from the New York Times (Registration Required)
Don't be too quick to dismiss the common bedbug as merely a pestiferous six-legged blood-sucker. Think of it, rather, as Cimex lectularius, international arthropod of mystery.
In comparison to other insects that bite man, or even only walk across man's food, nibble man's crops or bite man's farm animals, very little is known about the creature whose Latin name means--go figure--"bug of the bed." Only a handful of entomologists specialize in it, and until recently it has been low on the government's research agenda because it does not transmit disease. Most study grants come from the pesticide industry and ask only one question: What kills it?
... This month, the Environmental Protection Agency and the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention issued a joint statement on bedbug control. It was not, however, a declaration of war nor a plan of action. It was an acknowledgment that the problem is big, a reminder that federal agencies mostly give advice, plus some advice: try a mix of vacuuming, crevice-sealing, heat and chemicals to kill the things.
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from National Geographic News
Some 12,000 years ago in a small sunlit cave in northern Israel, mourners finished the last of the roasted tortoise meat and gathered up dozens of the blackened shells. Kneeling down beside an open grave in the cave floor, they paid their last respects to the elderly dead woman curled within, preparing her for a spiritual journey.
They tucked tortoise shells under her head and hips and arranged dozens of the shells on top and around her. Then they left her many rare and magical things--the wing of a golden eagle, the pelvis of a leopard, and the severed foot of a human being.
Now called Hilazon Tachtit, the small cave chosen as this woman's resting place is the subject of an intense investigation led by Leore Grosman, an archaeologist at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem in Israel.
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from New Scientist
Last September, David Barber was on board the Canadian icebreaker CCGS Amundsen, heading into the Beaufort Sea, north of Alaska. He was part of a team investigating ice conditions in autumn, the time when Arctic sea ice shrinks to its smallest extent before starting to grow again as winter sets in.
Barber, an environmental scientist at the University of Manitoba in Winnipeg, Canada, went to sleep one night at midnight, just before the ship was due to reach a region of very thick sea ice. The Amundsen is only capable of breaking solid ice about a metre thick, so according to the ice forecasts for ships, the region should have been impassable.
Yet when Barber woke up early the next morning, the ship was still cruising along almost as fast as usual. Either someone had made a mistake and the ship was headed for catastrophe, or there was something very wrong with the ice ...
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from the New York Times (Registration Required)
Scientists at Rice University and Hewlett-Packard are reporting this week that they can overcome a fundamental barrier to the continued rapid miniaturization of computer memory that has been the basis for the consumer electronics revolution.
In recent years the limits of physics and finance faced by chip makers had loomed so large that experts feared a slowdown in the pace of miniaturization that would act like a brake on the ability to pack ever more power into ever smaller devices like laptops, smartphones and digital cameras.
But the new announcements, along with competing technologies being pursued by companies like IBM and Intel, offer hope that the brake will not be applied any time soon.
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from the Washington Post (Registration Required)
Federal investigators found piles of manure up to eight feet tall, live mice, pigeons and other birds inside the hen houses at two egg farms suspected of causing a nationwide outbreak of salmonella illness, officials said Monday.
Investigators made public their observations of Wright County Egg and Hillandale Farms, two massive egg producers who have recalled nearly 500 million eggs since Aug. 13.
Salmonella enteritidis is a bacterium that lives in animal intestines, is often present in feces and can be spread by mice, birds, flies and other organisms. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention estimate that at least 1,400 people have been sickened since May by eating eggs contaminated by the bacteria. It is the largest outbreak of the disease since federal officials began tracking it in the 1970s.
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from BBC News Online
Fossils of a new type of dinosaur, which looks like a beefy version of the predatory Velociraptor, have been unearthed in Romania. The stocky dinosaur lived some 70 million years ago; higher sea levels at this time would have made the region an island archipelago.
The animal is also notable for the two large and sharp claws on each foot; Velociraptor had just one. It may have used these to rip apart its prey scientists believe.
The find is reported in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences journal. It has been given the scientific name Balaur bondoc, which means "stocky dragon."
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from NPR
Chesapeake oysters are a succulent treat that for centuries have been loved almost to extinction. But some scientists and business people are making headway in bringing back the bivalve, for the sake of oyster lovers and the bay.
A successful restoration project, a report showing that fewer oysters are dying from disease, and the growth of oyster farming all give cause for optimism. Still, experts caution that Chesapeake oysters have a long way to go. Overfishing, disease and pollution have left the bay with only about 1 percent of the oysters it once had.
President Obama has pledged to make good on decades-old promises to restore the Chesapeake, the nation's largest estuary, and scientists and environmental activists say he needs oysters to help him do that.
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from the Washington Post (Registration Required)
Even as supporters of human embryonic stem cell research are reeling from last week's sudden cutoff of federal funding, another portentous landmark is quietly approaching: the world's first attempt to carefully test the cells in people.
Scientists are poised to inject cells created from embryonic stem cells into some patients with a progressive form of blindness and others with devastating spinal cord injuries. That's a welcome step for researchers eager to move from the laboratory to the clinic and for patients hoping for cures.
But beyond being loathsome to those with moral objections to any research using cells from human embryos, the tests are worrying many proponents: Some argue that the experiments are premature, others question whether they are ethical, and many fear that the trials risk disaster for the field if anything goes awry.
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from New Scientist
The trapped Chilean miners may face their most severe psychological challenges in a couple of months' time, if experience from space missions is anything to go by.
A recent NASA study suggests rescuers need to be especially vigilant at the halfway stage of the project. It found that the morale of astronauts on the International Space Station declines during the third quarters of their expeditions.
Jack Stuster of Anacapa Sciences in Santa Barbara, California, carried out a systematic analysis of diaries that were kept for this purpose by astronauts during their six-month ISS expeditions. Each of more than 4000 diary entries were categorised as positive, negative or neutral in tone.
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from the Los Angeles Times (Registration Required)
The number of children in the U.S. seeking emergency medical care for concussions incurred playing competitive sports more than doubled in the five years leading up to 2005, according to a study published Monday in the journal Pediatrics.
Much of that increase came not from high school athletes who have been the mainstay of emergency-room visits for concussions, but from middle-schoolers and even elementary school students who have flocked to play on elite travel teams and in competitive youth leagues across the country. Fully 40% of the sports-related pediatric concussion patients seen in ERs were between the ages of 8 and 13, the study found.
Strikingly, the increase in concussions came against the backdrop of declining participation in organized sports among youth in those years, noted the research team from Rhode Island.
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from the Boston Globe (Registration Required)
VINALHAVEN, Maine -- Three white wind turbines, their 124-foot blades stretching 39 stories high, churn out more electricity than is used on this picturesque, pine-studded island off mid-coast Maine. Some residents call them objects of graceful art, others point to lower utility bills, and the environmentally conscious hail the benefits of clean energy.
But to some families living near the land-bound turbines, which began spinning in November, the blades signify something else. "That noise is so insidious that you can feel it," said David Wylie, 62, a transplant from Concord, Mass., who has owned property on the island since 1992. "I didn't come up to Vinalhaven to live next to a dishwasher."
Instead of a win-win mix of green power and continued tranquility, Wylie and other critics said, the turbines have brought chest-thumping noise, questionable cost savings, and frustrating stonewalling from wind farm managers who reject their claims of night-rattling sound.
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from BBC News Online
The UN's climate science body needs stricter checks to prevent damage to the organisation's credibility, an independent review has concluded.
The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) has faced mounting pressure over errors in its last major assessment of climate science in 2007. The review said guidelines were needed to ensure IPCC leaders were not seen as advocating specific climate policies. It also urges transparency and suggests changes to the management of the body.
The IPCC has admitted it made a mistake in its 2007 climate assessment in asserting that Himalayan glaciers could disappear by 2035. Officials at the UN body say this error did not change the broad picture of man-made climate change.
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from the New York Times (Registration Required)
In a remote reach of the Gulf of Mexico, nearly 200 miles from shore, a floating oil platform thrusts its tentacles deep into the ocean like a giant steel octopus.
The $3 billion rig, called Perdido, can pump oil from dozens of wells nearly two miles under the sea while simultaneously drilling new ones. It is part of a wave of ultra-deep platforms--all far more sophisticated than the rig that was used to drill the ill-fated BP well that blew up in April. These platforms have sprung up far from shore and have pushed the frontiers of technology in the gulf, a region that now accounts for a quarter of the nation's oil output.
Major offshore accidents are not common. But whether through equipment failure or human error, the risks increase as the rigs get larger and more complicated. Yet even as regulators investigate the causes of the Deepwater Horizon disaster, the broader dangers posed by the industry's push into deeper waters have gone largely unscrutinized.
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Engineers were expected to remove the failed blowout preventer from BP's damaged Gulf oil well either today or tomorrow. Once it's off and a new one in place, officials said less than 4 feet of drilling is needed to complete the relief well that should provide the final seal.
Meanwhile, scientists reported last week that oil-eating bacteria may be cleaning up the spill much faster than anyone anticipated. That would certainly be good news, but some researchers are still worried about how much oil remains in the Gulf and what it may ultimately do to marine life there.
And the Economist looked at what it's likely to take to restore confidence in deep-sea drilling. The oil industry is already formulating plans to contend with the possibility of another such disaster.
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As the largest egg recall in U.S. history continued last week, FDA officials said contaminated chicken feed was likely a major contributor to the salmonella outbreak that has sickened hundreds of people.
Meanwhile, the Los Angeles Times reported that, in a survey before the outbreak, only half of the federal scientists who monitor the safety of the nation's egg supply said they had full confidence that their organization adequately protects consumers from food-borne illness in eggs.
The consolidation of egg producers nationwide has meant that problems at even one company can have a far-reaching impact on public health, according to the Washington Post. "Just 192 large egg companies own about 95 percent of laying hens in this country, down from 2,500 in 1987."
And the New York Times reported that American regulators, in formulating recent new safety measures, decided not to require vaccination of laying hens against the salmonella bacteria, even though the vaccine has virtually wiped out the health threat in Britain. The article said it would cost "less than a penny per dozen eggs" to vaccinate hens.
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from the New York Times
(Registration Required)
Seventy years ago, in 1940, a popular
science magazine published a short
article that set in motion one of the
trendiest intellectual fads of the 20th
century. At first glance, there seemed
little about the article to augur its
subsequent celebrity. Neither the title,
"Science and Linguistics," nor the
magazine, M.I.T.'s Technology
Review, was most people's idea of
glamour. And the author, a chemical
engineer who worked for an insurance
company and moonlighted as an
anthropology lecturer at Yale
University, was an unlikely candidate
for international superstardom. And yet
Benjamin Lee Whorf let loose an alluring
idea about language's power over the
mind, and his stirring prose seduced a
whole generation into believing that our
mother tongue restricts what we are able
to think.
In particular, Whorf announced,
Native American languages impose on
their speakers a picture of reality that
is totally different from ours, so their
speakers would simply not be able to
understand some of our most basic
concepts, like the flow of time or the
distinction between objects (like
"stone") and actions (like "fall"). For
decades, Whorf's theory dazzled both
academics and the general public alike.
...
Eventually, Whorf's theory
crash-landed on hard facts and solid
common sense, when it transpired that
there had never actually been any
evidence to support his fantastic
claims. The reaction was so severe that
for decades, any attempts to explore the
influence of the mother tongue on our
thoughts were relegated to the loony
fringes of disrepute. But 70 years on,
it is surely time to put the trauma of
Whorf behind us. And in the last few
years, new research has revealed that
when we learn our mother tongue, we do
after all acquire certain habits of
thought that shape our experience in
significant and often surprising
ways.
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from BBC News Online
Brazil's government has given the
formal go-ahead for the building on a
tributary of the Amazon of the world's
third biggest hydroelectric dam.
After several failed legal
challenges, President Luiz Inacio Lula
da Silva signed the contract for the
Belo Monte dam with the Norte Energia
consortium. Critics say the project will
damage the local ecosystem and make
homeless 50,000 mainly indigenous
people. But the government says it is
crucial for development and will create
jobs.
Bidding for the project had to be
halted three times before a final court
appeal by the government allowed Norte
Energia, led by the state-owned
Companhia Hidro Eletrica do Sao
Francisco, to be awarded the
contract.
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from ScienceNOW Daily
News
African lions are one step away from
becoming an endangered species, and a
measure designed to preserve them is to
blame. A new study suggests that hunters
who pay to shoot the animals are killing
too many of the big cats.
Seventy years ago, the kings of the
jungle numbered 450,000. Now the lion
population has dwindled to less than a
tenth of that. In the 1980s and 1990s,
African nations started to think an old
practice might hold the solution to
saving the lion: trophy hunting. They
hoped that by allowing rich game-chasers
to shoot a few animals, landowners would
have an incentive to conserve lion
habitats and keep the species alive
while boosting their local economies. In
the meantime, it became conventional
wisdom to blame the decline on factors
such as conversion of lion habitat for
agriculture, disease, and killings by
locals upset over lion attacks on people
or livestock.
But the newest research, to be
published in an upcoming issue of
Conservation Biology, shows
that at least in Tanzania--home to more
lions than any other country--that isn't
the case. Led by Craig Packer of the
University of Minnesota, Twin Cities, a
team of biologists took a closer look at
the diminishing lion populations in
Tanzania over the last decade.
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from Science News
Annoyingly tiny fridges may not be
restricted to hotels or dorm rooms much
longer. A new study proposes a way to
construct the smallest refrigerator yet,
based on just a few particles and
capable of cooling to near absolute
zero.
The study, which will appear in an
upcoming issue of Physical Review
Letters, pushes the limits of how
small a cooling device can get and still
remain functional.
"When thermodynamics was first
invented, it was applied to big, steam
engine sorts of things," says physicist
Tony Short of the University of
Cambridge in England, who was not
involved in the study. "The fact that
you can bring the ideas all the way down
to individual quantum systems of tiny
dimensions and the same basic ideas
still work is quite nice."
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from Spiegel
For a century, archeologists have
been looking for a gate through a wall
built by the Vikings in northern Europe.
This summer, it was found. Researchers
now believe the extensive barrier was
built to protect an important trading
route.
Their attacks out of nowhere in rapid
longboats have led many to call Vikings
the inventors of the Blitzkrieg. "Like
wild hornets," reads an ancient
description, the Vikings would plunder
monasteries and entire cities from
Ireland to Spain. The fact that the
Vikings, who have since found their
place as droll comic book characters,
were also avid masons is slightly less
well known.
The proof can be seen in northern
Germany, not far from the North
Sea-Baltic Canal. There, one can marvel
at a giant, 30-kilometer (19-mile) wall
which runs through the entire state of
Schleswig-Holstein. The massive
construction, called the
Danevirke--"work of the Danes"--is
considered the largest earthwork in
northern Europe.
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from the New York Times
(Registration Required)
The renewed debate over embryonic
stem cells highlights the advances and
complications that have arisen in the
field since its controversial
beginnings.
The cells are a sort of blank slate,
plucked from human embryos just a few
days after fertilization. They tantalize
scientists because they could in theory
turn into any of the body's 200 mature
cell types, from blood to brain to liver
to heart. They could be used to study
and treat diseases and to study the
basic biology of what determines a
cell's destiny--why a heart cell becomes
a heart cell, for example, instead of a
brain cell.
The problem is their origin--human
embryos. In order to get stem cells,
embryos must be destroyed. It is this
fact that led to the court ruling [last]
Monday blocking most federal financing
for embryonic stem cell research.
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from BBC News Online
The dinosaurs were wiped out 65
million years ago by at least two
meteorite impacts, rather than a single
strike, a new study suggests.
Previously, scientists had identified
a huge impact crater in the Gulf of
Mexico as the event that spelled doom
for the dinosaurs. Now evidence for a
second impact in Ukraine has been
uncovered. This raises the possibility
that the Earth may have been bombarded
by a whole shower of meteorites.
The new findings are published in the
journal Geology by a team lead
by Professor David Jolley of Aberdeen
University.
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from Wired
As scientists get used to the idea
that Earth is in a new geological age,
that the Holocene--the last geological
age--has been replaced by Anthropocene,
they're figuring out how it got to be
that way.
Two years ago, ecologists Erle Ellis
and Navin Ramankutty at the University
of Maryland, Baltimore County, released
a map of the world's biological areas,
traditionally known as biomes. Similar
maps were found on science classroom
walls across the land, but theirs was
different in one very fundamental way:
They updated the definition of biome to
reflect how human beings used the
land.
Ellis and Ramankutty said this was
much more relevant to the 21st century,
with more than six billion people using
more of Earth's water, energy and matter
than any other species, than classical
biomes that didn't account for
humanity's influence. They called their
newly-defined areas "anthromes," short
for anthropological biomes. It was a map
for the anthropocene.
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