Nature Newsblog
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Satellite observations suggest climate models are wrong on rainfall.
Global warming will increase worldwide precipitation by three times the amount predicted by current climate models, according to a study based on two decades' worth of satellite observations.
Read more here.
Tree-dwellers can benefit from standing on two legs.
A study of orangutans walking through the tree-tops suggests that humans' ancestors may also have first stood upright in the trees, say researchers.
Read the story here.
Triangulation technique spots object at the edge of our Galaxy.
Astronomers have used telescopes on Earth and in space to nail the precise position of a mysterious, dark object at the outer edge of our Galaxy. The work could be an important step in understanding so-called dark matter — mysterious material that makes up about a quarter of our Universe.
Read the story here.
Single receptor responds to cold and menthol.
As an ice cream melts in your mouth this summer, take a moment to contemplate the protein that may be bringing you that sense of cool relief — and numbing your tongue. Researchers have pinned down that particular protein in mice, and think that a similar one in humans does the same job.
Read the story here.
Authors accuse agency of putting politics before health.
Two new books are forcing the United Nations' AIDS programme to defend itself against claims that politics have distorted its mission.
Read the story here.
This week the Nature Podcast spots water vapour in a planetary birthplace, chills out with a cold receptor, and nets five new breast cancer genes.
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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.
The South Col (Camp 4), at 7950m above sea level, is the most inhospitable place I have ever been to.
It lies as a saddle between the peaks of Lhotse and Everest. Wind funnels through this gap in the mountains continuously, scouring snow from the ground and projecting it horizontally at high speed. A number of tents are normally to be found huddled together at the bottom of the route which leads up to the summit of Everest.
Traditionally climbers arrive at the South Col, from camp 3, in the early afternoon. They rest and brew up drinks until early evening when they leave for the summit. On their return the camp is dismantled and the climbers descend as rapidly as possible. The aim is to spend as little time as possible on this litter strewn wasteland. Our aim was to set up a physiology laboratory on the Col, and spend a number of days trying to study as many of our investigators as possible.
Once the Sherpas had erected a suitably sized tent on the Col we set about trying to construct the world’s highest laboratory. The first hurdle was a reliable source of electricity from which to run the various pieces of equipment we intended to use. A bank of 12 volt batteries fed by solar panels mounted on the outside of the tent was the answer to this. Despite the howling gales one useful natural phenomenon at the South Col is sunlight; glaring rays beam down from dawn until sunset.
Then we needed to build the exercise bicycle which forms a vital component of the cardiopulmonary exercise (CPX) testing system. The bike had to be brought to the South Col in small pieces as the whole bike would be far too heavy and cumbersome for any Sherpa to carry up the steep Lhotse Face. Wearing oxygen masks and following simple instructions with plenty of photos we slowly pieced together the bicycle without damaging any of its delicate internal components.
Next the breath-by-breath analysis system needed to be calibrated to the thin cold air which is to be found 8000m. The missing link that co-ordinates the bicycle and the breath analysis system is a laptop computer. For those of you who have attempted research at altitude you will know that computer hard drives begin to fail after about 4500m. To get around this we had to make special hard drives from the memory cards more commonly found in cameras. To our amazement the laptops worked at this extreme altitude; the highest a computer has ever been successfully used on Earth, as far as we know! Numerous other pieces of research equipment were unpacked and warmed up ready for the subjects to be investigated.
After multiple glitches we eventually managed to perform the highest CPX tests ever. Subjects cycled to exhaustion whilst we measured systemic oxygen consumption. Needless to say, the maximum work load achievable by subjects was considerably less than they achieved at lower altitudes. Other tests included transcranial Doppler measurement of middle cerebral artery blood velocity (blood flow speed to the brain), near infra-red spectroscopy to assess brain oxygenation, neurocognitive assessments (higher brain function), sidestream-darkfield imaging of the sublingual microcirculation (blood flow under the tongue) and spirometry (lung function measurements). Considering the appalling conditions outside the tent we managed to complete a fairly extensive series of experiments in the limited time we could stay at the Col .
There remained one more experiment to perform, an arterial blood gas sample from the summit of Everest. We left the South Col at around nine thirty on the night of the 22nd May and began the long, cold, slow climb up towards the summit. We climbed through the night and as the sun began to rise we came face to face with the famous Hilary Step. Having conquered this final hurdle we arrived at the summit of Mount Everest (8848m) at around six thirty in the morning of the 23rd May.
It was cold and windy but worth every step of the arduous journey we had taken to get there. We decided that taking an arterial blood sample on the summit itself was too dangerous and that attempting to erect our light weight shelter would no doubt end in disaster. After about forty minutes on the summit we descended as far as ‘The Balcony’ (8475m) where conditions were more suitable for taking blood.
Within the shelter of our simple tent we were able to remove our big mittens and expose the femoral artery of each subject in order to take a small sample of blood. Taking arterial blood at such an altitude is no easy task and we were glad of the practice we’d had on other large mountains. The samples were carried by one of our nimblest Sherpas (Pasang Tenzing Sherpa) to the Camp 2 laboratory some 2000m below in a staggering two hours.
Successful analysis in the blood gas machine at Camp 2 revealed shockingly low levels of oxygen in the blood of the climbers studied. These results are the highest arterial blood gases ever obtained and go a long way to show just how adaptable the human body can be to extreme hypoxia.
So there ended our endeavours to explore the physiology of the human body when pushed to extremes. We safely descended the mountain and returned to base camp a number of days later. By that time nearly all 200 of the trekkers had passed through the laboratories and completed their testing. All that remains now is for the investigators to test one another for one last time at base camp before trekking back to Lukla for the somewhat hair-raising flight to Kathmandu.
Dan Martin
Government warning highlights global problem.
A man with a strain of tuberculosis that is immune to nearly all drugs travelled from Atlanta to Paris to Prague to Montreal this month before the authorities caught up with him and got him into isolation.
Read the story here.
Giant black holes create mystery by not flying out of galaxies.
Theorists predicted it would be one of the most dramatic events in the Universe: two black holes merging in a distant galaxy and then flying out of that galaxy, releasing the energy of tens of millions of Suns.
Read the story here.
Pure lump of silicon-28 could help to redefine the kilogram.
Researchers are a step closer to redefining the kilogram, thanks to the creation of the purest chunk of crystalline silicon-28 yet made.
Read the story here.
Planets around commonest stars in our Galaxy might be warm and safe.
The most common type of star in the Galaxy may be more hospitable to life than was previously believed, say astronomers who have calculated how much radiation planets orbiting such stars would receive.
Read the story here.
Discovery adds to understanding of individuals' susceptibility.
A large-scale genetic study has identified four new genes that significantly affect a woman's risk of developing breast cancer.
Read more here.
Satellites help to pinpoint highest-risk earthquake zones.
Global positioning systems (GPS) could help identify the places most at risk of devastating earthquakes, say researchers who have used the technology to identify high-hazard ‘locked zones’ that can spawn giant quakes.
Read more here
How do you prevent valuable collectors' items from degrading?
Many environmentalists would tell you that plastics, such as those that litter our oceans and landscapes, last for ever. But ask the collectors and museum curators who have gathered at London's Victoria and Albert Museum this week, and they will say the opposite.
Read all about it here
Mouth shapes are enough to distinguish one language from another.
Even before they begin to speak themselves, a young baby can tell when you're speaking a different language just by looking at your face.
Read more here
Soya beans and cotton could be treated with alternative herbicide.
Researchers have created what could be the next generation of transgenic crops by inserting a gene for herbicide resistance from a bacterium into plants. The new crops could help to combat the spread of resistance to other commonly used herbicides.
Read more here
The Everest team, including Dan Martin who has been writing a diary of the trip for Nature, have made it successfully to the summit:
The Caudwell Xtreme Everest Team are pleased to announce that Mike Grocott, Sundeep Dhillon, Chris Imray, Dan Martin, Nigel Hart, and Dave Rasmussen summitted Everest from the south side at 06.30 this morning (Nepal time). They were joined by Pema Tharki Sherpa, Mingma Tsiri Sherpa, Thundu Sherpa, Pasang Tenzing Sherpa (all brothers), Tshering Pemba Sherpa, Pema Chhiring Sherpa, Tashi Sherpa, Pasang Nuru Sherpa, Ongda Gyalzen Sherpa, and Dendi Sherpa. They are all now resting at Camp Four at the South Col.
Michael Brown, Vijay Ahuja, and Maryam Khosravi are also at Camp Four, and they have been joined by Paul Gunning, Roger McMorrow, Mick O’Dwyer, Jeremy Windsor, and Andre Vercueil. These five climbers moved up from Camp Three half way up the Lhotse face today.
Denny Levett, Patrick Doyle, and Graham Hoyland have remained at Camp Two, and were instrumental in keeping communications going between the climbing team and the rest of the mountain during the summit attempt last night. They have also continued to care for an injured climber, who is awaiting evacuation to base camp.
Watch this space for more details once they've got their breath back!
This week the Nature Podcast mingles with the stars, finds out how cancers are kindled, and studies historical hurricanes.
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The spring AGU meeting this year is in Acapulco, Mexico.. It is a joint affair with nearly a dozen Latin American societies. About 2,300 scientists have registered. This makes it smaller than some of the earlier joint meetings the AGU has held in the last four years to enhance scientific outreach. Certainly not as huge as the joint meeting with European societies four years ago in Nice, France, where some 10,000 scientists attended. Security at that event was insane, due to invasion/war in Iraq. No such problems in Acapulco. Although Mexican police/army trucks cruising oceanfront boulevard watching for drug lords are almost as frequent as buses. My long walk along the coast late last night turned up nothing but great pork posole and fine cazadores tequila. To many US-named fast-food spots along the way though. But at least a trendy little tequilaria like a coffee stand. Balmy doesn´t fully describe weather. Only a 2 degrees F spread predicted, from 82 to 84, day and nite. High humidity, full clouds. It´s Chabuso (read tropical storm) season. Hopefully, that doesn´t mean an earthquake. We sit atop one of THE most active quake zones. And new research revealed at the meeting raises the spector of a strange calm before a tectonic storm. Off to 14th floor hotel room. Hoping the building engineers did their job right decades ago when with this slightly frayed resort sprouted high-rises.
When you win a Nobel prize, you become much in demand. Eric Sorensen takes a look at how laureates decide which worthy causes to lend their name to.
Half a century has passed since chemist Linus Pauling spearheaded one of the biggest petitions ever in science. More than 11,000 scientists, including 36 of Pauling's fellow Nobel laureates, signed on to call for the "ultimate effective abolition of nuclear weapons". The petition led to the first international attempt to control nuclear weapons — the Partial Test Ban Treaty. And on the same day in 1963 that the treaty went into effect, the Norwegian Nobel Committee announced that Pauling would receive the peace prize to go with his 1954 Nobel Prize in Chemistry.
Scientific petitions graced by laureates have become common tools of activism — clamouring to free the unjustly imprisoned and cure a myriad of perceived ills, from drug laws to inadequate research funding to nuclear proliferation. Having a Nobel laureate's name on a petition almost guarantees it extra attention: in a newspaper story's first paragraph, if not its headline.
Read more here
Forecasters predict above-average spate of Atlantic storms.
US government scientists have released their latest prediction for how many hurricanes to expect in the Atlantic Ocean this summer. And the forecast contains a stark warning: don’t let the relative calm of last year lull you into a false sense of security.
Read more here
Cyber-attacks in the Baltic raise difficult questions about the threat of state-sponsored information warfare, says Philip Ball.
Is Estonia at war? Even the country’s leaders don’t seem sure. Over the past several weeks the Baltic nation has suffered serious attacks, but no one has been killed and it isn’t even clear who the enemy is.
Read more here
Fossil calls into question the purpose of the first feathers
Feathery dinosaurs might not have been as common as experts thought, according to researchers who analysed a fossil of a creature previously thought to have feathers, and found instead that it was bald.
Read the story here
Common pigment may allow bizarre feeding habits.
From plastic to asbestos, cardboard to jet fuel, fungi will eat just about anything. Now researchers have found another dish in the fungal diet: radiation. Not radioactive compounds, which have long been known to be on the menu — radiation itself.
Read more here
New census highlights threatened status of many species.
One-sixth of Europe’s mammal species are threatened with extinction, according to a comprehensive survey by the World Conservation Union (IUCN). Unless the trend is reversed, conservationists fear that the European Union will not be able to meet its self-imposed target of halting biodiversity loss by 2010.
Read more here
Little blue pill might help people shift their body clock forwards.
It's a safe bet that most people who take sildenafil — better known under its commercial name, Viagra — aren't looking for a good night's rest. But it turns out that the 'little blue pill' commonly used to treat erectile dysfunction is also good for relieving some forms of jetlag. Well, at least in hamsters.
Join Rex Dalton at the American Geophysical Union meeting in Acapulco from 22-25 May. He'll be blogging here for Nature.
Once beyond the event horizon, what should you do?
So there you are: you discover that your spaceship has inadvertently slipped across the event horizon of a black hole, and now there's no escape from being squeezed to oblivion by gravity. The only question is how you can maximize the time you have left. What do you do?
Pharmed food crop approved for growth despite controversy.
Rice modified to express proteins often found in breast milk will be planted in Kansas. The go-ahead for the planting came on 16 May from the United States Department of Agriculture (USDA).
An unsteered ship may have delivered crop to Polynesia.
How did the South American sweet potato wind up in Polynesia? New research suggests that the crop could have simply floated there on a ship.
Supreme Court refuses appeal to block human stem-cell research.
California's human stem-cell programme is now free of legal challenges, clearing the way for $3 billion in funding to flow towards researchers.
Windy waters may mean less greenhouse gas is stored at sea.
The ability of the Southern Ocean to remove carbon dioxide from the atmosphere is being eroded by climate change, say environmental researchers. If the trend continues, then the ability of this ‘carbon sink’ to deal with humankind’s greenhouse emissions will be impaired.
Read more here
As a second mosquito species is sequenced, news@nature.com looks back to see what these genomes do for science.
The ethical debate about a vaccine for a sexually transmitted disease has been premature, says Apoorva Mandavilli; we don't even know how well it works.
Here's a good lesson: before you start pushing for a controversial vaccine to be made compulsory, best wait for the research — and I mean all the research — to come up with results.
This week the Nature Podcast peers at hotspots on Saturn’s moon, finds out that herpes can sometimes be helpful, and explores a ‘hair-raising’ tale.
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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Research on mice raises hopes for regrowing hair.
Skin may have the capacity to regenerate lost hair follicles from within, according to a new discovery that could yield better treatments for baldness or abnormal hair growth. Researchers in the United States have found that, when skin is wounded, epidermal cells can respond by assuming the properties of stem cells that generate hair follicles and growing new hair.
Read more here
From the massive wealth of Bill Gates to the pennies of the masses, the private money given to scientific research and development has a huge impact. Nature takes a look at who is giving what, and the effects it has.
See our online special.
Viral infections give mice an immunity boost.
The herpesviruses bring untold suffering, but may not be all bad. Chronic latent infection with specific viral strains protects mice against some bacterial infections, a Nature study reveals this week.
Study shows how micro molecules interfere with gene expression.
Tiny fragments of RNA called microRNAs are known to interfere with gene expression, but how? A new study hints that they get involved right at the start of the game — they seem to prevent protein production before it even starts.
African proposal to ban all trade may not be the answer.
Sophisticated smuggling syndicates are driving a soaring trade in illegal ivory from Africa to Asia, according to a new report.
But having a mutated p53 gene may help ward off tumours after chemotherapy.
A key gene that helps the body to avoid cancer may sometimes hinder cancer treatment, suggest scientists today. On the flipside, the mutated version of the gene, which usually cannot protect against cancer, might work to a patient's advantage during therapy.
Neuroscience can't show us the source of free will, says Philip Ball, because it's not a scientific concept.
Gluing a fly's head to a wire and watching it trying to fly sounds more like the sort of experiment a naughty schoolboy would conduct than one that turns out to have philosophical and legal implications.
A distant cluster of galaxies contains a hoop of the elusive dark stuff.
A ghostly ripple spotted within a cluster of galaxies 5 billion light years away supplies further evidence that the mysterious substance known as dark matter really exists.
Andromeda will collide with the Milky Way sooner than thought, and may steal the Sun.
Our Milky Way galaxy is headed for a sedate collision with its neighbour, the Andromeda galaxy, billions of years earlier than was previously thought. The earlier date means that the Sun will still be alive when the two collide; and a new computer simulation shows what could happen to our star.
Third inquiry into bubble fusion is underway.
Purdue University has set up a third panel to look at allegations of research misconduct against nuclear engineer Rusi Taleyarkhan. The existence of the latest inquiry emerged when a congressional committee wrote to the university questioning the thoroughness of its earlier review. Now Purdue, based in West Lafayette, Indiana, faces an uphill task in convincing the wider scientific community that it is mounting a serious investigative effort, critics say.
Latest study suggests that milky tea is just as good for you
Here's a ray of hope for milky-tea drinkers: new research shows that the quaint British custom of adding milk doesn't ruin the beneficial properties of the traditional drink.
Read the story here
A natural sand-bridge made his defeat of Tyre easier.
Historians need not be quite so impressed by Alexander the Great's defeat of the island of Tyre in 332BC. Geological studies of the region show that Alexander's army had help reaching the island, in the form of a natural land-bridge lying just a metre or two below the water's surface.
Project aims to bring high-tech device to developing world.
A consortium of UK universities hopes to bring affordable domestic appliances to rural areas of developing countries by developing a device that acts as a refrigerator, cooker and power generator all in one, powered by locally available biomass fuels such as wood.
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.
Having completed our week long research programme at Camp 2 on Mount Everest (6,400m) the climbers have decided to come down low for some well earned rest. The remainder of the Caudwell Xtreme Everest (CXE) investigators continue to work testing all the trekkers that come through the four laboratories in Nepal (Kathmandu, Namche Bazaar, Pheriche and Everest Base Camp).
We are over half way through testing the trekking groups now and data collection has gone extremely well thanks to the effort of the teams at each laboratory. Altitude illness has been minimal on account of the slow ascent profile the trekkers take which means we have been able to test nearly every subject on the cardiopulmonary exercise (CPX) system. The volume of data from the 200 volunteer trekkers and our group of 24 investigator/subjects will be vast. I foresee a busy time ahead analysing the data, a task that will no doubt take a number of years to complete.
Why descend to low altitude in order to rest? Climbing up and down the mountain has taken its toll on many of the team. Some of the men in the group have lost over ten kilograms in the space of six weeks and as a consequence are beginning to feel weak.
High altitude weight loss is a well documented but poorly understood phenomenon. It is one of the consequences of high altitude travel which we shall be investigating whilst here. Above 5,000m despite what seems like an adequate diet people begin to lose weight at an alarming rate. It seems to affect men more than women, and perhaps most disturbingly the weight loss is due not only to fat loss but muscle wasting.
Loss of muscle mass is the last thing one needs when trying to climb the highest mountain in the world. So we have walked down the valley to a village called Dingboche at an altitude a little over 4,000m in order to relax and try and put some weight back on! It certainly is a strange sight in the lodge: a group of undernourished bearded climbers trying to eat as much as they possibly can before returning to base camp! This will be our last chance to rest before the final push up the mountain so we are trying to make the most of it.
When we return to the mountain we have one more laboratory to set up – the South Col laboratory. At 8,000m this will be the highest laboratory in the world. Although on previous expeditions we have taken blood at higher altitudes we have never attempted to set up a powered laboratory and investigate subjects as they pass through on their way to the summit. We plan to perform CPX, spirometry (lung function), transcranial Doppler (ultrasound of blood flow to the brain), sidestream darkfield imaging (a method of imaging blood flow under the tongue) and arterial blood gas analysis whilst there. If successful this will be the highest that any of these techniques have been performed and will provide unique data about human physiology at extreme altitudes.
Hopefully we will all muster the enthusiasm to return to base camp soon and the weather improves sufficiently for us to begin our journey towards the summit.
Dan Martin