is partly because Tutankhamun died unexpectedly, so his belongings had to be crammed into a much smaller tomb than would have been intended, and partly because the tomb was robbed shortly after the unfortunate king was buried, and the guards seem to have done a rather careless job of righting the ransacked contents before resealing the doors.

"We can see things missing," says John Taylor, who looks after the Egyptian mummies collection at the British Museum in London. "We have the plinths for gold statuettes but not the statuettes themselves. They broke the gold fittings off furniture. And we can see fingermarks inside a jar where a robber stuffed his fingers in and scooped out a sticky mass of very valuable scented oil."

Burton's photos document each artefact after removal from the tomb: a quick browse of the database reveals some charming treasures – from a leopardskin cloak with a golden head and silver claws to a collection of green and blue draughtsmen and even a folding bed. A search for "mummy" returns 68 photos taken at various stages of the unwrapping process, from plump outer bandages to fragile bone.

For Malek, a principal aim of the project is to bring the forgotten details of the tomb to as many people as possible. "We felt this was important because the discovery is so well-known," he says. "This doesn't belong to Egyptologists only, or even to Egypt only. Everybody should have the right to see what's there."

Taylor agrees that the failure of Egyptologists to publish the discovery in its entirety has left the public in the dark about much of what was in the tomb. "A lot of the objects will be very unfamiliar to people," he says. "What is needed is for schools and people with a more general interest to have access to the basic data and see what's there."

In this, the website appears to be succeeding. It has informed countless school projects and even an interactive DVD being produced by the BBC to accompany an Egypt-themed episode of Doctor Who. Semmel, the German event promoter, has used Carter's technical diagrams to make exact replicas of many of the treasures from Tutankhamun's tomb for an exhibition that is currently touring Europe.

But Malek also hopes to put "moral pressure" on Egyptologists, to encourage them to study this immensely important collection. Tutankhamun's is the only royal tomb that we have that wasn't gutted by tomb robbers. If we want to know what an Egyptian pharaoh took with him to the afterlife, he says, "it's the only one we can look at". Everything in the tomb was there so that the king could continue living in luxury, from the food he would eat and clothes he would wear, to ceremonial items such as huge animal-headed couches on which he would have been carried into the afterlife. "Nothing in the tomb was accidental," says Malek. "We will not be able to understand the tomb as a unit until all of the objects are properly explained."

Egyptologists are particularly excited about what the objects from the tomb can tell us about the technology of the ancient Egyptians. "We can study how these objects were made, the materials and techniques that were used," says Malek. "That is quite rare. There is a great difference between being able to look at a representation of a chair on the wall of a tomb or a temple and being able to study that particular object in reality."

Although researchers will always want to study objects directly, gaining access to many of the most priceless items from Tutankhamun's tomb can be difficult. Carter's archive is a useful source of back-up information. But it also provides a lot of data that would be difficult or impossible to glean from studying the objects today.

For a start, Carter recorded exactly where items were found in the tomb, and how they were positioned relative to each other. This has helped researchers to make sense of the jumble of objects in the antechamber. "It seems like just a pile of things, but there is a system," says Malek. "You can see what the thinking behind it was." For example, items of food should have gone into another room but the space was too small, so at the last minute they were placed into the antechamber.

Marianne Eaton-Krauss recently used the Griffith Institute website in a study of how Tutankhamun was buried. "It's a mine of information," she says. Eaton-Krauss was able to tell from Carter's excavation journal that the innermost shrine of Tutankhamun's tomb was too small to fit properly around his sarcophagus, suggesting that the sarcophagus had in fact been intended for someone else – something that it is impossible to tell from the objects as they are set up on display in Cairo.

Eaton-Krauss points out that many objects from Tutankhamun's tomb seem to have originally belonged to other kings, and says she hopes the website will stimulate other Egyptologists to investigate further. "If these were all studied, it would be of great historical significance."

Also crucial for researchers is the fact that Carter and his colleagues recorded the artefacts almost immediately after the tomb was opened. "They were the first to see the objects, and therefore saw them in the best condition possible," says André Veldmeijer of the PalArch Foundation in Amsterdam, who used the website in a recent analysis of the footwear found in Tutankhamun's tomb. This is particularly important for finds made of organic material. One pair of leather sandals, delicately embellished with gold leaf and coloured beads, is shown perfectly preserved in Burton's photographs, yet Veldmeijer says his visit to the Cairo museum revealed an oozing black mess. He describes the online archive as "one of the best things in Egyptology".

As Malek's project edges closer to completion, the Carter archive offers researchers an unprecedented view of the collection as a whole. "What's really interesting is to see the totality of what is in the tomb," says John Taylor of the British Museum. "There tends to be a lot of focus on the mummies and the jewellery, but these are just part of a complex of objects. Only if you study the whole lot together can you see why they are there."

"You can easily compare different types of object because you have that overview," agrees Veldmeijer. "It's a good example of how you can get so much more from archaeological research." He is now pushing for archaeologists working in other areas to take a similar approach, instead of leaving their dig notes on huge collections of record cards that soon become too unwieldy for anyone to study. Veldmeijer notes a dig at Qasr Ibrim in southern Egypt that is recorded on 20,000 separate cards. "So many excavations have not been properly published," he says.

Sitting in front of those grey rolling stacks, Malek tells me that after going through every single page of Carter's excavation notes he has a new appreciation of the archaeologist's strength of character. "He was not easy to work with," says Malek. "He was quite often short tempered, perhaps not always tactful. But what I find really impressive is that there was this massive task, and in spite of all the difficulties, he finished it." Something that Malek himself hopes to live up to within the next few months.

Source: Science news, comment and analysis | guardian.co.uk | 17 Jul 2010 | 5:01 pm

WISE Discovers 95 New Near-Earth Asteroids

Astronomers using the Wide-Field Infrared Explorer (WISE) have detected up 25,000 new asteroids, 95 of which are considered "Near-Earth Objects."
Source: Discovery News - Top Stories | 17 Jul 2010 | 1:41 pm

Divers Find 230-Year-Old Champagne in Baltic Shipwreck

Perfectly preserved 230-year-old champagne has been discovered by Swedish divers.
Source: Discovery News - Top Stories | 17 Jul 2010 | 12:29 pm

New Private Spacesuit Unveiled With New York Flair (SPACE.com)

SPACE.com - NEW YORK – Two private spacesuit designers unveiled their first steps toward serious attire for future space travelers Friday night in front of a young, hip crowd of artists and tech geeks in Manhattan.
Source: Yahoo! News: Science News | 17 Jul 2010 | 11:00 am

Finding Hope, Adventure Deep Within the Amazon Rain Forest (LiveScience.com)

LiveScience.com - If asked to compile a list of careers that offer old-fashioned thrills, one might say archeologist (Indiana Jones), or perhaps ship captain (Jack Sparrow). But geographer?
Source: Yahoo! News: Science News | 17 Jul 2010 | 9:30 am

Finding Hope, Adventure Deep Within the Amazon Rain Forest

Government efforts to save ecosystem may be working.
Source: Livescience.com | 17 Jul 2010 | 9:27 am

How Apple Saved $1 Billion on iPhone 4 Problem

Apple will offer free cases to all iPhone 4 buyers through Sept. 4 and refund those who bought the iPhone 4 Bumper case.
Source: Livescience.com | 17 Jul 2010 | 8:03 am

NASA Rescues Baby Sea Turtles Threatened by Gulf Oil Spill (SPACE.com)

SPACE.com - Endangered baby sea turtles plunged further into harm's way from the massive oil slick off the Gulf Coast have found reprieve at NASA's Kennedy Space Center in Florida.
Source: Yahoo! News: Science News | 17 Jul 2010 | 7:00 am