from the Times (London)
An investigation of how global warming could change the planet over the next century has won the world’s leading award for science writing.
"Six Degrees: Our Future on a Hotter Planet," by the journalist Mark Lynas, was named as this year's winner of the 10,000 [British pounds] Royal Society Science Books Prize.
Mr Lynas's book describes what science suggests could happen with each degree Celsius by which global temperatures could warm by 2100, to highlight the urgency of tackling climate change now.
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from the Los Angeles Times (Registration Required)
As the search for the source of salmonella-tainted tomatoes dragged on, federal officials announced several more cases of infection Monday.
The rare Salmonella Saintpaul strain has now caused 277 reported infections in 28 states and Washington, D.C., since mid-April and has led to at least 43 hospitalizations, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention said.
The Food and Drug Administration eliminated New Mexico, Indiana and Baja California as the origin of the outbreak Saturday and cleared Connecticut and Washington, D.C., late Monday. So far, the FDA has excluded 38 states, including California, and declared tomatoes grown in those regions to be safe to eat.
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from the Christian Science Monitor
Johannesburg, South Africa—The interior of the massive Chamber of Mines Building, on the west end of the University of Witwatersrand's main campus, is like a dark, concrete maze.
... So, when you get to the reception area for the Faculty of Electrical Engineering, it's hard not to do a double take at the shiny orange, vending machine-sized box with the cheerful cartoon logo—the one that proclaims "Burn free, as free as the source flows!" It seems gleefully out of place.
... So far, to the uninitiated, the words connected with this man-sized box make little sense. But this is Mr. [Brett] Simpson's new quest in life, as the head of Breadbin Interactive, the company now charged with producing Toasters: to explain why this machine is a bright spot in the sometimes drab, often challenging, world of African technology; why it can knock down some of the computing obstacles in the global digital divide.
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from the New York Times (Registration Required)
Everyone is born with one, but no one knows what it's for. The human appendix is a small dead-end tube connected to the cecum, or ascending colon, one section of the large intestine. Everyone lives happily with it until it becomes painfully inflamed, when the only treatment is to remove it surgically. Then everyone lives happily without it. So why is it there in the first place?
Some experts have guessed that it is a vestige of the evolutionary development of some other organ, but there is little evidence for an appendix in our evolutionary ancestors. Few mammals have any appendix at all, and the appendices of those that do bears little resemblance to the human one.
Last December, researchers published a novel explanation in The Journal of Theoretical Biology. The appendix, they suggest, is a "safe house" for commensal bacteria, the symbiotic germs that aid digestion and help protect against disease-causing germs.
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from the Baltimore Sun
Gov. Martin O'Malley Monday unveiled a proposal to invest $1.1 billion over the next decade to cement Maryland's status as a pre-eminent hub for biotechnology research, including stem-cell studies aimed at finding breakthrough medical advances.
The funding, which would build on existing tax credits and grant programs, would be used to create a biotechnology center, finance capital projects and make equity investments in start-up companies.
O'Malley, a Democrat, said the money could transform Maryland—where the human genome was mapped in 2001—into a global leader in personalized medicine, or the use of genetics to tailor treatments.
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from Science News
Fledgling farmers in the Middle East treasured ornamentation as much as irrigation. These ancient villagers traveled great distances to obtain green stone for making beads and pendants that held special meaning for them in a brave new agricultural world, a new study finds.
Bead-making began by 110,000 years ago in what's now Israel. But an emphasis on green beads emerged only about 11,000 years ago in concert with the agricultural revolution, say archaeologist Daniella Bar-Yosef Mayer of the University of Haifa in Israel and geologist Naomi Porat of the Geological Survey of Israel in Jerusalem.
"Because beads in white, red, yellow, brown and black colors had been used earlier, we suggest that the occurrence of green beads is directly related to the onset of agriculture," Bar-Yosef Mayer says.
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from Scientific American
So natural is our capacity for rhythm that most of us take it for granted: when we hear music, we tap our feet to the beat or rock and sway, often unaware that we are even moving. But this instinct is, for all intents and purposes, an evolutionary novelty among humans.
Nothing comparable occurs in other mammals nor probably elsewhere in the animal kingdom. Our talent for unconscious entrainment lies at the core of dance, a confluence of movement, rhythm and gestural representation. By far the most synchronized group practice, dance demands a type of interpersonal coordination in space and time that is almost nonexistent in other social contexts.
Even though dance is a fundamental form of human expression, neuroscientists have given it relatively little consideration. Recently, however, researchers have conducted the first brain-imaging studies of both amateur and professional dancers.
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from the Los Angeles Times (Registration Required)
In its first chemical analysis of soil from Mars' northern plains, NASA's Phoenix lander has turned up no evidence of water, scientists said Monday.
Still, researchers remained confident that the craft is in the right place to uncover veins of ice believed to lie only inches beneath the surface.
A soil sample was cooked twice in one of Phoenix's eight ovens over the last few days, according to William Boynton, lead scientist for the Thermal and Evolved-Gas Analyzer, or TEGA. ... "Had there been any ice, it would have melted," Boynton said. "We saw no water in the soil whatsoever."
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from the San Diego Union-Tribune (Registration Required)
WASHINGTON (Associated Press)—For most folks, a nice hug and some sympathy can help a bit after we get pushed around. Turns out, chimpanzees use hugs and kisses the same way.
And it works. Researchers studying people's closest genetic relatives found that stress was reduced in chimps that were victims of aggression if a third chimp stepped in to offer consolation.
"Consolation usually took the form of a kiss or embrace," said Dr. Orlaith N. Fraser of the Research Center in Evolutionary Anthropology and Paleoecology at Liverpool John Moores University in England.
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from the New York Times (Registration Required)
MONS, Belgium—On a fog-drizzled Monday afternoon, this fading medieval city feels like a forgotten place. Apart from the obligatory Gothic cathedral, there is not much to see here except for a tiny storefront museum called the Mundaneum, tucked down a narrow street in the northeast corner of town. It feels like a fittingly secluded home for the legacy of one of technology’s lost pioneers: Paul Otlet.
In 1934, Otlet sketched out plans for a global network of computers (or "electric telescopes," as he called them) that would allow people to search and browse through millions of interlinked documents, images, audio and video files.
He described how people would use the devices to send messages to one another, share files and even congregate in online social networks. He called the whole thing a "réseau," which might be translated as "network"—or arguably, "web."
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from the San Francisco Chronicle
UC Berkeley scientists are a step closer to understanding how a series of molecular switches can turn on or off the regenerative power of stem cells that normally build new muscle tissue after it has been damaged.
The research, conducted on laboratory mice, is years away from practical therapies for human beings. Nevertheless, this latest work, published online Sunday by the journal Nature, provides insight into how scientists are dissecting, step-by-step, the processes that govern how stem cells work.
A goal of such research is to find ways to intervene and control these molecular switches—to improve healing and perhaps slow the effects of aging.
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from the New York Times (Registration Required)
ITHACA, N.Y. - Many a professor dreams of revolution. But Norman T. Uphoff, working in a leafy corner of the Cornell University campus, is leading an inconspicuous one centered on solving the global food crisis. The secret, he says, is a new way of growing rice.
Rejecting old customs as well as the modern reliance on genetic engineering, Dr. Uphoff, 67, an emeritus professor of government and international agriculture with a trim white beard and a tidy office, advocates a management revolt.
Harvests typically double, he says, if farmers plant early, give seedlings more room to grow and stop flooding fields. That cuts water and seed costs while promoting root and leaf growth.
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from the Los Angeles Times (Registration Required)
The brains of gay men resemble those of straight women, according to research published today that provides more evidence of the role of biology in sexual orientation.
Using brain-scanning equipment, researchers said they discovered similarities in the brain circuits that deal with language, perhaps explaining why homosexual men tend to outperform straight men on verbal skills tests—as do heterosexual women.
The area of the brain that processes emotions also looked much the same in gay men and straight women—and both groups have higher rates of depressive disorders than heterosexual men, researchers said.
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from the Washington Post (Registration Required)
Tower cranes are the ubiquitous one-legged dinosaurs of the urban landscape—gigantic, powerful, small-headed and not a little scary.
Over the past two decades, they have proliferated in the construction industry. It is possible to stand on many a city street and see more than one at work, their booms rotating on turntables as they reach over rooftops to lift loads hundreds of feet in the air and carry them equally far.
Developed in Europe (and in most cases built there), the cranes are the perfect solution to working in crowded spaces. ... They also represent the application by engineering of the "just in time" strategy that has transformed manufacturing. When the job is done, they are taken apart like an Erector Set, the parts destined for another project in a different place.
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from the Boston Globe (Registration Required)
We spend a third of our lives doing it. We build special rooms for it, and we agonize over not getting enough of it. Yet despite all the time humans invest in sleep, scientists have still not been able to explain why we need it.
While an array of lab studies show that slumber-deprived people remember less, react more slowly, and even develop higher risks of heart disease and diabetes, the reasons sleep developed in the first place have remained murky—and some even argue that it may not be as useful as we think.
Several scientists are now trying an innovative approach: comparing the snoozing habits of different animals to better understand how sleep evolved over time.
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from USA Today
Giving your children all they need to grow big and strong may not be as simple as a gummy vitamin and three square meals. They still may be susceptible to an epidemic that's starting to gain the notice of pediatricians and bone doctors across the country: vitamin D deficiency.
Mike Stone joined a growing legion of children diagnosed with the condition when an X-ray of his 14-year-old bones revealed a skeleton so thin it appeared clear on film.
... Stone was seriously vitamin D deficient, and though he had felt a "snap" in his back—the impetus for the doctor's visit—he had no fractures. But his bones had become perilously thin, 50 percent less dense than they should have been. His doctor immediately put him on vitamin D supplements to correct the problem, Stone says.
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from National Geographic News
A trio of "super-Earths" have been found near a sun-like star, a team of European astronomers announced [yesterday].
The planets orbiting the star HD 40307—which is 42 light-years away—were found using an advanced "planet searcher" instrument at the European Southern Observatory in La Silla, Chile, the French and Swiss astronomers said. The part of the sky being studied contains 45 potential planets that are smaller than 30 times the mass of Earth, the astronomers said. Most of them orbit HD 40307 quickly—every 50 days or less.
"We are convinced that there are plenty of planets everywhere," said Didier Queloz, a member of the research team from the Observatoire de Genève in Switzerland. The discovery is creating a buzz throughout the astronomy community.
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from the Atlanta Journal-Constitution (Registration Required)
SALT LAKE CITY (Associated Press) - A newly discovered batch of well-preserved dinosaur bones, petrified trees and even freshwater clams in southeastern Utah could provide new clues about life in the region some 150 million years ago.
The Bureau of Land Management announced the find Monday, calling the quarry near Hanksville "a major dinosaur fossil discovery." An excavation revealed at least four sauropods, which are long-necked, long-tailed plant-eating dinosaurs, and two carnivorous ones, according to the bureau. It may have also uncovered an herbivorous stegosaurus.
Animal burrows and petrified tree trunks 6 feet in diameter were found nearby. The site doesn't contain any new species but offers scientists the chance to learn more about the ecology of that time, said Scott Foss, a BLM paleontologist.
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from the Scientist (Registration Required)
Darting lizards swing from four-legged to two-legged locomotion like a road bike popping a wheelie, a study published [Friday] in Journal of Experimental Biology suggests.
"It's a very interesting paper," said Duncan Irschick, a functional morphologist at the University of Massachusetts who did not participate in the research. "People have never understood why lizards run bipedally."
... [Christofer] Clemente and colleagues [at the University of Cambridge] filmed lizards running on a treadmill. "We showed that there tends to be this acceleration threshold -- there's this one acceleration where once the lizard hits it, it really has no choice but to go bipedal because the torque starts to move its head up," he said.
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from the Christian Science Monitor
When it comes to designing a new robot, some scientists are finding a visit to the zoo more helpful than hours spent at the drawing board. Rather than invent new ways for a robot to navigate a forest or crowded city street, they are copying how animals already do it.
If the goal is to make robots capable of surviving any environment, then nature almost always provides a template, says Joseph Ayers, a professor of biology at Northeastern University in Boston. "Animals have evolved to operate in every environment," he says.
The movement is part of an emerging field known as biomimetics, which takes designs from the natural world and applies them to everything from architecture to textiles.
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from the New York Times (Registration Required)
For the first time, leading prostate cancer specialists say, they have a drug that can significantly cut men's risk of developing the disease, dropping the incidence by 30 percent.
But the discovery, arising from a new analysis of a large federal study, comes with a debate: Should men take the drug?
Prostate cancer is unlike any other because it is relatively slow-growing, and while it can kill, it often is not lethal. In fact, most leading specialists say, a major problem is that men are getting screened, discovering they have cancers that may or may not be dangerous, and opting for treatments that can leave them impotent or incontinent.
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A 2,000-year-old date palm seed found in the arid Dead Sea palace of King Herod perched atop Masada has sprouted and grown into a tree, researchers reported last week. It has become the oldest seed ever grown.
Elsewhere, researchers said that a 200-million-year-old Australian fossil suggests that dinosaurs roamed farther than previously believed across the prehistoric supercontinent of Gondwana. The fossil belonged to a two-legged meat-eater related to a giant, big-clawed carnivore from Argentina.
And before it was swallowed by the sea, the English town of Dunwich was an important medieval city. Last week a research team set sail to discover the secrets of this British Atlantis. They will use the latest acoustic imaging technology to reveal Dunwich in its prime.
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A computing milestone was reached last week when an American military supercomputer nicknamed Roadrunner processed more than 1.026 quadrillion calculations per second. The new $133 million supercomputer, more than twice as fast as its closest rival, was built by engineers and scientists at IBM and Los Alamos National Laboratory.
British researchers at Lancaster University say they have designed a carbon nanotube that spins in a current of electrons like a wind turbine. They say this simple motor could be used to shrink optical communications components or to devise new forms of computer memory.
Biomaterials pioneer Robert Langer at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology last week won the Millennium Technology Prize, often called the unofficial Nobel Prize for technology. His work has involved finding a way to gradually release drug molecules into a patient's body.
Meanwhile, the most advanced bionic hand yet devised won the U.K.'s top engineering prize, the MacRobert Award. The prosthetic device has five individually powered digits and has been fitted to more than 200 people.
And as the price of gasoline soars, many students are now taking field trips on the Internet, according to the Christian Science Monitor. As of last month, more than 1.1 million students had participated in virtual field trips organized through the Center for Interactive Learning and Collaboration in Indianapolis.
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After a couple of miscues, the Phoenix Mars Lander finally filled its tiny scientific oven with Martian soil last week, and scientists were expected to begin analyzing it to determine whether, among other things, the soil contains organic compounds.
Meanwhile, NASA launched its Gamma-ray Large Area Space Telescope (GLAST) last week on a five- to 10-year mission in Earth orbit. It will pick up where the Compton Gamma Ray Observatory left off, but with better technology. Its particle detectors are much more sensitive and should provide the best look yet into the high-energy universe.
In other news, cosmologists speculate that structures larger than the visible universe may be responsible for a strange pattern seen in the Big Bang's afterglow. If confirmed, the structures could provide important information about the universe's early history.
Cosmologists are also pondering why the pattern of radiation left over from the Big Bang looks different in different regions of the sky. Several theories are being proposed for a "lopsided" universe.
And, finally, what was formerly known as the ninth planet in the solar system will henceforth be known as a "plutoid," according to the International Astronomical Union. That will be the official designation of all small, nearly spherical objects orbiting beyond Neptune.
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U.N. officials said last week that Africa is especially vulnerable to the harmful effects of global warming and lacks the resources to deal with them. They said industrialized nations should not look to developing nations to reduce greenhouse gas emissions without doing more themselves.
Meanwhile, the U.S. National Academy of Sciences joined with other such scientific groups in a dozen nations in calling on world leaders to limit the threat of climate change by decreasing their dependence on fossil fuels.
And the authors of an article in American Scientist magazine looked at the ecological effects of climate change on the Antarctic Peninsula. They say the average midwinter temperature there has increased by 6 degrees Celsius since 1950, or five times the global average.
American companies that burn coal to make electricity are looking for a way to build plants that would capture their emissions, a strategy that may become a lot more important soon, according to the New York Times.
And, finally, the Christian Science Monitor began a series called "Empty Oceans" that looks at disappearing fish stocks and changing undersea ecosystems, among other factors that are raising alarms.
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from Scientific American
Decades of chemical pollution have damaged the ozone layer of the upper atmosphere that shields Earth from the harmful effects of the sun's ultraviolet rays, each summer eating a hole over the South Pole that expands to nearly the size of Antarctica.
But since 1996, when an international treaty banned the culprit chemical refrigerants and propellants ... , the size of the seasonal tear has been shrinking - and scientists predict it may stop forming by the end of this century.
You would think that was good news. But atmospheric scientists caution in a new study published in Science that sewing up the rift in the ozone ... layer may exacerbate another environmental woe: climate change.
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from the Los Angeles Times (Registration required)
DIMONA, ISRAEL -- On the scorched floor of Israel's Negev Desert blooms a field of 1,640 robotic mirrors that behave like sunflowers.
Slightly larger than pingpong tables and guided by a computer, they turn imperceptibly to follow the sun and focus its rays on the pinnacle of a 200-foot tower, where a water boiler will soon start producing high-pressure steam.
This futuristic assembly is Arnold Goldman's scale model and testing ground for five larger solar fields his company plans to build in the Mojave Desert to supply up to 900 megawatts of clean energy to California in the next decade.
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from Science News
Dmitry Khavinson and Genevra Neumann didn't know anything about astrophysics. They were just doing mathematics, like they always do, following their curiosity. In 2004, they posted a new result, an extension of the fundamental theorem of algebra, on MathSciNet, a preprint server.
Five days later, they received an e-mail. Congratulations, it said. You just proved Sun Hong Rhie's conjecture on gravitational lensing.
Gravitational what? Khavinson, of the University of South Florida in Tampa, and Neumann, of the University of Northern Iowa in Cedar Falls, had never heard of it. So they started a crash course in gravitational lensing.
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from BBC News Online
A treasure trove of artefacts is being recovered from what experts describe as one of the most important maritime discoveries since the Mary Rose.
The late 16th Century shipwreck hails from a pivotal point in England's military history.
The raised haul includes a 2m-long cannon, which will give archaeologists an insight into Elizabeth I's naval might. The wreck, discovered 30 years ago, is situated off the coast of Alderney.
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