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Scientists discover how deadly fungal microbes enter host cellsA research team has discovered a fundamental entry mechanism that allows dangerous fungal microbes to infect plants and cause disease. The discovery paves the way for the development of new intervention strategies to protect plant, and even some animal cells, from deadly fungal infections.Source: ScienceDaily: Latest Science News | 23 Jul 2010 | 9:00 am Adults recall negative events less accurately than children, study findsEmotions -- particularly those provoked by negative events -- can cause distorted, inaccurate memories, but less often in children than in adults, according to a new study.Source: ScienceDaily: Latest Science News | 23 Jul 2010 | 9:00 am Not enough hours in the day for endangered apes: Warming climate may change ape behaviour, resulting in loss of habitatA study on the effect of global warming on African ape survival suggests that a warming climate may cause apes to run ‘out of time’. The research reveals that rising temperatures and changes in rainfall patterns have strong effects on ape behavior, distribution and survival, pushing them even further to the brink of extinction.Source: ScienceDaily: Latest Science News | 23 Jul 2010 | 9:00 am Out of the gait: Robot ranger sets untethered 'walking' record at 14.3 milesThe loneliness of the long-distance robot: A robot named Ranger walked 14.3 miles in about 11 hours, setting an unofficial world record. A human -- armed with nothing more than a standard remote control for toys -- steered the untethered robot.Source: ScienceDaily: Latest Science News | 23 Jul 2010 | 9:00 am More time spent sitting linked to higher risk of death; Risk found to be independent of physical activity levelA new study finds it's not just how much physical activity you get, but how much time you spend sitting that can affect your risk of death.Source: ScienceDaily: Latest Science News | 23 Jul 2010 | 9:00 am Misuse of anesthesia could cause hepatitis virus transmissionHepatitis B virus (HBV) and hepatitis C virus (HCV) can be transmitted during intravenous (IV) administration of anesthesia, according to a new study.Source: ScienceDaily: Latest Science News | 23 Jul 2010 | 9:00 am Scientists confirm role for mysterious cell component -- the nucleolinusScientists have confirmed the role in cell division of a long-neglected cellular component, the nucleolinus. The nucleolinus is a structure observed in the nucleus of many cells, including invertebrate egg cells and some mammalian cells. While it was discovered more than 150 years ago, and other scientists have proposed that is involved in cell division, difficulties in visualizing the nucleolinus inside most cells have kept that hypothesis dormant.Source: ScienceDaily: Latest Science News | 23 Jul 2010 | 6:00 am Abnormal cells in blood tied to lung cancer: Circulating aberrant cells increase as non-small cell lung cancer progressesA novel approach detects genetically abnormal cells in the blood of non-small cell lung cancer patients that match abnormalities found in tumor cells and increase in number with the severity of the disease, a research team reports.Source: ScienceDaily: Latest Science News | 23 Jul 2010 | 6:00 am Structural brain alterations in patients with irritable bowel syndrome discoveredA large academic study has demonstrated structural changes in specific brain regions in female patients with irritable bowel syndrome, a condition that causes pain and discomfort in the abdomen, along with diarrhea, constipation or both. According to researchers, the finding removes the idea once and for all that IBS symptoms are not real and are "only psychological."Source: ScienceDaily: Latest Science News | 23 Jul 2010 | 6:00 am Math model of colon inflammation singles out dangerous immune cellsScientists have constructed a mathematical and computational model of inflammatory bowel disease that allows researchers to simulate the cellular and molecular changes underlying chronic inflammation in humans. The model allows scientists to explore different interactions of cells in the immune system, check how these cells are linked to inflammation in the colon, and identify intervention points to perhaps stop the disease in its tracks.Source: ScienceDaily: Latest Science News | 23 Jul 2010 | 6:00 am Video: Elephant attacks trainer at an Ohio ZooDon Redfox was seriously injured when he entered a room in the Toledo zoo elephant exhibit that housed seven-year-old male, Louie Source: Science news, comment and analysis | guardian.co.uk | 23 Jul 2010 | 3:52 am The nation's weather (AP)
Source: Yahoo! News: Science News | 23 Jul 2010 | 3:48 am UK nanotech centres 'may be axed'Britain's 24 nanotechnology centres could be among the casualties of cuts to the UK science budget, science minister David Willetts has said.Source: BBC News - Science & Environment | 23 Jul 2010 | 3:28 am BP denies 'buying silence' of oil spill scientistsOil giant says it is just keeping company data confidential, as it faces 200 federal civil lawsuits over spill BP has rejected accusations of muzzling the scientists and academics it has hired to help fight hundreds of lawsuits relating to the Gulf of Mexico oil spill. The American Association of University Professors claims the oil giant is seeking to "buy the silence" of the scientific community in its fight against litigation. But BP says it is only protecting confidential information and is not trying to prevent the discussion of scientific data. A copy of the contract issued by BP to scientists, obtained by the BBC, says they cannot publish the research they conduct for BP or speak about the data for at least three years, or until the government gives the final approval to the company's restoration plan for the gulf. It also states that scientists may perform research for other agencies only so long as it does not conflict with the work they are doing for BP, and that they must take instructions from lawyers offering the contracts and other in-house counsel at the oil company. Cary Nelson, president of the American Association of University Professors, criticised the contract. He told the BBC: "This is really one huge corporation trying to buy faculty silence in a comprehensive way." Bob Shipp, head of marine sciences at the University of South Alabama and one of the scientists approached by BP's lawyers, said the company wanted to hire his whole department. "They contacted me and said we would like to have your department interact to develop the best restoration plan possible after this oil spill," he said. "We laid the ground rules – that any research we did, we would have to take total control of the data, transparency and the freedom to make those data available to other scientists and subject to peer review. They left and we never heard back from them." BP said that it had hired a number of experts to help with the lawsuits, as well as a number of national and local scientists with expertise in the resources of the gulf of Mexico to help in restoration work. "These scientists are helping us collect and understand data about the impacts of the oil spill on the natural resources and to plan for restoration of those resources," BP said. "As is customary, we have asked these experts (more than a dozen) to treat information from BP counsel as confidential. However, BP does not take the position that environmental data are confidential. "Moreover, BP does not place restrictions on academics speaking about scientific data." Seven federal judges next week will meet attorneys in Boise, Idaho, to try and decide whether or how to consolidate more than 200 federal civil lawsuits filed by a range of claimants, from fishermen to injured rig workers, oil-rig owner Transocean and other contractors tied to the spill. The judges will consider two key questions: where the cases will be heard and who will preside over them. The lawsuits range from civil racketeering and personal-injury suits to claims from out-of-work shrimpers and owners of now-vacant hotels on the gulf shore. The cost of the spill to BP has already exceeded $3.1bn (£2bn), and the company has pledged some of its assets as security to the US government while it builds up a promised $20bn compensation fund. Analysts at Goldman Sachs estimate the final bill for the disaster caused by the explosion on the Deepwater Horizon rig, which killed 11 workers, could run to $70bn. 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 | 23 Jul 2010 | 3:27 am Tropical Storm Bonnie moving toward oil spill (AP)
Source: Yahoo! News: Science News | 23 Jul 2010 | 3:20 am Protests as Australian PM delays climate action (AFP)
Source: Yahoo! News: Science News | 23 Jul 2010 | 1:53 am EPA hears from gas drillers, angry Pa. residents (AP)AP - Federal researchers studying a natural gas drilling technique that involves blasting chemical-laced water into the ground got an earful from residents who say it's poisoning them and killing their animals and from industry experts who say it's being unfairly demonized.Source: Yahoo! News: Science News | 23 Jul 2010 | 1:45 am BP accused of trying to silence science on spill (AFP)
Source: Yahoo! News: Science News | 23 Jul 2010 | 1:12 am Storm forces ships off spill siteDozens of ships are ordered to leave the site of the Gulf of Mexico oil spill as Tropical Storm Bonnie gathers pace.Source: BBC News - Science & Environment | 23 Jul 2010 | 12:23 am Scientist's 1m for cells studyA researcher at Cardiff University scoops 1.1m to study living cells in minute detail, which could help treat diseases like Alzheimer's.Source: BBC News - Science & Environment | 22 Jul 2010 | 11:46 pm Gulf storm puts BP spill efforts on hold (Reuters)
Source: Yahoo! News: Science News | 22 Jul 2010 | 11:18 pm Tropical storm delays Gulf of Mexico oil spill fix (AFP)
Source: Yahoo! News: Science News | 22 Jul 2010 | 10:48 pm Consumer gene test results misleading: U.S. probeCHICAGO (Reuters) - People who send off their saliva to genetic testing companies to find out their risk for prostate cancer or diabetes are likely to get different results, depending on the company they choose, government investigators told lawmakers on Thursday.Source: Reuters: Science News | 22 Jul 2010 | 5:50 pm BP 'frustrated' by storm delaySenior BP official Doug Suttles has said it is "frustrating" that a tropical storm could delay plans to deal with a blown-out oil well in the Gulf of Mexico.Source: BBC News - Science & Environment | 22 Jul 2010 | 4:28 pm Brain-imaging programme suspended after violationsFDA investigation at Columbia University serves as warning to other centres, say experts.<img src="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~r/news/rss/today/~4/1M7eeePprug" height="1" width="1"/>Source: NatureNews - All articles published today - nature.com science feeds | 22 Jul 2010 | 4:16 pm Sister monument to Stonehenge may have been found (AP)
Source: Yahoo! News: Science News | 22 Jul 2010 | 4:14 pm Arctic Ocean full up with carbon dioxideLoss of sea ice is unlikely to enable Arctic waters to mop up more carbon dioxide from the air.Source: NatureNews - All articles published today - nature.com science feeds | 22 Jul 2010 | 4:04 pm Quantum mechanics flummoxes physicists againA fresh take on a classic experiment makes no progress in unifying quantum mechanics and relativity.Source: NatureNews - All articles published today - nature.com science feeds | 22 Jul 2010 | 4:00 pm Claims of 100 Earth-Like Planets Not True (SPACE.com)SPACE.com - Despite overzealous news headlines this week, NASA's Kepler spacecraft has not indentified more than 100 Earth-like planets in the galaxy.Source: Yahoo! News: Science News | 22 Jul 2010 | 3:45 pm Peru archaeologists find hall for human sacrificeLIMA (Reuters) - An ancient ceremonial ground used by a Pre-Columbian civilization for human sacrifices has been uncovered on Peru's northern coast, archaeologists said on Thursday.Source: Reuters: Science News | 22 Jul 2010 | 3:40 pm Hyperfast Star Kicked Out of Milky Way
New Hubble observations suggest a dramatic origin story for one of the fastest stars ever detected, involving a tragic encounter with a black hole, a lost companion and swift exile from the galaxy. The star, HE 0437-5439, is one of just 16 so-called hypervelocity stars, all of which were thought to come from the center of the Milky Way. The Hubble observations allowed astronomers to definitively trace the star’s origin to the heart of the galaxy for the first time. Based on observations taken three and a half years apart, astronomers calculated that the star is zooming away from the Milky Way’s center at a speed of 16 million miles per hour — three times faster than the sun. “The star is traveling at an absurd velocity, twice as much as it needs to escape the galaxy’s gravitational field,” said hypervelocity star hunter Warren Brown of the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics, who found the first unbound star in 2005, in a press release. “There is no star that travels that quickly under normal circumstances — something exotic has to happen.”
Earlier observations linked the star to a neighboring galaxy, the Large Magellanic Cloud. But Brown and his colleagues claim that the new Hubble observations settle the question of the star’s origin squarely in favor of the Milky Way. One reason the star’s home was under debate is its bizarrely youthful appearance. Based on its speed, the star would have to be 100 million years old to have traveled from the Milky Way’s center to its current location, 200,000 light-years away. But its mass — nine times that of our sun — and blue color mean it should have burned out after only 20 million years. The new origin story reconciles the star’s age and speed, and has all the makings of a melodrama. A hundred million years ago, astronomers suggest, the runaway star was a member of a triple-star system that veered disastrously close to the galaxy’s central supermassive black hole. One member of the trio was captured, and its momentum was transferred to the remaining binary pair, which was hurled from the Milky Way at breakneck speed. As time passed, the larger star evolved into a puffy red giant and devoured its partner. The two merged into the single, massive, blue star called a blue straggler that Hubble observed. This bizarre scenario conveniently explains why the star looks so young. By merging into a blue straggler, the two original stars managed to look like a star one-fifth its true age. The findings were published online July 20 in a paper in The Astrophysical Journal Letters. The team is hunting for the homes of four other unbound stars, all zooming around the fringes of the Milky Way. “Studying these stars could provide more clues about the nature of some of the universe’s unseen mass, and it could help astronomers better understand how galaxies form,” said study coauthor Oleg Gnedin of the University of Michigan in a press release.
Images: NASA/ESA/G. Bacon (STScI) See Also:
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Source: Wired: Wired Science | 22 Jul 2010 | 3:25 pm How One Jellyfish Stung 100 People (LiveScience.com)
Source: Yahoo! News: Science News | 22 Jul 2010 | 3:20 pm How One Jellyfish Stung 100 PeopleIt takes a lot of stinger-equipped tentacles.Source: Livescience.com | 22 Jul 2010 | 3:11 pm Measuring the Earth's ForestsThe first global map of the heights of Earth's forests will help scientists fill gaps in their accounting of the planet's inventory of carbon dioxide.Source: Discovery News - Top Stories | 22 Jul 2010 | 3:09 pm DNA factory builds up steamFirst reliable components for synthetic biology could be available by the end of the year.Source: NatureNews - All articles published today - nature.com science feeds | 22 Jul 2010 | 2:53 pm New Supersonic Passenger Jet Set for TakeoffThe Aerion SBJ will be able to carry a dozen passengers at speeds of up to Mach 1.5 for more than 4,000 miles.Source: Livescience.com | 22 Jul 2010 | 1:44 pm Buckyballs Found in SpaceThe discovery of these carbon structures in space could have a profound impact on our understanding of chemistry in the cosmos.Source: Discovery News - Top Stories | 22 Jul 2010 | 1:40 pm Mobile Video Poised to SoarRevenue from mobile video services is expected to top $2 billion worldwide in 2013.Source: Livescience.com | 22 Jul 2010 | 1:39 pm Computers may soon be calling the shots in scienceWithin a decade, computers will be able to plough through scientific data looking for patterns and connections – then tell scientists what they should do next Move over scientists – computers will be asking the questions from now on. They will trawl the millions of scientific papers on the web and suggest new hypotheses for humans to test, according to an article in tomorrow's issue of Science. Scientists are drowning in data. Whether it's high-speed genome sequencing, simulating the early universe or testing complex mathematical proofs, there are often more numbers to crunch than there are people to crunch them. But help is on the way in the form of "automatic hypothesis generation", argue James Evans and Andrey Rzhetsky of the University of Chicago. "Computer programs increasingly are able to integrate published knowledge with experimental data, search for patterns and logical relations, and enable new hypotheses to emerge with little human intervention," they write. "We predict that within a decade, even more powerful tools will enable automated, high-volume hypothesis generation to guide high-throughput experiments in biomedicine, chemistry, physics, and even the social sciences." Evans foresees a time when computers crawl the millions of scientific papers online, linking and analysing data and concepts, then suggesting new hypotheses to test. "Wouldn't it make more sense to extract information from the huge corpus of previous research and put it together [to form new hypotheses]?" he told me. For more than 20 years cosmologists have been using computers to test models designed by people. "The new twist here is that the computer can be given information and told to find its own model explaining the data or the connections between different pieces of data, after some 'ground rules' are set by the user," said Carlton Baugh of the Institute for Computational Cosmology at Durham University, who uses whole armies of computers to run "massively parallel" calculations of how different structures form in the universe. "With pattern finding, the computer is asked to uncover a connection or relation defined by the user within a dataset. With hypothesis generation, the computer has more flexibility to come up with different patterns to test." Automatic hypothesis generation may also prove invaluable in genetics. Increasingly, geneticists can conduct studies from their computers. In genome-wide association studies, they compare all the genes of people who have a disease with those of a healthy control group to find mutations related to the disease. Studies like this have identified risk genes for type 2 diabetes and breast cancer, for example. There are millions of human DNA sequences stored in online databases such as GenBank, and dealing with this information has spawned a new discipline called bioinformatics, which involves applying statistics and computer science to biological problems. Automatic hypothesis generation could take it one step further. Dawn Field, head of the molecular evolution and bioinformatics group at the Centre for Ecology and Hydrology in Oxford, says Evans and Rzhetsky are on the right track. "This will become more and more possible in the future. We are just experiencing the beginnings of this field of endeavour." Some argue that new knowledge will emerge by mechanically applying algorithms to find patterns in large datasets. But pattern-finding without knowing the theoretical context of a field has potential pitfalls, write Evans and Rhetsky. They compare it to the task of an explorer in an unfamiliar jungle without a guide: "With no sense of what is already known about the environment or its perils, [the explorer] is likely to misclassify what she sees – fearing the intimidating but harmless snake; ignoring the tiny lethal frog." Dr Dietrich Rebholz-Schuhmann of the European Bioinformatics Insititute told me the question was whether a computer can generate hypotheses that can be validated easily. "A computer can propose experiments in combination with a hypothesis in such a way that the hypothesis can be validated in the experiment. This is an important step, but still far away from what humans do." Automatic hypothesis generation may also have a role in identifying bridges between disciplines. "[Finding] amazing links between facts coming from different disciplines is the most exciting possibility," said Field. "It is hard for working scientists to have more than a shallow knowledge of subjects not in their direct area of expertise and yet there are often many 'low hanging fruits' at the intersection between two fields just ready for the picking." Within a given field of scientific enquiry, write Evans and Rzhetsky, unpublished connections are likely to represent "negative knowledge" – ideas considered implausible by scientists in that field. Between fields, however, those unpublished connections might turn out to represent unanswered questions. Automatic hypothesis generation is one way of finding those unanswered questions, they argue. Linking disparate fields of research automatically will be no easy task, however, not least because different terms mean different things to different scientists. Semantic integration – speaking a technical language that all the fields have in common – is important. "There's no question that semantic integration is a major challenge," said Evans. "But looking at associations between terms also ends up being an opportunity." Of course there are pitfalls with the automated approach. Computers could find a promising pattern that leads to nothing, for example, or even suggest blind avenues. "There is still a need for a scientist with a basic understanding of the problem to design the framework of such experiments and to interpret the results," said Baugh. Large-scale computation of this sort is already being applied to problems of "systems thinking". "This is when you have enough experts all thinking together across disciplines that the 'big picture' emerges and you can solve 'big problems'," said Field. "You can unravel a long trail of causality. X causes Y causes Z etc ... This is especially hard to do unless you have cross-discipline thinking." She said efforts to tackle global issues such as climate change and the long-term conservation of biodiversity could benefit from this approach. If computers could start to pull together global patterns and trends, then make predictions or or suggest solutions, said Field, "it would be amazing". Watch this cyber space. Do you deal with large datasets? Do you share Evans and Rhzetsky's optimism for automatic hypothesis generation? Post your comments below ... 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 | 22 Jul 2010 | 1:00 pm Forensic science braces for changeFBI laboratory chief is optimistic despite severe criticism and challenges ahead.Source: NatureNews - All articles published today - nature.com science feeds | 22 Jul 2010 | 12:57 pm Exploding Moss Reproduces with a BangThis lowly plant is everywhere. And it's packing heat.Source: Livescience.com | 22 Jul 2010 | 12:46 pm Longest Eclipse Ever: Airplane Chases the Moon’s Shadow
Eclipse hunters set a new record on July 11 for the longest eclipse ever observed by civilians chasing the moon in an airplane. While hundreds of eclipse enthusiasts flocked to islands in the South Pacific to watch the moon blot out the sun, astronomer Glenn Schneider and colleagues climbed to 39,000 feet to spend 9 minutes, 23 seconds in the moon’s shadow. “We cheated Mother Nature by two minutes beyond what she could normally produce,” Schneider said. Theoretically, the longest total solar eclipse that can be viewed from the ground is 7 minutes, 32 seconds long, a limit set by the geometry of celestial mechanics. Total solar eclipses happen when the new moon passes in front of the sun, casting a round shadow on the Earth that turns day to night. During the few minutes when the moon is directly in front of the sun, called totality, viewers get a rare glimpse of the solar corona, tendrils of gas that dance around the sun’s outer atmosphere. Although a solar eclipse is visible from somewhere on Earth every 16 months or so, totality is only ever visible from a narrow swatch of the planet. The geometry of the July 11 eclipse worked out such that, by chasing the moon’s shadow at Mach 0.8, Schneider and his colleagues could stretch totality to from about 5 minutes to nearly 9 and a half minutes. “It’s something we’re never going to be able to do again,” Schneider said. “It was an opportunity we just couldn’t pass up.”
The plane also provided “weather insurance,” Schneider said. The path of totality for the eclipse crossed the Pacific Ocean, grazing the Cook Islands, Easter Island, parts of French Polynesia and the southern tip of South America. Although there were clear skies for the actual event, the region’s annual weather records suggested that the odds of clouds blocking the eclipse were no better than 50/50, even from the best land-based viewing spots. Getting above the clouds guaranteed a clear view, plus superb shots of the corona contrasted against a dark sky. Schneider’s flight took off from Faa’a International Airport on the island of Tahiti at 5:45 a.m. local time. On board were eclipse chasers Rick Brown and John Beattie, NASA eclipse predictor Fred Espenak, about 30 paying passengers who contacted Brown through the website eclipse-chasers.com, and four officials from the Tahitian government. The group flew in a specially configured jet aircraft from Skytraders Antarctic Solutions, an aviation company that ferries scientists and equipment from Australia to Antarctica. The crew removed all the seats from the left side of the plane to give an unobstructed view from the sun-facing windows.
A few minutes before totality, the plane turned to face the approaching lunar shadow head-on. Schneider and his colleagues watched the shadow zoom toward the plane from a hundred miles away, engulfing the clouds below in darkness. “It looked like the end of the world, this black shadow coming at us,” said Brown, who is a commodity trader by profession but has been organizing group eclipse viewings since 1991. “It was very, very surreal.” As the shadow came closer, the observers could see daylight at its far edge, like a miniature sunrise in the middle of the day.
The plane made a right-angle turn to intercept the moon’s shadow at about 9:15 a.m. At the moment of totality, the plane fell quiet. “Normally on the ground there’s a lot of screaming, oohing and aahing, and a lot of noise going on, but for some reason it was very quiet in the plane,” Brown said. “People were astounded.” The plane flew along with the shadow at 500 miles per hour, about a third of the shadow’s speed across the Earth’s surface. At that speed, the time in totality stretched from the 5 minutes, 20 seconds visible from the ground to 9 minutes, 23 seconds. It was the longest totality ever observed from a non-experimental and non-military aircraft. Brown said the team is submitting a DVD to the Guinness Book of World Records. The longest totality ever observed by an experimental aircraft was 74 minutes, captured by a supersonic Concorde aircraft in 1973. Schneider’s first attempt to beat celestial geometry would have come close to that. For the June 2001 eclipse, he made plans to fly in the moon’s shadow for over an hour in an Air France Concorde plane. But just days before the final planning meeting with the airline, Air France Flight 4590 crashed in Gonesse, France, killing all 109 people on board and four people on the ground. All Concordes were grounded a few days later. “That was the end of that plan,” Schneider said. “Since then, it was always in the back of my head: When can I do something like that again?” The July 11 eclipse was the fourth eclipse Schneider observed from the air. Since his first total solar eclipse as a 14-year-old in North Carolina in 1970, Schneider has chased 29 eclipses from Australia to Zambia, catching a few minutes of eerie darkness from land, air and sea. He boasts that he has lost just 3.7 eclipses to clouds. That 0.7 was from partly cloudy skies over Wuhan, China on July 22, 2009, which blocked his view of the longest total solar eclipse visible from the ground for more than a century. Of what should have been 5 minutes, 40 seconds of totality, Schneider caught just a minute and a half. The next total solar eclipse will be visible from Australia and the South Pacific on November 13, 2012. After that comes an eclipse on the vernal equinox, March 20, 2015, which will be visible from the North Pole. Viewers in the United States will luck out in 2017, when the moon’s shadow will cross diagonally from Oregon to South Carolina. Schneider plans to be there for all of them. “I could not think of missing one. It’s more of an addiction than a hobby. I think most eclipse chasers would tell you that,” he said. Like many of his fellow eclipse enthusiasts, Schneider is easily prompted into waxing sentimental about the experience. “You feel your place in the solar system, and the weight of the universe. It almost sounds corny, but it’s not,” he said. “People think we’re fanatical, until they see one themselves. If you haven’t seen one yourself, you absolutely have to. It will change your life.”
Images: Glenn Schneider and Rick Brown. The top image is a composite of five pictures from the flight. See Also:
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Source: Wired: Wired Science | 22 Jul 2010 | 12:23 pm 'God particle' lab eyes reprieveA US "atom smasher" may get three more years of life in order to continue its hunt for the so-called God particle.Source: BBC News - Science & Environment | 22 Jul 2010 | 12:18 pm Stars reveal carbon 'spaceballs'Scientists have detected carbon buckyballs - the largest molecules ever seen in space - in a cloud of cosmic dust surrounding a distant star.Source: BBC News - Science & Environment | 22 Jul 2010 | 12:14 pm The Future of Robot Scientists
Future science historians will mark the beginning of the 21st century as a time when robots took their place beside human scientists. Programmers have turned computers from extraordinarily powerful but fundamentally dumb tools, into tools with smarts. Artificially intelligent programs make sense of data so complex that it defies human analysis. They even come up with hypotheses, the testable questions that drive science, on their own. At the University of Cambridge, Ross King’s program “Adam” designs and runs genetics experiments. At Cornell, Hod Lipson’s Eureqa finds equations to fit data, attaining Newton’s insights in a single afternoon. University of Chicago mathematical biologist Andrey Rzhetsky designs programs less glamorous but equally powerful, able to analyze millions of papers at once. In the future, the human scientist’s job may be “to do the programming, and make sure the robot has enough reagents,” said Rzhetsky, only partly tongue-in-cheek. Wired.com talked to Rzhetsky about the intersection of artificial intelligence and science. Wired.com: Why do scientists need artificially intelligent computer assistance? Andrey Rzhetsky: During Newton’s time, a scientist could read everything that was published, at least in English. That’s just not an option anymore. We can’t deal with all this information. Wired.com: How have you used AI in your own work? Rzhetsky: In our paper on brain malformations in mice and humans, the program analyzed 368,000 full-text articles and 8,000,000 article abstracts in the PubMed database. That’s something no human curator, or even a group of human curators, could ever do. In a program, it’s possible.
We made available a huge knowledge base and a tool for prioritizing genes and making hypotheses about associations between genes and phenotypes. A bunch of the predictions we made were followed up by our experimentally talented collaborators, and seem very reasonable. The problem is how to design a process to discover a good hypothesis, because it’s expensive to test all possible hypotheses. That’s where literature analysis and computational modeling can help. It prioritizes. Wired.com: So much published research isn’t replicated. Isn’t there a garbage-in, garbage-out problem? Rzhetsky: That’s always a possibility, but good statistical analysis doesn’t throw away data. Even with good data, you get a lot of noise. Even noisy data with false positives can be useful. Think about it as intelligence data. Obviously, when it’s collected, there are lots of false positives. But when it’s collected from multiple sources, compared and examined, it becomes more certain. Wired.com: Cornell’s Hod Lipson designed a program that discovers equations to explain relationships between data. Researchers then have to figure out what the equations mean. It’s like interpreting an oracle’s pronouncements. Is that the role of the human in all this? Rzhetsky: It’s an interesting question. I talk to electrical engineers who use genetic algorithms to design circuits, and the circuits end up being completely alien to humans. They’re very robust, but designed in such a way that it’s not obvious how to understand them. That’s similar to what Lipson discovers: non-human logic. In Lipson’s analysis, he wants to make it transparent and understandable to humans. I’m not sure that’s necessary. Wired.com: Some scientists say that being able to crunch huge datasets makes hypotheses obsolete — why worry about testing when you can find connections. You don’t like that idea, though. Why not? Rzhetsky In the movie Memento, a man has only a short-term memory. Every 15 minutes has to reconstruct causal relationships. He observes people talking to him, and doesn’t know who’s a friend and who’s a foe. That’s my metaphor for abandoning hypothesis and context. There are a lot of approaches claiming you can reverse-engineer the world from the flow of data. With an infinite dataset, the statement probably gets close to truth. But I don’t think it’s true for individual datasets. Prior hypotheses and contextual knowledge need to be used. Wired.com: So is the role of human scientists to come up with hypotheses? Rzhetsky: The tools can come up with hypotheses, too. Wired.com: One of the great human abilities is to come up with insights that combine knowledge and speculation across disciplines. How could a program ever have those insights? Rzhetsky: One kind of creativity is combining old symbols in a new way. The best thinkers digest the experience of previous thinkers, and come up with their own syntheses. I would claim this is still in the space of symbolic reasoning and symbolic hypothesis generation. Wired.com: But wouldn’t this require far more general artificial intelligence than the narrow, task-specific types we have now? Rzhetsky: Possibly. But you can think about the human brain as a collection of specialized tools. There’s a tool for discerning vertical symmetrical patterns in noisy backgrounds in order to find predators, a tool to recognize faces, a tool to classify experiences as pleasant or unpleasant, and so on. I don’t see why a tool that does several specialized tasks well can’t be upgraded to something more comprehensive. Photo whiskey kitten/Flickr See Also:
Citation: “Machine Science.” By James Evans and Andrey Rzhetsky. Science, Vol. 323 No. 5990, July 23, 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 | 22 Jul 2010 | 12:10 pm Exploding Moss Launch System RevealedThe plants employ essentially the same type of propulsion mechanism that jellyfish and squid use to move through water.Source: Discovery News - Top Stories | 22 Jul 2010 | 12:01 pm Race to find 'God particle' hots upResearchers working with the Large Hadron Collider have published their first data in the quest to unlock the mysteries of the Universe.Source: BBC News - Science & Environment | 22 Jul 2010 | 11:54 am Foreign Turtles Don’t Smell Dangerous to Tadpoles
Foreign turtles may do so well at invading Europe in part because they get the drop on tadpoles more readily than their native counterparts.
The invaders could thus be gaining an advantage over natives in competing for food, Polo-Cavia and her colleagues suggest in a paper to appear in Animal Behaviour. The Iberian Peninsula has seen disturbing declines in two natives, the European pond turtle and the Spanish terrapin. Among their troubles is competition from exotic turtles that have escaped from the pet trade, including the red-eared slider and the false map turtle. All these turtles hunt tadpoles to some degree. And other research has shown that even quite inexperienced tadpoles can be canny when it comes to things that might eat them.
The researchers tested the tadpoles of Iberian green frogs and western spadefoot toads, collecting both from ponds without turtles of any kind. Researchers then released the tadpoles in containers dosed with water pulled from a tank where a native turtle had swum.
Iberian green frog tadpoles proved quite a cautious species, also lessening their motion when they scented a second, less carnivorous native, the Spanish terrapin. Tadpoles of common tree frogs likewise stopped darting around as much in water scented with either native turtle. Yet these savvy tadpoles just didn’t get it when researchers repeated the tests with water from tanks that held either red-eared sliders or false map turtles. Bathed in water scented with these invasive menaces, the tadpoles still darted around as much as they had in eau de fish. These invaders aren’t that closely related to native European species, so whatever cues the tadpoles use to detect their local menaces don’t seem to apply to the newcomers, the researchers concluded. Tying the tadpole recklessness to a possible edge in food competition “is an interesting wrinkle,” says Joseph Kiesecker of The Nature Conservancy’s office in Fort Collins, Colo., who also has studied nervous tadpoles. Recognizing an invasive species is a lot easier than figuring out how it’s succeeding, he says, so he welcomes work exploring the mechanics behind invasions. “Globally we have an invasive species crisis that doesn’t get a lot of attention,” Kiesecker says. His own work raises a glimmer of hope for the European tadpoles. When he and his colleagues studied invasive bullfrogs in the American West, some native tadpoles showed signs of updating their sense of danger. Images: 1) Flickr/plecosword. 2) Flickr/Erik.Nielsen.photos See Also:
Source: Wired: Wired Science | 22 Jul 2010 | 11:41 am Hobbyists Take Out-of-This-World Images of EarthHobbyists Take Out-of-This-World Images of EarthSource: Livescience.com | 22 Jul 2010 | 11:37 am Solar Lightbulbs Could Replace Kerosene LanternsNew solar lightbulbs from Denver startup Nokero could be the final nail in kerosene's coffin.Source: Discovery News - Top Stories | 22 Jul 2010 | 11:17 am The Secret of Successful EntrepreneursIn a recent blog post, Ross Douthat describes the “trouble with meritocracy,” or our belief that the best and brightest (as measured by their SAT scores and GPA) should all attend the same elite universities:
The obvious rejoinder to any critique of meritocracy is that, like democracy, it’s the worst system except for all the others that have been tried. Nevertheless, I think it’s still worth considering ways in which our meritocratic institutions – I’m looking at you, Harvard – can improve their outcomes and help mitigate the very real problem of social homogenization. The first thing to note is that homogenization happens automatically: we naturally construct our social network so that it consists mostly of people like us. (Sociologists refer to this failing as the self-similarity principle.) In 2007, Paul Ingram and Michael Morris conducted a study of business executives at Columbia University. The executives were invited to a cocktail mixer, where they were encouraged to network with new people. Not surprisingly, the vast majority of executives at the event said their primary goal was to meet “as many different as people as possible” and “expand their social network”. Unfortunately, that’s not what happened. By surreptitiously monitoring the participants with electronic devices, Ingram and Morris were able to track every conversation. What they found was that people tended to interact with the people who were most like them, so that investment bankers chatted with other investment bankers, and marketers talked with other marketers, and accountants interacted with other accountants. Instead of mixing with new people, the leaders made small talk with those from similar backgrounds; the smallness of their social world got reinforced. According to Ingram and Morris, the only successful networker at the event was the bartender. So far, so obvious. However, it’s important to note that cultivating diverse social networks - connecting with people who think differently – comes with real, tangible benefits. Consider this interesting study led by Martin Ruef, a sociologist at Princeton. He began by interviewing 766 graduates of the Stanford Business School, all of whom had gone on to start their own business. Ruef was most interested in the structure of their social networks. He noticed that most entrepreneurs had a rather homogenous collection of contacts. They might have lots of friends, but all of their friends came from the same place and were interested in the same things. This isn’t particularly surprising: We naturally self-segregate. But not every entrepreneur had such a self-similar network of friends. In fact, Ruef discovered a small subset of business people who were embedded in diverse social structures. They didn’t just hang out with colleagues and close friends. Instead, these entrepreneurs maintained a large number of “weak ties” with people at different companies and from different backgrounds. Their social networks were varied and undirected, full of surprising interactions and “informational entropy”. These entrepreneurs made a habit of hanging out with people who told them unexpected things; they chatted with acquaintances and struck up conversations with random strangers. Ruef then analyzed each of these entrepreneurs using an elaborate metric of innovation. He measured the number of patents they’d invented and kept track of all their trademarks. He rated the originality of their products and gave them bonus points if they’d “entered an unexploited niche” or pioneered a new marketing method. He then compared these innovation rankings to the structure of the entrepreneur’s social networks. The results were impressive: Business people with entropic networks were three times more innovative than people with predictable networks. Because they interacted with lots of different folks, they were exposed to a much wider range of ideas and “non-redundant information”. Instead of getting stuck in the rut of conformity – thinking the same tired thoughts as everyone else – they were able to invent startling new concepts. There is something unsettling about Ruef’s data. We think of entrepreneurs, after all, as individuals. If someone has a brilliant idea for a new company, we assume that they are inherently more creative than the rest of us. This is why we idolize people like Bill Gates and Richard Branson and Oprah Winfrey. It’s also why we invest in the meritocracy: We believe that we can identify talent in isolation. But Ruef’s analysis suggests that this focus on the singular misses the real story of entrepreneurship. Unless we take our social circle into account – that collection of weak ties and remote acquaintances who feed us unfamiliar facts - we’re not going to really understand the nature of achievement. Behind every successful entrepreneur is a vast network. And this returns us to meritocracy. It’s not enough to simply take the smartest kids and make them smarter. What’s just as important is teaching these young people to seek out strangers, to resist the tug of self-similarity and homogenization. Diversity can seem like a such a vague and wishy-washy aspiration, but it comes with measurable benefits. To the extent our meritocratic institutions diminish our social diversity – are your college buddies just like you? – they might actually make us less likely to succeed. Perhaps Bill Gates knew what he was doing when he dropped out of Harvard.
Source: Wired: Wired Science | 22 Jul 2010 | 11:15 am New Health Risk Found in Public PoolsYour sweat and urine mixed with the pool's chlorine can be hazardous to your health.Source: Livescience.com | 22 Jul 2010 | 10:40 am Storm Could Delay Efforts to Seal BP WellA potential cyclone may move into the Gulf and stall BP's operations by 10 to 14 days.Source: Discovery News - Top Stories | 22 Jul 2010 | 10:27 am Caterpillars Have a Crazy Crawl, Scientists DiscoverAs hawkmoth caterpillars crawl, their guts slide forward before the rest of the body.Source: Livescience.com | 22 Jul 2010 | 10:02 am Caterpillars Move Guts-FirstX-ray analysis shows the insects slide their guts ahead before moving the rest of their body in a unique form of motion that may inspire new robot designs.Source: Discovery News - Top Stories | 22 Jul 2010 | 10:00 am Engineer Seeks Better Control Over Wind EnergyKathryn Johnson explores how to maximize the energy of wind turbines, making them more efficient and cost-effective.Source: Livescience.com | 22 Jul 2010 | 9:38 am Stonehenge Twin Found Near Ancient MonumentA wooden version of the world-famous stone structure has been discovered by British archaeologists.Source: Discovery News - Top Stories | 22 Jul 2010 | 9:25 am UK government axes green watchdogThe government is to scrap the Sustainable Development Commission (SDC), its independent watchdog and advisory body on sustainability.Source: BBC News - Science & Environment | 22 Jul 2010 | 9:08 am Haul of Roman coins dug up in field to earn finder a fortuneMetal detector enthusiast Dave Crisp could share £1m with owner of Somerset field where he unearthed 52,000 coins A metal detector enthusiast could share a £1m payout after finding one of Britain's largest ever collections of Roman coins in a farmer's field, it emerged today. Dave Crisp, an NHS chef, was celebrating after a coroner ruled the find of 52,000 coins was treasure. It becomes the property of the crown and is bound to end up in a museum, but Crisp and the landowner will be rewarded once the hoard has been valued by an independent panel. Crisp, 63, had spent more than 20 years hunting for buried treasure, with modest success. But he struck gold in April when he dug down a foot into the earth of a field near Frome, Somerset, and found a huge, well-preserved earthenware pot full of coins. Experts believe the coins had been deliberately buried in the third century as an offering to the gods by landowners hoping for favourable farming conditions. Speaking after the hearing at East Somerset coroner's court in Frome, grandfather-of-three Crisp said that he would continue with his hobby. He said: "I'm over the moon. The money doesn't really matter. Obviously it's nice, but the significant thing for me is that I am the person who has made this discovery. "I will keep working until I retire next year and will definitely continue with my hobby – you don't just stop a hobby. I have no idea what I'll spend the cash on. Maybe I'll buy a new wok. "People often compare metal detecting to trainspotting, or say it's a bit geeky. Well, it just goes to show." The value of the hoard will not be known until it is examined in detail, but some experts have privately speculated it could run to hundreds of thousands of pounds and might even be worth up to £1m. The value will be split between Crisp and the landowner. Anna Booth, finds liaison officer for Somerset at the Portable Antiquities Scheme, said: "It will be fairly substantial, but how substantial, we don't know." Over the years, Crisp, from Devizes, Wiltshire, has found coins, artefacts and jewellery of Celtic, Saxon, Victorian and Georgian origin. Earlier this year he found 62 coins scattered in the field near Frome, which he reported to the authorities, before returning for a second sweep. On 11 April, Crisp unearthed the haul of 52,503 coins. Crisp told the coroner, Tony Williams, how he dug a foot beneath the surface after his metal detector emitted a "funny signal". He dusted away the soil and found the pot full of treasure. Crisp said: "I sat down and started to dig around and pulled out a bit of clay, which was attached to a pot. At first I found a coin, then another, then another. Then I realised what I had stumbled across and I literally stood up and shouted: 'I have found a haul.'" He alerted a finds liaison officer and a team of archaeologists was sent to study the site. Three days later they unearthed the pot, which was taken to the British Museum. It is thought to date from between AD253 and 293. Crisp said: "Leaving it in the ground for the archaeologists to excavate was a very hard decision to take, but as it had been there for 1,800 years, I thought a few days more would not hurt. My family thought I was mad to walk away and leave it." Booth told the hearing the hoard was probably an offering to the gods for "favourable weather or good farming conditions". She said the pot was so heavy that whoever left it there did not intend to return to collect the contents. Roger Bland, head of portable antiquities at the British Museum, said it was an extraordinary discovery. "It's the largest hoard of coins that has even been found in a single pot," he said. "In 1978, there was another find that was a little bit bigger but that was in two pots. "We are at the beginning of understanding it properly. We have been able to wash and count all the coins and do a preliminary sort." He said most were bronze with about five silver coins that date back to the time of Emperor Carausius. "He is not well known, this man," said Bland. "He was a Roman commander who set himself up as emperor in Britain and ruled for seven years. To find such a big group of his coins will give us a lot of information about this episode in our nation's history, which is not well understood." The Museum of Somerset is expected to try to raise the money to buy the coins to keep them in the county. 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 | 22 Jul 2010 | 9:04 am How Do Oil Skimmers Work?In the wake of the Deepwater Horizon disaster, oil skimming innovations have revved up in a field that hasn't changed much in 20 years.Source: Discovery News - Top Stories | 22 Jul 2010 | 8:58 am Antarctic octopuses found with cold-resistant venomHONG KONG (Reuters) - Researchers have discovered four new species of octopus in Antarctica with venom that works at sub-zero temperatures.Source: Reuters: Science News | 22 Jul 2010 | 8:17 am Plane Lands Like a Bird on a WireThe design could allow robotic planes better maneuverability and the ability to recharge batteries by alighting on lines.Source: Discovery News - Top Stories | 22 Jul 2010 | 8:13 am Mama Monkey Adopts Baby of Another SpeciesA female monkey at the London Zoo has taken a liking to her neighbor's babySource: Livescience.com | 22 Jul 2010 | 8:03 am As Ice Recedes, U.S. Prepares For a Bustling Bering StraitOutdated navigational maps pose a shipping hazard.Source: Livescience.com | 22 Jul 2010 | 7:53 am High energy physics in ParisThe International Conference on High Energy Physics is firing up in Paris, preparing to update the world on the latest insights into the fundamental laws of the universe. Physicist Jon Butterworth will be posting updates for the Guardian I'm writing this on a Eurostar train at St Pancras in London, waiting for it to pull out of the station and take us to Paris and the International Conference on High Energy Physics. Of course there are many international conferences on high energy physics. It's a completely international subject. But there's only one ICHEP. Well, one every two years, anyway. And this, after many promises and a false start, is the ICHEP where the first data from the Large Hadron Collider (LHC) will be presented to the world. In the carriage with me is Mike Paterson, the cameraman, director and creative genius behind the "Colliding Particles" films. He has been following me, Adam Davison and Gavin Salam around for longer than he bargained for. In 2008 we went to the previous ICHEP in Philadelphia where we were promised LHC data imminently. Sadly, although we got beams shortly afterwards, the well-publicised accident nine days later meant that the first physics measurements were delayed by a year. Anyway. The collider and the detectors that record what happens when protons collide head-on are now working beautifully, and we have data! I have been working with one team within the Atlas collaboration measuring the jets we see when the quarks and gluons in protons scatter off each other. Other teams have been measuring Z and W bosons (the carriers of the weak nuclear force), and many other properties of the collisions. These are all things that have been seen elsewhere, but we are measuring them at higher energies than ever before and we are of course looking out for the unexpected ... ... And the Higgs boson. The LHC is not the only game in town, and Fermilab's Tevatron collider will for sure be presenting updated results from its search, which may show some first hints of the Higgs and will at the very least tighten the limits on what its mass might be. In fact, the hunt for the Higgs is not the only game in town – far from it. There have been some fascinating results from neutrino experiments (with again a venerable experiment at Fermilab (MINOS) slugging it out with a newer competitor, this time T2K in Japan). And numerous other experiments will be advertising their latest measurements. This conference should be a great summary of the global progress in understanding the fundamental physical laws of the universe. It's bound to be interesting and there may be some surprises. The Eurostar is moving off. Paris here we come. Jon Butterworth is a member of the High Energy Physics Group at University College London 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 | 22 Jul 2010 | 7:50 am Archaeologists find new structure at StonehengeLONDON (Reuters) - Archaeologists have discovered a wooden version of British prehistoric monument Stonehenge at the same site, the project's leader told Reuters on Thursday.Source: Reuters: Science News | 22 Jul 2010 | 7:48 am Russia's latest spacecraftThe craft that will carry the next generation of cosmonautsSource: BBC News - Science & Environment | 22 Jul 2010 | 7:24 am Stonehenge: twin site unearthedA team led by the University of Birmingham has found a neighbour for Stonehenge - and all without a single hole being dug ... Source: Science news, comment and analysis | guardian.co.uk | 22 Jul 2010 | 7:24 am Climate unit's funding suspendedClimate scientists in a row over leaked emails have funding of 131,0000 suspended by the US government.Source: BBC News - Science & Environment | 22 Jul 2010 | 7:05 am Most massive star on recordColossal stars discovered by British astronomers give an insight into the early universe They are the most colossal stars ever seen and live short, bright, lives in faraway reaches of space before exploding in a blaze of glory. One of the stars, now tagged R136a1, is estimated to weigh 265 times more than the sun and to shine millions of times more brightly. Were it to replace our own star, the intensity of its rays would sterilise the Earth leaving it lifeless. British astronomers spotted the stars, more massive than any others on record, using the Very Large Telescope, an aptly named observatory on a mountain top in the Atacama desert of northern Chile. The discovery of the stellar giants has prompted astronomers to scrap the upper limits they set on star formation which suggested it was almost impossible for a star to grow to more than 150 times the mass of the sun. The team, led by Paul Crowther, an astrophysicist at Sheffield University, searched two regions of space for massive stars. The first region, known as NGC 3603, is a stellar nursery 22,000 light-years away in a region of the Milky Way called the Carina spiral arm. The second target, RMC 136a, is a cloud of gas and dust, 165,000 light-years away in the Tarantula nebula of our neighbouring galaxy, the Large Magellanic Cloud. The astronomers were able to distinguish individual stars using exquisitely sensitive infra-red instruments on the telescope, and take measurements of their brightness and mass. At least three stars examined in the first region of space weighed in at about 150 times the mass of the sun. The record-breaking star, R136a1, was found in the second region. When born, the star could have been a staggering 320 times more massive than the sun. Several of the stars were found to have surface temperatures above 40,000C, which is more than seven times hotter than the sun. "These stars are born heavy and lose weight as they age," said Crowther. "Being a little over a million years old, the most extreme star R136a1 is already middle-aged and has undergone an intense weight loss programme, shedding a fifth of its initial mass over that time. Owing to the rarity of these monsters I think it unlikely this new record will be broken any time soon." If R136a1 were in our own solar system it would outshine the sun as much as the sun outshines the full moon, the scientists said. The mass of the star is so great that it would reduce the length of an Earth year - the time it takes to circle the star - to just three weeks. "It would [also] bathe Earth in incredibly intense ultraviolet radiation, rendering life on our planet impossible," said Raphael Hirschi, a member of the team at Keele University. While the latest crop of stars are the most massive and heaviest ever spotted, they are not the largest. The biggest star in the group, R136a1, is roughly 30 times as wide as the sun. Another kind of star, known as a super red giant, can grow to many hundreds of times that size - though is considerably lighter, at only 10 times the mass of the sun. It is unlikely that any "alien" planets circle the massive stars that Crowther's team has studied. Radiation from the stars would obliterate any nearby cosmic material that could become compact enough to be a planet. Even if some remained, planets would take longer to form than the entire lifespan of a massive star. Crowther said: "We don't really know what happens when these massive stars reach the end of their lives. When some big stars die, their cores implode and they become neutron stars or black holes, but these might be different. They might blow up in a spectacular supernova and leave no remnants behind at all." The explosions could fling the weight of 10 suns worth of iron into space. The team's observations reveal what the early universe might have looked like, when many of the first stars to be born might have been cosmic monsters like R136a1. Before the latest discovery, the most massive star known was the peony nebula star, which, at about 175 times the mass of the sun, could still hold the record for our own galaxy. Details of the discovery are reported in the monthly notices of the Royal Astronomical Society. This version of the article appeared in print on Thursday 22 July 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 | 22 Jul 2010 | 6:48 am Footprint Fossils Analyzed for Ancient Human GaitResearchers compare the gait and foot structure of modern humans to a collection of 1.5 million year old footprints discovered in Kenya.Source: Discovery News - Top Stories | 22 Jul 2010 | 6:33 am Stonehenge twin discoveredNew wooden henge, a circular ditch that aligns with world-famous monument, deemed site's most exciting find in a lifetime Without a sod of earth being dug up, a new henge, a circular ditch which probably enclosed a ring of timber posts and may have been used for feasting, has been discovered within sight of Stonehenge. Professor Vince Gaffney, of Birmingham university, described the discovery of the new monument, only 900 metres away and apparently contemporary to the 5,000-year-old stone circle, as the most exciting find at Stonehenge in a lifetime. "This finding is remarkable. It will completely change the way we think about the landscape around Stonehenge. "People have tended to think that as Stonehenge reached its peak, it was the paramount monument, existing in splendid isolation. This discovery is completely new and extremely important in how we understand Stonehenge and its landscape. "Stonehenge is one of the most studied monuments on Earth but this demonstrates that there is still much more to be found." Midsummer revellers coming to Stonehenge for the solstice have probably trampled unwittingly across the grass hiding the henge. The henge was revealed within a fortnight of an international team beginning fieldwork on the three-year Stonehenge Hidden Landscape project, which aims to survey and map 14 sq km of the sacred landscape around the world's most famous prehistoric monument, which is studded with thousands more monuments from single standing stones to ploughed out burial mounds. Amanda Chadburn, the archaeologist responsible for Stonehenge at English Heritage, said: "This new monument is part of a growing body of evidence which shows how important the summer and winter solstices were to the ancient peoples who built Stonehenge. The discovery is all the more remarkable given how much research there has been in the vicinity of Stonehenge, and emphasises the importance of continuing research within and around the world heritage site." The survey suggests that the henge was on the same alignment as Stonehenge, and comprised a segmented ditch with north-east and south-west entrances, enclosing internal pits up to a metre in diameter believed to have held massive timbers. For the last fortnight curious tourists have watched scientists trundling what look like large lawnmowers around the nearby field. The geophysical equipment can peer under the surface of the earth using techniques like ground-penetrating radar, revealing structures now invisible to the human eye. The new discovery was hidden in the landscape: nothing remains above ground. The international team includes scientists and archaeologists from Birmingham University, Bradford, St Andrews, and the Ludwig Boltzmann Institute for Virtual Archaeology in Austria, as well as teams from Germany, Norway and Sweden. Professor Wolfgang Neubauer, director of the Ludwig Boltzmann Institute, said: "This is just the beginning. We will now map this monument using an array of technologies that will allow us to view this new discovery, and the landscape around it, in three dimensions. This marks a new departure for archaeologists and how they investigate the past." The work of other teams suggests that timber and stone monuments were separate parts of the same Stonehenge story. Professor Mike Parker Pearson, an archaeologist who has been excavating for many seasons at Durrington Walls, another nearby timber henge site, has already suggested that timber henges and structures were associated with feasting for the living, and stone circles with the realms of the dead. Work continues and the team expects to uncover many more secrets in the landscape. The discovery sharpens the disappointment of the partners working on the Stonehenge Project, an ambitious scheme which has already absorbed millions of pounds in planning work, intended to reunite the stone circle with the surrounding landscape, most of which is owned by the National Trust and leased to farmers. The plan to bury in a tunnel the traffic choked trunk road that runs within yards of the monument has been abandoned on cost grounds. Last month the government announced it was scrapping the promised £25m contribution towards a new visitor centre, replacing the present facilities damned by the parliamentary public accounts committee as "a national disgrace". 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 | 22 Jul 2010 | 3:52 am
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