from Time
ROME (Associated Press) -- An Italian who lost his left forearm in a car crash was successfully linked to a robotic hand, allowing him to feel sensations in the artificial limb and control it with his thoughts, scientists said Wednesday.
During a one-month experiment conducted last year, 26-year-old Pierpaolo Petruzziello felt like his lost arm had grown back again, although he was only controlling a robotic hand that was not even attached to his body. "It's a matter of mind, of concentration," Petruzziello said. "When you think of it as your hand and forearm, it all becomes easier."
Though similar experiments have been successful before, the European scientists who led the project say this was the first time a patient has been able to make such complex movements using his mind to control a biomechanic hand connected to his nervous system.
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from the Christian Science Monitor
Dennis Baldocchi often drives past the ruins of his grandmother's house on Sherman Island, in northern California's Sacramento-San Joaquin River Delta. Flooding gutted the house when the island's levee broke 40 years ago. Today, grass grows through the floors and chickens wander through.
To Dr. Baldocchi, the slanting hulk whispers an unsettling truth: The land that his family farmed for three generations is sinking farther below sea level each year.
Immigrants began arriving at the Sacramento River Delta 150 years ago. They drained 450,000 acres of marshy lands so that they could farm asparagus, corn, and sugar beets.
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from the Economist
There is an awesome amount of energy tied up in an atom of uranium. Because of that, projections of the price of nuclear power tend to focus on the cost of building the plant rather than that of fuelling it. But proponents of nuclear energy--who argue, correctly, that such plants emit little carbon dioxide--would do well to remember that, like coal and oil, uranium is a finite resource.
Some 60% of the 66,500 tonnes of uranium needed to fuel the world's existing nuclear power plants is dug fresh from the ground each year. The remaining 40% comes from so-called secondary sources, in the form of recycled fuel or redundant nuclear warheads.
The International Atomic Energy Agency, which is a United Nations body, and the Nuclear Energy Agency, which was formed by the rich countries that are members of the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development, both reckon that, at present rates, these secondary sources will be exhausted within the next decade or so.
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from New Scientist
Toddlers with symptoms of autism can show dramatic improvement if they are given early, intensive therapy. The finding, from the first randomised controlled trial in such young children, should settle the question of whether early screening and treatment of autism are worthwhile.
Sally Rogers, a psychologist at the Mind Institute of the University of California, Davis, and colleagues randomly assigned autistic toddlers aged 18 to 30 months to receive either conventional care or an intensive programme of behavioural therapy known as the Early Start Denver Model. This emphasises fun, child-directed activities rather than the repetitive exercises used in conventional autism therapies, which are less suitable for very young children.
"Being able to follow children's leads and build fun into their interactions is an important teaching tool. That may sound like common sense, but with autism nothing is common sense," says Rogers.
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from Yahoo News
BEIJING (AFP) -- China has approved genetically modified strains of rice and corn in a move experts say could dramatically boost crop yields and help the world's most populous nation avoid food shortages.
The Ministry of Agriculture said it had issued initial production licences for genetically modified rice and corn, paving the way for commercial cultivation of high-yielding and pest-resistant grain and cereal crops.
In a fax to AFP this week, the ministry said the decision was "an important outcome of China's research on genetic engineering technology".
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from the Guardian (U.K.)
The head of the climate research unit that had its emails hacked and posted online will step down from his post while an inquiry into the affair is carried out.
Messages between scientists at the University of East Anglia's Climatic Research Unit (CRU) were posted on the web last week, and climate-change deniers seized on them as alleged evidence that scientists have been hiding and manipulating data to support the idea that the world is warming up.
Professor Phil Jones, the director of the CRU, said he stood by the science produced by his researchers and suggestions of a conspiracy to alter evidence to support a theory of man-made global warming were "complete rubbish". But he said today that he would stand aside as director of the unit until an independent review into the hacked emails had been completed.
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from Scientific American
I love spending time outside. From wild places like the backcountry of the Sierra Nevada Mountains, to the mundane nature in my back yard, I find comfort in my natural experiences. These places are restful. Peaceful. ...
The benefits of spending time in nature have been well-documented. Psychological research has shown that natural experiences help to reduce stress, improve mood, and promote an overall increase in physical and psychological well-being. There is even evidence that hospital patients with a view of nature recover faster than do hospital patients without such a view. This line of research provides clear evidence that people are drawn to nature with good reason. It has restorative properties.
But a recent article by researchers at the University of Rochester shows that experiences with nature can affect more than our mood. In a series of studies, Netta Weinstein, Andrew Przybylski, and Richard Ryan, University of Rochester, show that exposure to nature can affect our priorities and alter what we think is important in life. In short, we become less self-focused and more other-focused. Our value priorities shift from personal gain, to a broader focus on community and connection with others.
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from the New York Times (Registration Required)
The meeting last month was a watershed: the leaders of 564 American Indian tribes were invited to Washington to talk with cabinet members and President Obama, who called it "the largest and most widely attended gathering of tribal leaders in our history." Topping the list of their needs was better health care.
"Native Americans die of illnesses like tuberculosis, alcoholism, diabetes, pneumonia and influenza at far higher rates," Mr. Obama said. "We're going to have to do more to address disparities in health care delivery."
The health care overhaul now being debated in Congress appears poised to bring the most significant improvements to the Indian health system in decades. After months of negotiations, provisions under consideration could, over time, direct streams of money to the Indian health care system and give Indians more treatment options.
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from Nature News
Climate analysts are praising China's promise to slash the country's emissions--even as they wonder if the target is achievable or ambitious enough.
Last week, China's State Council announced that the country will cut its carbon intensity--carbon emissions per unit of gross domestic product (GDP)--by 40-45% from 2005 levels by 2020. "It is a very welcome decision," says Fatih Birol, chief economist at the International Energy Agency in Paris. "If the target is met, it would have significant implications for China and the rest of the world."
Yet some think that the target is not far-reaching enough given China's booming economy and its track record of improving energy efficiency. The country reduced its energy intensity--energy consumption per unit of GDP--by 47% between 1990 and 2005, and looks likely to cut it by another 20% from 2005 levels by the end of next year. Carbon intensity can drop faster than energy intensity if clean-energy sources are brought into the mix.
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from Science News
Staying socially connected may be just as important for public health as washing your hands and covering your cough. A new study suggests that feelings of loneliness can spread through social networks like the common cold.
"People on the edge of the network spread their loneliness to others and then cut their ties," says Nicholas Christakis of Harvard Medical School in Boston, a coauthor of the new study in the December Journal of Personality and Social Psychology. "It's like the edge of a sweater: You start pulling at it and it unravels the network."
This study is the latest in a series that Christakis and James Fowler of the University of California, San Diego have conducted to see how habits and feelings move through social networks. Their earlier studies suggested that obesity, smoking and happiness are contagious.
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from the Scientist
A controversial company that claimed to develop hypoallergenic cats and dogs will bow out of the companion animal business and launch a new venture focused on veterinary diagnostic services starting next year, according to a statement sent out in their corporate newsletter this Sunday (29th November).
"Following our recent acquisition, the business will be taking a new direction from 2010, specifically, fine-tuning and launching our proprietary veterinary genetic molecular diagnostic products," reads a statement from the company, called Allerca Lifestyle Pets.
The statement did not indicate which company had acquired it, but noted that this information, as well as details on its new business model, will be announced publicly early next year. Allerca said that it will stop taking new orders for its two breeds of hypoallergenic cats and one dog breed as of December 31, 2010, but will continue filling already-placed orders through 2010 and early 2011.
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from the Wall Street Journal
Men who didn't confront colleagues or bosses who treated them unfairly doubled their risk of heart attack, according to a study in Journal of Epidemiology and Community Health.
Researchers asked 2,755 men how they typically responded to unfair treatment at work. Those who said they would most often "Go away" or "Let things pass without saying anything" had significantly more heart attacks during the following 10 years, even after researchers controlled for variables such as education level and job strain. The authors hypothesized that the stress resulting from unexpressed anger led to higher blood pressure, a risk factor for heart disease.
Caveat: The researchers didn't ask respondents how often they faced unfair treatment at work. The authors also interviewed women for the study, but too few of them had heart attacks to conduct a meaningful analysis.
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Duke University anthropologist Steven Churchill presents his research on the evolutionary origins of projectile weaponry, and how weapon use changed interactions between humans and other species—including, perhaps, the Neandertals. (October 20, 2009)
See our complete list of Pizza Lunch Podcasts.
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from Wired
Astronomers have spied a distant black hole in the act of creating the galaxy that will eventually become its home.
By sending a jet of gas and highly energetic particles into a neighboring galaxy, the black hole has touched off star formation at a rate 100 times the galactic average.
"Our study suggests that supermassive black holes can trigger the formation of stars, thus 'building' their own host galaxies," David Elbaz, lead author of a paper on the work in the journal Astronomy and Astrophysics, said in a press release. "This link could also explain why galaxies hosting larger black holes have more stars."
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from BBC News Online
The content of stolen e-mails from the Climatic Research Unit (CRU) at the University of East Anglia has prompted much discussion about the way peer-reviewed science is conducted. But it is also raising questions among some scientists about the workings of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC).
The IPCC, steered by governments and drawing on the work of thousands of scientists and other experts, is the world's biggest peer-review body. It was formed because politicians needed definitive advice about the effects of greenhouse gases.
Most policymakers rely in large part on the IPCC's summary reports--so the summaries involve a battle of wills and opinions in the distillation of thousands of studies into climate change. ... The CRU holds one of the key global data sets on temperature, so its data has helped underpin the IPCC's conclusions.
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from New Scientist
The inner workings of a supposedly simple bacterial cell have turned out to be much more sophisticated than expected.
An in-depth "blueprint" of an apparently minimalist species has revealed details that challenge preconceptions about how genes operate. It also brings closer the day when it may be possible to create artificial life.
Mycoplasma pneumoniae, which causes a form of pneumonia in people, has just 689 genes, compared with 25,000 in humans and 4000 or more in most other bacteria. Now a study of its inner workings has revealed that the bacterium has uncanny flexibility and sophistication, allowing it to react fast to changes in its diet and environment.
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from the New York Times (Registration Required)
Before the glory that was Greece and Rome, even before the first cities of Mesopotamia or temples along the Nile, there lived in the Lower Danube Valley and the Balkan foothills people who were ahead of their time in art, technology and long-distance trade.
For 1,500 years, starting earlier than 5000 B.C., they farmed and built sizable towns, a few with as many as 2,000 dwellings. They mastered large-scale copper smelting, the new technology of the age. Their graves held an impressive array of exquisite headdresses and necklaces and, in one cemetery, the earliest major assemblage of gold artifacts to be found anywhere in the world.
The striking designs of their pottery speak of the refinement of the culture's visual language. Until recent discoveries, the most intriguing artifacts were the ubiquitous terracotta "goddess" figurines, originally interpreted as evidence of the spiritual and political power of women in society.
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from ScienceNOW Daily News
Imagine if all of the water in the Great Lakes evaporated, moved to the Southern Hemisphere, and rained down to form new lakes in Argentina. Then thousands of years later, the process repeated and the water returned north.
That's what researchers say could be happening on Saturn's largest moon, Titan. Understanding the process could shed light on how long-term climate cycles operate on other worlds.
Titan's lakes aren't anything like those on Earth. Although some are as large and deep as our own Great Lakes--one, called Ontario Lacus, is about the size of Lake Ontario--they contain mostly methane, which becomes liquid at temperatures below -180°C. Even stranger, of the hundreds of lakes spotted so far, almost all are in Titan's far northern latitudes, and there seem to be no lakes at all near the moon's equator.
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from LiveScience
In an ironic twist, Oscar Pistorius' disability has now been shown to be an unfair advantage. The South African sprinter, who races with two prosthetic lower legs, has been the subject of a see-saw legal battle trying to determine if his carbon fiber, crescent-shaped manufactured legs give him an unfair advantage.
Now, two sports scientists have published new research showing that the legs, known as "Cheetahs," make him 15-20 percent faster, equal to 10 seconds over a 400 meter race, then he otherwise would be with natural legs.
In 2008, the Court of Arbitration for Sport (CAS) overturned a competition ban placed on Pistorius from the International Association of Athletics Federations (IAAF), track and field's governing body. Seven scientists produced research that refuted the IAAF's contentions and Pistorius was cleared in time to try for a spot on the Beijing Olympic squad.
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from the San Diego Union-Tribune (Registration Required)
As best he could remember, Henry Gustav Molaison never visited San Diego, spending his entire life on the East Coast. When he died late last year at the age of 82, Molaison was a man almost entirely unknown except by his initials H.M. and the fact that experimental brain surgery had erased his ability to form new memories.
He forgot names, places, events and faces almost immediately. Half an hour after lunch, he couldn't recall what he had eaten, or that he had eaten at all. His face in the mirror was a constant surprise because he remembered only what he looked like as a young man. Every question was new, even those asked just minutes before.
Yet Molaison bore this strange and unimaginable burden with grace and stoicism, allowing scores of scientists to study, probe and ponder his condition for decades, each seeking to better understand the mysteries of the human brain, memory and personal identity.
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from BBC News Online
The cost of installing and owning solar panels will fall even faster than expected according to new research.
Tests show that 90% of existing solar panels last for 30 years, instead of the predicted 20 years. According to the independent EU Energy Institute, this brings down the lifetime cost. The institute says the panels are such a good long-term investment that banks should offer mortgages on them like they do on homes.
At a conference, the institute forecast that solar panels would be cost-competitive with energy from the grid for half the homes in Europe by 2020--without a subsidy.
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from the Guardian (U.K.)
Europe's carrion-guzzling vultures should be allowed to return to their old jobs as nature's waste managers, according to scientists who say the birds are suffering as they increasingly depend on being fed by people.
Stringent regulations brought in because of mad cow disease in 2002 meant the carcasses of dead cows, as well as sheep, goats and other livestock, could not be left in the open. Carrion was crucial part of the vultures' diet, but the birds now do much of their feeding at managed carrion centres set up by authorities.
The change means a gradual, decades-old revival of vulture populations around Europe is grinding to a halt. Vultures fed by humans find it harder to reproduce and farmers complain some have taken to attacking live animals.
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from the Boston Globe (Registration Required)
Research into an unusual sleep disorder is unraveling what goes awry in the brains of people who fall prey to daytime sleep attacks--and shedding light on everything from addiction to appetite.
Work that began in sleepy dogs and mice has led to a significant advance in understanding narcolepsy, providing new insight into the ways in which sleep and wakefulness, eating, and addictive behaviors are linked. The work is pointing to potential therapies not only for people who are chronically sleepy, but also for the much larger numbers who have trouble sleeping at all.
At the root of this work is a fundamental brain chemical called orexin. Research over the past decade has shown that narcolepsy is caused by the loss of a type of brain cell that produces orexin. Scientists have found that the chemical also helps determine when we are asleep and awake and plays a role in regulating appetite and addiction.
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Seeking to prevent future shortages, researchers are looking for new ways to produce flu vaccines. The standard technique, in use for more than 50 years, involves growing modified versions of the targeted flu inside chicken eggs. Innovators are trying to produce recombinant virus in cell cultures, to develop a means to inject flu DNA sequence directly into people and to produce in the laboratory proteins normally manufactured by flu viruses in infected people's bodies.
In criminal proceedings, brain imaging has been brought into a criminal courtroom as evidence. For what may be the first time, functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) was presented by the defense during the sentencing phase of a murder trial. The scan results were used to argue that a convicted child rapist and murderer had a brain disorder.
Oh, and it's time to add skin color to a quality that's in the eye of the beholder. A new study suggests that we mentally alter politicians' skin tones depending upon how we feel about them. In a study using photographs of President Barack Obama, people who like the president reported he had lighter skin than those who dislike him.
In truth, appearances are deceiving in many contexts, including the microscopic. Many people don't like the image of bacteria coating their bodies. But evidence is mounting that some bacteria that dwell on people's skin may keep in check inflammation triggered by injury and unwanted bacteria.
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How many scientists does it take to craft a better greeting to be broadcast into space in the hopes of reaching other life forms out there? Two, apparently: one to write the code and one to role-play an out-of-this-world listener. At least that's what a pair of researchers from the California Institute of Technology and Stanford University have concluded.
When looking for life beyond this planet, researchers would be wise to pay attention to clues easily overlooked. That's a lesson learned from newly understood cave deposits long thought to be ordinary minerals. They are actually mats of waste produced by newly identified microbes.
And while the search for alien life has not yet been successful, our view of our closest cosmic neighbors continues to improve. For instance, NASA has released the latest raw images of Saturn's moon Enceladus.
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The Large Hadron Collider is finally up and running after extensive repairs following an electrical malfunction last September. Physicists have orchestrated the machine's first successful collisions among subatomic particles—but the collider is still in a testing phase and operating at a fraction of its potential power. The real experiments should begin in early 2010.
Also in Switzerland, a solar plane that will eventually circumnavigate the globe has taken its first trip down the runway. The plane has the wingspan of a jumbo jet but weighs less than two tons; it has room for the pilot but no passengers. Its first flight is scheduled for February.
Meanwhile, Scientific American took a look at ground transport and the future of trains in the United States. Several states are planning—or hoping—to use federal stimulus money to build European-style high-speed rail routes, but the expense of converting and augmenting the existing rail infrastructure would be tremendous.
And finally, the Boston Globe featured the emerging field of optogenetics—a biotechnology approach that may enable researchers to map the brain and its functions in greater detail. By genetically engineering brain cells of flies, mice or monkeys to contain light-sensitive proteins, and then exposing those cells to light, researchers can zero in on the functions of specific brain cells.
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Last week the Economist looked into the costs and benefits of mitigating climate change, concluding that sequestering carbon by protecting rainforest, while feasible, may not be quite the bargain that some claim it to be. Besides being expensive, climate change may also lead to conflict. Investigators at the University of California, Berkeley, have found a strong connection between unusually warm years and the likelihood of civil wars in African nations. At the same time, some climate researchers took a credibility hit in the eyes of skeptics when their e-mail was hacked and released to the public.
In other environmental news, the New York Times reported on efforts by Columbia University conservation biologists to turn the environmentally degraded town of Miches, Dominican Republic, into an ecotourism site. Back stateside, the EPA announced tests of permeable paving materials that would reduce storm water runoff, particularly in cities, where 10 percent of the land area may be paved. Perhaps such developments will help control whatever is causing male fish in the Potomac River to grow eggs.
Tuesday marks the 150th anniversary of the publication of On the Origin of the Species, and Sean B. Carroll offers his thoughts on Darwin's near-obsession with "contrivances"—and particularly those of the land snail—in an essay in the New York Times. But Darwin could scarcely have imagined what a 10-year census of marine life below sunlight's reach would find—17,650 species, ranging from strange to utterly bizarre. For sheer photogenic brilliance, however, it would be hard to equal the exotic Ethiopian monkeys known as geladas, as this Smithsonian article and photo gallery demonstrate. Not nearly so attractive but fascinating in their own right, rats starred in a story of disease transmission in Baltimore.
Finally, sometimes fundamentals go unnoticed. Take, for example, the leaf-cutter ant, which has long posed a mystery: How do they feed as many as 8 million individuals in a single colony on nitrogen-poor leaves? It turns out that the fungus that the ants produce harbors a bacterium that is able to fix nitrogen from the air, providing 45 to 60 percent of the nitrogen in their food.
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from the Los Angeles Times (Registration Required)
Isiolo, Kenya -- Have the climate wars of Africa begun? Tales of conflict emerging from this remote, arid region of Kenya have disturbing echoes of the lethal building blocks that turned Darfur into a killing ground in western Sudan.
Tribes that lived side by side for decades say they've been pushed to warfare by competition for disappearing water and pasture. The government is accused of exacerbating tensions by taking sides and arming combatants who once used spears and arrows.
The aim, all sides say, is no longer just to steal land or cattle, but to drive the enemy away forever.
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