from Sigma Xi, The Scientific Research Society
Today's Headlines - November 2, 2009
from BBC News Online
A European satellite is set to provide major new insights into how water is cycled around the Earth. The Smos spacecraft will make the first global maps of the amount of moisture held in soils and of the quantity of salts dissolved in the oceans.
The data will have wide uses but should improve weather forecasts and warnings of extreme events, such as floods. A Russian Rokot launcher carrying Smos lifted off from the Plesetsk Cosmodrome in Russia at 0450 (0150 GMT) on Monday.
... The Soil Moisture and Ocean Salinity (Smos) satellite is part of an armada of European spacecraft being sent into orbit over the next few years to study the planet.
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from the New York Times (Registration Required)
WASHINGTON -- As Congress debates legislation to slow global warming by limiting emissions, engineers are tinkering with ways to capture and store carbon dioxide, the leading heat-trapping gas.
But coal-fired power plants, commonly identified as the nation's biggest emissions villain, may not be the best focus.
Rather, engineers and policymakers say, it may be easier and less costly to capture the carbon dioxide at oil refineries, chemical plants, cement factories and ethanol plants, which emit a far purer stream of it than a coal smokestack does.
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from the Washington Post (Registration Required)
The 10 tomatoes sitting in a Tupperware tub at the Food and Drug Administration seem to be doing nothing more than rotting, slowly. But an invisible battle is raging on the surface of the fruit, with provocative implications for food safety and the war that humans have been waging against bacteria for a century.
"This is the wrestling ring," said Eric Brown, a microbiologist at the FDA's Center for Food Safety and Applied Nutrition, as he clicked open the lid to the tub. "This is the smack-down."
Brown and a team of FDA scientists trying to prevent salmonella contamination in tomatoes have stumbled upon what they believe are powerful, naturally occurring "good" bacteria that can slaughter the "bad" bacteria that have become a persistent problem in fresh fruits and vegetables because they harm humans.
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from the Boston Globe (Registration Required)
PAONIA, Colo. -- From the hillsides of extinct volcanoes in Arizona to the jagged peaks of Idaho, aspen trees are falling by the tens of thousands, the latest example of how climate change is dramatically altering the American West.
Starting seven years ago, foresters noticed massive aspen losses caused by parasitical insects, one of which is so rare it is hardly even written about in the scientific literature.
But with warming temperatures and the aftereffects of a brutal drought lingering, the parasites are flourishing at the expense of the tree, beloved for its skinny branches and heart-shaped leaves that turn a brilliant yellow in autumn.
http://snipr.com/t0gco
from USA Today
WASHINGTON (Associated Press) -- What's all the fuss about? After all the noise over Democrats' push for a government insurance plan to compete with private carriers, coverage numbers are finally in: Two percent.
That's the estimated share of Americans younger than 65 who'd sign up for the public option plan under the health care bill that Speaker Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif., is steering toward House approval.
The underwhelming statistic is raising questions about whether the government plan will be the iron-fisted competitor that private insurers warn will shut them down or a niche operator that becomes a haven for patients with health insurance horror stories.
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from Science News
Modeling the climate just got a little more complex. A new simulation that considers chemical interactions between various gases and atmospheric aerosols is giving scientists and policy makers better estimates of the climate-altering effects of those gases, scientists report.
Some atmospheric gases--known as greenhouse gases--trap heat and boost the planet's surface temperature. This process keeps Earth habitable, but nowadays, many scientists say, the planet may be getting too much of a good thing.
Though most climate simulations include the direct, heat-trapping effects of these atmospheric constituents, which can readily be measured in a lab, few account for how their presence either increases or decreases atmospheric concentrations of planet-cooling aerosols, says Drew Shindell, a climate scientist at NASA's Goddard Institute for Space Studies in New York City.
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from Scientific American
Myrtle Beach's popular oceanfront is retreating at a rate of up to 30 centimeters per year. But visitors who flock to that part of South Carolina's Atlantic coast continue to enjoy its wide, sandy stretches, because the state refills them every seven years or so with sediment dredged from the sea bottom.
Deciding whether to re-sand an area of beach is one impetus behind a study by researchers from the U.S. Geological Survey (USGS) and the South Carolina Sea Grant Consortium, who are presenting its findings this week at the International Geological Program Annual Conference in Myrtle Beach.
... By gathering information for the entire bay area, the scientists can make better predictions about erosion rates and the best ways to restore beaches. Moreover, the study's wide-scale approach could be applied to improve erosion projections in other areas.
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from the San Diego Union-Tribune (Registration Required)
Any chance of recovery from a spinal-cord injury, however small, depends on swift treatment. Without that, damaged nerve cells wither, some die and the body becomes paralyzed.
But perhaps the paralysis isn't permanent. Neuroscientists at the University of California San Diego have for the first time successfully regrown axons--fibers that connect nerve cells and conduct their essential communications--in the damaged spinal cords of rats with untreated injuries that are six weeks to more than a year old.
"This work may eventually make it possible to help people with longtime, established spinal-cord injuries," said Dr. Mark Tuszynski, a UCSD professor of neurosciences and co-author of a new paper describing the research in the journal Neuron.
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from the Times (London)
A new "one-step" test allows breast cancer patients to be treated directly if their disease has spread, meaning that they no longer have to wait weeks for test results to come back or undergo a second operation.
Surgeons say that thousands of women undergoing surgery could benefit from the rapid diagnostic test, known as the breast lymph node assay. It is already being used at hospitals in Surrey and Portsmouth, and is due to be recommended for implementation across the NHS next year.
Quicker and more reliable than existing checks, it involves analysing the glands under the arms, to check if the cancer has already spread, at the same time as a patient has a mastectomy or surgery to remove an initial tumour.
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from the Los Angeles Times (Registration Required)
The Nazca people of Peru--famous for their huge line drawings on an arid plateau that are fully visible only from the air--set the stage for their demise by deforesting the plain, allowing a huge El Niño-fueled flood to ravage the Ica Valley about AD 500, researchers have found.
"They died out because they destroyed their natural ecosystem," said archaeologist Alex J. Chepstow-Lusty of the French Institute of Andean Studies in Lima, coauthor of a paper in the current issue of Latin American Antiquity. "As the population expanded, they put in too many fields and didn't protect the landscape. The El Niño wiped away society."
Chepstow-Lusty, David Beresford-Jones of the University of Cambridge and their colleagues used pollen in the soil to trace the horticultural history of the valley, revealing environmental depredation.
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