from Wired
In the marvelously sensitive eyes of mantis shrimps, scientists have found cells that could inspire an overhaul of humanity's comparatively clumsy communications hardware.
Mechanical analogs of their eyes "are among the most important and commonly used optical components, and the cellular structure we describe significantly outperforms these current optics," write researchers in a study published Sunday in Nature Photonics.
Mantis shrimps are reef-dwelling marine crustaceans who trace their evolutionary lineage straight back to the Cambrian age 500 million years ago, before vertebrates had even evolved. They're so biologically unique that biologists call them "shrimps from Mars."
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from the New York Times (Registration Required)
A new examination of skulls from the royal cemetery at Ur, discovered in Iraq almost a century ago, appears to support a more grisly interpretation than before of human sacrifices associated with elite burials in ancient Mesopotamia, archaeologists say.
Palace attendants, as part of royal mortuary ritual, were not dosed with poison to meet a rather serene death. Instead, a sharp instrument, a pike perhaps, was driven into their heads.
Archaeologists at the University of Pennsylvania reached that conclusion after conducting the first CT scans of two skulls from the 4,500-year-old cemetery. The cemetery, with 16 tombs grand in construction and rich in gold and jewels, was discovered in the 1920s. A sensation in 20th century archaeology, it revealed the splendor at the height of the Mesopotamian civilization.
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from the Los Angeles Times (Registration Required)
Disgraced South Korean cloning scientist Hwang Woo-suk was found guilty by a Seoul court today of embezzling from his stem cell research fund and illegally buying human embryos.
The court also ruled that the 56-year-old Hwang, who became a national hero after he claimed to be the first to successfully clone human stem cells, had partially fabricated the results of his research. He was given a suspended jail sentence.
"He feels deeply sorry that this case elicited so much criticism in the scientific field and shocked the public. ... His wrongdoing is not minor but does not merit the severe punishment of a prison sentence," the Seoul Central District Court said in the verdict.
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from the San Diego Union-Tribune (Registration Required)
AKESPE, Kazakhstan (Associated Press) -- Standing on the shore under the relentless Central Asian sun, Badarkhan Prikeyev drew on a cigarette and squinted into the distance as one fishing boat after another returned with the day's catch.
Until recently, this spot where the fish merchant was standing, in a man-made desert at the edge of nowhere, represented one of the world's worst environmental calamities.
Now fresh water was lapping at his boots, proclaiming an environmental miracle-- the return of the Aral Sea.
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from ScienceNOW Daily News
With its wrinkled skin and bucked teeth, the naked mole rat isn't going to win any beauty contests. But the burrowing, desert rodent is exceptional in another way: It doesn't get cancer.
The naked mole rat's cells hate to be crowded, it turns out, so they stop growing before they can form tumors. The details could someday lead to a new strategy for treating cancer in people.
In search of clues to aging, cell biologists Vera Gorbunova, Andrei Seluanov, and colleagues at the University of Rochester have been comparing rodents that vary in size and life span, from mice to beavers. The naked mole rat stands out because it's small yet can live more than 28 years--seven times as long as a house mouse. Resistance to cancer could be a major factor; whereas most laboratory mice and rats die from the disease, it has never been observed in naked mole rats.
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from the Scientist
The forensic scientists depicted in popular TV shows CSI and NCIS often work in slick, technologically-decked out labs solving case after scintillating case. But for forensic sculptor Frank Bender, reconstructing the faces of decomposing bodies or skeletons is a much more hands-on, creative process done in his paint-stained, converted-butcher-shop-studio in South Philadelphia.
Through a career that's spanned 33 years, Bender has worked with the Philadelphia police department, the FBI, Scotland Yard, America's Most Wanted and the Mexican government to give faces to unidentified victims. Just don't ask him how many--he's lost count.
His methods are far from traditional--the only scientific forensics data he uses are facial tissue thickness charts, but only as starting points, he said--and have been widely criticized. But his methods, no matter how unusual, work.
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from the New York Times (Registration Required)
If you've ever had a problem with rodents and woken up to find that mice had chewed their way through the Cheerios, the Famous Amos, three packages of Ramen noodles, and even that carton of baker's yeast you had bought in a fit of "Ladies of the Canyon" wistfulness, you will appreciate just how freakish is the strain of laboratory mouse that lacks all motivation to eat.
The mouse is physically capable of eating. It still likes the taste of food. Put a kibble in its mouth, and it will chew and swallow, all the while wriggling its nose in apparent rodent satisfaction.
Yet left on its own, the mouse will not rouse itself for dinner. The mere thought of walking across the cage and lifting food pellets from the bowl fills it with overwhelming apathy. What is the point, really, of all this ingesting and excreting? Why bother? Days pass, the mouse doesn't eat, it hardly moves, and within a couple of weeks, it has starved itself to death.
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from BBC News Online
Black bears are often considered among the most dangerous animals in North America, depicted down the years as ferocious predators threatening to man.
But, says one man, that perception could not be further from the truth. For 43 years, Professor Lynn Rogers has studied wild bears, walking and playing with them, gaining amazing insights into their behaviour.
His studies reveal the bears as peaceful, playful creatures, which even hum when they are content.
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Science answers some questions only to raise new ones, such as how do we define the difference between women and men? In unusual cases, the usual indicators of male and female contradict each other in the same body. The best-known recent example is South African runner Caster Semenya.
Still, bit by bit, research can clarify things. Consider this: It's now quite certain that musical training can improve hearing. It's not that musicians have better ears but that, thanks to their musical training, musicians' brains are better equipped to process sounds.
And how about this promising finding: Researchers think that desperately ill heart failure patients may find relief with the help of the eastern green mamba snake. Some have fashioned an experimental drug based in part on the venom of the tree-dwelling snake.
And what looks like progress can encounter setbacks. For instance, new findings are complicating recent evidence for a viral link to prostate cancer. A recent report detected no sign of the suspected virus in tissue samples from almost 600 prostate cancer patients.
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North America's smallest dinosaur weighed less than two pounds and scampered about eating a mixture of plants, eggs and insects. Researchers described the species, Fruitadens haagarorum, based on fossils that were collected in Colorado in 1979 and have been stored in a museum ever since.
Ida, the much-discussed primate fossil unveiled earlier this year, probably wasn't really a direct ancestor of humans, according to a new analysis in the journal Nature. The study includes 117 living and extinct primate species, including a newly described fossil of one of Ida's more recent relatives. Ida and her kin—the adapiform primates—are more closely related to lemurs and lorises than to the lineage that led to humans, the researchers report.
And finally, the Boston Globe looked at how a team of scientists, museum conservators and surgeons are working up the head of a 4,000-year-old Egyptian mummy. Although the head was found without its body, high-tech analyses are still giving clues about the mummy's identity and the rituals and procedures it underwent prior to burial.
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In an ironic turn of events, the Mexican government is felling fir trees to protect monarch butterfly habitat. Late rains left the trees vulnerable to deadly bark beetle attack, and officials—who usually work to stop illegal logging—are themselves cutting and disposing of infested trees in an effort to slow the beetles' spread.
A different beetle is causing problems in the United States—the invasive Asian longhorn beetle, which was introduced from China and which kills a number of North American hardwoods. Smithsonian magazine chronicled the fight against the insect in Massachusetts.
Meanwhile, the U.S. government is getting more serious about protecting polar bears, and just proposed protecting more than 200,000 square miles of critical habitat for the species. The designation won't stop the bears' most serious problem, the melting of sea ice, but conservationists say it's a step in the right direction.
Amphibians have also been declining around the world, in part because of a pandemic fungal disease. New research published in Science magazine revealed how the fungus ultimately causes heart failure, even though it only infects the animals' skin.
Another article in Science pointed to a key flaw in the Kyoto Protocol and in international climate legislation, including some versions of the still-pending U.S. climate bill. The problem, the scientists say, is that biofuels are counted as carbon-neutral, regardless of whether forests were cut in order to produce the fuels. The resulting laws could encourage deforestation and ultimately worsen climate change.
Meanwhile, despite mounting evidence, Americans are becoming increasingly skeptical of climate change. The Pew Research Center polled 1,500 adults and found that only 57 percent believe the climate is warming—down from 71 percent last April. Analysts say a distracting economy, temporarily cooler weather and politics may have diverted people from the evidence for climate change.
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from the Los Angeles Times (Registration Required)
Pennsylvania researchers using gene therapy have made significant improvements in vision in 12 patients with a rare inherited visual defect, a finding that suggests it may be possible to produce similar improvements in a much larger number of patients with retinitis pigmentosa and macular degeneration.
The team last year reported success with three adult patients, an achievement that was hailed as a major accomplishment for gene therapy. They have now treated an additional nine patients, including five children, and find that the best results are achieved in the youngest patients, whose defective retinal cells have not had time to die off.
The youngest patient, 9-year-old Corey Haas, was considered legally blind before the treatment began. He was confined largely to his house and driveway when playing, had immense difficulties in navigating an obstacle course and required special enlarging equipment for books and help in the classroom.
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from the New York Times (Registration Required)
Campaigners against global warming have drawn on an arsenal of visually startling tactics over the years, from posing nude on a Swiss glacier to scaling smokestacks at coal-fired power plants.
On Saturday, they tried something new with the goal of prodding countries to get serious about reaching an international climate accord: a synchronized burst of more than 4,300 demonstrations, from the Himalayas to the Great Barrier Reef, all centered on the number 350.
For some prominent climate scientists, that is the upper limit for heat-trapping carbon dioxide in the atmosphere, measured in parts per million. If the gas concentration exceeds that for long, they warn, the world can expect decades of disrupted climate patterns, rising sea levels, drought and famine. The current concentration is 387 parts per million.
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from the Washington Post (Registration Required)
ACOMA, N.M. -- Uranium from the Grants Mineral Belt running under rugged peaks and Indian pueblos of New Mexico was a source of electric power and military might in decades past, providing fuel for reactors and atomic bombs.
Now, interest in carbon-free nuclear power is fueling a potential resurgence of uranium mining. But Indian people gathered in Acoma, N.M., for the Indigenous Uranium Forum over the weekend decried future uranium extraction, especially from nearby Mount Taylor, considered sacred by many tribes. Native people from Alaska, Canada, the Western United States and South America discussed the severe health problems uranium mining has caused their communities, including high rates of cancer and kidney disease.
Uranium companies and government authorities do not dispute this, and federal environmental remediation and workers' compensation programs related to past uranium mining are ongoing. But mining companies say today's methods and regulations have improved so much that locals have nothing to fear.
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from the San Francisco Chronicle
The rebellious bears of Yosemite Valley have developed a taste for that old standard of the suburban family life, the minivan. The kid-friendly vehicles are quickly becoming a bear necessity along with handouts and garbage slop, according to a study published in the October issue of the Journal of Mammalogy.
Specifically, the burly bruins select minivans over all other types of vehicles, no matter how sporty, colorful or expensive, and rip them open looking for grub, said the study "Selective Foraging for Anthropogenic Resources by Black Bears: Minivans in Yosemite National Park."
"They target minivans," said Stewart Breck, a research biologist with the National Wildlife Research Center, who co-authored the study. "They will pop open windows, peel open a door, rip out back seats. They can do a lot of damage."
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from Scientific American
SYRACUSE, N.Y. -- The financial crisis and subsequent global recession have led to much soul-searching among economists, the vast majority of whom never saw it coming. But were their assumptions and models wrong only because of minor errors or because today's dominant economic thinking violates the laws of physics?
A small but growing group of academics believe the latter is true, and they are out to prove it. These thinkers say that the neoclassical mantra of constant economic growth is ignoring the world's diminishing supply of energy at humanity's peril, failing to take account of the principle of net energy return on investment. They hope that a set of theories they call "biophysical economics" will improve upon neoclassical theory, or even replace it altogether.
But even this nascent field finds itself divided, as evidenced by the vigorous and candid back-and-forth debate last week over where to go next. One camp says its models prove the world is headed toward a dramatic economic collapse as energy scarcity takes hold, while another camp believes there is still time to turn the ship around. Still, all biophysical economists see only very bleak prospects for the future of modern civilization, putting a whole new spin on the phrase "the dismal science."
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from Time
Dyson Inc.'s new bladeless electric fan resembles anything but a fan. The company calls it an "air multiplier." To the average sci-fi enthusiast, it looks like a miniature replica of a stargate--but, alas, this gadget does not create a wormhole that teleports people to distant worlds.
When introduced recently to students in a cafeteria at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, the ring-shaped contraption immediately drew curious onlookers. "It's clearly a fan," said engineering student Sergei Bernstein, 18, placing his palm before the draft of cool air flowing from the circular frame. "But it looks completely different, very modern," said his friend John Berman, 17.
It's no surprise that Dyson, the company behind the bagless vacuum cleaner, would devise a bladeless fan. Since the invention of the electric fan in the late 19th century, the air-stirring apparatus has not changed in any significant way--a quick Google image search suggests that every model from the classic 1950s table fan to the industrial exhaust fan to something called the batman fan has one consistent, characteristic feature: rotating blades. But Dyson did away with those, replacing them with a graceful ring set atop a cylindrical base.
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from the Christian Science Monitor
Every season at your local concert hall, the drill is the same: Musicians tune up their instruments, a conductor walks onstage, taps a baton, and works of past compositional masters spring to life.
This scenario has not been tampered with for centuries, a fact that many cherish and others lament about the symphonic experience. Now, threatened by the high costs of producing orchestral concerts, shrinking endowments, an aging subscriber base, and the slashing of music curriculums across the country, which diminishes the role of music in young people's lives, classical music has arrived kicking and screaming into the Digital Age. Computers are helping change the way people make, perform, and listen to symphonic music.
"Orchestras are floundering," says Greg Bowers, a composer who teaches music theory and composition at the College of William & Mary in Williamsburg, Va. "They want to fill seats desperately. A lot of them are cowering, they're afraid to do anything that may challenge the audience. Their patrons are older and less amenable to new things. So you have this incredible, aesthetic bind."
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from the Boston Globe (Registration Required)
At a time when most people are contemplating whether to give in and turn up the thermostat, Simon Hare and his family are embarking on a bold experiment in green living: a winter with no heat.
Their modest, two-story cottage in Roxbury will be warmed by the sun, the body heat of Hare, his wife Damiana, and his 16-month-old daughter Lulu, and even the heat thrown off by its energy-efficient appliances. The airtight, well-insulated house is part of a small but growing movement to design and build extremely green dwellings by rethinking what is essential in a house.
"You make it really efficient; you design your house to do your work for you," Hare said. "On a February day of 6 degrees, if it's getting cool, we can heat the house by making a second batch of pancakes for my daughter."
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from BBC News Online
Scientists are planning to develop a paint coating for military vehicles which would soak up a chemical warfare agent and then decontaminate itself.
The technology could protect those operating in or around a vehicle after a chemical attack.
It would be adapted from "strippable" coatings currently used to provide temporary camouflage for vehicles.
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from the San Diego Union-Tribune (Registration Required)
HONOLULU (Associated Press) -- Hawaii regulators have approved a Honolulu startup company's plan to build the nation's first tuna farm in waters off the Big Island.
Hawaii Oceanic Technology aims to create an environmentally friendly open ocean farm for bigeye tuna, a favorite source for sushi and sashimi that's overfished in the wild. The project would also be the world's first commercial bigeye farm.
The state Board of Land and Natural Resources voted 4-to-1 to give Hawaii Oceanic permission to install three large underwater cages for the tuna.
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from the San Diego Union-Tribune
WASHINGTON (Associated Press) -- Americans seem to be cooling toward global warming. Just 57 percent think there is solid evidence the world is getting warmer, down 20 points in just three years, a new poll says. And the share of people who believe pollution caused by humans is causing temperatures to rise has also taken a dip, even as the U.S. and world forums gear up for possible action against climate change.
In a poll of 1,500 adults by the Pew Research Center for the People & the Press, released Thursday, the number of people saying there is strong scientific evidence that the Earth has gotten warmer over the past few decades is down from 71 percent in April of last year and from 77 percent when Pew started asking the question in 2006. The number of people who see the situation as a serious problem also has declined.
The steepest drop has occurred during the past year, as Congress and the Obama administration have taken steps to control heat-trapping emissions for the first time and international negotiations for a new treaty to slow global warming have been under way. At the same time, there has been mounting scientific evidence of climate change - from melting ice caps to the world's oceans hitting the highest monthly recorded temperatures this summer.
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from BBC News Online
Scientists have unravelled the mechanism by which the fungal disease chytridiomycosis kills its victims.
The fungus is steadily spreading through populations of frogs and other amphibians worldwide, and has sent some species extinct in just a few years.
Researchers now report in the journal Science that the fungus kills by changing the animals' electrolyte balance, resulting in cardiac arrest. The finding is described as a "key step" in understanding the epidemic.
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from National Public Radio
On Friday, the Environmental Protection Agency is expected to give a price tag for the Senate's global warming bill. That will frame next week's scheduled debate on the legislation.
One key part of the climate bill has to do with fuels made from green plants. These can reduce the use of fossil fuels, and they also are a big draw for farm-state votes.
But scientists writing in the current issue of Science magazine point out a huge error in existing biofuel laws that could actually make climate change worse. They say these rules inadvertently encourage deforestation, which in turn contributes to global warming.
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from the Christian Science Monitor
Mexico City (Associated Press) -- Authorities who have struggled to stop illegal logging in Mexico's famed monarch butterfly reserve now are cutting down thousands of trees themselves to fight an unprecedented infestation of deadly bark beetles.
Biologists and park workers are racing to fell as many as 9,000 infected fir trees and bury or extract infested wood before the orange-and-black monarchs start arriving in late October to spend the winter bunched together on branches, carpeting the trees.
Environmentalists say the forest canopy of tall firs is essential to shelter the butterflies on their annual migration through Mexico, the United States, and Canada. The journey is tracked by scholars and schoolchildren across North America and draws tens of thousands of tourists to the reserve, a U.N. Heritage site.
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from ScienceNOW Daily News
A subset of women in Framingham, Massachusetts, is evolving at the same rate as the average animal and plant, and will become shorter and heavier over successive generations. That means that natural selection continues to exert its influence over humans, researchers argue in a new study, one of the more ambitious to assess evolution's impact on modern humans.
Soon after Darwin published his theory of evolution, Lawson Tait, a surgeon, wrote that the law of natural selection does not apply to people because medicine keeps adverse traits in the gene pool. Some doctors still think this today, says Yale University evolutionary biologist Stephen Stearns, but they're wrong. Natural selection continues to exert its pressure through our reproductive success: the more children we have, the more our traits spread through the population.
For evidence, Stearns and colleagues turned to the Framingham Heart Study, a classic source of family history data. Started in 1948, the study has followed the cardiovascular health of about 5000 residents of Framingham, Massachusetts, and their descendents over 3 generations. Stearns and colleagues followed only women from the study because they didn't initially have information on paternity.
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