If you're 13 to 18 years old, you can enter by submitting your entry by 1 April 2012 for your chance to win fantastic prizes. This video tells you a little more:
Here's some information from last year's Google Science Fair competition, and a story where I interviewed one of last year's semi-finalists, a young British scientist, Georgia Bondy, about her Google Science Fair project.
Time.com - The energy-starved country needs wind power but environmental critics say it will not only mar the landscape but harm the wildlife
Source: Yahoo! News: Science News | 7 Feb 2012 | 12:55 am
A computer programming error doomed Russia's Phobos-Grunt Mars spacecraft, a government board investigating the accident has determined.
Source: Discovery News - Top Stories | 7 Feb 2012 | 12:25 am
AP - After five years of legislative struggling, 23 stopgap measures and a two-week shutdown of the Federal Aviation Administration, Congress finally has passed a bill aimed at prodding the nation's aviation system into a new high-tech era in which satellites are central to air traffic control and piloted planes share the skies with unmanned drones.
Source: Yahoo! News: Science News | 6 Feb 2012 | 11:39 pm
SPACE.com - One man's quest to make a record-breaking leap from near the edge of space is nearing make-or-break time.
Source: Yahoo! News: Science News | 6 Feb 2012 | 11:31 pm
The human brain has 100 billion neurons, each of which is connected to many others. Neuroscientists believe these connections hold the key to our memories, personality and even mental disorders such as schizophrenia. By unraveling them, we may be able to learn more about how we become our unique selves, and possibly even how to alter those selves.
Mapping all those connections may sound like a daunting task, but MIT neuroscientist Sebastian Seung believes it can be done — one cubic millimeter of brain tissue at a time.
“When you start to explain how difficult it would be to find the connectome of an entire brain, people ask, ‘What’s the point? That seems too far off.’ But even finding or mapping the connections in a small piece of brain can tell you a lot,” says Seung, a professor of computational neuroscience and physics at MIT.
Even more than our genome, our connectome shapes who we are, says Seung, who outlines his vision for connectome research in a new book, Connectome, published this month by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt. “Clearly genes are very important, but because they don’t change after the moment of conception, they can’t really account for the effects of experience,” he says.
A streambed of consciousness
Seung envisions the brain’s connections as the “streambed” through which our consciousness flows. At a molecular level, that streambed consists of billions of synapses, in which one neuron sends signals to the next via chemical neurotransmitters. While scientists once believed that synapses could not be changed after formation, they now know that synapses are continuously strengthening, weakening, disappearing and reforming, as we learn new things and have new experiences.
While neuroscientists have long hypothesized that the key to our unique selves lies in those connections, this has proven impossible to test because the technology to map the connections did not exist. That is now changing, due to the efforts of Seung and a handful of other neuroscientists around the world.
At the Max Planck Institute for Medical Research in Heidelberg, Germany, neuroscientists in the laboratory of Winfried Denk have taken extremely thin slices of brain tissue and generated electron-microscope images of all the neural connections within each slice. However, the next step — mapping those connections — is extremely time-consuming. Seung estimates that it would take 100,000 years for a lone worker to trace the connections in one cubic millimeter of brain tissue.
To help speed that up, Seung and his colleagues have developed an artificial intelligence (AI) system, which they presented at the International Conference on Computer Vision and the Neural Information Processing Systems Conference in 2009. However, the system still requires human guidance, so the researchers are enlisting the help of the general public through a website called eyewire.org. “The brain is like a vast jungle of neurons,” Seung says. “They’re like trees that are all tangled up together, and people can help us explore that.”
Participants in the Eyewire project will help guide the computer program when it loses track of where a neuronal extension goes amidst the tangle of neurons.
“The person can click the mouse and say color here, and the computer starts coloring again, and keeps going, and then stops again when it’s uncertain. So you’re guiding the computer,” Seung says. Furthermore, the AI system becomes “smarter” as people guide it, so it will need less and less help as it goes on.
Rather than tackling the human brain right away, the researchers are beginning with a 300- by 350- by 80-micron slice of mouse retinal tissue. Images of just this small piece of tissue take up a terabyte of data, or enough to hold 220 million pages of text.
In a review published in New Scientist, Terrence Sejnowski, the Francis Crick Professor of Computational Neurobiology at the Salk Institute, says the book “gives a sense of the excitement on the cutting edge of neuroscience.” Sejnowski points out that connectomics, just like genomics, will be aided by the rapid advance of technology. “Once a certain threshold has been achieved, something that seemed impossible becomes possible, and soon becomes routine,” he writes.
Miswired brains
While everyone’s connectomes are different, extreme differences may account for mental disorders such as autism and schizophrenia. Neuroscientists have long speculated that autism and schizophrenia are caused by problems in brain wiring, but haven’t been able to test that theory. Once a typical human connectome has been mapped, scientists will be able to compare it to the wiring diagrams of small chunks of the brains of mice engineered to express autism or schizophrenia symptoms, in the hopes of figuring out why those disorders arise and, potentially, how to treat them.
“Finding those differences, of course, is not a cure or treatment, it’s just a starting point. But I would argue that being able to see those differences would be a huge step forward,” Seung says. “Imagine studying infectious diseases before there were microscopes. You could see the symptoms, but you couldn’t see the microbes. That’s why, for a long time, people didn’t believe schizophrenia had a biological basis, because they looked at the brain and there was nothing obviously wrong.”
In the last section of Connectome, Seung addresses some futuristic applications of connectomics, drawn directly from science fiction — ideas such as uploading human brains into computers or freezing bodies to preserve them until technology is developed to bring them back to life.
“My goal in those chapters is to point out that we can start to examine those dreams in a critical way,” Seung says. For example, he suggests that cryogenics is only a feasible plan if it can be shown that the connectome survives the freezing and thawing intact. “My point in those chapters is to introduce a dose of science into science fiction.”
ContributorNetwork - While Austin, like most Texas cities, has a recycling program, the capital of the state is experimenting with commercial composting, using food and other organic waste to create mulch and potter's soil for commercial use, according to the Austin American Statesman.
Source: Yahoo! News: Science News | 6 Feb 2012 | 9:00 pm
Five killer whales are named as plaintiffs in a lawsuit which argues that they deserve the same constitutional protection from slavery as humans.
Source: BBC News - Science & Environment | 6 Feb 2012 | 8:34 pm
Fast declines in some UK and European ladybirds are being caused by the spread of the invasive harlequin species, scientists show.
Source: BBC News - Science & Environment | 6 Feb 2012 | 6:23 pm
Felix Baumgartner, the Austrian planning to sky dive from a record-breaking altitude, has announced he will make the attempt later this year.
Source: BBC News - Science & Environment | 6 Feb 2012 | 6:03 pm
Tiger Woods may rule the golf course here on Earth, but when it comes to extraterrestrial golfing, Alan Shepard reigns supreme.
Source: Discovery News - Top Stories | 6 Feb 2012 | 5:21 pm
LONDON (Reuters) - Directed energy weapons that use wave beams to cause pain, and electrical brain stimulation that boosts a soldier's combat ability - it may sound like science fiction warfare, but experts say advances in neuroscience mean it's on the horizon.
Source: Reuters: Science News | 6 Feb 2012 | 5:09 pm
The "love song" of a 165-million-year-old insect is recreated from a tiny and remarkably intact fossil, say scientists.
Source: BBC News - Science & Environment | 6 Feb 2012 | 4:33 pm
Researchers have, for the first time, described the genetic basis of endometriosis, a condition affecting millions of women that is marked by chronic pelvic pain and infertility. The researchers' discovery of a new gene mutation provides hope for new screening methods.
Source: ScienceDaily: Latest Science News | 6 Feb 2012 | 3:43 pm
In a study of the harsh but beautiful White Sands National Monument in New Mexico, researchers have uncovered a unifying mechanism to explain dune patterns. The new work represents a contribution to basic science, but the findings may also hold implications for identifying when dune landscapes like those in Nebraska's Sand Hills may reach a "tipping point" under climate change, going from valuable grazing land to barren desert.
Source: ScienceDaily: Latest Science News | 6 Feb 2012 | 3:43 pm
Treatment with three "targeted" cancer drugs has been linked to a slightly elevated chance of fatal side effects, according to a new analysis. These risks remain low, but they should be factored in when developing patients’ treatment plans.
Source: ScienceDaily: Latest Science News | 6 Feb 2012 | 3:42 pm
Biologists have uncovered why the chemical defenses in birch, a common type of tree found in North America, are toxic to snowshoe hares.
Source: ScienceDaily: Latest Science News | 6 Feb 2012 | 3:42 pm
A new analysis has found that a state ballot initiative to increase the cigarette tax would create about 12,000 jobs and nearly $2 billion in new economic activity in California.
Source: ScienceDaily: Latest Science News | 6 Feb 2012 | 3:42 pm
The future of disease diagnosis may lie in a “breathalyzer”-like technology currently under development.
Source: ScienceDaily: Latest Science News | 6 Feb 2012 | 3:42 pm
Using high-quality data about the incidence of influenza infections in Alberta during the 2009 H1N1 flu pandemic, the researchers show that when schools closed for the summer, the transmission of infection from person to person was sharply reduced.
Source: ScienceDaily: Latest Science News | 6 Feb 2012 | 3:42 pm
LiveScience.com - The accuracy of a person reading a mammogram is improved when their gaze is subtly shifted toward suspicious areas, and nudged around to ensure that they look at every part of the scan, according to new research.
Source: Yahoo! News: Science News | 6 Feb 2012 | 3:35 pm
Scientists found evidence that domestic cats and wild cats that share the same outdoor areas in urban environments also can share diseases such as Bartonellosis and Toxoplasmosis. Both can be spread from cats to people.
Source: ScienceDaily: Latest Science News | 6 Feb 2012 | 2:46 pm
Guest contributor Pat Galea discusses how a starship may transmit signals across the light-years between the stars.
Source: Discovery News - Top Stories | 6 Feb 2012 | 2:42 pm
Under proposed new criteria for the diagnosis of cognitive problems, almost everyone with a mild form of Alzheimer's disease would be downgraded to not having the condition.
Source: LiveScience.com | 6 Feb 2012 | 2:34 pm
Diamond coatings on joint replacements are safe, and could make them more durable less painful.
Source: Discovery News - Top Stories | 6 Feb 2012 | 1:46 pm
Studies of diving beetles suggest sperm evolution may be driven by changes in female reproductive organs, challenging the paradigm of post-mating sexual selection being driven mostly by competition among sperm. In the process, the researchers discovered an unexpected and stunning variety of sperm form and behavior.
Source: ScienceDaily: Latest Science News | 6 Feb 2012 | 1:41 pm
Researchers have uncovered 27 new candidate genes for congenital diaphragmatic hernia, a common and often deadly birth defect. Their sophisticated data-filtering strategy offers a new, efficient and potentially game-changing approach to gene discovery.
Source: ScienceDaily: Latest Science News | 6 Feb 2012 | 1:41 pm
"Doomsday Preppers," a new show on the National Geographic Channel, profiles people who fear the coming apocalypse. Scholars say this phenomenon is on the rise.
Source: LiveScience.com | 6 Feb 2012 | 1:37 pm
At dusk, Archaboilus musicus sings in a Jurassic forest of Northwest China. The forest grew under humid conditions, probably close to the banks of a river and consisted primarily of conifers and ferns.
Source: LiveScience.com | 6 Feb 2012 | 1:29 pm
By using subtle techniques of "gaze direction," a new system could improve the accuracy of mammogram readers.
Source: LiveScience.com | 6 Feb 2012 | 1:28 pm
A cricket song last heard 165 million years ago has been played again.
To reconstruct the sound, paleontologists compared microscopic wing structures of fossil Archaboilus musicus, a Jurassic ancestor of modern crickets, to contemporary wings. Crickets sing — or, technically, “stridulate” — by rubbing together the ridged edges of their wings.
From noises generated by modern features, the researchers could extrapolate what A. musicus sounded like. (To listen, play the file below.) Theirs was a powerful song, almost certainly used to attract mates.
What does the song tell us? To the researchers, it suggests that cricket songs are ancient, rather than a recent evolutionary innovation, and hints at the sonic richness of the Jurassic world.
The Russian drilling team has successfully reached the waterline on Antarctica's Lake Vostok.
Source: Discovery News - Top Stories | 6 Feb 2012 | 12:49 pm
In recent weeks, a pair of high-resolution images of the Earth has captivated the public. Taken by the Suomi NPP satellite, these pictures portray our planet’s incredible beauty with 8,000- by 8,000-pixel and 11,500- by 11,500-pixel detail.
How were these highly detailed images created? The satellite flies 512 miles above the Earth, but the images appear as if they were taken from a much higher perspective: an altitude of 1,242 for the first image and 7,918 miles for the second. This little trick was accomplished by stitching together data from several orbits, creating an image that appears to be “pulled back.”
NASA launched the 4,600-pound Suomi in October to remotely sense variations in the Earth’s oceans, continents, and atmosphere and get a better understanding of climate change. It passes directly from pole to pole 14 times a day, imaging 1,865-mile swaths of our planet with each trip.
On board Suomi, the Visible Infrared Imaging Radiometer Suite (VIIRS) instrument takes pictures in red, green, and blue wavelengths. For the whole-Earth images, those wavelengths were combined to create a natural color photograph. It is not an exact representation of what an observer sitting in space would see, because particles in the atmosphere scatter short wavelengths of light, and our planet would actually appear more blue-tinged. The photos more accurately portray how the oceans and continents appear from the ground.
Oceanographer Norman Kuring, who compiled the two pictures, said the original image, showing North and Central America, was made as a favor to project scientist James Gleason who was looking for an ocean color image to show in a presentation. Word got out of the striking picture and NASA officials released it on Jan. 25, resulting in 3 million people viewing it in one week.
With the popularity of this first image and requests from the public for another perspective, the agency produced a second image on Feb. 3 showing Africa and the Arabian Peninsula.
The photos follow in the footsteps of NASA’s other great Earth images. The original Blue Marble — one of the most famous pictures of all time — was captured by the crew of Apollo 17 from a distance of 28,000 miles. Since 2002, the agency has stitched together up to 10,000 satellite images to produce other incredible detailed images. One of the most recent, from 2007, had a mind-boggling resolution of 86,400 pixels by 43,200 pixels.
Such pictures have proved time and time again to be among the most-viewed and best-loved NASA photos. What accounts for their enduring popularity?
“My guess is that people know that this is the only place we have to live. When they see an image showing these beautiful blues and greens, it speaks to them,” said Kuring. “This is our home.”
A now-grandmother reveals her 18-month affair with the president while she was a White House intern.
Source: Discovery News - Top Stories | 6 Feb 2012 | 12:30 pm
The love song of an extinct katydid that lived 165 million years ago has been brought back to life.
Source: Discovery News - Top Stories | 6 Feb 2012 | 12:26 pm
The "consensus on climate change" is said to be cracking - again - but what's the evidence?
Source: BBC News - Science & Environment | 6 Feb 2012 | 10:05 am
Update: Russian news agency Ria Novosti has reported that the team penetrated Lake Vostok on Feb. 5, 2012. According to the report, the researchers stopped drilling at a depth of 3,768 meters as they reached the surface of the sub-glacial lake.
After 20 years of drilling, a team of Russian researchers is close to breaching the prehistoric Lake Vostok, which has been trapped deep beneath Antarctica for the last 14 million years.
Vostok is the largest in a sub-glacial web of more than 200 lakes that are hidden 4 kilometers beneath the ice. Some of the lakes formed when the continent was much warmer and still connected to Australia.
The lakes are rich in oxygen (making them oligotrophic), with levels of the element some 50 times higher than what would be found in your typical freshwater lake. The high gas concentration is thought to be because of the enormous weight and pressure of the continental ice cap.
If life exists in Vostok, it will have to be an extremophile — a life form that has adapted to survive in extreme environments. The organism would have to withstand high pressure, constant cold, low nutrient input, high oxygen concentration and an absence of sunlight.
The conditions in Lake Vostok are thought to be similar to the conditions on Jupiter’s moon Europa and Saturn’s tiny moon Enceladus. In June, NASA probe Cassini found the best evidence yet for a massive saltwater reservoir beneath the icy surface of Enceladus. This all means that finding life in the inhospitable depths of Vostok would strengthen the case for life in the outer solar system.
Back on planet Earth, the team at Vostok are running short on time. Antarctica’s summer will soon end and the researchers need to leave their remote base while they still can. Temperatures will drop as low as -80 degrees Celsius, grounding planes and trapping the team.
They missed their chance last year. “Time is short, however. It’s possible that the drillers won’t be able to reach the water before the end of the current Antarctic summer, and they’ll need to wait another year before the process can continue,” we wrote in January 2011. The drill halted in February.
Meanwhile, Russian engineers are planning to venture into the lake itself, with swimming robots. In the Antarctic summer of 2012 to 2013, they plan to send a robot into the lake to collect water samples and sediments from the bottom. An environmental assessment of the plan will be submitted at the Antarctic Treaty’s consultative meeting in May 2012.
AP - Rescuers dug with picks and shovels trying to reach dozens of people trapped under houses collapsed by a strong earthquake Monday that shook a central Philippine island and set off landslides.
Mystery Birds photographed at Lake Washington, Seattle, Washington (USA). [I will identify these birds for you in 48 hours]
Image: Doug Schurman, 22 January 2012 (with permission) [velociraptorize]. Canon 7D with the Canon 400mm f5.6 lens
Question: These common North American mystery birds are strikingly different in size despite having the same colours and patterns. Why? Are these parent birds with one of their chicks? Are they different subspecies or are they two different species? Can you identify the taxonomic family and species for these birds?
The Rules:
1. Keep in mind that people live in zillions of different time zones, and some people are following on their smart phones. So let everyone play the game. Don't spoil it for everyone else by identifying the bird in the first 24 to 36 hours. 2. If you know the mystery bird's identity, answer the accompanying questions and provide subtle ID hints so others know that you know. Your hints may be helpful clues for less experienced players. Keep in mind that some hints may read like "inside jokes" and thus, may discourage others from participating. 3. Describe the key field marks that distinguish this species from any similar ones. 4. Comments that spoil others' enjoyment may be deleted.
The Game:
1. This is meant to be a learning experience where together we learn a few things about birds and about the process of identifying them (and maybe about ourselves, too). 2. Each mystery bird is usually accompanied by a question or two. These questions can be useful for identifying the pictured species, but may instead be used to illustrate an interesting aspect of avian biology, behaviour or evolution, or may be intended to generate conversation on other topics, such as conservation or ethics. 3. Thoughtful comments will add to everyone's enjoyment, and will keep the suspense going until the next teaser is published. Interesting snippets may add to the knowledge of all. 4. Each bird species will be demystified approximately 48 hours after publication.
If you have bird images, video or mp3 files that you'd like to share with a large and (mostly) appreciative international audience here at The Guardian, feel free to contact me to learn more.
Alberto Contador is handed a two-year ban for a doping offence - and is stripped of his 2010 Tour de France title.
Source: BBC News - Science & Environment | 6 Feb 2012 | 8:20 am
US space agency officials let their European counterparts know that it is now highly unlikely that America will participate in joint missions to the Red Planet in 2016 and 2018.
Source: BBC News - Science & Environment | 6 Feb 2012 | 7:56 am
A clan chief is accusing the Scottish government and SNH of not listening to islanders' concerns about a conservation area.
Source: BBC News - Science & Environment | 6 Feb 2012 | 7:40 am
An 83-year-old woman is fitted with a jaw made by a 3D printer in what doctors say is the first operation of its kind.
Source: BBC News - Science & Environment | 6 Feb 2012 | 7:07 am
This week, we're focusing on some pivotal stories from the history of science and medicine.
First up are human-to-human transplants and intensive care medicine. These are among the greatest successes of post-war medicine, but they also raise some of the most profound ethical questions. Ahead of a discussion at the Royal Institution in London, Kevin Fong, an anaesthetist and physiology lecturer at University College London, and medical historian Richard Barnett came into the studio to discuss how these important medical interventions started and, crucially, where they are heading.
The debates will be held at the Royal Institution on 28 February. "From iron lungs to intensive care", "Hearts to hearts" will be on 15 February.
The Observer's science editor, Robin McKie, was on hand to delve into the secrets of the Piltdown Hoax of 1912. The discovery that the Piltdown Man remains were not all they seemed rocked the scientific establishment of the time, and now a new generation of researchers wants to find out the truth. Who was behind the hoax?
And finally … with Nature and Science voluntarily suspending their publication of studies into bird flu, we ask: should scientific research ever be censored?
Vostok is the largest in a sub-glacial web of more than 200 lakes that are hidden 4 kilometers beneath the ice. Some of the lakes formed when the continent was much warmer and still connected to Australia.
AP - Rescuers dug with picks and shovels trying to reach dozens of people trapped under houses collapsed by a strong earthquake Monday that shook a central Philippine island and set off landslides.
