Nature Newsblog
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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:
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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)
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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.