Over the weekend, scientists reported that a malfunction Friday at the Large Hadron Collider may take a couple of months to repair, but they maintained that the setback, although disappointing, is relatively minor.
In the wake of a recent head-on collision between two trains in California, investigators said a warning system in use in some parts of the country would have prevented the accident. Meanwhile, a federal board urged government mandate of alarm systems that alert truck drivers when they are falling asleep at the wheel.
Massive rotating flywheels that store power like giant alkaline batteries could one day help satisfy the nation's energy needs. A utility that has invested $150 million in the concept is building its first large-scale commercial system.
And scientists are planning to monitor Giant Kangaroo Rats from outer space, based on satellite images of circular patches of earth denuded by the rodents as they gather food. This will be the first time that an endangered species has been monitored from space.
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from the BBC News Online
The fault that has shut down the Large Hadron Collider (LHC) will be hugely disappointing for scientists and engineers following the successful "start-up" of the experiment.
It is now over a week since the first beams were fired around the accelerator's 27km (16.7 miles) underground ring. The crucial next step is to collide those beams head on. But hopes that the first trial collisions would be carried out before the machine's official inauguration on 21 October now seem to have been dashed. It even looks uncertain whether this can be achieved before 2009.
The failure on 19 September-described as a "massive" magnet quench-certainly seems dramatic: it caused the temperatures in about 100 of the LHC's super-cooled magnets to soar by as much as 100 degrees. ... But the European Organization for Nuclear Research (Cern), which operates the LHC, maintains the setback is a relatively minor one in the grand scheme of things and poses no longer-term threat to the LHC.
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from the Los Angeles Times (Registration Required)
Science Debate 2008—an effort spearheaded by half a dozen voters concerned about the state of American science—posed 14 questions to the major parties' presidential candidates, Democrat Barack Obama and Republican John McCain.
The queries were culled from more than 3,400 suggestions offered by 38,000 contributors, including Nobel laureates, university presidents, government officials and professional organizations.
Obama submitted his responses in August, and McCain answered [last] week. Excerpts were printed Saturday in the LA Times, with more to come next Saturday. The candidates' complete replies are online at www.sciencedebate2008.com.
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from the Scientific American
... The tale of the Trojan War has captivated generations of audiences while evolving from its origins as an oral epic to written versions and, finally, to several film adaptations. The power of this story to transcend time, language and culture is clear even today, evidenced by [the movie] Troy’s robust success around the world.
Popular tales do far more than entertain, however. Psychologists and neuroscientists have recently become fascinated by the human predilection for storytelling.
Why does our brain seem to be wired to enjoy stories? And how do the emotional and cognitive effects of a narrative influence our beliefs and real-world decisions? The answers to these questions seem to be rooted in our history as a social animal.
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from the Economist
For three years, from an office overlooking the Atlantic in Nova Scotia, Boris Worm, a marine scientist, studied what could prevent a fishery from collapsing.
By 2006 Dr Worm and his team had worked out that although biodiversity might slow down an erosion of fish stocks, it could not prevent it. Their gloomy prediction was that by 2048 all the world’s commercial fisheries would have collapsed.
Now two economists and a marine biologist have looked at an idea that might prevent such a catastrophe. This is the privatisation of commercial fisheries through what are known as catch shares or Individual Transferable Quotas (ITQs).
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from Science News
Some fats are just better than others. Omega-3 fatty acids, such as the fats that compose fish oil, have been recognized for their health-promoting benefits.
Well, move over, omega-3s; now there’s a fat that’s even phatter. Researchers at Harvard University and Lipomics Technologies in West Sacramento, Calif., have discovered that a fatty acid can make mice super healthy.
An omega-7 fatty acid called C16:1n7-palmitoleate works as a health-promoting hormone, the researchers report September 19 in Cell. Palmitoleate is made by fat and liver cells, the team discovered. The lipid, or fatty acid, signals muscles to respond to insulin, prevents the harmful buildup of fats in the liver and reduces levels of inflammatory chemicals made in fat cells.
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from National Geographic News
About half the stars in our celestial neighborhood may have traveled great distances through the Milky Way, according to a new study, which suggests our sun may be one of them.
People have generally assumed that once a star forms inside a galactic disk, it stays in a more or less fixed orbit around the center of its galaxy, said lead study author Rok Roškar, a graduate student in astronomy at the University of Washington in Seattle. The reality "might be a lot more complicated and interesting than that," he said.
In their study, Roškar and his colleagues performed computer simulations of the past ten billion years for a hypothetical Milky Way-like galaxy .... The team found that under the right conditions, a spiraling galactic arm can knock a star into a bigger or smaller circular orbit.
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from the Christian Science Monitor
Attention parents: Don’t be surprised this school year if you tell your kids to stop playing video games and they respond, “But it’s homework.”
In classrooms across the country, electronic games have increasingly become tools for teaching problem solving and critical thinking.
For example, Brock Dubbels, a teacher at the Seward Montessori School in Minneapolis, has eighth-graders reading Homer while playing Sega’s “Sonic the Hedgehog” to better understand Odysseus’s quest.
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from the San Diego Union-Tribune (Registration Required)
Quick, what's the biggest prime number you know? OK, here's some help: A prime number is a number divisible only by 1 and itself. Most folks can recite a handful of prime numbers, usually the first few: 2, 3, 5, 7, 11 and so on.
According to the Greek mathematician Euclid, who invented geometry a few thousand years ago, there's actually no end to prime numbers. They just go on forever.
[Last] week, two groups of mathematicians, including a San Diegan, announced they had discovered the two largest prime numbers yet. Neither goes on forever, but both numbers are too big to be printed in full here: One is 12,978,189 digits long; the other is 11,185,272 digits.
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from the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel
With their field riding a wave of discovery and change, researchers, financiers and policy-makers from around the world [arrived Saturday] for the 2008 World Stem Cell Summit in Madison, the city where James Thomson started a scientific revolution almost a decade ago.
If any need confirmation of the rapidly changing landscape, it should come with this announcement planned for the summit: The two Madison companies co-founded by Thomson have merged and shifted their focus to products involving non-embryonic stem cells.
In 1998, Thomson was the first person to isolate human embryonic stem cells, launching a national debate and making Madison a major destination for stem cell research. Last November, Thomson's team and a separate group from Japan made history and suggested a new direction for stem cells by reprogramming human skin cells back to an embryonic state.
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from the Times (London)
Scientists may have detected dark matter—the mysterious substance thought to make up 85% of the universe—for the first time.
They have discovered a surge of high-energy particles from the heart of the Milky Way, Earth’s home galaxy, which closely matches the radiation signature predicted for dark matter. Details of the particles, detected by a European space probe named Pamela, emerged at a cosmology conference in Stockholm.
Dr Mirko Boezio ... said the probe had detected a surge of positrons—a form of antimatter. The observation fitted predictions that dark matter would be concentrated in galactic cores becoming so dense that particles collide and smash each other apart, emitting positrons. Boezio said his results were preliminary and had not been subject to peer review.
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from the Philadelphia Inquirer
WASHINGTON—Super Chicken strutted a step closer to the dinner table yesterday. The government said it would start considering proposals to sell genetically engineered animals as food, a move that could lead to faster-growing fish, cattle that can resist mad cow disease, or perhaps heart-healthier eggs laid by a new breed of chickens.
The rules will also apply to drugs and other medical materials from genetically engineered animals, a field with explosive potential.
U.S. supermarkets currently sell no meat from genetically engineered animals. But a Boston-area company called Aqua Bounty Technologies hopes to win approval next year for its faster-growing salmon and make the fish available by 2011. "It tastes just like any other farm-raised salmon," said vice chairman Elliot Entis, who has sampled it.
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from the Atlanta Journal-Constitution (Registration Required)
WASHINGTON—Aspirin is among the most popular remedies used by people. Turns out some plants like it, too. Researchers at the National Center for Atmospheric Research were surprised to discover that stressed plants produce an aspirin-like chemical that can be detected in the air above the plants. The chemical may be a sort of immune response that helps protect the plants, the scientists speculated.
According to the researchers, the finding raises the possibility that farmers, forest managers and others may eventually be able to start monitoring plants for early signs of a disease, an insect infestation or other types of stress.
Currently they often do not know if an ecosystem is unhealthy until there are visible indicators, such as dead leaves.
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from the Miami Herald (Registration Required)
PARIS—It's a forgotten melody, sketched in black ink in a swift but sure hand. The single manuscript page, long hidden in a provincial French library, has been verified as the work of Mozart, the apparent underpinnings for a Mass he never composed.
The previously undocumented music fragment gives insight into Mozart's evolving composition style and provides a clue about the role religion may have played for the composer as his life neared its turbulent end, one prominent Mozart expert says.
A library in Nantes, western France, has had the fragment in its collection since the 19th century, but it had never been authenticated until now, partly because it does not bear Mozart's signature.
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from the Chicago Tribune (Registration Required)
(AP)—The world's oldest man celebrated his 113th birthday Thursday in southern Japan, telling reporters he wants to live another five years. Tomoji Tanabe, who was born Sept. 18, 1895, received birthday gifts, flowers and $1,000 cash from the mayor of his hometown of Miyakonojo, on Japan's southern island of Kyushu.
Tanabe told reporters he wants to live "another five years or so," according to city spokesman Akihide Yokoyama. That was a slight downgrade from last year, when he said he wanted to live "for infinity."
The former city land surveyor, who lives with his son and daughter-in-law, is in good health and sticks to the habits that have gotten him this far. He rises early and reads the newspaper each day, drinks milk every afternoon and eats regular meals. He also avoids alcohol and does not smoke.
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from the Telegraph (UK)
The oldest known ice in North America has been found, revealing that it is three quarters of a million years old and more resistant to climate warming than thought.
Permafrost is like a glue that holds the Arctic together and a deep thaw would have dramatic effects on ecosystems and also release carbon dioxide and methane that would further accelerate climate change.
But evidence that the permafrost will tolerate warming at more southerly, Subarctic latitudes has been found in the form of ancient ice in the Klondike area of central Yukon Territory near Dawson City, by a team from the University of Alberta.
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from the Guardian (UK)
Children who are given paracetamol in their early years are more likely to get asthma, researchers say today at the end of a major worldwide study.
More than 200,000 children were involved in the research in 31 countries, making this the biggest and most authoritative study of the links between asthma and paracetamol ever carried out. The scientists found that babies given paracetamol, such as the ubiquitous Calpol, which is licensed for use over two months of age, were more likely to develop asthma. So were those in later childhood who were given it frequently. Use of the drug was also associated with a risk of eczema and rhinoconjunctivitis (allergy-linked runny nose and watering eyes).
Professor Richard Beasley, from the Medical Research Institute of New Zealand in Wellington, and colleagues, who publish their results today in the Lancet medical journal, say the study shows taking paracetamol is a "risk factor" for childhood asthma. It does not prove it causes it, but may be a reason to avoid over-use.
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from the Times (London)
Hundreds of previously undocumented species have been found living in and around one of the world's most visited coral reefs. Bizarre and beautiful crustaceans, corals and colourful worms were discovered off the Australian coast by researchers working for the Census of Marine Life.
Many of the creatures had been seen repeatedly by scientists based in nearby research stations and by divers and professional guides on the Great Barrier Reef—but no one had realised their significance.
The species were identified during expeditions to the Ningaloo Reef off the northwest coast, and Lizard and Heron islands off the northeast coast, at opposite ends of the reef system.
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from the Times (London)
Benefits of a variety of genetically modified cotton are not restricted to fields where it is planted, but extend to nearby conventional crops, scientists have found.
The GM cotton, which is engineered to make its own biological insecticide, reduces pest populations significantly in neighbouring fields.
A ten-year study of the GM cotton variety in China, led by Kong-Ming Wu, of the Chinese Academy of Agricultural Sciences in Beijing, has suggested that its widespread adoption was responsible for a dramatic long-term decline in damage from the cotton bollworm, the biggest pest threat to the crop.
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from BBC News
Shop shelves across China are being cleared of popular dairy products after tests found contamination in regular milk as well as baby milk powder.
Inspectors found that 10% of liquid milk from three of China's dairies was tainted with melamine.
The scandal first came to light in milk powder that killed four infants and sickened more than 6,000 others. Suppliers are suspected of diluting milk to cut costs, then adding melamine to make it appear higher in protein.
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from the Los Angeles Times (Registration Required)
Many obstacles, including insufficient investment and lack of training, keep scientists from embracing green chemistry and designing safer substitutes for the vast majority of compounds in use today.
To a chemist, chlorine is the perfect compound. Easily combining with other elements and molecules, chlorine is transformed into new classes of chemicals with an endless array of uses. It disinfects water, cleans clothes, kills bugs, degreases metals, bleaches paper. It has long been vital to the synthesis of plastics, drugs, microchips and many other products around the globe.
But to environmental scientists, chlorine is a perfect nightmare.
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from the Los Angeles Times (Registration Required)
Die-hard liberals and conservatives aren't made; they're born. It's literally in their DNA. That's the implication of a study by a group of researchers who wanted to see if there was a biological basis for people's political attitudes.
"What is revolutionary about this paper is that it shows the path from genes to physiology to behavior," said James H. Fowler, a political science professor at UC San Diego who was not involved in the research.
The researchers, whose findings were published today in the journal Science, looked at 46 people who fell into two camps—liberals who supported foreign aid, immigration, pacifism and gun control; and conservatives who advocated defense spending, capital punishment, patriotism and the Iraq war.
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from the New York Times (Registration Required)
CHICAGO—Mayor Richard M. Daley of Chicago on Thursday unveiled perhaps the most aggressive plan of any major American city to reduce heat-trapping gases. The blueprint would change the city's building codes to promote energy efficiency. It also calls for installing huge solar panels at municipal properties and building alternative fueling stations.
Ron Burke, a director with the Union of Concerned Scientists, which helped shape the plan, said it was "more robust and quantitative than those in any other city."
Like hundreds of other cities, Chicago has pledged by 2020 to reduce the emissions of heat-trapping gases 25 percent from the levels in 1990, the baseline established by the Kyoto Protocol, an international climate treaty. Mr. Burke said the Chicago plan offered much more specific ways than other cities' plans to measure and cut the emissions.
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from the Chicago Tribune (Registration Required)
Britain's premier scientific society has dumped its education director after he suggested that discussing creationism in science classes might be a way to engage students whose religious faith disavows the theory of evolution.
Rev. Michael Reiss, a biologist and Church of England minister, was asked to resign after his comments "led to damage to the society's reputation," the Royal Society, Britain's oldest scientific organization, said in a letter Tuesday.
In a speech at a Royal Society science fair last week in Liverpool, England, Reiss suggested that raising the theory of creationism in science classes might be the only way to engage the approximately 10 percent of students who have been taught at home and in church that evolution is incompatible with their religious beliefs.
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from the Times (London)
The Large Hadron Collider is ready to start smashing its first particles together early next week, after glitches with the £3.6 billion "big bang machine" were fixed by engineers.
Although scientists had hoped that the successful creation of the particle accelerator’s first beams last Wednesday would clear the way for trial collisions this week, the timetable has had to be delayed because of power failures that affected its cooling system.
The problems were resolved finally yesterday and the team was planning to resume circulating beams of protons around the 17-mile (27km) ring last night. The success should allow the two beams to be fired in opposite directions early next week, and then crashed together inside the vast detectors of the Large Hadron Collider (LHC).
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from BBC News Online
Scientists have found what they describe as a missing link between the behaviour of the smallest and the biggest black holes. Star-sized black holes often pulse X-rays as they pull gas into themselves and tear it apart.
Durham University researchers say they have now witnessed this same pulsing signature in the gargantuan black holes that reside at the cores of galaxies.
The team reports its observations in the journal Nature. The researchers believe the phenomenon could be used to measure the mass of far-distant super-massive black holes.
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from BBC News Online
Plants are unlikely to soak up more carbon dioxide from the air as the planet warms, research suggests.
US scientists found that grassland took up less CO2 than usual for two years following temperatures that are now unusually hot, but may become common.
The conclusion parallels a real-world finding from Europe's 2003 heatwave, when the continent's plant life became a net producer, not absorber, of CO2. The latest study is published in the scientific journal Nature.
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from the Washington Post (Registration Required)
The Environmental Protection Agency has done little to curb the export of discarded electronic products containing hazardous waste, much of which ends up in poorly regulated countries and harms the environment and public health, the Government Accountability Office concluded in a report being released today.
The 63-page report—commissioned by House Foreign Affairs Committee Chairman Howard L. Berman (D-Calif.)—is a scathing critique of the EPA's failure to control the export of used electronic equipment, which often is sent to China, India and other countries to be dismantled under unsafe conditions. U.S. authorities have yet to develop a national approach for handling the waste, which often contains toxic metals such as lead, mercury and cadmium. Amounts are rapidly growing as consumers replace their laptops, cellphones and televisions.
"It's a really inadequate situation that we've allowed to continue," said Berman, whose panel is holding a hearing on the issue today. "We have a regulation where, as far as I can tell, there's no effort to enforce it."
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from USA Today
ROCKVILLE, Md.—A hormone-like chemical should be taken out of food packaging, especially baby bottles, infant formula cans and other products used by children and pregnant women, university researchers and consumer advocates told a Food and Drug Administration subcommittee Tuesday.
The FDA has said that the chemical, bisphenol A, or BPA, doesn't pose a risk at the levels to which people are commonly exposed. BPA has been detected in the bodies of virtually all Americans tested.
But critics questioned why the FDA based that ruling on three studies funded by the chemical industry, all of which found BPA to be safe at current exposure levels. Hundreds of independent studies in animals and cells suggest the estrogen-like chemical poses serious risks.
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