Nature Newsblog
« February 2007 | Main | April 2007 »
John Whitfield wonders why fringe fantasies get attracted to the edges of the Earth.
After the initial flurry of interest, International Polar Year (IPY, launched this March) seems to have gone a bit quiet. I propose pepping things up with a good conspiracy theory.
Read the column here.
PlayStation-3 owners chip in to help research projects.
Computer-game consoles most commonly associated with killing aliens may soon be used to actually search for them. At the same time, they could also help to cure Alzheimer's disease, carry out climate predictions and malaria epidemiology, and study gravity waves.
Members of the Caudwell Xtreme Everest expedition, testing human adaptation to hypoxia on the roof of the world, write a diary blog for Nature from 30 March, 2007.
Sat in the Namche Bazaar Bakery Nepal with some particularly fine apple pie, I watch with amazement as our 20 tons of equipment slowly makes its way up the Khumbu Valley. Exercise bikes, tanks of gas, centrifuges, an arterial blood gas machine and over a hundred litres of liquid nitrogen snaking their way along the path courtesy of the local yaks and porters. Such a caravan is quite a sight even in this part of the world; a place where the bizarre becomes an everyday occurrence after spending enough time here. There aren’t many other places where you’ll see people walk past you carrying a freezer or a washing machine on their back as part of a day’s work.
All this equipment is currently being moved from its former home in London to six semi-permanent physiology laboratories in Nepal spanning altitudes of 1,300 to 8,000m above sea level. This huge logistical challenge will form the foundations for the Caudwell Xtreme Everest project, the largest high altitude volunteer study ever to be undertaken. Its purpose is to study the process of adaptation to the hypoxia experienced at high altitude in a large group of volunteers as they trek up the Khumbu valley to Everest Base Camp at 5,300m.
Two hundred and twenty subjects are already enrolled into the study. The baseline sea level testing has been completed in London and we are now in the midst of setting up the high altitude laboratories in Nepal.
The first two laboratories have been successfully constructed and field tested; one in Kathmandu (1,300m) and another in Namche Bazaar (3,400m). Both locations are fully functional physiology laboratories capable of performing cardiopulmonary exercise testing, venesection [surgically cutting into a vein], blood processing and cold storage, spirometry [measuring the breath] and a number of other more specialised investigations. They have their own mains power systems, are permanently staffed by experts in their field and have resident medical cover should the need arise. During the next ten days or so we will be completing studies in Namche Bazaar then continuing our journey in order to set up two further laboratories, one in Pheriche (4,300m) and the other at Everest Base Camp (5,300m).
If setting up four independent high altitude field laboratories in a matter of weeks were not enough, the remaining task is to set up two more laboratories on the mountain. One will be in the Western Cwm (6,400m) and the final one on the South Col (8,000m); an environment so harsh that survival there can be measured in hours rather than days. The thought of climbing to 8,000m is daunting enough without the knowledge that once there we have to assemble an exercise bike, then convince a laptop computer and some very sophisticated breath-by-breath gas analysis equipment to function. Only then do we get the pleasure of performing an exercise test to exhaustion at an altitude where putting a pair of boots on can take over an hour.
So many questions must be surfacing in the minds of the reader. Why on earth are they bothering to go to such enormous lengths to study the physiology of those fortunate enough to be trekking and climbing in Nepal this year? What use are the results of this to anyone outside of the world of high altitude adventurers? Surely this is just another excuse for a group of doctors to take time off work and perform some half-hearted research in order to satisfy their own desires…
Hopefully over the coming weeks we will be able to tell the story of why we have spent the last few years putting together this study and why its results will benefit the field of critical care medicine for many years to come. We will also be able to keep you up-to-date on how the studies are progressing in this unusual environment.
Next week we’ll explain what it is we are investigating and how this is relevant to life at sea level for those who also suffer the effects of hypoxia as a result of disease.
Dan Martin
Molecular biologist and intensive care registrar
University College London Institute for Human Health and Performance
A team of doctors, scientists and mountaineers are attempting to summit Everest this spring. As if that weren’t hard enough, they’re taking an exercise bike with them.
Together the group hopes to take some novel measurements of the blood’s oxygen content at high altitude, to understand more about the body’s response to hypoxia. The data they gather should help in the treatment of critical care patients down here at sea level, who also have problems shuttling enough oxygen around their bodies.
Today the group writes to Nature from Namche Bazaar, the village that serves as gateway to the high Himalayas. And they’ll keep sending us reports as the expedition continues; check the Nature newsblog for the science team’s diary entries.
For more about the science behind this expedition, read our news story from October 2006.
And find out more about the project on the Cauldwell Xtreme Everest site.
Mediterranean corals could strip, but not die, in response to climate change.
Reef-building corals may be more resilient against climate change than scientists had previously thought. Researchers have discovered that some species are able to survive an increase in seawater acidity, even though it strips the individual coral polyps of their protective calcium carbonate skeletons. This may be good news for individual polyps, but it doesn't change the gloomy outlook for reef ecosystems.
The caution of climate scientists is commendable even if caution is out of fashion, says Philip Ball.
Jim Hansen is no stranger to controversy. Ever since the 1980s he has been much more outspoken about the existence and perils of human-induced climate change than most of his scientific colleagues. A climate modeller at NASA's Goddard Institute for Space Studies in New York, Hansen has flawless credentials to speak about climate change, and has fought for his right to do so.
I leave for the UK soon. It's been a great meeting, and it's actually still going on, but the last day is always a bit odd, everything seems to close - the expo has packed up, the press room is shut (i'm writing this at the general email point and I think am annoying everyone by taking so long and hogging the computer - oops).
So, until next time, farewell...
Things are winding down here. I just went along to the session on cold fusion (read the story here), but my expert timing meant that i arrived just in time for the break. Never mind, I was treated to an advance showing of one of the talks yesterday. I have to admit, I was sceptical, but this is pretty cool stuff. As Frank Gordon, one of the cold fusion scientists said to me, "this actually looks like real science" - and he's right.
In spite of all the disdain that the field is treated with, the cold fusion people I met were all very positive cheerful people, all completely convinced by their research and with what look like compelling arguments. Even the programme chair for this session (not a cold fusion scientist) told me that he was impressed by the results being presented. He's keeping an open mind on the matter. That's quite a way for the field to come since it was laughed almost out of existance in 1989. Gordon was keen to tell me that since they have been quietly plugging away at their work they have not come under attack in the same way Pons and Fleischmann did. "The silence has been deafening" he said.
Cold fusion? I don't know, but the evidence that something weird is happening is there. Maybe it's time to think about this again...
Chemistry meeting grants audience to low-energy nuclear work.
After an 18-year hiatus, the American Chemical Society (ACS) seems to be warming to cold fusion. Today that society is holding a symposium at their national meeting in Chicago, Illinois, on 'low-energy nuclear reactions', the official name for cold fusion.
Read the story here
Hello y'all. Apologies for the lack of posts today, I've been imerssed in the world of cold fusion - more of which tomorrow. As such I haven't been to any sessions, which is disappointing, and the conference is almost over - it's certainly winding down. Apparently the ACS bigwigs are already back at home. Bt the conference still has one day to run. It's going to be quite eerie in the cavernous conference venue if the exodus continues at present rates. More tomorrow....
This week the Nature Podcast unravels sex discrimination in fruit flies, pieces together a mammalian family tree, and finds out how to predict the next big epidemic.
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
The mass extinction 65 million years ago had little effect on today's mammals.
The extinction of the dinosaurs had little impact on the evolution of today's mammals, say researchers. After building a family tree of nearly every living mammal, they show that the main groups arose millions of years before the dinosaurs went extinct, and did not become dominant until millions of years after they disappeared.
Read the story here.
Maps provide friendly — but rough — view of global emissions.
It's still pretty raw, but an online tool to track carbon dioxide emissions is being set up by the US government. The new CarbonTracker website (http://carbontracker.noaa.gov ) is meant to provide a public-friendly view of greenhouse-gas emissions from various sources around the world. The snapshot here shows CO2 uptake for a week in July 2005 - dark blue represents the strongest CO2 sinks.
Read the story here.
International health agencies sing praises of surgical procedure.
The United Nations (UN) has recommended circumcision as a means of reducing the risk of HIV infection in heterosexual men. The announcement should pave the way for African governments to incorporate the practice into their AIDS-prevention strategies.
Read the story here.
Invasive amphibians could double their present extent in Australia, study warns.
Since cane toads were introduced to Australia in 1935, they have colonized 1.2 million square kilometres of that country — an area greater than that of France and Spain combined. But they might just be getting started, says an analysis that suggests they could double their current range.
Read more here.
Was On the Origin of Species really delayed by religious fears?
Did Darwin delay publishing his theory of evolution by natural selection because he feared an outcry from the establishment? This has been a popular belief, and has been stoked by the fact that although Darwin began formulating the theory in 1837, he did not publish On the Origin of Species until 1859.
Read the story here.
There was a chance for us to "meet George Whitesides" today. It was great idea - like a book signing by some celebrity chef or something. Having never met the great man myself I pottered over to the exhibition room and was amused by the long line of people queuing to get their special issue of Chemical and Engineering News signed.
(For those of you who don't know who Whitesides is - he's a professor at Harvard who has the widest ranging research areas I know of - and is doing some interesting work in the chemistry of the origins of life. He's a hero to many young chemists)
I decided not to join the queue, as it didn't seem like i was going to get a chance to really meet the man hiself other than to say "Hello, I'm Katharine, from Nature". Still, I hope everyone else was happy. Whitesides himself seemed to be enjoying himself. I even saw one fan who'd had his shirt signed. Has chemistry just gone rock and roll? Yeehah.
Polymer technology could speed ships by stopping critters clinging on
Barnacles will no longer slow down ships if the latest polymer coatings being developed live up to expectations.
read the story here
The Sci Mix poster session last night was hot, sweaty, and yet again underground with no natural light. I think I'm going to turn into a mole. And what's this? Free beer at the poster session? Hooray. But there was a catch - you needed tokens, and my humble press registration didn't include any. Thankfully the look of horror on my face when i realised this prompted the nice man standing behind me in the queue to donate one of his tokens. Thanks very much.
The session had some interesting posters - here's a brief run down of my faves.... (oh, and watch out for a news story on the news@nature site later on one of them)
"was Boltzmann wrong?" screamed one poster. Well, i couldn't quite remember what Boltzmann had done apart from have a constant named after him, and the details of that were hazy. Wikipedia tells me it's the physical constant that relates temperature to energy. So was he wrong? No, it turns out, he just didn't have to consider nanoscale properties.
Another poster was looking at using titanium dioxide to neutralise astronaut's waste. And i don't mean their used teabags. Yuck. But i suppose they can't all wear nappies all the time.
There was a great poster that detailed how barnacles can be kept off ship's hulls - but i will let you check back later to read a news piece about that...
Using sunlight to split water is a monster job, but a team of chemists is striving to crack this problem in their attempt to save the world.
Daniel Nocera, at MIT, has taken the latest step in his part of the project, known as “Powering the planet”. His task is to find a catalyst to make oxygen molecules once the water has been split into its constituent parts (hydrogen and oxygen). Elsewhere, Harry Gray at Caltech is looking for a hydrogen catalyst, and the final part of the puzzle, the photovoltaic medium that will separate the two catalysts is being investigated by Nathan Lewis.
In case that didn't make sense, the three-part system works like this: sunlight hits the PV material, which converts the light into current - or holes and electrons. The holes go towards the oxygen catalyst, where water is split into oxygen. The remaining protons scoot off to the hydrogen catalyst to be turned into molecular hydrogen, which can be stored in some other molecular form until the energy is needed.
Yesterday’s afternoon session was something of a double act between Nocera and Gray, both doing incredible chemistry, and both very funny men. Nocera showed us his various oxygen-trapping molecules, one called a ‘Hangman’ and one ‘Pacman’. He is about to publish the hangman version – which is based on a stripped down version of cytochrome p450. In it, a water molecule dangles above an oxygen atom – hard to do apparently. This isn’t going to be the final answer, but Nocera says it’s important because it highlights that key intermediates in these energetically uphill processes are being identified.
Nocera also showed his ruthenium pacman catalyst candidate, and hinted to me after the session that this might just be the catalyst that works. How intriguing. Except, it isn't strictly true - because an environmentally friendly catalyst is never goin to be ruthenium based - it needs to be a metal that can be dug out of the ground - iron or manganese, perhaps.
But Nocera's claims will please Harry Gray, who spent a lot of his talk (that he described as “the technical version of Dan’s talk”) reminding Nocera that an oxygen catalyst was needed – and soon.
I'm very interested to see what happens as these three elements conitue to be developed. Nocera is certain that if (and it's a big if) the chemistry community really take this idea seriously, we could have our solar powered water-splitting energy supply within 10 years. I'm going to be paying close attention.
One month on, Indonesian physicists think their concrete plan might be working.
Physicists in Indonesia are about to embark on the second phase of their effort to smother a mud volcano with chains of concrete balls. The physicists say their plan might be working, although it is too early to tell for certain.
Read the story here.
I turned my back on academia a few years ago, but i still like to think i have a modicum of intelligence... So why, in my hotel does the non-dairy creamer have a note on it that says "contains milk"? huh?
Marmoset families have mixed-up genetics.
As a general rule, a man who learns that his children are genetically his brother's offspring would have good cause for distress. But for one group of primates, that wouldn't necessarily mean that mum has been unfaithful, a new study finds.
Read the story here.
Hermaphrodite reveals previously unknown type of twinning.
Researchers have discovered a pair of twins who are identical through their mother's side, but share only half their genes on their father's side.
Read the story here.
A pharma giant's decision to withhold new drugs from Thailand will only hurt patients, says Apoorva Mandavilli.
Is there ever a good enough reason to deny life-saving medicines to an entire country's citizens?
I say no. But it seems a pharmaceutical giant begs to differ.
Read the column here.
Researchers to be removed from study of Tamiflu's side effects.
Japan's health ministry is expected to remove two researchers from its eight-member study group on influenza, because their normal research was partly funded by a Japanese distributor of the flu drug Tamiflu.
Read the story here.
"When the moon hits your eye like a big pizza pie, That's amore..."
So sang Dean Martin. What's a pizza pie? I often wondered. Now I know - cos I've just had some - it's just a pizza with a massive crust, and miraculously by the power of chemistry that very crust was pumping me full of antioxidants.
Yes, the life of a journalist is a tough one. Here in the ACS press room we are given free pizza. Hooray. But of course, there is no such thing as a free lunch. The pizza was to highlight graduate student Jeffery Moore's research at the University of Maryland. He has tinkered with baking conditions and fermentation processes in dough and shown that longer baking times and higher temperatures lead to more antioxidants forming in the dough.
And that is the very dough they fed us. It might make up for the lack of natural light here in the journalist's cave - surely being outside in the sun and all that vitamin D would be better for us than a pile of greasy pizza - antioxidants or not?
I wouldn't normally go to the health and safety talks, but this one struck a personal chord with me. "Explosion in a refrigerator results in college laboratory fire". Hey, it could happen to anyone. Really, I didn't know that the fridge hadn't been made chemistry-safe. Really, IT COULD HAPPEN TO ANYONE....
... Anyway, on with the story. Lawrence Stephens is professor of natural sciences at Elmira College (apparently the first college to offer degrees to women that were equivalent to men's degrees).
Larry had high hopes for one of his students to crack a particularly tricky chemical synthesis, and was thrilled that said student wanted to do extra work over Thanksgiving. When that student asked if he could leave his solution in the fridge as a final attempt for it to crystalise, Larry said "sure".
It turns out that there was a miscommunication about which fridge was to be used, and the student popped his solution (2 litres of pentane) into a normal fridge in the basic science lab - which also had hydrogen peroxide in it. And the door was firmly closed for 3 days or so. This resulted in a major explosion that gutted the undergrad teaching lab (on a positive note, a brand new and very swanky new lab was built as a replacement).
Now for that personal chime I felt. During my PhD a similar - almost identical thing happened to me. The fridge in my lab - unbeknownst to me - had not been modified so had working electrics inside that cause low flash-point solvents to spark. Oops. My lovely dichloromethane solution never did give me the nice crystals I wanted. But i guess, like Larry, i did get a new lab. (sorry Brian).
As Larry put it, there is a lesson to be learned "we shouldn't have household refrigerators in our labs". Wise words indeed.
An ancient theatre filters out low-frequency background noise.
The wonderful acoustics for which the ancient Greek theatre of Epidaurus is renowned may come from exploiting complex acoustic physics, new research shows.
Read the story here.
“Ladybird, ladybird, fly away home, your house is on fire and your children are gone…”
Always one of my favourite nursery rhymes, possibly for the gruesome reason that I thought it suggested that all the baby bugs were dead. (And before I delve deeper into this subject of ladybirds I might have to clarify for non-brits that the ladybird is more commonly known in North America as the ladybug, and I will switch to that definition for the rest of this post).
Did you know that the cutest red and black spotted bug is the enemy of another of my favourite things – wine? “Ladybug taint” is responsible for a stench in wine that makes it unmarketable. Bad news, then.
A researcher at the University of Iowa, Lingshuang Cai, has looked at live asian ladybugs and taken precise mass spectrometry measurements of the stuff to come out of their heads. She and her team simultaneously sniffed the bugs as they were mass spec-ed.
This combination of sophisticated machinery/human discernment led Cai to identify 38 different smells. Impressive. And four of these were new ones in a class of stinky compounds called methoxypyrazines (MPs). The main culprit for ladybug taint is the catchy IPMP (2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine), which was present in the ladybug headspace at a concentration of 0.1626 nanograms/L.
No suggestions given for how to combat any impending ladybug attack, but nice to know what it is that’s causing a stink, I suppose.
(the work was published recently in the Journal of Chromatogrphy A - but you'll need a password to read the whole thing)
Chemistry is great, and I'm not just saying that because I'm at the ACS meeting. Who'd have thought that, in my first hour here, in a crowd of 12,000 (predominately US-based) chemists I should bump into a familiar face - Victor Snieckus, a Canadian-based chemist, originally from the Baltic States, who enthusiastically organises a conference in the Baltic countries every couple of years.
Well, I didn't think it that odd, but according to Snieckus, it is unusual for Canadians to cross the border and venture south to this meeting. That really surprised me, so any Canadian chemists listening, can you let me know why?
I've just been to a great talk about making a fuel cell that can be powered by sugar. I liked this talk for a number of reasons, first because it's a great, simple idea that if developed could be a real commerical success. Second, it was work done by an undergraduate as a research project. What better way to be inspired to carry on in research than to do a tangible project. And one that could perhaps bag someone a lot of money one day.
So here's the story: Tamara Klotzbach, a final year undergrad working with Shelley Minteer at Saint Louis University has developed an enzyme-based electrode fuel cell system that can run on sugary solution, and has so far been used to power a pocket calculator - but the big sell here is the promise that all the trappings of modern life - cell phones, laptops, ipods - could be powered by a can of fizzy pop. Pretty cool, no?
Klotzbach coated an electrode with a conducting polymer, based on the dye Azure C. Onto this she deposited a membrane made from modified chitosan (a complex carbohydrate sometimes made from the shells of shrimps and other crustaceans - tasty). This modified chitosan layer provided a protective environment to store enzymes until they are needed to convert sugar to energy and so power an electrical system. The enzymes (dehydrogenases) are the same as the ones used in our bodies to power us.
Because these are natural enzymes, not highly engineered catalysts, they can work with any natural sugar solution. Including "all the junk that would be in Kool-Aid," Minteer told me. The bad news? Diet drink fans will have to switch to the full-sugar varieties to use this technology - artificial sugars or sweeteners can't be broken down by these enzymes.
Other enzyme fuel cells exist, inculding those under development by Derek Lovley at the University of Massachusets, but Minteer claims the difference with her system is that they isolate the enzymes from cells, rather than just using cells. The improvement she gets is a better efficiency, becuase the enzymes - once released from their protective pockets - can act directly on the sugars rather than having to work their way through the cell walls.
Hello from the American Chemical Society's 2007 spring meeting in Chicago. This is my final destination on a long trip across the pond, and it's great. Chicago is lovely and sunny, and I'm looking forward to a host of chemical revelations at this the most enormous chemistry meeting imaginable.
Just as an aside, I think I was infested by some contaminated lunar dust or something at the first conference of this trip (the LPSC in Texas). So apologies if the first few day's reports from ACS are not the most action-packed imaginable. Normal service will be resumed as soon as possible
Revised league table could reopen debate on drug classification.
British scientists asked by the government to rank the harm of different drugs of abuse today publish their results in the Lancet.
Read the story here.
Researchers turn to saliva to diagnose disease.
It's an often unconsidered gateway to the human body that can reveal whether you're tired, stressed or drunk; how much testosterone, nicotine or caffeine you've ingested; or if you've been infected with HIV, measles or hepatitis. And now, thanks to recent technological advances, scientists are looking to expand the diagnostic range of that most humble of bodily fluids: spit.
Read the story here.
Light microscopes beat the traditional resolution limits.
Microscopes have been fitted out with spectacles that give them better vision than ever before.
Read the story here.
All you need to see more is more pigments in the eye.
Simply by inserting a piece of DNA that codes for a human eye pigment into the genome of a mouse, scientists have introduced a rainbow array of colour to the dull mix of yellows, blues and greys that normally make up a mouse's visual world.
Read the story here.
Vehicle bankrolled by millionaire PayPal-founder nears success.
When a multi-million-dollar launch vehicle burns up in the atmosphere before achieving orbit, the mission might be deemed a failure. Yet space industry experts say that the latest test run by SpaceX, a firm that aims to radically cut the cost and time needed to launch satellites, should be judged a significant success.
Read the story here.
Stunning video of collapsing magnetic arc baffles scientists.
The best images of the Sun yet obtained are now streaming in — and are proving both illuminating and baffling for scientists.
Read the story, and watch video, here.
Brain damage takes the emotion out of decisions.
A runaway train is speeding down the tracks towards five workmen. You and a stranger are standing on a bridge over the track. The only way to save the five is to push the stranger in front of the train to his death, and his body will stop it from reaching them.
Read the story here.
Amplification of light restores limited vision in some damaged retinas.
The first test of an electrically boosted light-sensitive electronic chip implanted into the eye shows that it can restore sight to some blind patients.
Read the story here.
Direction of tail wagging highlights different tasks of brain halves.
Dogs wag their tails to the right when they see something they want to approach, and to the left when confronted with something they want to back away from, say researchers in Italy. The finding provides another example of how the right and left halves of the brain do different jobs in controlling emotions.
Read the story here.
Brute force added to the list of ways to do clever chemistry.
Here's a new trick for making molecules — chemists have succeeded in literally ripping the bonds between atoms apart, rather than using the usual suspects of heat, pressure, light or electricity to drive a chemical reaction.
Read the story here.
Alternative therapies are now a degree subject at some British universities. But do they deserve these credentials? Jim Giles reports.
As debate rages in the United States over whether intelligent design should be taught in science classes, another topic that many researchers see as a pseudoscience is claiming scientific status within the British education system.
Read the story here.
This week the Nature Podcast practices chemistry without protection, solves a tectonic teaser, and debates whether homeopathy is harmless superstition or dangerous pseudoscience.
TELL US WHAT YOU THINK: Is homeopathy fact or fiction? Superstition or pseudoscience? Read the special report and Commentary on the subject, and join the debate here.
(most comments on this topic are on another thread, here)
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
Fossilized family broadens picture of extinct reptiles.
The discovery of a dinosaur family fossilized in its burrow could make us rethink where the animals lived, how they behaved, and even what wiped them out, say researchers.
Read more here.
Law of physics could break down on the equinox.
On 21 March — the spring equinox — something very strange may happen. In two particular places on Earth, objects might start to move without any force acting on them.
Read the story here.
Insects bred to fight disease outlive natural breeds.
Mosquitoes engineered to not transmit malaria fare better than their unaltered siblings, according to new research. The work rekindles hope that transgenic mosquitoes could one day be used to wipe out natural insects in the wild, helping to control the spread of malaria.
Read the story here.
Splinter group from Dahlem Conferences sets up new Frankfurt forum.
Some of the senior players behind an internationally renowned series of interdisciplinary science workshops and publications have decided to strike out on their own with a new organization.
Read the story here.
Map of weird mathematical entity may point way for string theory.
A map of one of the strangest and most complex entities in mathematics should be a powerful new tool for both mathematicians and physicists pursuing a unified theory of space, time and matter.
Read the story here.
Dental arrays may be optimized for sound in shallow waters.
A model of how dolphins may use their teeth to receive sound could provide clues for improving man-made sonar systems, according to a study published in Bioinspiration & Biomimetics1.
Read the story here.
I am getting out of here, the number of people around me coughing their way through the last day of the conference is increasing exponentially, and I refuse to succumb (*cough*... too late?)
... I just looked back over the entries from the conference and spotted a recurring theme - Mars...
... I'm not obsessed, it's just the way things go. Most of the amazing images being sent back happen to be from Mars, and even the Lunar part of the LPSC seems somewhat Mars-focussed. As Ben Bussey - a lunar scientist from the Applied Physical Laboratory told me yesterday, "We're going to the Moon to find out if we can go further," and that includes Mars.
So maybe LPSC's 88th meeting will see me reporting from the surface of the red planet. Well it will certainly look familiar by then thanks to all the images I've seen so far...
See you then. Bye.
Instruments from doomed Mars mission seek a second chance on the Moon.
There's life in the old dog yet: plans are afoot to use duplicates of the Beagle 2's instrumentation to assess conditions for a future Moon base.
Read the story here
Dark 'skylights' could be openings to martian shelters
Some underground martian caves may have been spotted, thanks to 'skylight' holes into the caverns that have been photographed from above.
Read the story here
The second poster session threw up a few treats last night. And not just the beer and snacks (that didn't quite come out right - no one was literally vomiting beer and snacks. Yuck).
Anyway, I was thrilled to see a poster involving Colin Pillinger's long lost friend, Beagle 2. Check out the news story on the website later...
Could Charon, Pluto’s largest moon, have watery volcanos spewing forth as we speak? According to maths, yes, but according to other’s views of geology, no.
Steven Desch at Arizona State University, Tempe, suggests that crystalline water seen at Charon is evidence of cryovolcanism, and he did some mathematical modelling to work out how Charon and other large Kuiper Belt Objects (KBOs), often considered to be geologically dead, could be storing liquid water or ammonia that is able to erupt through the crust even today.
Desch claims that energy is stored at the core of the KBOs and released at a different rate than predicted, and manages to keep the tempeture just right to maintain liquid ammonia temperatures under the crust – even today. This is the hard part, he says. Getting that liquid to the surface isn’t as difficult.
Desch’s model suggested a cut off radius of 500km for KBOs that could support cryovolcanism, any smaller than that and the model didn’t hold. Corroborating his model, he says is the presence of ammonia hydrates on Charon, “They provide a nice antifreeze,” Desch says.
But all is not as it seems. Bill McKinnon, from Washington University in St Louis, told me that as far as he’s concerned, Desch’s model is “geologically impossible”. He doesn’t see how the magma could be hot enough to break throuh the surface of Charon. What is more intriguing to him is the presence of ammonia ice on the surface. “You don’t’ need vulcanism to explain crystalline ice,” McKinnon says, “we see it everywhere”.
Mike Brown, at Caltech (not tempted to attend the Texan gathering), is expert in all things Kuiper (and author of a paper on related Kuiper belt objects that come from the same massive collison - published in Nature yesterday), especially crystalline water. He remains to be convinced. “Cryovolcanism is cool (literally) so everyone wants to jump to that answer, but the real answer is probably much more dull,” he told me. Just because crystalline water ice is everywhere doesn't mean, of course, that cryvolcanism is nowhere, Brown says, but to him it’s clear that the crystalline water ice is not nearly enough evidence to prove the volcano hypothesis.
I didn’t manage to get hold of Desch in person to ask him – so if I learn the real answer I’ll update here…
Oh, and if you didn't know, Charon in Greek mythology was the Ferryman of the dead. Lovely.
Resequencing effort unpicks genetics of body extremes.
Researchers have used a new technique to hunt for rare genetic quirks that explain why some people are extremely fat or very thin.
Read the story here.
Evolution of species is more leisurely in the tropics.
Most people tend to think of the tropics as the hottest scene on the planet when it comes to spawning new life. But Canadian zoologists have found that it is actually the world's temperate zones where new species evolve and become extinct the fastest.
Read the story here.
This morning, in the only session on Astrobiology, John Moores from the University of Arizona suggested that areas of Mars that were sheltered from UV rays could harbour bacteria or other Martian life forms much longer than if they were exposed to the largely unfiltered UV rays that the surface of Mars usually encounters.
Maybe the hardier of bacteria could be surviving underneath the rovers, Moores suggested - although i'm not sure how serious he was. He did caveat that comment by saying it doesn't mean that organics are there - just that subsurface organcis can surface in shady areas.
And speaking of shady areas, and being English, I couldn't help but mention the weather - 3 days of dramatic electrical storms today gave way to glorious sunshine. Even League City, Texas looks nice in the sunshine...
Here's a thought - Jupiter's volcanic moon Io is responsible for most of the rocky stuff on another of Jupiter's moons, Europa. So says Kevin Zahnle of NASA's Ames research center.
Objects crashing into Io cause chunks of basalt to fly off the surface. "Piano-sized stuff," Zahnle told me. Not just piano sized, but fridge or car sized as well.
These secondary ejecta land on Europa bringing what Zahnle said, to ripples of chuckles in the audience, is an important source of vitamins and minerals to Europa. And by mass, these Io remnants are more important for Europa's rockyness than micrometeoroids.
Zahnle insisted that this was just a basic piece of science, "it might not be right," he added. The best way to test will be to check for the basalt signature on Io, he said.
A US study calls for more investment and focus on carbon capture and storage to make for cleaner coal.
After two years of work, an interdisciplinary group of Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) professors released their report on The Future of Coal yesterday in Washington DC, making recommendations about how the United States should use coal for energy.
Read the story here.
Mathematophiles of all ages enjoyed this year's ode to pi.
What is it that draws hundreds of visitors to San Francisco's Exploratorium every March to celebrate Pi Day? The allure of the unknowable? The draw of a mathematical mystery? Sure, all of that, said several participants at yesterday's event, but also the free pie.
Read the feature here.
Last night’s session about lunar missions felt a bit like a grand PR exercise. We were treated to presentations from senior NASA figures about plans to send manned missions to the moon and set up a habitable station there - very exciting it all looked too. But this isn’t news, so I’m not sure why there is a need to keep telling everyone what a good idea it is. The meeting room was certainly not as full as it was for, say the Mars rovers session that morning, so perhaps my cynicism is bordering on being correct.
The way NASA are selling manned missions to the Moon is by saying that they are a forerunner for going to Mars. “We have to re-learn the art of exploration,” NASA’s John Connolley said. And to do that NASA is building a massive rocket – Ares V.
When asked how much the giant Ares V would cost, James Green, director of NASA's Planetary Science Division enigmatically replied, "Yes, we do have an idea of how much Ares V will cost..."
Again, trying to reach Mars via the Moon isn't news, but it raised some interesting questions in the post-presentation grilling session. What i learned was that there is no specific crew training going on yet to prepare people to live on the Moon for long periods; the ISS will be supported by private enterprises and international partners once the Shuttle programme is decommissioned in 3 year's time; and a robotic precursor programme for Moon landings is also going to be an international effort, discusssed just last week at a meeting in Kyoto. (I wonder whether "international effort" is code for anything...)
There is money up for grabs to help us get to the Moon. Green repeated his call from Monday evening, by encouraging researchers to apply for money in the LASER (Lunar Advanced Science and Exploration Research) programme. 1,2 or 3 year programmes worth $2 -3 million per year are available.
But as the presentations wore on, i looked around the room to see that most of it's inhabitatants had sloped off early...
Plate-tectonics study could explain why some mountains are higher than expected.
A three-dimensional model of our planet's plate tectonics could help to explain why the Andes mountain range is taller than geologists would predict: it could all be down to the long length of the South American continent.
Read the story here.
Ah, those Mars rovers. Still struggling on, and still finding new ways to excite their masters. This time Spirit's broken front right wheel has churnded up the soil as it is being dragged along the ground, instead of wheeling nicely, to reveal some interesting geology.
The front right wheel packed up a year ago, and since then Spirit has been dragging itself backwards, with the broken wheel in tow. How annoying. But no! How wonderful - the ever-optimistic Mars scientists have used Spirit's misfortune to study the churned-up soil captured inside its pumpkin-like wheels.
And in that wheel Spirit found sulfur-rich salts of iron and calcium.
There's always a silver lining, Steve Squyres, PI on the rovers project said. With Spirit's broken wheel "we're going to dig a 100's of metres long trench," he told the throng gathered in this morning's session.
There are a couple of theories abou the origin of the sulfate salts. They were either concentrated by hydrothermal vents, or left behind by volcanoes, says Ray Arvidson of Washington University, St. Louis, the rover's deputy PI.
Spirit's sibling, Opportunity, has also been busy sending back some cracking images of the edge of Victoria Crater. Read more later on that... if i can get my hands on the images.
Lots of the scientists at this meeting are sporting natty mission-related t-shirts. It's like a school uniform, so far I've seen Phoenix shirts, HiRISE shirts, Mars Rover shirts, as well as any number of plain old NASA t-shirts. If anyone knows how i can get hold of, say, a HiRISE shirt (actually, I'm not fussy - any will do), please let me know. I feel a little underdressed...
Stunning footage of the surface of Mars has been filmed — sort of
Read the story here
This week the Nature Podcast witnesses the results of some astronomical collisions, explores the roots of flowering plants, uncovers the legacy of Carl Linnaeus and studies swarms of mini-earthquakes.
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
At the poster session last night, amidst the free beer and snacks, there was some confusion (at least to me) about where to try and land on Mars.
Two posters, right next to each other, both addressed potential sites for the Phoenix lander to touch down after it launches late in 2009. The mission's aim is to dig beneath the surface of Mars and do some indepth chemical analysis of the surface - and any underlying ice.
Three likely candidates had already been identified, all relatively close to one another. Tim Titus from the USGS used thermal inertia measurements of the surface of these three areas and said that none of them had more than about 7cm of topsoil above the ice, and suggested that maybe these weren't the best places to start digging.
But exhibiting a poster next to Titus's was Peter Smith, principal investigator on the Phoenix mission. The decision about where to land has already been taken, he says, and the two sites that Titius suggested had the least topsoil had already been ruled out.
But digging deep isn't the primary objective of the mission, says Smith, "safe landing is the primary consideration." And Smith is confident that the slightly rugged nature of th planet will give Phoenix a good chance of landing on a crack that will give more than the 7cm of soil Titus predicts.
And will Phoenix give us a chance to find life on Mars? Smith's personal opinion is "maybe". He thinks that as the planet's obliquity, or tilt, changes, the ice will get a bit slushy on the top. If this process cycles back and forth, bacteria could be popped in and out of habitable conditions. And Smith thinks that his favoured landing site offers a good chance to find signatures of life. "Of all the places I've heard about this is the place to go," he says.
The thing I find fascinating about space science is the enthusiam for uncertainty in the results.
For example, in a talk by Ralph Lorenz from Johns Hopkins University, about mapping Titan's mountains and channels using spectrometry results from VIMS, he optimistically announced that a sure sign an instrument is working well is when the first results from it make no sense.
His explanation is that when you haven't observed the results before, it is because previoiusly unprobed subtleties are now being, err, probed.
He did have some interesting results - showing that Titan has mountainous regions ("Titan is pretty flat - except where it isn't") that bump up its average radius to 2575.5 km - 0.5 km bigger than previous data from Voyager suggested.
His IR data was coupled to Radar data, and this is a trend at the meeting, and likely to be the way of future LPSC meetings. Using data from mutliple instruments to cross check, verufy and enhance results.
UK politicians aim to lead the world on long-term carbon cuts.
The British government today revealed its draft climate bill, which sets out plans for a 60% cut in carbon dioxide emissions by 2050. The bill makes Britain the first major economy to lay out a comprehensive scheme for making wholesale greenhouse-gas reductions.
Read more here
Mutations could make recent tuberculosis vaccines less powerful than older ones.
Genetic changes in a commonly used vaccine for tuberculosis could be contributing to its spotty performance, new research suggests.
Read the story here.
Study adds to concerns over drug link to Alzheimer's.
Exposure to widely used anaesthetic drugs increases production of a brain protein thought to cause Alzheimer's disease, a study of mice has shown. The research feeds concern that general anaesthesia may be linked to dementia in humans.
Read the story here.
The CRISM mission has been gathering data at Mars for only a few months, and already scientists are working hard to interpret what is being sent back.
Shannon Pelkey, from Brown University, has been involved with the mission since 2003. Since CRISM began it's first sceince orbit in November, she has been copmaring data with other images from Omega, a spectrometer onboard ESA's Mars Express.
The spectra being returned are offering more insight into the ancient crust of the red planet. Pelkey saw that in two different exposed areas of Mars - a deep eroded area in the Northern hempsiphere, and a shallow impact crater in the southern highlands - deep down clay from the most ancient era of Mars's history has been exposed.
Clay is a marker for water - because it can only form when water is there, and it seems to always show up in the most ancient material on the planet, Pelkey says. Above the clay, she saw another mineral - olivine. But as yet the data can't be used to say whether this pattern is ubiquitous on the planet. On some central peaks the same features can't be seen, for example.
Luckily, CRISM is only a few months into its nominal 2 year science mission. Pelkey anticipates some serious quantities of data to start flowing soon, and with it some significant evidence for the climate history of Mars. We await the results with eager anticipation.
Welcome to this year's Lunar and Planetary Science Conference. I'm looking forward to seeing lots of pretty pictures and seeing new data from various missions currently doing their stuff above us and around us. It's my first time in Texas, and apparently there be alligators here, although maybe someone was just trying to scare me by saying that...
It worked - in my jet-lagged state this morning, for a second thought there was a croc in my room. Actually, there was an incredible storm wreaking havoc outside,it might even have prompted a tornado warning. Apparently the LPSC is known for it's bad luck with the weather - an LPSC stalwart told me that the conference has been flooded every 5 years. Or was that 5 times in recent years, I forget. Anyway, there was a lot of rain, thunder, lightning. Spectacular.
Get all the latest news from our Solar System and beyond, from the Lunar and Planetary Science Conference in Houston. Katharine Sanderson will be filing diary reports here from 12-16 March.
Drug can clear away one fearful memory while leaving another intact.
A single, specific memory has been wiped from the brains of rats, leaving other recollections intact.
Read the story here.
If addiction's the problem, says Phil Ball, prohibition's not the answer.
This week the Chinese government announced that it will freeze the opening of any new Internet cafés for a year from July 2007. This restriction on computer access has inevitably been interpreted as a further attempt by the Chinese authorities to control and censor politically sensitive information. But the government claims that the move is to protect susceptible teenagers from becoming addicted to games, chatrooms and online porn.
Read the column here.
Mega-expressway may threaten endangered birds.
Conflicts between environmental goals and construction work may be a dime a dozen. But it isn't very often that the European Commission threatens a government with a court injunction to make road workers step down in favour of preserving nature.
Read the story here.
A billion dollars needed to spot potential killer impacts.
Astronomers trying to save the world from Earth-threatening asteroids have this week composed a white paper outlining the threat and what needs to be done about it.
Read the story here.
The switching of the poles can be studied in a tub of molten metal.
Every few hundred thousand years or so, the Earth's north and south magnetic poles switch places. No one knows what triggers these geomagnetic field reversals, but a team in France has now reproduced them in the lab.
Read the story here.
Alright blog readers, I'm off. I'll see you all next year!
The APS’s congressional relations people were out in force, trying to get physicists to write letters to their congress people,and implore them for cash. As a rule, the physics community is pretty good at making their funding voices heard. But condensed matter researchers appear apathetic: as of yesterday afternoon, just 900 of the roughly 7,300 people who showed up bothered to sign letters.
One thing that was clear in a session last night (in which I participated) is that physicists will need to speak much more loudly to the new congress if they want their voices heard over competing interest like Iraq, health care and education.
But, at this meeting at least, that didn't seem to grab people's attention. Maybe it’s the lack of big machines, or the fact that the field itself isn’t very cohesive. Whatever the reason, Mike Lubell, APS’s head of public affairs, says he hopes to boost participation next year.
Single entangled photons travel 144 km through the air.
A team of European physicists has successfully transmitted a secure quantum 'key' between two of the Canary Islands, opening the possibility of long-distance, wireless quantum cryptography.
Read the story here.
Bursts of scent during the night can help solidify learning.
It's often said that optimistic people look at the world through rose-tinted spectacles. Now it seems that rose-tinted smells can have benefits too.
Read the story here.
Bot throws light on the evolution of walking.
It's yellow, modular, and can both walk and swim: it is Salamander robotica, the fruition of four years of research and one clever theory.
Read the story here.
Mountains in haze get less rain.
Air pollution is severely diminishing rainfall in Chinese mountains, researchers have found. The same effect is probably causing water shortages in many other highly polluted areas that depend on the nearby hills for their water.
Read the story here.
This week the Nature Podcast sizes up dinosaur genomes, uncovers the cancer genome, tries some silica alchemy, and asks whether there really is water on Mars.
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
Salt deposits could have come from groundwater, not standing water.
Was there once a sea in Mars' Meridiani Planum? Probably not, according to a new model of water flow on the red planet.
Read the story here.
A smaller genome evolved in dinosaurs, long before birds learned to fly.
A study of dinosaur genomes hints that the early evolution of a smaller genome might have been necessary for later vertebrates to take to the skies.
Read the story here.
Genome sweep shows cancer-driving mutations more common than thought.
The range of mutations that can drive cancer growth could be much wider than thought. An international research effort called the Cancer Genome Project has identified around 120 new genes that contain mutations promoting the disease.
Read the story here.
From March 2007 researchers launch a year of polar research, from tracking whales in the Arctic to star spotting from the South Pole. Here is Nature's news coverage of the launch (apologies - some is password protected)
FEATURES
Buried treasure : Looking for an ice core more than a million years old.
School of rock : Digging into the hard stuff beneath the Antarctic.
The new face of the Arctic : How the vanishing summer ice affects northern living.
NEWS
Scientists kick off huge polar research plan
Polar year projects
EDITORIAL
The ends of the Earth: International Polar Year 2007 can leave an imprint.
FROM THE ARCHIVE
Polar research in focus
Share your thoughts here!
Last night, after the sessions were over, I found myself in a bar with two locals who work at a prominent Denver-area restaurant.
I asked them who, of the Denver conference circuit, were the best tippers. Surprisingly, they said that attendees of the annual sex business convention were most generous. Bible conferences tended to be the worst, possibly because they didn’t drink much.
Physicists, they told me, lie in the vast middle ground between the God-squad and the pornographers. But they do distinguish themselves in one way: they leave very precise tips. For example, they would leave a tip of $7.23, exactly 17% of a $42.50 bill.
The servers wanted me to ask all of you to start rounding, preferably up.
Medallion goes missing in California.
A caper of Nobel stature has struck the University of California, Berkeley.
read the story here.
Michael Deem of Rice University has an interesting vaccination strategy for HIV: vaccinate different parts of the body against different strains of the virus.
Deem claims that current vaccination plans have a weakness. If you vaccinate for one particular strain of HIV, the immune system will produce too many T-cells for that strain, while ignoring other dangerous variants. By injecting different vaccines into different lymph nodes (where T-cells get made), his mathematical calculations show that you could produce a more balanced immune response.
Of course, that’s all a little abstract since there isn’t an HIV vaccine yet. But the same strategy could work for different strains of Dengue Fever (there are apparently four). Deem says that he will soon test his ideas on animal subjects.
At a session at the meeting this morning, a group of government officials and nuclear weapons experts discussed the state of US strategic forces.
Everyone in the room seemed to sense that the US didn’t know quite what to do with the 10,000 nukes in its stockpile. US Strategic Command no longer considers the weapons its primary priority, according to Lt. General Robert Kehler. “We go days at a time without being involved in the nuclear weapons business,” he says.
The White House and other politicians seem similarly detached. Eminent physicist and arms control expert Sidney Drell summed it up pretty well: “We need an answer to the question—what are nuclear weapons for?"
Fifty years ago it seemed like TB would soon be consigned to the history books. But now it kills more than a million people a year. What went wrong, and how can tuburculosis be tamed?
Read our special from Nature Medicine.
Fight for basic research will trouble successor at Medical Research Council.
Uncertainty over the immediate future of Britain's Medical Research Council (MRC) has persuaded its head to decide to step down when his present contract expires this September.
Read the story here.
Non-invasive test can pick up the whiff of disease.
Physicists have developed a simple breath test that may be capable of detecting Type I diabetes.
Read the story here.
Watching a sham execution comes near the top of distressing assaults.
The long-term mental anguish caused by psychological torture and humiliating treatment is comparable to that caused by physical torture, a new study indicates. The results, say the study's authors, support the prohibition of psychological torture by international law.
Read the story here.
At our first press conference today, we learned how a mysterious set of formations on Mars known as “razorbacks” may be made by static cling, rather than water. Razorbacks are spikes in the Martian soil, about a millimetre wide and a centimetre high. Scientists had theorized that water flowing through fractures on the surface might have created these dainty peaks.
Not so fast, says Troy Shinbrot of Rutgers University. By sliding tiny glass beads down a table, Shinbrot created similar structures here on earth. The terrestrial razorbacks were built up by the static cling of the beads rubbing together. Shinbrot believes that a similar process could be at work on Mars, especially since the dry atmosphere would facilitate static build-up.
This isn’t the first water on Mars theory Shinbrot has debunked. In 2004 he showed that the low gravity of Mars could cause dust to flow like water, creating gullies similar to those made by streams here on Earth.
Estonia premiers the world's first Internet voting for parliamentary elections
On Sunday 4 March, Estonia played host to a grand experiment: Internet voting for parliament.
read more here
Can't make it to the American Physical Society meeting in Denver this week, or having trouble hitting all the sessions? Keep up with all the news and get behind the scenes with Geoff Brumfiel's diary reports, here from Monday 5 March.
Blueprints for cellulose plants get US funding.
The next generation of biofuel facilities will break ground this year. On 28 February the US Department of Energy (DOE) announced that it would provide up to $385 million to help underwrite six biorefineries that will extract fuel from materials such as wheat straw, wood chips, grass clippings and even orange peels.
Read the story here.
Virtual tours could help build better policy decisions.
How would a sneak preview of the destruction caused by rising sea levels in a warmer world, say in 50 years' time, affect how much you'd be willing to invest now in carbon-capture technologies?
Read the story here.
Could ‘gym generators’ power the way to green electricity?
Do you spend your free time sweating away in the gym? Ever wonder whether all that energy might be put to better use? Well fear not, because you might soon find yourself converting those calories to light, and helping the club out with its electricity bill.
Read more here
Glacial deposits could help to hold back sea-level rise.
Antarctic ice is protected from the sea by rocky wedges of debris that act as ‘sandbags’ to protect glaciers from rising waters, a survey of one of the continent’s major ice flows has revealed. If much of Antarctica’s ice is protected in this way, it may help to fend off ice melting as a result of rising sea levels.
Read more here
Modelling the eyes of a hurricane should help predictions of intensity.
Scientists have documented for the first time how the eye of a hurricane dies, and is replaced by a new one. The observations, made by radar-equipped aircraft during the hurricane season of 2005, could be used to improve forecasts of hurricane intensity.
Read more here
Engineers make the most anti-reflective coating yet.
Shiny metal objects have been reduced to a dull, record-breaking black by a super anti-reflective coating. As Nigel Tufnel from This is Spinal Tap says in the film: "It's like, how much more black could this be? And the answer is none. None more black."
Read the story here.
