Nature Newsblog
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Having more words for a colour changes how it’s seen.
The language you speak may influence how you perceive colours, according to new research. Russian speakers, who have separate words for light and dark blue, are better at discriminating between the two, suggesting that they do indeed perceive them as different colours.
Read more here
Conservation icon thought to be last of his species may yet find a mate.
Lonesome George, conservation icon and apparent sole survivor of a species of giant Galápagos tortoise, may not be so lonely after all. Biologists have identified a living relative on Isabela Island, some 70 kilometres away from George's birthplace — an animal whose father (who may or may not be alive) is from the same population as George.
Desks and walls could one day light up electronics without need for cables.
Annoyed by the tangle of power cords under your desk? A sheet of plastic invented by researchers in Japan could one day make for tables and walls that power devices placed on them — without any need for wires or plugs. Computers could be powered through the desks on which they sit, for example, or flat-screen televisions through the walls where they hang.
Autonomous device should help protect animals from ships
An underwater robot that can hear the calls of whales, and so help ships to avoid them, has just been successfully trialled in the Bahamas.
read the story here
Simulation proves it's possible to eavesdrop on super-secure encrypted messages.
A team of researchers has, for the first time, hacked into a network protected by quantum encryption.
A shift in population, money and political influence to America's 'sunbelt states' is helping to reshape its research universities.
You will need a password to access this content:
The first of two features in Nature looks at the far-reaching ambitions of Arizona State University.
US education: the Arizona experiment
The second asks whether a rush to create extra medical schools could spread the region's resources too thinly.
US higher education: Medicinal properties
Court turns down request in case aiming for 'ape rights'.
An Austrian judge turned down a request this week to appoint a woman as legal guardian of a chimpanzee.
This week the Nature Podcast looks at how lowering inhibition in the brain can lead to addiction, hears how a wind tunnel full of wings might help build more efficient aircraft, and explores how invasive species thrive on hard times.
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Natural input of nutrients works ten times better than manmade injections.
Blooms of algae created by pumping nutrients into the ocean can suck up at least ten times more carbon dioxide (CO2) from the atmosphere than was previously thought. But the findings lend no support to controversial schemes to encourage such blooms in order to reduce global warming, the authors warn.
Study of swifts could improve airplane designs.
The average swift (Apus apus) travels 4.5 million kilometres in its lifetime — roughly the same as six round trips to the Moon. Now researchers have demonstrated how these adept aviators change the shape of their wings to improve performance, providing hints as to how aircraft engineers can improve their designs.
Extrasolar planet grabs attention of astronomers and alien-hunters
Astronomers have found an Earth-like planet circling a dim red star not far, in galactic terms, from our Solar System. The planet, just five times the mass of our own, might be the best hope yet of a world that can support life.
Read the story here
Unseen particles may confuse climate models.
Clouds are bigger than they look, according to new measurements by atmospheric scientists in Israel and the United States. They say that clouds are surrounded by a ‘twilight zone’ of diffuse particles, invisible to the naked eye, extending for tens of kilometres around the cloud’s visible portion.
Read more here
Gunman carried revolver onto research campus.
Workers at NASA’s Johnson Space Center in Houston, Texas, were back on the job Monday after a disgruntled contractor shot himself and one bystander.
Read more here
Tests show that it isn’t just the vitamin that protects the body.
If you’re in the market for an antioxidant to keep your body young and healthy, new research suggests you’d be much better off with oranges than vitamin C tablets.
Read more here
Sufferers show less cognitive decline as they age.
A migraine is not just a headache, it is an über-headache — a pounding, queasy, searing pain that can incapacitate its victims for hours on end. And as if the pain weren’t bad enough, sufferers were also thought to show diminished memory and verbal skills.
Read more here
Mission will investigate clouds’ connection to climate change.
NASA is about to launch a spacecraft to study mysterious invaders lurking above Earth’s poles — not UFOs, but the shimmering, high-altitude apparitions known as noctilucent clouds.
Read more here
Treasure trove of extinct species discovered in old coal mine.
Geologists have found the remains of a huge underground rainforest hidden in a coal mine in Illinois. The fossil forest, buried by an earthquake 300 million years ago, contains giant versions of several plant types alive today.
Read the story here
Leaders from three steadfastly right-wing arenas - church, military and industry - are now calling for limits on US emissions. Jim Giles surveys America's green stampede.
When politicians start to run out of analogies, you know a subject must be hot. And in Washington right now, they are scraping the bottom of the barrel.
Al Gore has for months been using the 'sick child' story to explain the scientific consensus on global warming: if nine out of ten doctors say your kid needs antibiotics, you don't choose to go with the single dissenter. Which means: listen to the consensus report on the causes and effects of climate change, ignore the skeptics.
Cash injection will safegaurd 21 critical food crops.
Funds have been announced to save 165,000 varieties of 21 food crops, from wheat to potatoes, some of which form the staple diet of people living in developing countries.
It's all over. There’s probably a scientific explanation for this – and it’s something I’d suggest the organizers consider before hosting another conference in Australia. WHY is the Australian accent so infectious? I’ve found myself speaking like an extra from “Neighbours” without even realizing I’m doing it. I fear I may be offending our gracious hosts here in Melbourne with my constant “G’day mate’s” and incessant upwards inflection. I think I’m being funny. Maybe I should be at the other convention…
Sorry Australia.
Ruth Francis
Neither journalists nor scientists are renown for sartorial sophistication but the crowd looked particularly dapper at the farewell reception held at the Governor’s house last night.
We arrived in an armada of tour buses, each of us holding fancy little personal invitations as the buses wound their way up the long drive to the impressive estate. The fleet parked in the courtyard but, before we were allowed to disembark, each bus was boarded by a security guard who examined our invitations.
I think we were all impressed with the residence. I certainly wasn’t expecting anything quite so spectacular. As we walked into the grand hall, a room in which you could fit at least a dozen family homes stacked upon each other, one of my colleagues, looking up and taking in the dramatic heights of the ceiling, turned to me and said: “Man, this place is like Versailles.”
The governor, Professor David de Kretser, who is affable and well-spoken (and a scientist himself) congratulated us on a successful conference and Wilson da Silva handed over the reigns to Pallab Ghosh of the BBC, who takes over as the new president of the World Federation of Science Journalists.
Then the crowd dispersed and milled about, exploring the premises. Each room seemed grander than the next but journalists don’t necessarily always meet grandeur with reverence. One of my colleagues was debating trying to take a seat upon the governor’s throne, a rather inviting chair with comfy-looking blue upholstery and lots of gold gilding. In the dining room, there was a very long table that could serve as an aircraft carrier if pressed into service. Along its length was a row of highly-polished candelabras, about a dozen of them. One delegate asked me how far down the table I thought he could slide, if he took a good running start. I sized him up. “About the fourth candelabra,” I told him. "But then, I've never been very good at physics. You might go a lot further than that."
I think we were all a little giddy after such an intense week. There was plenty of laughter and warm camaraderie. Eventually we were called back to the buses and, as we were leaving, there were plenty of last-moment business card exchanges, handshakes and hugs. I’m leaving Melbourne with many new contacts, a lot of ambitious project ideas and a sense of belonging to a crew of committed, hard-working and wonderfully irreverent professionals.
Ultra-hard material made in the lab without high pressures
There's hard, and then there's superhard. Researchers have designed and made a material capable of scratching diamond — and done it without resorting to harsh, high-pressure methods.
read the story here
A protein in the blood could make for a new class of AIDS drug.
A natural component of human blood has been found to block the HIV virus from infecting cells. And fortunately, tweaking just a few of the amino acids that form the molecule somehow makes its effects 100 times more potent.
The EGU goes on until Friday, but my time here is over. It has so far been another solid European geosciences meeting, although certainly not all talks were as good as you might hope.
One thing is language. The organizers ask that all lecturers must be able to give their talks in ‘more or less’ fluent English. Well, I certainly attended a few talks which suffered more than just a little from, err, let’s say ‘handicapped’ English.
Questions from the audience were encouraged, and usually they do add interesting aspects to a given topic. But discussion doesn’t make much sense if a lecturer seems not to understand what he or she is being asked. There is an issue of politeness and consideration: Do you really need to query someone in a strong Australian accent if it’s plain to see that the poor guy up there – Malaysian, Ukrainian, French, whatever - is in deep linguistic trouble?
Another thing is the use of formula in presentations. Of course, mathematics is part of the game, whether in remote sensing or in modelling fluid dynamics. But if your slides contain little else than rows and rows of equations you can’t hope to reach out to anyone except to the die-hard experts.
But these are minor points. By and large the meeting had, and has still, plenty of enlightening talks to offer. Indeed, some North American attendees told me they prefer the more human proportions of the EGU to its oversized American counterpart, the annual AGU meeting. Vienna’s ‘old-Europe’ charm, I would say, adds quite a lot to the appeal of the EGU.
And, after all, the meetings serve not least as a marketplace for new ideas, jobs and collaborations in the geosciences. I don’t know how many participants have teamed up with new scientific partners, and it’s hard to guess how many fruitful ideas have been conceived during these days. But from the many happy faces I saw during sessions I guess it must be plenty.
The session about spreading science by reaching women and children was an emotional journey. First up was Jacqueline Ashby of the Rural Innovation Institute in Columbia, who presented via video link. Her presentation was pretty positive and discussed improvements made in food security and nutrition by working with women’s groups.
The next talk was far more depressing. A series of statistics on HIV and AIDS outlined the horrific situation worldwide was given by Annmaree O’Keefe – Australia’s Special Representative for HIV/AIDS. She says there is no silver bullet to kill this disease and no hope on the horizon. But, in Australia we know that targeting the at risk communities with prevention and behavioural change messages has resulted in a low infection rate so this approach should be used elsewhere. Elsewhere in the world we know which groups are most at risk, sex workers in China, in East Asia high levels of sexual violence and the low status of women and in Eastern Europe shared needles for drug use according to O’Keefe. Different groups should be focused upon in different regions but there is hope if these messages can get spread through the right networks, a lot of which involve women.
More positively, Subbiah Arunachalam of WS Swaminathan Research Foundation in India gave examples of successful projects in his region. Women are reached via local knowledge centres and a blend of old and new technologies is used depending on what is most appropriate for that group. Indeed some of the most successful programs are those based around the coasts where 98% of families rely on fishing. Traditionally men go to sea and women sell their catch. Now satellite technology is used to provide weather forecasts 36 hours in advance and these forecasts are printed and broadcast for the community. So the women will know the men aren’t going to sea and will get them to help with chores rather than running off to hang out with their friends. Any other places where this kind of technology could play a useful role? Answers on a postcard….
Ruth Francis
I’ve been looking towards today’s sessions because they focus largely on science in developing countries. I’m particularly interested in these sessions because I’ll be in India this summer, where I’ll be focusing on renewable energy development in rural villages.
So, one of my goals at the conference has been to meet science journalists from developing countries in order to prepare myself for life and work in India.
This morning’s panel was particularly encouraging. It was a plenary session comprised of six journalists from developing countries (including India) discussing some of the challenges of reporting on science. Some of the challenges include a lack of infrastructure, low literacy levels, lack of government support and reticent scientists. There’s no doubt about it - science reporters in Africa, South America and Asia often have to do some slogging in order to get their job done. One journalist, a reporter from Zambia, mentioned that the Zambian government regularly keeps track of science journalists who travel outside the country in order to cover stories.
But does this hinder these journalists, or discourage them? Not a chance. In fact, my favourite remark was by Christina Scott, a South African journalist with SciDev.Net: “Science journalists in developing countries are like extremophile bacteria,” she quipped. “We’ve evolved to thrive in extreme environments.”
Extremophile Journalism. I like that. In fact, I’m thinking of having it printed on my business card.
Melbourne this week hosts not only the science journalism conference; there is a comedy convention just down the road. On leaving the hotel last night to go to a networking event I was stopped in the hallway by another guest who asked if I was part of the comedy conference.
I explained that I was actually part of the science one and thanked her for the assumption, based on the way I look, that I’m a comic and not a scientist. Now I come to think of it I'm not sure which is more flattering!
Ruth Francis
The best part of conferences is, of course, the socializing. Not just for the free drinks and finger sandwiches (though I certainly appreciate them both), but because you get a chance to have great conversations with fascinating people.
On Tuesday, I attended a networking breakfast for science journalists from developing countries. I sat next to William a journalist in Kampala, Uganda who I caught up with again last night.
William covers environmental issues but, as he put it, environmental issues in Uganda are usually a manifestation of poor governance. So writing about science is a politically charged and, therefore, potentially dangerous endevour.
He pointed to the riots that broke out a few days ago in Kampala when the Ugandan government seemed prepared to allocate vast tracts of the environmentally-sensitive Mabira Forest to the sugar company Scoul. Protestors were concerned that the sugar company would raze the forest in order to plant sugarcane crops. Unfortunately, what started as peaceful protests turned into riots in which several people were killed.
William said the government was probably lining its pockets by handing over a protected forest reserve to a profitable company.
And, as a journalist, he occasionally finds this frustrating because he can’t readily write about such things without putting himself at risk. In fact, William says he tends to self-censor when it comes to writing environmental stories in which the government is implicated because he feels publishing them may very well cause the paper trouble. But that’s not to say he’s resigned himself to silence. Instead, he’s decided to start up a website where he’ll publishing what he wants.
Apparently the web is still off the government’s radar; they don’t really see it as an important form of public dialogue and so William has a window of opportunity to cover stories where politics and the environment intersect. “For a journalist, it’s about speaking the truth,” he told me.
“Sure,” I said, “but what happens when the government eventually realizes you’ve been writing stories that make it look bad?”
William laughed and shrugged. “We’ll cross that bridge when we get there.”
Daemon Fairless
EDITORIAL
France's presidential elections are taking place at a time of deep debate over the French research community's standing and prospects. To further the debate, Nature's Declan Butler submitted a list of questions on research issues to the three leading candidates. Plus Nature surveys opinions from across the community, and takes a look at the research scene in France.
(You will need a password for much of this content)
EDITORIAL: Plus ça change?
NEWS FEATURES
The candidates respond
Let science speak for itself
Is French science in decline?
PLUS: Nature Jobs
Search for science jobs in the Francophone region
(please make your comments in English to aid discussion)
Claire Fraser-Liggett's move dooms The Institute for Genomic Research.
The personal divorce was final two years ago. The professional one dragged on until April, when Claire Fraser-Liggett left the organization headed by her ex-husband, genome scientist J. Craig Venter, to hoist her own flag over a new institute at the University of Maryland in Baltimore.
Google Earth is now being used to advocate for human rights and highlight the tragedy in Darfur, says Declan Butler.
When anyone now downloads Google Earth and browses over Africa, their eye cannot escape the ongoing genocide in Darfur. The country appears to be literally on fire, with flame symbols marking the locations of more than 1,600 destroyed villages and towns in this nation the size of France.
Discovery provides the first view of early forests.
Palaeontologists have uncovered a whole sample of the oldest known trees, providing a glimpse of what the Earth's earliest forests might have looked like.
This week the Nature Podcast rethinks realism in the quantum world, discovers how melting mantle formed the Earth’s crust, and uncovers the earliest forests.
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
Quantum mechanics just got even stranger.
There's only one way to describe the experiment performed by physicist Anton Zeilinger and his colleagues: it's unreal, dude.
So, remember how fat is one of the few factors consistently linked to cancer? Researchers are hard at work trying to figure out why, and here’s what they’re learning, according to a symposium on the obesity-cancer link:
1. Fat cells are evil. Texas scientist Stephen Hursting showed a Power Point slide of a fat cell, depicted as a globular circle with arrows sprouting out of it in all directions. Each arrow corresponded to a molecule that that the fat cell makes and dumps out into the body. Every one of these molecules is a bad actor that triggers deadly downstream effects, like inflammation, that lead to cancer.
The take home message? A fat cell, Hursting said, is “a veritable endocrine factory.” Translation: fat cells are like toxic chemical plants, churning out noxious substances that make us sick.
2. You can exercise to shed your excess fat cells. But this may not undo the damage you suffered by gaining too many fat cells in the first place.
Scientists like Hursting study the way our cells respond to the noxious substances that fat cells generate. It appears that exercise can counteract some of the damage wreaked by these chemicals on our cells. But the exercise effect isn’t the same as the effect of calorie restriction diets, which seem to boost health in powerful ways. Translation: as one of the speakers said, “A calorie in is not a calorie out.”
3. Drug companies like Novartis are hard at work designing drugs to save us from our own fat cells. A researcher from Novartis described a drug the company is taking through clinical trials right now, in fact, that could counteract some of the toxic effects of obesity. But here’s the kicker – drugs like these could improve our health, but they won’t make us skinnier. So here’s a question that fascinates me: When fat is healthy again, will it come back into style?
That’s a question that can’t be answered by anyone within these convention center walls. So it’s quite appropriate that the meeting is in Los Angeles this year, home of the thin-obsessed entertainment industry, which will probably determine whether or not Fat 'N' Healthy becomes the next big thing (so to speak). After all, Hollywood seems to have more influence on most ordinary people’s lives than the business that goes on at meetings like this.
And so, with that, I’m signing off from this year’s AACR meeting … and heading for the gym!
Well that's all from me from this year's April meeting as I pack my bags to leave Jacksonville. You can read more physics stories reported from the meeting, however, such as this online story by David Harris about the results from the Xenon10 dark matter experiment at the Gran Sasso laboratory in Italy.
More stories will appear in Nature on Thursday, be sure to check back then.
Some pop artists, including Madonna, have been accused of hypocrisy because their life styles are not exactly compatible with the climate-awareness they are going to raise at the Live Earth concert at Wembley Stadium in London on July 7. Can the same be said about scientists who fly around the world to attend the EGU?
A session yesterday evening about whether the meeting’s ‘carbon footprint’ is justified was not overwhelmingly well attended. In the end, 100 or so people showed up. Well, it was a perfectly fine spring day in Vienna, so no wonder that the meeting had partly shifted outdoors. Hundreds of scientists were busy ‘networking’ in the sunshine all day. Today it’s raining.
Some 8,000 scientists from almost 100 countries are said to be here. Someone has calculated that together they have travelled 15 million kilometres – this is 400 times around the world – to come to Vienna. The planes, trains and cars (only one participant is said to have taken the bicycle) which brought them here have emitted 5,000 tonnes of CO2, roughly the annual emissions of 2,500 EU citizens. Too much?
Yes, say some. Why go to a meeting at the other side of the world when you don’t really interact much with other parts of your university. Ok, you’ll hear a few talks and do a little networking. But then, aren’t we all swamped with information every day anyways?
Video conferences and email interactions could do the whole networking thing just as efficiently as physically going to meetings, argue the very physically present critics.
That’s well-meant. But do we really want to create a world of scientific homies?
No, says John Ludden, the president of the EGU. We should rather increase the carbon footprint, and the outreach, of the EGU, he counters. To really start tackling the problem of climate change we must bring more, and other, people - energy experts, economists, power plant engineers, scientists from India and China – to the EGU. The benefits easily outweigh the meeting’s carbon footprint. After all, he says, the coming together of earth scientists spins off ideas how to mitigate environmental issues and perhaps save the planet.
And why not plant a few trees or invest in carbon ‘offsetting’ projects?
“Rather than giving money to some Mickey Mouse offset company we should invite more people,” says Ludden.
You heard it here first folks. The World Federation of Science Journalists just announced the venue for the next World Conference of Science Journalists will be…… London.
On Monday two cities, London and Trieste, bid for the chance to host the 6th World Conference in 2009. Both presentations were very detailed and very well received.
After further grilling the teams the Federation announced just now in their General Assembly that the London bid won. Nature is a media partner so we are all very excited.
Ruth Francis
A wonderful reception at the Melbourne Aquarium last night gave delegates opportunities to network while enjoying rays, turtles, sharks and a beautiful array of jellyfish. Champagne and canapés, were accompanied by a brass trio clothed in wetsuits, fins, masks and snorkels.
Although there was disappointment that the shark feeding turned out to be just shark viewing there were some exciting spectacles to view including a huge humphead maori wrasse. Also a somewhat famous fat shark! She has been in the news recently because of her size - she has been put on a diet by the aquarium although some people think weight loss is somewhat slow. Some think she has been eating the fish in the exhibit.
A fantastic evening was had by all. Continue reading for a couple of images by Erika Harrison
Ruth Francis
If any science story has legs it is that of the discovery of a new species of dwarf human on a remote Indonesian island of Flores, published in 2004 by Nature (Vol: 7012 pp: 1055 & 1087). A session on Tuesday looked at how this remained in the media eye so long and the resulting public confusion. The panel were Bert Roberts and Chris Turney of the original research team and Deborah Smith an award winning journalist for her coverage of the story.
The researchers detailed a new species of around 1 meter tall which they named Homo floresiensis after the island she was discovered on and nicknamed the Hobbit in relation to her height and oversized feet! (The name was apparently changed from Homo floresianes en route to publication as one of the peer reviewers pointed out she would forever be remembered by students as flowery anus…)
Initial publicity was phenomenal – countless papers reported the find as front page news and broadcasters clambered to get images and interviews. Two days later critics also began to engage with media. They claim the now nicknamed ‘Hobbit’ was a modern human who was micro cephalic – a genetic condition resulting in, amongst other things, a reduced skull size.
It is not the first time that a new fossil or human or subhuman has been claimed not to be real. The first Neanderthal was claimed by some to be a bear, others believed it was a lost Mongolian Cossack, and one critic said it was a child with rickets who had been bashed on the head!
How do the public deal with ongoing debate and discussions? Do they believe that the fossil is a genuine new species, a hoax or are they genuinely confused? Comparisons with the climate change debate in the media were made. Journalists wanting to present opposing views have focused on the vocal minority of critics and the team who found the fossil. In reality, the researchers who found the Hobbit estimate, the field is probably divided 95% to 5%.
What are the answers? What lessons have been learned by the team and reporters? Given the history of these issues researchers could have preempted the critics informed media that they were aware of the potential for criticism and tackled it head on. Media could have waited until the critics had been peer reviewed before giving them the same space as the believers who had been through this process.
On the positive side, Deb Smith pointed out this is a fantastic example of scientists engaging in media and continuing to do so. It is the ‘story of her career’ and she continues to enjoy it playing out. Only more fossils will end the confusion and a new dig begins this June. We shall watch and see if lessons have been learned and how the public perceives what ensues.
Ruth Francis
(I should probably say here that I'm the press officer for Nature, where this fossil was first published)
Leaving just 2% of transgenic crop rows unsprayed could boost diversity.
British crop researchers are claiming that they have developed a method to stop transgenic crops from damaging the biodiversity of weeds and seeds. By leaving two rows in every 100 unsprayed with pesticides, enough diversity can be preserved to prevent knock-on effects on birds and other animals, they calculate.
Read more here
Swaying from tree to tree is done with the greatest of ease.
Red apes have an easy life: their preferred method of getting from one tree to the next in the jungle not only keeps them safe from harm, but also saves them a lot of hard work. A detailed investigation into how orangutans use the sway of branches to propel themselves from tree to tree shows that it is way more efficient than climbing down one tree and up the next.
Well, hopefully not. But today, I learned that some researchers question the wisdom of adding a nutrient called folic acid to flour, as we do in the United States. Folic acid is a form of vitamin B that is essential for preventing very serious birth defects. It's also suspected to prevent colon cancer. But confusingly, some researchers also seem to be concerned that too much folate given throughout life creates its own cancer risk, and that giving it to pregnant women (as is currently recommended) creates cancer hazards for the fetus.
Why? Because of something called epigenetics - a field that is very hot right now. Epigenetics is the study of modifications that can silence or activate our genes. It's increasingly clear that when epigenetic processes go awry, cancer can result. In fact, last October, the FDA approved the first-ever drug intended to treat cancer by resetting faulty epigenetic processes.
So what does this have to do with folate? It turns out the nutrient provides an abundant supply of chemicals that the body uses to make epigenetic modifications. So there is a concern that too much folate could accelerate the epigenetic processes that lead to cancer, said Jean-Pierre Issa, an epigenetics researcher at Houston's MD Anderson Cancer Center. "People in epigenetics are particularly worried about the massive doses of folate pregnant women take," he said, because those doses are presumably passed on to the fetus.
Researchers have tried to study this issue by looking at colon biopsies taken from adults, some of whom had taken three years of folate supplements. The study didn't find that the supplements accelerated epigenetic marking on the genes examined in the study. But, Issa cautioned, "We don't know what decades of folate would do, and we don't know what it will do to a fetus."
So far, the idea that folate might actually harm you is pure speculation. So nobody should avoid flour, and pregnant women should definitely continue taking their folate supplements. But it's definitely a space to watch for the future. And it's yet another case where the science behind single nutrients is irritatingly complex.
These drugs usually do more good than harm; but more monitoring is needed.
A re-evaluation of clinical data suggests that although antidepressants do promote suicidal tendencies in a small percentage of children and adolescents — as widely reported a few years ago — the benefits of the drugs for the treatment of depression and anxiety disorders almost always outweigh the risks.
Being in Australia, I’ve been keeping my eye out for quintessential Aussie research – and researchers. Today I met Marilyn Renfree, the Deputy Director of the ARC Centre of Excellence for Kangaroo Genomics. She studies developmental biology and uses wallabies as an animal model. This makes a lot of sense since newborn wallabies, being marsupials, are essentially in an embryonic state when they’re born. Unlike humans, they don’t becoming male or female until well after they’ve been born. So, for Marilyn, the wallaby is a perfect model for studying the endocrine pathways controlling sexual differentiation. Interesting, certainly. But what I really appreciated was that, instead of calling herself something unwieldy like a Developmental Endocrinologist, a Mammalian Endocrinologist or a Marsupial Physiologist she simply called herself a Wallaby-ologist. Crickey!
It’s been a morning of science and politics. Today’s opening session focused on the biasing of scientific information. Chris Mooney, Seed Magazine’s Washington correspondent and the author of The Republican War on Science (and the forthcoming Hurricane Wars) spoke about the need for scientists to better “frame” scientific issues so they’re easily digestible and something the public can engage in. Mooney argues this is an effective counter attack – Aussie rules, as he says – on the US Republican stance on issues like stem cell research and climate change.
“Frame”, however, is another word for “spin doctoring” – a term that doesn’t really sit well with me.
But Mooney argues people are “cognitive misers” – that’s to say that we’re willing to base our decisions, including policy decisions, on the cues and opinions we take from other people – people we designate as trusted experts -- rather than muddling our way through the finer points of a complex issue. And, as Mooney rightly points out, this becomes a problem when the so-called experts are charismatic and have politically-driven agendas. So, while I balk at the idea of spinning science, I tend to agree with Mooney that scientists (and science journalists) protect the public from politically biased science. “Science,” as Mooney said, “is too important to stay out of politics.”
(As an aside, almost as if to illustrate this point, a few minutes walk from the conference site, the Australian Parliament is debating a bill to allow the use of therapeutic cloning – a bill that in all likelihood will pass, according to Victoria’s Minister for Innovation, John Brumbey, who introduced today’s session.)
Still, I’m not quite sure how I feel about the idea of scientists communicating through talking points, soundbites and buzzwords; about leading so-called information campaigns. Framing, in my opinion, runs the risk of becoming a form of propaganda if its goal is to design digestible opinions.
But, I do agree with Mooney: humans are cognitive misers – I definitely qualify as one much of the time. But I think this means that now, more than ever, the onus falls on science journalists to devote themselves to helping the public understanding complexity. If there’s a place for seducing the public’s senses, it’s in luring them into engaging in complex issues by creating appealing and entertaining ways of presenting science.
A recent claim of water on an extrasolar planet raises broader questions about how science news is reported, says Philip Ball
'Scientists discover just what they expected' is not, for obvious reasons, a headline you see very often. But it could serve for probably a good half of the stories reported in the public media, and would certainly have been apt for the recent reports of water on a planet outside our Solar System.
Experiment shows weakly-interacting particles must be very weak indeed.
The tiny, wimpy particles that might make up the Universe's dark matter must be even wimpier than some theories suggest.
Researchers pin down when we'll know the effects of climate on water flow.
Is the powerful Atlantic current that has a major role in ocean circulation slowing down? We won't know until we have collected more than 20 years' worth of continuous measurements, researchers said on Monday at the general assembly of the European Geoscience Union in Vienna, Austria.
It’s been a morning of science and politics. Today’s opening session focused on the biasing of scientific information. Chris Mooney, Seed Magazine’s Washington correspondent and the author of The Republican War on Science (and the forthcoming Hurricane Wars) spoke about the need for scientists to better “frame” scientific issues so they’re easily digestible and something the public can engage in. Mooney argues that this is an effective counter attack – Aussie rules, as he says – on the US Republican stance on issues like stem cell research and climate change.
"Frame," however, is another word for spin doctoring – a term that doesn’t really sit well with me.
But Mooney argues people are “cognitive misers” – that’s to say that we’re willing to base our decisions, including policy decisions, on the cues and opinions we take from other people – people we designate as trusted experts -- rather than muddling our way through the finer points of a complex issue. And, as Mooney rightly points out, this becomes a problem when the so-called experts are charismatic and have politically-driven agendas. So, while I balk at the idea of spinning science, I tend to agree with Mooney that scientists (and science journalists) have a duty to protect the public from politically biased science. “Science,” as Mooney says, “is too important to stay out of politics.”
(As an aside, almost as if to illustrate this point, a few minutes walk from the conference site, the Australian Parliament is debating a bill to allow the use of therapeutic cloning – a bill that in all likelihood will pass, according to Victoria’s Minister for Innovation, John Brumbey, who introduced today’s session.)
Still, I’m not quite sure how I feel about the idea of scientists communicating through talking points, soundbites and buzzwords and leading so-called information campaigns. Framing, in my opinion, runs the risk of becoming a form of propaganda if its goal is to provide pre-fab opinions for people.
But, I do agree with Mooney: humans are cognitive misers – I definitely qualify as one much of the time. But I think this means that now, more than ever, the onus falls on science journalists to devote themselves to helping the public understanding complexity. If there’s a place for seducing the public’s senses, it’s in luring them into engaging in complex issues by creating appealing and entertaining ways of presenting science.
Daemon Fairless
I am a bit at loss now, standing here between the tall concrete buldings that surround the Vienna Conference Center in the Kaisermühlen district of the Austrian capital. Kaisermühlen-Blues, it occurrs to me, was the name of a succesful 1990s TV series that ran on Austrian television.
It is the opening day of the EGU’s general assembly, the grand parade of European Geosciences. The problem is I can’t get in. The guys at the registration desk can’t find the badge with my name on it. Well, that can happen. Do I have a press ID? Uhm, no. Would my Nature business card be ok perhaps? No, it would not.
I’m told I have to apply to the press office somewhere inside the conference centre. That’s fair enough I guess, so I walk over. It’s only when I realize that without the damn badge the security blokes won’t let me pass that the Kaisermühlen-Blues comes to mind. It’s a dilemma, sort of.
Now, I am a reporter. So I hang around the main entrance, inconspicuously waiting for a moment when both guards will be distracted by some other trouble-makers. Sure enough, after a short while I manage to sneak in unnoticed. Fifteen minutes later I have got my badge and everything else I need to do my job here.
The Vienna Conference Centre is an impressive piece of modern architecture. Unfortunately it is also a rather convoluted affair. The lecture rooms are cunningly hidden in unlikely nooks and corners on different levels of this Byzantine maze. Confusingly, the centre seems to constantly alter its layout, so that you never seem to be able to find again the spot where you’ve been just five minutes ago. Drones of scientists meander between the countless cafeterias and exhibition stands, in search of cryptically signposted lecture rooms. Some pretend to know where their heading for, but I’m sure they’re just as clueless as me.
Now that’s what big meetings are like, right? Surprisingly, the lecture rooms are actually filled with plenty of listeners, and most sessions begin sharply punctual. Eventually even I manage to find room 16 (L) on the blue level, where a talk abut predictions of extreme hurricane intensities was supposed to be held. Alas, they moved it to a slot two hours later. Too bad.
Instead, I decide to listen in to the session in the neighboring room. Impact of Saharan dust on radiation and climate, interesting one. I take home the message that dust rising from the Saharan-Sahel corridor affects the thermodynamics of the atmosphere, and that it also alters the microphysics of clouds. The effect is as yet largely unquantified, and hence poorly represented in climate models. I learn that a place in Chad, the Boudélé Depression, is the world’s most intense dust source. Hasn’t my colleague Jim Giles written an award-winning feature about this? Anyway, must be lovely there.
On my personal meeting programme is now, fittingly, a Mars session. I have a little trouble finding the lecture room (turns out it is next door), which is why I miss the first two presentations. Kindly enough, Gerhart Neukum, the principal investigator with the High Resolution Stereo Camera (HRSC) on board Mars Express, update me during the coffee break.
Two experiments – the German-built HRSC and Omega, a French infrared spectrometry experiment – have in recent months resolved a long-standing scientific controversy, he says. Mars seems to have dried and cooled, and its atmosphere to have thinned, much earlier than previously assumed. Deposits of clay minerals and sulphates in the Mawrth Vallis region, and the absence of carbonates there, suggest that the drying must have occurred very early in Mars’ geological history, at least 3 billion years ago. Episodic volcanic releases of water may have still ocurred thereafter, and possibly until this day, but any liquid water would immediately evaporate in the low-pressure atmosphere. Oceans can only have existed in Mars’ infancy, when the planet’s climate was much warmer and its atmosphere much thicker.
This doesn’t necessarily mean that life never had a chance to evolve on Mars. But if it did, it must have evolved very quickly, or else gone underground early on.
A quick lunch then. The afternoon brings a very interesting session about an old warhorse of ocean sciences, the Atlanic overturning circulation. Watch out on news@nature.com for more on this. It also brings more of the familiar feeling of missing hundreds of other interesting things. But that’s what big meetings are like, am I right?
Oh, and did I mention at all how charming a city Vienna is?
Kaisermühlen-Blues, by the way, was a terrific programme. If you do understand some German (the Vienna version, that is) you should really try to find a DVD.
posted by Quirin Schiermeier
Before this morning’s opening session commenced, the hotel manager made an apology for the breach of security that had occurred in the night. The ears of those of us not staying in the Hyatt conference hotel pricked up and I’ve been trying to uncover the details ever since.
It transpires out that some anti-climate change propagandists somehow broke into the hotel and posted magazines and DVDs under the doors of guests overnight. Worrying because the hotel’s card keys should only allow guests out of the lift on their own floor, yet the activists managed to pamphlet almost the whole tower.
The suspects are now in custody having twice attempted to infiltrate the meeting itself today. The first time they were asked to register but could not prove their journalistic credentials, but the second time they were held and questioned about the incident. An announcement will be made later to update us on the situation…..
Ruth Francis
Last night at a reception with several eminent speakers Aunty Joy Murphy, a senior woman of the indigenous Wurundjeri people began the evening by inviting us to enjoy the land of her people and handing out leaves from gum trees – a traditional act of welcome.
The Australian Broadcasting Corporation’s Robyn Williams concluded the speeches with a short talk comparing science journalists to whales. We drink a lot, like to spout and occasionally beach together like this for discussions. So we are here this week to blow holes together and get the most out of the conference that we can.
Ruth Francis
Not what you normally expect at a physics conference. But now I’ve got your attention, we can talk NASCAR physics.
Diandra Leslie-Pelecky, a University of Nebraska physicist and NASCAR fan, gave a public lecture at the APS on Monday night, and did a good job mixing science and speed.
Why NASCAR? Well, as she puts it: “in what other sports do engineers have their own weekly TV shows?”
Leslie-Pelecky got interested in the science behind NASCAR when she saw replays of a high-speed car crash that appeared to have no cause – no collision, no engine failure, no tire blowout. In figuring out how NASCAR drivers maintain 190 mph speeds around 31-degree banked tracks she spent time 'embedded' with a racing team. Her behind-the-scenes investigation revealed that the best drivers know a lot of physics and that a crash can happen simply because of aerodynamics (bad turbulence or drafting) when the cars get close enough.
She also explained the science behind NASCAR’s “car of tomorrow”, which has been 7 years in development and making its debut this season. To prevent teams building a different car for every track NASCAR decided to develop one design for everyone to use. But the car of tomorrow does have two aerodynamic features that the teams can tweak – a rear wing and a front splitter. Developed using computational fluid dynamics the car’s aerodynamic features are designed to improve driver safety and to make it easier for the cars to pass each other, so making the race more exciting.
Not convinced? You can join the 35 million NASCAR fans who watch the races on TV and judge for yourselves.
If you're like me, you often find yourself confused by scientific advice on what to eat for good health. For every study that finds some miracle benefit to some food, another study always seems to come along and contradict the results of the first. This meeting is no exception. One study released yesterday claimed to have found a chemical reason why soy prevents cancer. But another study presented today claims the opposite, reporting that soy doesn't prevent colon cancer. So should you blend up that delicious tofu shake, or not?
Part of the problem here is that studies on diet and health often use different methods. So the study presented yesterday only examined cells in a culture dish, while the study presented today examined how tofu influenced cancer spread in live rats. Their results aren't really comparable. So which one is right?
Honestly, they're both pretty meaningless. We human beings aren't rats, and we're not single cells plated across a plastic dish in a lab refrigerator. Until a study finds that something has a large effect on cancer risk in a lot of people, over many years, it doesn't really mean that much.
Unfortunately, a lot of the news we read on diet and exercise online and in the newspapers every day doesn't pass that test. But that doesn't stop researchers and reporters from claiming that maybe the diet intervention du jour will save you from cancer - be it pomegranate juice, broccoli or green tea.
But none of these things on their own will save you from cancer. What might? Eating lots of fruits and veggies, and staying trim. Obesity has consistently been linked to many different types of cancers in large studies in thousands of patients. And people who eat diets high in fruits and vegetables generally - not single ingredients, like apples or broccoli - also seem to be at lower risk for cancer.
So eating right and exercising isn't as easy as guzzling down a soy shake every day, but it'll probably do you a lot more good.
This morning David Spergel of Princeton University ran through the many achievements of the Wilkinson Microwave Anisotropy Probe for the assembled physicists in Jacksonville. This probe measures temperature fluctuations of the cosmic microwave background – the oldest light in the universe. Since its launch in 2001 it has confirmed six predictions of the inflation model of big bang cosmology, including the fact that the universe is flat.
The next big quarry for the team is detecting gravitational waves in the WMAP data. They still have another two years of data from their five-year dataset to analyse before the mission ends in September 2009. Spergel is confident they will provide an upper limit on gravitational waves, even if they don’t discover them directly. After that we can expect the Planck mission, which will have three times the resolution and ten times the sensitivity of WMAP, to pick up the challenge.
More chimpanzee genes have been positively selected for than human ones.
Humans are generally believed to be more highly 'evolved' than our chimpanzee cousins. But in at least one sense that isn't true, say geneticists who have hunted for the hallmarks of natural selection in our respective genomes - and found more of them in chimps.
Huge urban centres are fed by rapidly moving innovation and networking.
Visitors to New York City often chafe at being jostled out of the way as city residents rush by. But if it seems as though New Yorkers think their time is more precious than yours, new research suggests there may be a good reason: it is.
How much is a month of life worth to you?
This is a question no one should have to ask herself, but cancer patients often must – for instance, in the United States, where 16 percent of patients are uninsured and drug costs are ballooning. Breast cancer treatment with Genentech’s drug Herceptin, for example, can cost $70,000.
Patients aren’t the only ones – governments now find themselves making difficult decisions about whether or not to pay for treatments that cost tens of thousands of dollars, but add perhaps just a few months to a patient’s life. In 2005, for instance, the United Kingdom’s National Health Service decided to pay for treatment with Herceptin as an add-on to breast cancer chemotherapy, after patients battled for years for access to the drug. But clinicians there warned that the high cost of Herceptin treatment would force cutbacks elsewhere in the health care system.
Do cancer treatments cost too much?
Today, Alexander Capron, a medical ethicist at the University of Southern California, pointed out that biotechnology companies price their treatments not just based on how much it costs to make the drugs – companies also set prices based on the value of added life to patients. So for instance, Genentech decided to price its drug Avastin for breast and lung cancer patients at about $100,000, even though it only extends life by a few months, and even the company charges half that when Avastin is used to treat colon cancer. “Should a lifeguard charge someone a million dollars just for throwing him a life buoy?” Capron asked.
Most of us would say no. So perhaps cancer drug prices are too high.
But Susan Desmond-Hellman – Genentech’s vice president for product development – countered that it’s not so simple. Biotechnology companies on the whole don’t make large profits, because the business is extremely risky and unpredictable, and therefore companies need incentives to discover new drugs, she said.
Translation: We fail so often, we’ve got to be able to capitalize on our few successes. Or else everyone will suffer, because companies will bail from the drug development business.
So, Genentech’s answer to the question would be no – cancer drugs aren’t too expensive, because really high drug costs are actually beneficial for patients.
But, one patient advocate said, this arrangement isn’t so tidy.
Deborah Collyar, who leads patient advocacy groups for National Cancer Institute-funded centers, said that Genentech is actually endangering patient support by setting what seem like outlandish prices. “Avastin has created a dilemma for us in the advocacy world,” she said, diplomatically, explaining that is makes it difficult for patient advocates to push for more cancer research funding when the resulting treatments are so expensive that many patients can’t afford them.
So, yes, biotech companies can charge whatever they like for medicines, but it’s not necessarily in their best interest to do so. But they don’t seem to have figured this out yet.
Bethan Morgan is on a mission to educate African bushmeat hunters about the endangered wildlife they kill. Emma Marris talks to her about the work.
This month, Bethan Morgan of the San Diego Zoo's centre for Conservation and Research for Endangered Species (CRES) took 14 Cameroonian hunters on a visit to the Limbe Wildlife Centre, on the southwestern coast of Cameroon, to teach them about conservation and attempt to convince them to turn to farming.
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.
Here at Everest Base Camp in Nepal the science continues to flourish. It is a strange environment in which to work but after some time you do get used to it. We are living on glacial moraine created by the mighty Khumbu glacier. At night as we try to sleep the only sounds that can be heard are that of the ice creaking and snapping below us and avalanches crashing down the giant rock faces above us. In front of our camp lies the Khumbu ice fall, the tumbling face of the glacier that drains from the Westen Cwm, a snow bowl created in the rock horseshoe of Everest, Lhotse and Nuptse. In the morning it is somewhere between -5 and -10 oC, by lunchtime inside the laboratories it can reach nearly 20 oC. These conditions are very challenging for both investigators and subjects.
We have basically built ourselves a small village up here in the mountains. About forty little tents surround the central hub of the Caudwell Xtreme Everest project. We have laboratories constructed from shelters used in the arctic by the military. These laboratories are where we carry out our work into how humans effectively adapt to the hypoxia of high altitude. There are three cardiopulmonary exercise (CPX) systems in continuous use, on which we are cycling daily whilst measuring oxygen consumption and carbon dioxide production on a breath-by-breath basis. Most exercise laboratories at sea level have only one such system in place; to have three running simultaneously at 5,300m above sea level has been no small feat.
We are also taking blood from one another, centrifuging it to produce plasma, then storing it in liquid nitrogen ready for transportation back to the UK. By the time the project is complete we will have almost 15,000 individual plasma samples to bring home and analyse. To provide enough cold storage facility for our laboratories in Nepal we have already used 100 litres of liquid nitrogen. A dedicated team of porters ensures a regular supply to top up the liquid nitrogen dewars posted at each of the laboratories.
To power all this research we need an uninterruptible electricity supply, which is easier said than done up here. Our logistics team have engineered a faultless power system which any professional electrician would be proud of. Generators provide electricity in the day with a battery back up system for the evenings and in case of generator failure. Unfortunately to power our labs by solar panels we would have to carpet most of base camp with panels which, as you can imagine, would be highly impractical.
We also have medical facilities comparable to that found in any UK hospital. Our staff includes general practitioners, nurses, anaesthetists, physicians, intensivists and surgeons. Not only can we offer our trekkers a daily clinic for ailments they have picked up along their journey but we have the capability to resuscitate patients following cardiac arrest or major trauma, perform minor surgery and artificially ventilate if such unfortunate circumstances arose.
The first of our groups of trekkers has arrived at base camp in good spirit and testing of them has begun. Many more groups are strung out along the valley, slowly making their way here, to base camp.
Next week I’ll begin to explain some specific details about the different studies which form the Caudwell Xtreme Everest project.
Dan Martin
German government decides to tackle the myth of the 'Mozart effect'.
Passively listening to Mozart — or indeed any other music you enjoy — does not make you smarter. But more studies should be done to find out whether music lessons could raise your child's IQ in the long term, concludes a report analysing all the scientific literature on music and intelligence, which was published last week by the German research ministry.
Cancer researchers are embarking on a huge experiment that is attempting to deliver on science’s promise to usher in the era of personalized medicine. Led by the National Cancer Institute, the project is called the Cancer Genome Atlas. The idea is to catalog all the genetic mutations associated with cancer. The positive spin on this project is that it’s highly ambitious, but some have called it foolhardy. Tonight, a room of brain cancer researchers hashed over their portion of the Cancer Genome Atlas – a pilot project to catalog genetic mutations in one form of brain cancer called glioblastoma multiforme. And, as scientists are wont to do, they spent more than an hour pointing out all the flaws with the design of the brain cancer part of the atlas.
They weren’t just trying to be difficult; this is part of what scientists are trained to do. Their job is to study things that, by nature, are often very poorly understood. So they have to eliminate as much uncertainty as possible from the outset, because the chances of getting a useful answer back to any of their questions is often very small. So, tonight, when asked to brainstorm about the Cancer Genome Atlas project, the room full of somewhere around one hundred scientists put their collective minds to work pointing out all its unanticipated shortcomings. Had its leaders chosen the right brain cancer cells to study? Had they made a plan for analyzing the data? And how, exactly, were they going to convince all the brain cancer researchers to work together?
This last question may seem odd, because to outsiders, brain cancer researchers probably just seem like a group of individuals dedicated to one common goal: curing brain cancer. But it’s not that simple. Brain cancer researchers are actually a group of diverse little cliques, each of which works on one tiny part of the total problem. So there are basic lab scientists who study cancer cells in Petri dishes, and never see a live, human patient; and there are neurosurgeons, who cut brain cancers out of sick people and send them off to the lab for analysis; and lots of other types in between. All too often, these groups of scientists will never speak to each other. So a lot of what the scientists were really debating tonight was: how do you propose to get those guys, or gals, to work with us?
Finally, Paul Mischel of the University of California at Los Angeles injected a much-needed reality check into the discussion. It shouldn’t be that hard to get people to work together, he said: “Let’s focus on thoroughness – on taking two or three drug targets all the way to the clinic to treat patients.” If every scientist in the room brought his or her expertise to bear on a project involving one of these common drug targets, he was saying, then tight-knit, focused research groups would form naturally. After all, he said, the whole point of the Cancer Genome Atlas is to get new treatments out to patients – and if everyone unifies around that goal, certainly, it shouldn’t be so hard to work together.
It was refreshing to hear a scientist bring the discussion back to the real world – I only hope some of the people in the room were listening.
Amory Lovins, leading energy conservation expert, appears somewhat less worried about conserving trees. He thrusts papers and books at everyone he meets. Ask a question at a press briefing and he chucks you a paper (fortunately he’s a good throw). So what’s the message behind the missiles?
It’s certainly hard not to be impressed by the facts and figures that Lovins has amassed. The Rocky Mountain Institute he founded in Snowmass, Colorado has documented in detail the inefficiencies of the energy sector, from waste heat at power plants to poorly designed consumer electronics that waste energy even when switched off. The engineering solutions RMI proposes for each energy challenge are equally impressive, from smart home insulation to ultralight cars made from carbon fibre composites.
But some of the RMI solutions make you wonder, why doesn’t everyone already do that? For me that's the hardest question to answer. Figuring out why humans make bad decisions, and continue to make bad decisions, in the face of sometimes overwhelming evidence, may be as big a part of the energy challenge as finding the right technology.
As far as I can tell we’re just not very good at making decisions about lifecycle costs (energy savings from compact fluorescent light bulbs, say) versus the sticker price (cheaper incandescent bulbs). And technologies that need to be ‘pushed’ on the market, rather than being ‘pulled’ by what people want, are understandably less attractive to businesses. Perhaps there are marketing experts and social scientists out there with answers to those questions.
In a plenary talk this morning on his latest measurement of the electron's magnetic moment, Gerald Gabrielse of Harvard entertained the packed audiorium with a discussion of what he called 'perhaps the most obscure paper I've ever written'.
He showed a slide with the title of his PRL paper at the top: Stochastic Phase Switching of a Parametrically Driven Electron in a Penning Trap. And below it a clip from a February 2007 interview between Jim Carrey and talkshow host Conan O'Brien.
In a moment straight out of a parallel universe, Carrey tells Conan O' how much he likes reading about quantum physics before repeating verbatim the title of the Harvard paper. The contortionist star and the host both go on to discuss the physics of electrons in a Penning trap to much audience applause.
Before it was removed from YouTube the clip was viewed more than 90,000 times, try wrapping your head around that! You can still view the clip here: http://www.nbc.com/Late_Night_with_Conan_O'Brien/video/index.shtml#mea=64956
I've been here less than 24 hours and what I've discovered so far (some of this without leaving the hotel lobby) is that Jacksonville is home to bitter Granny Smith apples, very sweet iced tea and the extremely lazy St John river. This river is the longest North running river in the United States and as you arrive at Jacksonville airport you can see it snaking its way lazily across the mud flats. For the next few days at least there will be pasty faced physicists jostling with tanned Floridians along its riverbanks.
Consider me your blogging companion for this April meeting of the American Physical Society. It's my first time at this meeting - I've been to the larger March meeting many times, but this year I'm looking forward to getting stuck into the small and large-scale topics that are the focus of the April gathering - from nuclear and particle physics all the way up to astrophysics and cosmology. I'm expecting lots of explosions.
Sarah Tomlin
How are journalists doing in their reports of controversial topics, from stem cells to climate change? Do we need a better ethical guide for science writers? And can mathematicians really tell a good joke?
Stay tuned for musings on all this and more from our roving reporters at the World Conference of Science Journalists in Australia, this 16-19 April.
Join Sarah Tomlin at the APS April meeting in Florida. She'll be sending reports to our newsblog from 15-17 April.
Is snow disappearing from European mountains? What happens if you drill into an earthquake zone? And what, exactly, is the carbon footprint of a meeting of scientists gathered to discuss these questions?
Join Quirin Schiermeier on our newsblog for diary reports from the European Geosciences Union annual gathering in Vienna. He'll be sending back news from 16-18 April.
While you're at it, why not also check out our climate change in focus?
Earlier detection, better surgery, radiation, chemotherapy and drugs means that more cancer patients live longer today than ever before. Yet it still kills more than 7 million people each year, accounting for around 12.5% of all deaths worldwide.
Erika Check is off to the American Association for Cancer Research meeting in LA this weekend, and she'll be sending back diary reports with all the latest news in the field. Stay tuned for her blog, from 15-18 April.
And find a collection of all our news stories on cancer in our in focus.
New genome has scientists going bananas.
In some ways, macaque monkeys are a lot like people: they can reside in cities, eat everything from peanuts to ice cream, and prefer to live in communities. Research published today will help scientists to figure out any genetic reasons behind these similarities — and behind our differences, from the macaques' short size and hairy bodies to their vulnerability to disease.
Proposal aims to measure changes in the land, sea and atmosphere.
India desperately needs to join a coordinated global effort to monitor climate change, scientists say in this week's Science.
Lucky find shows up record-breaking fossil.
Palaeontologists have sequenced some protein from a 68-million-year-old fossilized Tyrannosaurus rex bone.
Kazakhstan plans second phase of project.
The Aral Sea, whose disappearance counts as one of the world's worst environmental catastrophes, is making a modest recovery thanks to a series of water-management projects implemented by the World Bank and the government of Kazakhstan.
This week the Nature Podcast finds out how to stop the spread of cancer with drugs, spies distant planets the size of Jupiter, and solves a photosynthetic puzzle.
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
Model shows the rainbow of plant life possible in the Universe.
A picnic on a far-flung planet orbiting a red dwarf might involve spreading your blanket on black grass and munching on purple veggies, according to a new model.
Breast cancer kept from the lungs of mice with simple drug cocktail.
Breast cancer has been prevented from spreading in mice with a simple cocktail of drugs, some of which are already approved for human use.
Genetic variants may not really be linked to heart troubles after all.
A study looking at 85 genetic variations thought to be linked to heart disease — some of which are already used in clinical tests — has been unable to confirm that any of these links are real.
Fears of contamination in comet collection may be overblown.
Recent media reports that certain comet samples returned by the Stardust mission may simply be contamination have been overblown, say researchers.
Traditional techniques fail to select materials with the best sound.
Despite their reputation as master craftspeople, violin makers don't actually choose the best materials. According to research by a team based in Austria, they tend to pick their wood more for its looks than for its acoustic qualities.
Attention is now turning to the developing world, where those least equipped to handle it will bear the brunt of global warming. Michael Hopkin reports.
BRUSSELS: The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) is not known as a bearer of good news. In February, it reported that human activities are almost certainly causing the planet to warm (see 'From words to action'). On 6 April in Brussels, Belgium, it delivered an even more sobering message: that billions of the world's poorest citizens are at risk of hardship and disease as a result of climate change.
Study suggests animals may not migrate in response to rising temperatures.
Even the fast-moving arctic fox, used to trekking long distances, failed to retreat to cooler climes when global temperatures rose in the past, a new study suggests. The find dampens hopes that species will be able to adapt to climate change by moving towards the poles.
Modelling study no excuse for deforestation, researchers warn.
Large-scale deforestation — long fingered as a contributing factor in climate change — could cool Earth, say the researchers behind one of the first attempts to model the phenomenon at a global scale.
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.
We have now completed our trek to the base camp of Mount Everest at 5,300m above sea level. It is a harsh environment in which to live, let alone carry out complicated physiological protocols. During the day the temperature reaches about 20 oC yet at night it falls below -10 oC. This means that there are huge temperature fluctuations within our tented laboratories. Needless to say, the sensitive equipment we are using to study our subjects does not appreciate this daily freeze-thaw cycle. Keeping the equipment happy in this environment is a full time job!
So why are we here? The majority of clinicians involved in this project care for critically ill patients on intensive care units. These patients tend to be the most unwell in the hospital and are universally hypoxic (they don’t get enough oxygen). Unlikely though it may seem, we noticed a remarkable similarity between critically ill patients and lowlanders venturing to high altitude. Amongst both of these groups there are those that cope well with hypoxia and those that do not. Admittedly this is hardly a Nobel Prize winning discovery. What is interesting, however, is that we seem to have no real ability to predict which path any one individual may follow when exposed to hypoxia. Despite advances in technology and a better understanding of human physiology, our ability to predict who will survive adult respiratory distress syndrome on an intensive care unit and who will make it to the top of Mount Everest is limited.
Studies designed to investigate the isolated effect of hypoxia in the critically ill are fraught with difficulty. Different underlying pathologies and treatment strategies cloud any potential data derived from this population. There are a number of strategies which could be employed to overcome these confounding issues. Animal studies and cellular models are two such examples but both have their limitations when trying to investigate the interaction of multiple human physiological systems. The model we have therefore chosen is the gradual exposure of human volunteers to increasing degrees of hypoxia. And the manner in which we shall induce hypoxia is by slow ascent to high altitude, allowing ample time for adequate acclimatisation. Although not a perfect model (if such a thing exists) it does remove many of the confounding factors experienced in critically ill patients.
[Editor's note: You might be wondering why they don't just put people in pressure chambers. But this presents difficulties too: it's expensive, there aren't enough such chambers in the UK for this experiment, and volunteers would probably be slightly less willing to sit in an uncomfortable room than to climb a mountain. Certainly the view isn't as good.]
To accomplish our aims we have created a large observational healthy volunteer study composed of two distinct components. The first and certainly most important of these seeks to study a group of 200 subjects first at sea level, then as they ascend slowly to Everest Base Camp (5,300m). The subjects will journey in small groups throughout the trekking season and pass through the four laboratories we are currently setting up. They will spend twice the standard number of days resting as they ascend in order to aid their physiological acclimatisation to high altitude. This is because it is our intention to study successful adaptation to hypoxia as opposed to altitude illness in our subjects.
The second component of the study is a much more in-depth look at a small group of 24 subjects, who are all people involved in the running of the project. This group will perform the same tests as the large trekking group but in addition will endure some rather less pleasant studies, which we felt the general public may not be so keen on! Members of this smaller group will remain above 5,000m for the duration of the season in order for us to look at the long term changes associated with living at high altitude. Some of the members of this group will be climbing Mount Everest where more research will be carried out in the Western Cwm (6,400m), on the South Col (8,000m) and hopefully on the summit (8,848m).
The first of the trekking groups has now arrived in Kathmandu and they will be studied in the laboratory there before they start to follow us up the Khumbu Valley towards base camp. By next week I’ll be able to tell you what it is like to live at 5,300m and discuss in more detail some of the studies which the volunteers and investigators will be taking part in.
Dan Martin
Nigel Hart, one of the medical team, celebrates easter.
Pic credit: Caudwell Xtreme Everest
Increased drought, flood and disease ‘will hit poorest hardest’.
Climate change is very likely having an impact now on our planet and its life, according to the latest instalment of a report published by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC). And the future problems caused by rising seas, growing deserts and more frequent droughts, all look set to affect the developing world more than rich countries, they add.
Climate change set to make the arid southwest even drier.
The drought that spawned the great American Dust Bowl of the 1930s may become the new climatic norm for much of the southwestern United States and other subtropical regions of the world. In a report published today, researchers in the United States and Israel project an imminent increase in aridity in subtropical regions over the next century, which will affect several important agricultural regions.
UK fungi season now longer in autumn, with an extra fruiting in spring.
Climate change could turn the autumnal fungus foray in Britain into a year-round event, say researchers who have recorded changes in fruiting patterns over the past half-century.
This week the Nature Podcast makes an illuminating discovery about brain control, finds out about climate change on Mars, discovers the origin of the Earth’s magnetic field, and unravels the mysterious relics of Joan of Arc.
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 warming of other solar bodies has been seized upon by climate sceptics; but oh how wrong they are, says Oliver Morton.
If the shooting of fish in barrels offends you, look away. The publication this week of a Nature paper on global warming on Mars offers a fantastic opportunity to kill off one of the silliest climate-sceptic arguments, and I'm more than happy to be pointing the gun at the water.
Antibiotics that don't work could beat back resistant bacteria.
You would think that a combination of antibiotics that is less effective than either drug on its own would be fairly useless. But researchers now say that such ineffectual mixes could be used in the campaign against resistance to the drugs.
Dust storms and dark rocks are making the red planet hotter
Mars is getting hotter. Measurements of the brightness of the planet's surface over the show that the thermometer has ratcheted up some 0.65 °C over a few decades.
Read the story here
US think tank proposes mandatory but anonymous reporting.
A prominent US biosecurity think tank has called for labs that deal with high-risk biological agents to be far more thorough in reporting their accidents and near-misses.
Fermilab admits it is to blame for design fault.
Construction of the world's most powerful particle collider has been hit by the sudden failure of a key part of the device.
Supreme Court affirms that greenhouse gases fall under the Clean Air Act.
In a major victory for environmentalists, the US Supreme Court this week ruled that the federal government must regulate carbon dioxide emitted from cars and trucks.
Multi-million-dollar X Prize set for automotive innovation.
Start your engines: the X Prize Foundation has announced a competition to build an environmentally friendly car.
Experts call for investigation into sport and fatal brain condition.
British neuroscientists are planning to investigate whether playing soccer contributes to the development of motor neurone disease. The move comes after three amateur footballers playing in the same league developed the disease, which normally affects less than one person in every 50,000 each year.
Read more here
Stripping blood of antigens means it can be given to anyone.
Scientists have discovered enzymes that can efficiently convert blood groups A, B and AB into the 'universal' O group — which can be given to anyone but is always in short supply.
The oceans' heating will shave instants off the day.
The warming of the world's oceans is going to shorten the day, say German researchers. But there's no need to adjust your watch: the shortening will be by only 0.12 milliseconds over the next 200 years, they estimate.
Stranger than fiction: on 1 April 2004, news@nature.com reported that climate change was making the day longer - as an April Fools' day joke (see 'Day lost to stronger trade winds'). "I'm astonished we got anywhere close to the truth," says Nicola Jones, author of the original piece. "I just made that up."
