Nature Newsblog
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Male deer with better sperm invest in male offspring.
The fertility of male red deer helps to determine the sex of their offspring, say biologists in Spain. The best-quality sperm tends to father sons, while the less healthy sperm tends to lead to daughters.
Read the story here.
Rainfall events and floods are getting more intense.
India is having to cope with more frequent extreme weather events, and the densely populated subcontinent may see even more in future.
Read the story here.
Established forests may continue to increase soil carbon stores.
Old-growth forests can keep on squirreling away carbon from the atmosphere long after they have reached maturity, a study suggests. The discovery runs counter to the theory that established forests, although valuable stores of carbon, will not help to alleviate the greenhouse effect because they are already 'full' of carbon.
Read the story here.
States and the Environmental Protection Agency argue over regulation of emissions.
The Supreme Court of the United States yesterday heard a potentially pivotal case on climate change.
Read the story here.
Surprise El Niño soothed this year's hurricane season.
2006 was supposed to be a rough year for Atlantic hurricanes. Coming on the back of the devastating 2005 season — which saw Hurricane Katrina ravage the US Gulf Coast and forecasters run out of alphabetized names for storms — both researchers and the public were braced for an above-average season.
Read the story here.
Freezing medieval weather linked to diminished ocean current.
The Gulf Stream — the ocean current that helps to bring warm weather to much of the North Atlantic region — was significantly weakened during the period known to historians as the Little Ice Age, new research reveals.
Read more here
I wandered into a session today and was confronted by a video of an orangutan chomping on a nut.
This wasn't what i expected at a materials science conference. How foolish of me, this meeting has it all - I should have realised that. Analysis into the toughness of nuts and why orangutans can't crack certain types (i missed the start of the talk so actually what kind of nut it was will remain a mystery), someone trying to recreate an elephant's trunk using robotics, as well as some hard core chemistry (which pleased me - lots of pictures of molecules) for photovoltaic solar cells.
There's a notice board here acting as a matchmaker for lonely research groups. It's the Research Collobaration Center.
The idea is to get like-minded collaborators together, and to provide a forum for that to happen. But so far i don't think anyone knows it's there because there was only one message pinned on the board. From Cisco Systems. Seems an ideal opportunity for a researcher who's maybe having difficulties getting funding to grasp to me. Come on materials scientists, let's get matchmaking!
It's obvious - nanoscale devices need nano amounts of power. I'd just never thought of it before.
Zhong Wang pointed out this blindingly obvious point today. He's also got a way of making little pockets of power by prodding an upstanding nanowire with an AFM tip and bending it back and forth. This does alsorts of things to the potential between the metal tip and the piezoelectric semiconductor zinc oxide nanotube, which ultimately causes a disharge of power. Piezoelectric materials, if you didn't know, can generate a voltage in response to mechanical stress. Nanorobots inside the body could then use muscle power to create their own power, which is a cool concept.
Wang also coined a new phrase, only yesterday, he claimed. Nano-piezotronics. Wow. What does that mean? It means harnessing piezoelectric principles to make electronic devices - diodes, transitors etc.
And to go back to the tiny power generation, Wang reckons that developing his system could lead to shoes that power soldiers. Or at least that's what the picture looked like. I think i misunderstood and what he means is the movement of a soldiers' foot in a specially designed shoe could be used to generate power on the nanoscale.
Antique violins may have been chemically tuned.
Simple pest control techniques may have given rise to the greatest violins ever made. Biochemists say the key to the instrument's sweet sounds come not only from their construction but also from chemicals used to treat wood.
Read the story here.
Insects and fish emerge intact from uplifting experience.
In northern China there are flying fish and flying ants like you've never seen before. Scientists at Northwestern Polytechnical University in Xian have used sound waves to levitate these and other small creatures while they are still alive, without causing them any apparent harm.
Read the story here.
Women beat men at the task of being attuned to a familiar face.
Women are more attuned to the subtle non-verbal communication made by the direction of a colleague's gaze, according to new research.
Read the story here.
People really do seem to have a unique odour that marks them out.
There are many good reasons to believe that we all have our own unique smell. Dogs, for example — as pets or police sniffers — seem to be able to distinguish individuals by their smell. And the mother-baby bond is cemented by their own distinctive odours.
Read the story here.
The mysteriously titled symposium X happens each lunchtime, and gets a huge crowd because it serves pizza.
Today’s talks included one by Gregg Zank, vice president of Dow Corning – the silicone company. He was talking about innovation being fuelled by advanced materials. Zank spots trends and then suggests needs that emerge from that trend that require innovative thinking to solve. So taking data storage for example, Zank saw a trend for mass archival storage – calling it WORN – write once, read never. The materials innovation needed to get away from this, he said, was a holographic data storage material that can be easily read,-re-read and added to. It’s light-sensitive, and contains a dispersion of monomers and polymers, randomly distributed in the dark, but in light the polymers and monomers separate and set up a refractive index differential, and this, somehow, can be used to store data.
Even more cool was a material for an active protection system – a body armour for old people to stop them breaking bones when they fall, or for pesky kids who fall off their skate boards.
An acrylate backbone polymer of silicone was the innovative material Dow developed to help improve L’Oreal’s Stay Beautiful lipstick. It can last for 16 hours and withstand all those lip-based activities one might indulge in. Like eating free pizza.
A giant carbon nanotube made out of black balloons is being built here. And i helped make it! It's been the highlight of my day.
Wendy Crone from the University of Wisconsin Madison made the original giant tube that was 40 feet high, and a shorter version (restricted by the ceiling height) is being built by a local balloon artist Todd Neufeld.
The model is usually taken round museums. Crone told me that trying to explain nanotechnology to people was made tricky by the fact that you can't see things on the nanoscale. So she decided to go big. Huge, in fact. And balloon-y. Genius. Neufeld, originally an engineer, has just started studying for a materials science course, although i'm not sure how much that has to do with the balloon tube.
AIDS set to become world's biggest problem disease.
AIDS will become the world's most burdensome disease by 2030, according to predictions released today. Its predicted rise, which will overtake today's top problem of poor perinatal health (such as low birth weight), is being blamed on many countries' failure to impose proper prevention measures since the pandemic was first revealed.
Read the story here.
There was the second annual hydrogen fuel cell car challenge today. Kids from local high school kids built and raced their own hydrogen-powered fuel cell cars. Wow, I thought. Teenagers are developing materials to make a new generation of fuel cells. Are we on the edge of the hydrogen revolution after all?
I was even more impressed when I saw the bits of kit they were using – balloons, string, a few drinking straws and a bit of blue-tack.
It seems I was a little naiive, and maybe slightly over-estimating the state of technologies in US schools. The fuel cell and a motors were provided to the entrants in advance. This means that the real challenge is one of engineering a lightweight and speedy car. Still, that’s no mean feat, especially when each team only received the cell and motor the day before. These cars were whizzing along their race track, which must be about 10 metres long, in a matter of a few seconds. And the teams still had to work out how to harness the power from the fuel cell.
One of the early favourites during the heats showed me his car and explained how the cell hydrolyses water to hydrogen and oxygen, which was stored in two syringes and these were used to charge a motor. Others were storing the gas in balloons and some had wheels made of old CDs, like huge dragsters, others were tiny little things the size of your hand.
The final was a tense affair, one of the teams disappeared to charge their car again, then the finish line judges disappeared as well. But the background sound of a Harley revving it’s engine kept us all entertained while we waited. And they’re off! The winning car came in at a track-record beating 4.32 seconds. Well done Norwell high school.
It’s a bit disappointing to see how male-dominated the teams were. But at least the winning team had a couple of girls in it. I was impressed by the grasp of the science that must be needed to understand and build these little machines and it’s a shame that the kids didn’t get more support from the rest of the meeting attendees. But with umpteen parallel scientific sessions going on at once, dipping out to re-live your meccano-esque childhood is a bit of a luxury I suppose.
New technique could reduce the need for painful breast biopsies.
A new ultrasound technique could help to tell a benign lump in the breast from a malignant tumour, reducing the number of painful and expensive biopsies carried out.
Read the story here.
The death of ex-spy Alexander Litvinenko has highlighted how long it can take to diagnose a poison. Nicola Jones asks how hard can it be?
You'd think, in this day and age, that diagnosing the culprit in a suspected poisoning wouldn't be that tricky. Bang the symptoms into a database, plug the blood into a mass spec and spot the toxin.
Read the column here.
The Queen of pop was right when she told us we're living in a material world. Madonna herself isn't here at the Materials Research Society's fall meeting in sunny Boston, but it's obvious that materials science (which seems to mainly mean nanotech) is absoulutely everywhere.
Want better memory storage from your CDs? Then use materials science to build clever patterened surfaces for the discs.
Want to build a brain? You could do worse than going along to the session about interfacing silicon with neurons. And how about this one: mapping nanoscale displacements during loading of human teeth. What can it mean?
I have even had an invitation to go and hear how nanotechnology can save the National Grid. I am intrigued...
Join Katharine Sanderson at the Materials Research Society fall meeting in Boston. She'll be blogging here from 27 November to 1 December.
Thunderstorms on the giant planet may cause puzzling streaks in its rings.
The mysterious spokes in Saturn's rings may be created by massive thunderstorms in the planet's atmosphere.
Read the story here.
Genetic analysis turns up three new species.
The number of known species of the mouse lemur, the world's smallest primate, has increased by 25% with the description of three new species, bringing the total to 15.
Read the story here.
Breeding can repair a poor mutation in cultivated crops.
When ancient farmers first domesticated wheat some 10,000 years ago, they were trying to breed a crop perfectly suited to making food. But it seems that somewhere along the line, farmers unwittingly took out a gene that packs the plant full of goodness. Now researchers have found a way to fix that old mistake and put the nutrients back.
Read more here
Soils lacking sulphur may increase carcinogens in crops.
Not enough sulphur in the wheat can spell 'probable carcinogen' in the bun, according to new research.
Read the story here.
Lights, camera, pipette... online journal aims to put science in pictures.
Cemile Guldal pays attention to details. Her tattoo of a DNA double-helix, for example, doesn't wrap quite all the way around her right arm because doing so would have distorted the major and minor grooves of the helix. And that simply wouldn't do.
Read the story here
Stem-cell research uncovers the heart's foundations.
Researchers have uncovered a 'master' stem cell responsible for producing all the major tissues of the heart.
Click here to read the story
NASA scientists may give up hope on old craft, but welcome new one.
NASA scientists say they may have to bid farewell to a dear old friend — Mars Global Surveyor (MGS). NASA lost contact with the craft on 2 November as it was coming out from behind Mars, just five days before the tenth anniversary of its launch. The last they heard from it was a possible faint signal on 5 November.
Read the story here.
Surprisingly large segments of DNA found to differ from person to person.
Nearly six years after the sequence of the human genome was sketched out, one might assume that researchers had worked out what all that DNA means. But a new investigation has left them wondering just how similar one person's genome is to another's.
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Cosmonaut space stunt will put balls into orbit.
What would you do if you were taking a stroll in space? Take some souvenir snaps? Do some somersaults in zero gravity? Or perhaps you would practice your golf swing.
Read the story here.
On this week's Nature Podcast we develop a taste for synaesthesia, discover colon cancer stem cells and human genome variation, hear how your genes could help you conquer mountains, find out what tsunamis can do to coral reefs, and take a look at some real-time molecular movies.
THIS WEEK'S TOPIC FOR DISCUSSION: Creationism vs. Evolution correspondence - is Nature the right place for the debate?
To SUBSCRIBE to the Nature Podcast for FREE copy and paste this URL into iTunes or your preferred media player or RSS reader:
http://www.nature.com/nature/podcast/rss/nature.xml
Triumph and despair alter fishes' future behaviour.
You might be forgiven for thinking that fish have no personality. But according to biologists in Britain, not only do different trout have different characters, but these change as the fish experience life's highs and lows.
Read the story here.
International participants confirm their commitment to the ITER project.
What is ITER?
ITER is a giant, 5 billion (US$6 billion) machine designed to prove that fusion power can work. It will use magnetic fields to confine hydrogen isotopes and heat them to hundreds of millions of degrees Celcius. If all goes well, the isotopes will fuse together — producing some 500 megawatts of power in the process.
Read the briefing here.
UK museum's decision rattles researchers.
The origins of the small collection of bones that will soon travel from London's Natural History Museum (NHM) to Tasmania say much about why the journey has taken so long to come about — and is still so controversial. One skull comes from an unnamed Tasmanian aboriginal woman, shot by a white settler and later decapitated. The curatorial description for another set of remains notes coolly that: "There has been white settlement of Tasmania since 1802. The remnants of the blacks being removed from the island in 1831."
Read the story here.
It took nearly two weeks, but the results of one of the tightest Congressional races are finally out. Incumbent Rep. Heather Wilson, a Republican, has fought off Patricia Madrid, her Democratic challenger, to represent New Mexico's 1st congressional district in the House of Representatives. County election officials certified yesterday that Wilson beat Madrid by 875 votes -- in an election where roughly 211,000 votes were cast.
Nature profiled this race in its midterm election special because of two science issues: Wilson was one of many Republicans who split with President Bush over the issue of embryonic stem-cell research, and Madrid made climate change a major portion of her platform.
Looks like stem cells beat climate change for now.
The Fountain explores the roles of science and spirituality in understanding life.
A movie out this week in the United States seeks to explore mankind's persistent struggle against death, through a triple-stranded plot in three different eras. In The Fountain, Hugh Jackman plays a sixteenth-century conquistador searching for the fountain of youth; a twenty-first-century neurologist who's researching brain tumors because his wife has one; and a beatific astronaut in the future, who flies through nebulas in a more spiritual pursuit of the meaning of life.
Read the story here.
Engineered cottonseed has protein without poisons.
Researchers have genetically engineered cotton plants that produce toxin-free seeds, potentially unlocking enough nutritional content to feed half a billion people worldwide each year.
Read the story here.
But Nairobi conference leaves open the question of what happens after Kyoto.
A roadmap for the expansion of the Kyoto protocol, including ways to assist developing countries adapt to the effects of climate change, was reached at the United Nations climate-change conference that concluded in Nairobi, Kenya, this weekend.
But there was little movement on deciding what to do after the Kyoto agreement expires in 2012. Despite general agreement that global emissions need to fall drastically, all that the parties specifically decided upon in this regard was a comprehensive review in 2008 to focus on future commitments.
Read the story here.
Damaging wave hit after warnings were called off, despite accurate predictions.
When the tsunami hit California's Crescent City, harbour-master Richard Young was sitting in his office, gazing out the window at the 200-boat harbour. He wasn't surprised when the first surge arrived at around 11:30 PST on Wednesday morning — he'd been warned that it would come at about 11:38.
Read the story here.
New vaccine programme could rid the world of polio soon.
Polio has been making a comeback in India, but researchers say that a new vaccination campaign has a very good chance of finally eradicating the disease, by the end of the decade.
Read the story here.
Ancient supernovae show that mysterious force existed early in Universe.
Astronomers have determined that dark energy, a force that counters gravity, existed at least 9 billion years ago. And the mysterious force seems to have been much the same then, in the infancy of our 13.7-billion-year-old Universe, as it is today.
Read the story here.
American scientist reports setbacks at plutonium plant.
North Korea's plutonium production facilities are facing problems, says a prominent US weapons scientist who visited the country earlier this month.
Read the story here.
Must...keep...going...complete...mission.
Josh Bongard's robots walk, but they do not stride. They flop, wiggle, and scrape their way along on four, starfish-like legs. But what these robots lack in grace, they make up for in ingenuity.
Read the story here.
Gas guzzlers highlight need for new technologies.
An economic assessment predicts that the number of private cars on the world's roads will skyrocket from today's figure of just over 600 million to between 1.4 and 2.7 billion by 2050, doubling or quadrupling their carbon dioxide emissions.
Read the story here.
On this week's Nature Podcast we discover ways to treat muscular dystrophy and healing a broken heart, take a special look at secrets of synaesthesia, and have more on H5N1 mutations, Palaeolithic infant burials, and the quest for Neanderthal DNA.
This week's topic for discussion: Did humans and Neanderthals interbreed?
To SUBSCRIBE to the Nature Podcast for FREE copy and paste this URL into iTunes or your preferred media player or RSS reader:
http://www.nature.com/nature/podcast/rss/nature.xml
Dogs with muscular dystrophy walk better after injections.
An infusion of stem cells scraped from blood vessels has helped dogs with a form of muscular dystrophy to walk more normally, perhaps heralding a treatment for the human disease.
Read the story here.
Carbon nanotech may have given swords of Damascus their edge
Think carbon nanotubes are new-fangled? Think again. The Crusaders felt the might of the tube when they fought against the Muslims and their distinctive, patterned Damascus blades.
Read the story here
Policy experts call for measures to go even further.
Climate policy experts have cautiously welcomed the British government's newly announced plan to make drastic cuts to the country's greenhouse-gas emissions over the next half-century.
Read more here
As scientists debate the risks of nanotech, Philip Ball warns that the major impacts of emerging technologies have rarely been spotted in advance.
In today's issue of Nature, an international team of scientists presents a five-point scheme for "the safe handling of nanotechnology". "If the global research community can rise to the challenges we have set," they say, "then we can surely look forward to the advent of safe nanotechnologies."
Read the story here.
Giant quake generates alert but only small waves.
A gigantic magnitude-8.1 earthquake in Japan today triggered warnings of a tsunami and a call for limited evacuation, although the waves that hit land only measured tens of centimetres at their highest.
Read the story here.
Life may be the ultimate in planetary stress relief, a new theory claims.
The appearance of life on Earth seems to face so many obstacles — sourcing the right ingredients, for example, and arranging them into living things (while being bombarded by meteorites) — that scientists often feel forced to regard it as almost miraculous. Now two US researchers suggest that, on the contrary, it may have been inevitable.
Read more here