Open golfers should putt with a 'Quiet Eye'

Studies by researchers in the UK have shown how using a technique called the "Quiet Eye" can significantly improve a golfers' putting performance, particularly when under pressure.
Source: ScienceDaily: Latest Science News | 26 Jul 2010 | 9:00 am

Unaccounted feedbacks from climate-induced ecosystem changes may increase future climate warming

In addition to the carbon cycle-climate interactions that have been a major focus of modeling work in recent years, other biogeochemistry feedbacks could be at least equally important for future climate change. Experts argue that it is important to include these feedbacks in the next generation of Earth system models.
Source: ScienceDaily: Latest Science News | 26 Jul 2010 | 9:00 am

Why more education lowers dementia risk

A team of researchers from the UK and Finland has discovered why people who stay in education longer have a lower risk of developing dementia -- a question that has puzzled scientists for the past decade.
Source: ScienceDaily: Latest Science News | 26 Jul 2010 | 9:00 am

Irradiating stem cell niche doubles survival in brain cancer patients

Patients with deadly glioblastomas who received high doses of radiation that hit a portion of the brain that harbors neural stem cells had double the progression-free survival time as patients who had lower doses or no radiation targeting the area, a study has found.
Source: ScienceDaily: Latest Science News | 26 Jul 2010 | 9:00 am

The healing effects of forests

Forests -- and other natural, green settings -- can reduce stress, improve moods, reduce anger and aggressiveness and increase overall happiness. Forest visits may also strengthen our immune system by increasing the activity and number of natural killer cells that destroy cancer cells.
Source: ScienceDaily: Latest Science News | 26 Jul 2010 | 9:00 am

New antibacterial material for bandages, food packaging, shoes

A new form of paper with the built-in ability to fight disease-causing bacteria could have applications that range from antibacterial bandages to food packaging that keeps food fresher longer to shoes that ward off foot odor. The new material consists of the thinnest possible sheets of carbon.
Source: ScienceDaily: Latest Science News | 26 Jul 2010 | 9:00 am

The hormone IGF-1: A trigger of puberty

Puberty is triggered by pulsatile release of GnRH from specific nerve cells in the the brain. What signals tell these nerve cells to release GnRH in this manner has not been determined, although it has been suggested that hormones associated with good nutritional status (such as IGF-1) have a role. New research has now confirmed that in mice IGF-1 does indeed have a key role in coordinating the timing of puberty onset.
Source: ScienceDaily: Latest Science News | 26 Jul 2010 | 6:00 am

How key enzyme repairs sun-damaged DNA

Researchers have long known that humans lack a key enzyme -- one possessed by most of the animal kingdom and even plants -- that reverses severe sun damage. For the first time, researchers have witnessed how this enzyme works at the atomic level to repair sun-damaged DNA. The discovery holds promise for future sunburn remedies and skin cancer prevention.
Source: ScienceDaily: Latest Science News | 26 Jul 2010 | 6:00 am

A plane that lands like a bird

Everyone knows what it's like for an airplane to land: the slow maneuvering into an approach pattern, the long descent, and the brakes slamming on as soon as the plane touches down, which seems to just barely bring it to a rest a mile later. Birds, however, can switch from barreling forward at full speed to lightly touching down on a target as narrow as a telephone wire. Why can't an airplane be more like a bird?
Source: ScienceDaily: Latest Science News | 26 Jul 2010 | 6:00 am

Organic nanoelectronics a step closer

Scientists have effectively discovered a way to order the molecules in the PEDOT, the single most industrially important conducting polymer.
Source: ScienceDaily: Latest Science News | 26 Jul 2010 | 6:00 am

China says oil spill under control (AFP)

AFP - China said Monday an oil spill on the northeast coast had been successfully controlled as reports said operations at the port where it originated were returning to normal.

Source: Yahoo! News: Science News | 26 Jul 2010 | 3:44 am

Could American take over Britain's BP? (AP)

AP - The man overseeing the much-maligned response by BP PLC to the Gulf oil spill crisis is the likely choice to replace gaffe-prone Tony Hayward to run the company and would become the first American to ever head the oil giant.

Source: Yahoo! News: Science News | 26 Jul 2010 | 3:33 am

From the archive 26 July 1978: Test tube mother has girl

Originally published in the Guardian on 26 July 1978

Mrs Lesley Brown, the world's first test-tube mother, gave birth to a baby girl at Oldham General Hospital, Lancashire, last night after a caesarian section delivery. The historic birth took place shortly before midnight. The baby weighed in at 5lb 12ozs.

Medical staff said later that the condition of both mother and daughter were "excellent". The birth was slightly premature – it was due on 4 August. Last week Mrs Brown (32) was found to be suffering from toxemia, a mild form of blood poisoning, and there was speculation that her gynaecologist, Mr Patrick Steptoe, would hasten the birth to avoid complications.

The toxemia followed a month-long crisis for Mr Steptoe when Mrs Brown was found to be suffering from a hormone deficiency which threatened to starve the unborn baby of oxygen. 

When Mrs Brown was presented with her long-awaited child today it was not the first time she had seen her. Earlier this month she saw the fully formed baby in her womb with the help of an ultrasonic scanner. Doctors have also known the sex of the child, but at her own request Mrs Brown was not told until the birth.

The end of Mrs Brown's confinement is not likely to end the newspaper controversy which has blemished what is otherwise a high-point in British medical history.

Since news of the impending birth was first broken by an American newspaper in April, journalists from Japan, the US as well as Fleet Street have been wrangling over the "rights" to the big story.

The Daily Mail finally offered a reputed £325,000 and mounted its own guard on Mrs Brown's ward to protect the booty. Then, after a row which reached ministerial level, health authorities agreed that news of Mrs Brown's progress would be released on a normal, non-selective basis.

The test-tube baby breakthrough is the product of the research Mr Steptoe, whose unit is at Oldham, and a Cambridge physiologist, Dr Robert Edwards, have been conducting since the 1960s. Properly known as an "embryo transfer" the technique involves the removal of an egg from the mother, its fertilisation with the father's sperm, its growth in a culture medium and then its re-implantation in the mother's womb.

The operation is highly expensive, but Mr Steptoe believes several thousand women a year could soon be benefiting from it. He used the technique with Mrs Brown after she and her husband, 38-year-old lorry driver, Mr Gilbert Brown, had tried unsuccessfully for nine years to have a baby.

David Beresford

Source: Science news, comment and analysis | guardian.co.uk | 26 Jul 2010 | 3:28 am

Hayward payoff ignites new BP controversy (AFP)

AFP - BP chief executive Tony Hayward will walk away from the crisis-stricken oil giant with a payoff of up to 18.5 million dollars, media reported Monday ahead of Hayward's departure.

Source: Yahoo! News: Science News | 26 Jul 2010 | 3:22 am

Jets, neutrinos and Debussy collide at high-energy physics conference

Delegates at the ICHEP high-energy physics conference in Paris were entertained by a string quartet and sprays of subatomic particles called jets

ICHEP now moves from the parallel to the plenary sessions. Some people leave, some arrive. Some, like me, stay.

On Friday evening we were treated to a concert by a string quartet dressed as the Reservoir Dogs at the beautiful Hotel de Ville de Paris. Debussy's slow movement was slightly spoiled by the guy behind me typing on a phone, which made a noise like nylon trouser legs rubbing together. But the concert was excellent.

Loved Saturday's session on jet measurements. A jet is a spray of particles produced by a quark or a gluon in a high-energy collision.
There were talks from the HERA, Tevatron and LHC colliders.

HERA was an underground ring in Hamburg that collided electrons and
protons from 1992 until 2007, and it is where I did my PhD work. They
are still analysing their data and presented some really beautiful, precise measurements. Their jets are being used to measure the strength
of the strong nuclear force.

The Tevatron also presented very precise measurements. Of particular interest to me was their first measurement of the mass of a jet. This is a topic that has become more interesting lately, partly as a result of some of my own work, which has shown that jet mass is useful when searching for new particles, especially the Higgs.

Results from the CDF (Collider Detector at Fermilab) showed that for "normal" jets from quarks and gluons, the theory describes the data quite well, which is good news.

The LHC's Atlas and CMS detectors presented the highest-energy jets ever seen. We have measured their "rates" - how many of these events you get per proton collision - and compared them against the Standard Model of particle physics in a new energy regime. We will turn the screw on this in the coming months, going to higher energies and more precision as we collect more data.

One thing dictating the precision is the "jet energy scale". The older
experiments have determined their jet energy scale to within about 1%.
This means they know that the energy on the read-outs of their detectors
matches the energy that went in, to within one part in a hundred.

The equivalent figure for Atlas and CMS at present is 5-10%. Eventually
we should also get to 1%, but it will take years of work, and lots of
data, to do that. The jet energy scale will remain the biggest uncertainty in the LHC measurements for quite some time.

This is an example of how older experiments can still contribute, even though new experiments may surpass them in many ways.

In the neutrino sessions of the conference, Eric Zimmerman from the University of Colorado showed some of the first neutrino events from the T2K experiment in Japan. This involves firing a neutrino beam hundreds of kilometres across Japan, using GPS to aim it at the Super-Kamiokande detector, where they will make precise measurements of neutrino oscillations.

Later, Justin Evans, a colleague of mine from University College London, showed data from MINOS, a similar but older neutrino experiment at Fermilab that has just made the first measurement of anti-neutrino oscillations.

Oddly, there are hints that these don't look quite the same as neutrino oscillations. If this turns out to be the case, it breaks the current theory in a big way.

The trade-off between old and new means the best physics from an experiment often comes close to the end of its lifetime. We should make sure we exploit these wonderful older machines properly, as well as preparing for new generations.

Sunday was a day off and featured the final stage of the Tour de France.

Today the plenary sessions begin. We have the grand opening by President Sarkozy, we have the LHC summaries, the press conference, and the presentation of the combined, updated Higgs search results from the Tevatron.

ICHEP is over, long live ICHEP.

Jon Butterworth is a member of the High Energy Physics Group at University College London

Source: Science news, comment and analysis | guardian.co.uk | 26 Jul 2010 | 3:21 am

The nation's weather (AP)

AP - Active weather was forecast to continue throughout the southeastern quadrant of the nation Monday as a frontal boundary from the North stalled over the region.

Source: Yahoo! News: Science News | 26 Jul 2010 | 3:14 am

Mars Rover 'Curiosity' Grows Up, Rolls for the First Time

It's been a busy few days for the Mars Science Laboratory after NASA engineers and technicians attach the rover's 'eyes' and take it for a test drive.
Source: Discovery News - Top Stories | 26 Jul 2010 | 2:43 am

BP's Hayward to step aside; Gulf work resumes (Reuters)

Reuters - BP Plc is expected to announce changes at the top in the next 24 hours, with the anticipated departure of CEO Tony Hayward, who came under fire for his handling of the worst oil spill in U.S. history.

Source: Yahoo! News: Science News | 26 Jul 2010 | 2:00 am

Should Environmental Protection Extend to the Planets?

Do we have an ethical duty to respect and preserve the natural environments of neighboring planets and their moons?
Source: Discovery News - Top Stories | 26 Jul 2010 | 1:12 am

China braces for more flooding as rains continue (AP)

AP - Troops sandbagged swollen rivers Monday and storm-battered regions across China prepared for more floods and potential landslides as forecasters predicted torrential rains this week.

Source: Yahoo! News: Science News | 26 Jul 2010 | 12:07 am

Top 10 Animal Recruits in War

Animals have each played roles in human military history, and continue to aid modern warfare.
Source: Livescience.com | 26 Jul 2010 | 12:03 am

Remains of Roman villa discovered

Archaeologists find the remains of a 4th Century Roman villa near Aberystwyth after an aerial photograph showed up an outline.
Source: BBC News - Science & Environment | 25 Jul 2010 | 11:55 pm

What happens when 1,000 particle physicists collide

What happens when 1,000 particle physicists meet? BBC News visited the 35th International Conference on High Energy Physics (ICHEP) in Paris to find out.
Source: BBC News - Science & Environment | 25 Jul 2010 | 11:17 pm

Engineers race to design world's biggest offshore wind turbines

British firm to design mammoth offshore wind turbines with 275m wingspan that produce three times power of standard models

• Interactive: The race to build bigger turbines

British, American and Norwegian engineers are in a race to design and build the holy grail of wind turbines – giant, 10MW offshore machines twice the size and power of anything seen before – that could transform the global energy market because of their economies of scale.

Today, a revolutionary British design that mimics a spinning sycamore leaf and which was inspired by floating oil platform technology, entered the race. Leading engineering firm Arup is to work with an academic consortium backed by blue-chip companies including Rolls Royce, Shell and BP to create detailed designs for the "Aerogenerator", a machine that rotates on its axis and would stretch nearly 275m from blade tip to tip. It is thought that the first machines will be built in 2013-14 following two years of testing.

But the all-British team of designers and engineers, which includes Eden project architects Grimshaw, is in stiff competition with other groups. Earlier this year US wind company Clipper, which has close ties with the US Department of Energy's National Renewable Energy Laboratory, announced plans to build 10MW "Britannia" turbines in north-east England.

Based on a scaled-up version of the conventional wind turbines now common in the British landscape, these giants would be fixed to the sea bed but would stand nearly 600ft high above the waves. If they prove technically and financially feasible, each turbine should be able to generate enough electricity to provide 5,000-10,000 homes and, says Clipper, should create energy equivalent to 2m barrels of oil in their 25-year lifetime.

Meanwhile, Norwegian firm Sway is planning to build massive floating turbines that would stick straight out of the sea from 100m-deep floating "masts" anchored to the sea bed. An EU-sponsored research project is also investigating 8–10MW turbines, and other American and Danish companies are planning 9MW machines. Full-scale prototyes of all three leading designs are expected to be complete within three years.

"There is a wonderful race on. It's very tight and the prize is domination of the global offshore wind energy market," said Feargal Brennan, head of offshore engineering at Cranfield University, where much of the Aerogenerator development work has been carried out.

"The UK has come late to the race, but with 40 years of oil and gas experience we have the chance to lead the world. The new [Aero-generator] turbine is based on semi-submersible oil platform technology and does not have the same weight constraints as a normal wind turbine. The radical new design is half the height of an equivalent [conventional] turbine," he said. He added that the design could be expanded to produce turbines that generated 20MW or more.

The largest wind turbines currently installed are mostly rated at around 3MW. By comparison, coal power stations typically have a capacity in gigawatts, or thousands of megawatts – it would take 180 of the new giant turbines to generate the equivalent capacity of a coal power station proposed this year for North Ayshire, Scotland.

Engineers say that scale is the key to wind power. Doubling the diameter of a conventional wind turbine theoretically produces four times as much power, but weighs eight times as much and can increase costs by a factor of eight. Offshore power is widely regarded as the future of renewable energy because the wind is much more reliable at sea, larger machines are possible to transport and install and there is far less public opposition.

On land, massive cranes and blades have to be driven to remote hilltops, and planning permission can take many years. However, the present generation of offshore turbines are 30-50% more expensive than their terrestrial counterparts, are harder to maintain and are more prone to corrosion.

The market for offshore power is expected to grow to hundreds of billions of dollars a year. Last year the European Wind Energy Association predicted that Europe would increase its offshore wind power from less than 2GW today to more than 150GW by 2030.

Britain, which has little upland space available for large wind farms, overtook Denmark in offshore wind generation in 2008 and now leads the world with 330 offshore turbines installed. It also has the world's most ambitious plans to develop the wind resource, being committed to installing 12GW of offshore power by 2012. This is the equivalent of 2,500 of the largest 5MW machines presently developed.

John Sauven, director of Greenpeace UK, said: "It is critical that the UK government does not hinder the development of offshore wind power by cutting budgets for short-term gain. All our energy needs depend on this."

Source: Science news, comment and analysis | guardian.co.uk | 25 Jul 2010 | 10:59 pm

Science Weekly podcast: Why you should distrust your senses

Before listening to this podcast, for best results we recommend you watch this short YouTube video.

Daniel Simons joins us from a studio in Illinois to discuss his new book The Invisible Gorilla. We look at how our intuition deceives us and the problems this causes for the judicial system. Daniel also reveals why criminals and chess players are more alike than they'd like to believe.

More than 40 years on, film footage of Nasa mission control during the Apollo 11 moon landing has only just been synchronised with the audio. We listen in to that.

Cian O'Luanaigh attends the first ever academic conference on the subject Comics and Medicine: Medical Narrative in Graphic Novels at the University of London. He reports on why doctors and nurses are turning to a different medium to get their message across.

Follow the podcast on our Science Weekly Twitter feed and receive updates on all breaking science news stories from Guardian Science.

Email scienceweeklypodcast@gmail.com.

Join our Facebook group.

Listen back through our archive.

Subscribe free via iTunes to ensure every episode gets delivered. (Here is the non-iTunes URL feed).

Source: Science news, comment and analysis | guardian.co.uk | 25 Jul 2010 | 5:01 pm

Avoidable Disasters: Major (and Deadly) Human Screw-ups (LiveScience.com)

LiveScience.com - While BP seems to have gotten the flow of oil in the Gulf of Mexico under control for now, investigations suggest corners were cut for the sake of profit and expediency, leading to the Deepwater Horizon rig explosion and fire that killed 11 workers and started the oil leak.
Source: Yahoo! News: Science News | 25 Jul 2010 | 4:25 pm

Reaper drones: Death by remote control

Unmanned planes that unleash missiles have become an effective but expensive weapon for US forces and the RAF

It flies at 50,000ft, is virtually invisible and carries a deadly payload of missiles and bombs. Meet the Reaper, a new variety of heavily armed unmanned drone which the war logs reveal is increasingly the coalition's weapon of choice against the Taliban.

At about $13m (£8m) each, and up to $100,000 for each of its four Hellfire missiles, that adds up to an extraordinary amount of cash that is routinely being spent to try to kill a single insurgent.

The growing reliance on the Reaper becomes apparent in the account of one operation on 29 August last year.

US soldiers on the ground studied the live video, from the Reaper's camera thousands of feet up, of a fighter "pulling weapons from a cache site in a culvert under the road". He rode his motorbike to an underground cellar in a compound, "carrying weapons back and forth".

The US soldiers waited until he met a group of men, signalling back via satellite to the pilot controlling a joystick thousands of miles away in a Nevada bunker, who loosed a missile on to their vehicle. The US claimed a kill of three insurgents.

The Reaper is much more powerful than its predecessors. It not only flies higher, but loiters longer, and – most significantly – carries a more destructive payload. In addition to the four Hellfires, it is armed with two 500lb GBU-12 smart bombs.

Typical of the extensive – and expensive – use of these drones is an operation recorded in southern Afghanistan on 30 June last year. Insurgents had attacked Afghan police. The log records "2 x INS [insurgents] moving into mountains above Khakrez" and continues: "INS were tracked by Reaper to a large tree when 1 x INS dropped his kit and ran to the south. Additional INS were observed under the cover of a tree."

The pilot in Nevada then launched his laser-guided bomb, "resulting that 3 x INS fled the area to the north, 1 x INS fled the area to the south".

The pilot steered the drone to follow the three fleeing northwards and unleashed three Hellfires on them. The Reaper continued tracking and an hour later spotted two more insurgents who were "followed to a rock pile" and hit with the final Hellfire.

A surveillance drone, a Predator, "was providing overwatch and nothing was seen moving in the area after the strike". Up to seven Taliban fighters were said to have been killed in that battle.

Another log entry tells of a Reaper hide-and-seek mission above Kandahar province on the afternoon of 28 October 2008. The remote pilot "observed INS with 82mm mortars and engaged them with 1 x Hellfire" Then he chased and launched another Hellfire at two "squirters" – slang for people fleeing a building or position after it has just been bombed.

On 27 October last year, a unit from the 2nd Battalion The Yorkshire Regiment (Green Howards) was attacked by four Taliban fighters hidden in what are known as "murder holes" in a wall of a compound near Nad-e Ali, Helmand. The Taliban dig burrows in walls then climb into them, firing guns through small slits. On this occasion, the Reaper drone bombed the wall. The log says it succeeded in killing two Taliban.

The RAF, third in the queue after the US air force and the CIA, is ordering as many Reapers as it can. It deployed its first one in Afghanistan in June 2008.

Since then British Reapers have flown more than 11,500 hours in a purely surveillance role and fired 97 missiles to help commanders on the ground, the RAF says. They fly from an airfield in Kandahar, which maintains and refuels them. No civilians have been killed as a result, according to the Ministry of Defence .

Yet Reapers are not always the perfect video-game weapon. On 13 September last year, the logs record that a rogue Reaper went out of control. The unmanned "hunter-killer" headed for neighbouring Tajikistan with its full load of missiles and bombs. An F15 fighter jet was scrambled and only succeeded in shooting it down a short distance from the border.

Source: Science news, comment and analysis | guardian.co.uk | 25 Jul 2010 | 3:04 pm

Afghanistan war logs: Shattering the illusion of a bloodless victory

Real picture of a conflict longer than Vietnam, or either world war, refutes the idea of a 'revolution in military affairs'

More than a decade ago, when the cold war was well and truly over, American and British strategists began to celebrate what they called a "revolution in military affairs". Information technology and "precision weapons", products of the microchip, would lead to a new, western, way of warfare. Public opinion, it was said, would no longer tolerate civilian or military casualties.

The logs we publish today, a detailed chronicle of a violent conflict that has lasted longer than the Vietnam war, longer than the two world wars, shatter the illusion that conflicts could be meticulously planned and executed, and the assumption that bloodshed would be acceptable only in very limited quantities.

They demonstrate, too, that despite the opportunities provided by new technology, media groups with a global reach still cannot offer their public more than sporadic accounts of the most visible and controversial incidents, and glimpses of the background.

Donald Rumsfeld and his fellow neocons in Washington translated the "revolution in military affairs" into "shock and awe". When that didn't work in Iraq, General David Petraeus rewrote the US army's field manual. The British army belatedly followed suit, as the two countries providing the vast majority of troops to Afghanistan set out a modern counter-insurgency strategy, a battle for "hearts and minds", a war "among the people, for the people". Above all, civilians would be protected.

That is what government officials and military commanders have been saying for years and what they continue to say. The reality, as the logs show, is very different. They provide unprecedented insight, through the wood and the trees, painting a picture, via a myriad micro-episodes, of brutality, cynicism, fear, panic, false alarms and the killing of a large number of civilians – many more than of foreign troops or insurgents – by all sides in the conflict. And, inevitably, "friendly fire". It is a story of deep-seated corruption by senior members of the Afghan police, of black operations by coalition special forces engaged in assassinations of dubious legality, of spies, and of unmanned but armed drones controlled by "pilots", including private contractors, sitting in front of computers thousands of miles away in air-conditioned rooms in the Nevada desert.

It creates an illusion of war games isolating the drones' controllers, national military commanders and politicians in their offices in London or Washington from the real violence and confusion on the ground in Afghanistan.

Sophisticated communications and weapons systems, which often provide false comfort, can lead to information overload and excess firepower adding to the confusion – the fog of war – rather than clearing it away. This war of the future, as military strategists now describe it, costing billions of pounds a year, is no conventional conflict with fixed positions on a battlefield, a clear enemy and friendly forces.

The Taliban-led insurgents soon realised they were on a hiding to nothing when four years ago they first engaged British, US (though few of those were so exposed at the time) and other foreign troops in open gun battles. They adapted their tactics and their weaponry, resorting to increasingly powerful improvised explosive devices (IEDs) which are now responsible for well over half of the deaths and serious injuries to foreign troops in Afghanistan. There are increasing signs, however, that insurgents, growing more confident, are reverting to rifles, putting more pressure on foreign soldiers by shooting at them from a distance.

According to the logs, special forces have killed "high value" targets without any attempt to capture them. The records say that British soldiers killed or wounded civilians on occasions by firing "warning shots". They describe how US forces have killed British troops and Afghan forces by mistake, and how Afghan soldiers have killed their comrades by accident. They describe the difficulty in promoting "hearts and minds", in dampening suspicions in a country where central government and its officials, let alone foreign forces, are distrusted, and where tribal loyalties and ethnic divisions cross internal administrative boundaries.

Military and government spokesmen may have covered up, misled, simply been ignorant of what was taking place. This is why the publication of the logs are so important.

Military commanders and officials no longer try to maintain the fiction which they were tempted to not so long ago. They came to admit that the war in Afghanistan is messy. The logs reveal just how messy it really is.

Source: Science news, comment and analysis | guardian.co.uk | 25 Jul 2010 | 3:04 pm

Ageing cells lose protein pumps

Longevity of cells could be linked to levels of cellular pumps that get rid of toxic cell products.<img src="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~r/news/rss/today/~4/i_4--_icYWg" height="1" width="1"/>
Source: NatureNews - All articles published today - nature.com science feeds | 25 Jul 2010 | 3:00 pm

Jordan police prevent 'lettuce lady' protest (AFP)

AFP - An animal rights activist in salad dressing -- she wore an all-lettuce gown -- never got to promote her pro-vegetarian message on Sunday after Jordanian police said the one-woman demo was unauthorised.

Source: Yahoo! News: Science News | 25 Jul 2010 | 2:56 pm

In midst of river cleanup, supporters are divided (AP)

AP - Once a dumping ground for chemicals, a stretch of the Housatonic River that winds near this Berkshires hamlet is being scoured in a lengthy, expensive cleanup. Now, dredging other parts of the riverbed is under consideration, but the fishers, bird watchers and swimmers who would benefit are wondering how much effort is too much.

Source: Yahoo! News: Science News | 25 Jul 2010 | 1:39 pm

Huge Space Rock (Meeting) Descends on New York (SPACE.com)

SPACE.com - NEW YORK - Space rock aficionados from around the world are converging on New York City for the biggest ever meeting of the Meteoritical Society this week.
Source: Yahoo! News: Science News | 25 Jul 2010 | 1:15 pm

Tropical Biodiversity Explained by Steady Temperatures

Study explains why tropics more diverse than temperate zones.
Source: Livescience.com | 25 Jul 2010 | 12:14 pm

BAE to assist green energy project

Britain's biggest arms manufacturer will contribute its marine engineering expertise to a wave-power project off Orkney

Marine engineering for an innovative wave-power project off Orkney is to be provided by Britain's biggest arms manufacturer, BAE Systems. The defence firm, which builds Type 45 destroyers and Astute nuclear submarines, is to develop the hi-tech remote ballasting and problem-solving systems in co-operation with Aquamarine Power, which owns the device, known as the Oyster wave energy converter.

The converter uses a floating himged flap to pump water through a hydro-electric turbine, generating electricity for the National Grid.

BAE and Aquamarine have received a £450,000 grant from the government's technology strategy board to support a 30-month research and development scheme to try to make Oyster cost-effective. "This is a great opportunity for us to apply skills developed in naval design and the management of large, complex maritime engineering programmes to support the emerging marine energy industry," said Kevin McLeod, engineering director at BAE's surface ships division.

Aquamarine, which has already installed and tested its Oyster 1 demonstration device at the European Marine Energy Centre, in Orkney, said the firms shared "a belief in the global potential of wave energy".

Source: Science news, comment and analysis | guardian.co.uk | 25 Jul 2010 | 11:30 am

Dark matter hunt eyes deeper home

An underground experiment designed to search for dark matter could go even deeper in search of the elusive cosmic "stuff".
Source: BBC News - Science & Environment | 25 Jul 2010 | 9:30 am

Chinese archaeologists' African quest for sunken ship of Ming admiral

Search for remains of armada which came to grief on a pioneering voyage to Kenya 600 years ago

It's another chapter in the now familiar story of China's economic embrace of Africa. Except that this one begins nearly 600 years ago.

A team of 11 Chinese archaeologists will arrive in Kenya tomorrow to begin the search for an ancient shipwreck and other evidence of commerce with China dating back to the early 15th century. The three-year, £2m joint project will centre around the tourist towns of Lamu and Malindi and should shed light on a largely unknown part of both countries' histories.

The sunken ship is believed to have been part of a mighty armada commanded by Ming dynasty admiral Zheng He, who reached Malindi in 1418. According to Kenyan lore, reportedly backed by recent DNA testing, a handful of survivors swum ashore. After killing a python that had been plaguing a village, they were allowed to stay and marry local women, creating a community of African-Chinese whose descendants still live in the area.

A likely shipwreck site has been identified near Lamu island, according to Idle Farah, director general of the National Museums of Kenya, which is working on the archaeology project with its Chinese equivalent and Peking University.

"The voyages of the Portuguese and the Arabs to our coasts have long been documented," Farah told the Guardian. "Now, by examining this shipwreck, we hope to clarify with clear evidence the first contact between China and east Africa."

The project forms part of a recent effort by the Chinese government to celebrate the achievements of Zheng, a Muslim whose ships sailed the Indian and Pacific Oceans many decades before the exploits of more celebrated European explorers such as Christopher Columbus and Vasco da Gama. Starting in 1405, Zheng made seven journeys, taking in south-east Asia, India, the Middle East and Africa, in fleets of up to 300 huge ships with nearly 30,000 sailors in total, according to Chinese records.

On his voyages, Zheng dished out gifts from the Chinese emperor, including gold, porcelain and silk. In return, he brought home ivory, myrrh, zebras and camels. But it was a giraffe that caused the biggest stir. The animal is known to have been a gift from the Sultan of Malindi, on Kenya's northern coast, but theories vary as to how exactly it got to China. One account suggests that the giraffe was taken from the ruler of Bengal — who himself had received it as a gift from the Sultan — and that it inspired Zheng to visit Kenya a few years later.

Herman Kiriama, Kenya's head of coastal archeology, said the joint archeological team will this week try to locate the Sultan's original village, which is though to be around Mambrui village, outside Malindi, where Ming porcelain has been discovered. In late August, the project will move underwater, with the arrival of specialist maritime archeologists from China.

"Though we have not located the shipwreck yet, we have good indications of where it might have gone down," said Kiriama.

The team's confidence in finding the sunken ship is bolstered by work done in the run-up to the 600th anniversary of Zheng's first voyage. As part of the 2005 celebration, in which the Beijing government sought to present Zheng as a sort of maritime goodwill ambassador – a portrayal disputed by some scholars who point to his use of military force – China sent a team of scholars to Lamu.

In Siyu village they conducted DNA tests on a Swahili family whose oral history and hints of Chinese facial features led them to believe they were descendants of Zheng's shipwrecked sailors. The tests reportedly showed evidence of Chinese ancestry and a 19-year-old woman called Mwamaka Shirafu was given a full scholarship to study traditional medicine in China, where she remains.

Source: Science news, comment and analysis | guardian.co.uk | 25 Jul 2010 | 9:14 am

Oil Well 'Kill' Delayed, BP Chief Reportedly to Resign

The work to plug BP's leaky oil well got back on track Sunday as the skies cleared and crews raced to plug the well for good.
Source: Discovery News - Top Stories | 25 Jul 2010 | 9:09 am

Unusual Espionage: Not Your Average Spy

While there are various types of spies, they all share one goal: collecting secrets that their targets would prefer to keep hidden.
Source: Livescience.com | 25 Jul 2010 | 7:30 am

Remnants of Lost Polar Expedition Sought

A team of Canadian archaeologists is leading an expedition to find two British vessels that shipwrecked in the Canadian Arctic more than 150 years ago.
Source: Discovery News - Top Stories | 25 Jul 2010 | 7:17 am