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Human waste could be an alternative to chemical fertilizers.
Human urine could nourish the plankton used as food on fish farms. Plankton grown in diluted urine do better than those given other nitrogen-rich materials, ecological engineers have found.
Read the story here.
Leftovers become biofuel as officials move to cut excess production.
The European Commission is putting out to tender the opportunity to turn its excess wine into bioethanol. But if the commission gets its way, this will be the last time the European Union subsidizes such a move.
Read the story here.
One type of bacterium has been reprogrammed into another.
By transplanting their genomes, US scientists have converted one species into another.
Read more here.
American and Old World horticulture began about the same time.
Archaeologists have found some of the oldest evidence of cultivated food plants in South America. The squash seeds, peanuts hulls, cotton bolls and quinoa-like seeds add to evidence that the dawn of agriculture in the New World was earlier and more protracted than previously thought.
Read more here.
Cats' DNA reveals time and place of domestication.
Domestic cats have been worshiped as gods, reviled as devils and cherished as companions. News@nature.com looks at the feline family tree to find out when and where humans began to welcome cats into their homes.
Read the story here.
This week the Nature Podcast finds a battle of the sexes raging in red deer genes, derives a new type of stem cell, and welcomes you to the Wellcome Collection.
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Siberian lake could have been made by asteroid blast.
After nearly 100 years of searches, researchers have found what may be an impact crater made by the object that caused a huge blast over the remote Siberian area of Tunguska on 30 June 1908.
NASA mission leaders hope Dawn will rise on time.
If all goes well, NASA's first mission to the asteroid belt, called Dawn, will rocket off the launch pad on 7 July or soon after. But the window of opportunity for this mission is squeezed fairly tight by traffic at Cape Canaveral, and in the wake of mechanical and logistical problems, there's a chance that the launch could be postponed until autumn.
Yesterday marked the finale of Synthetic Biology 3.0. Tom Knight of MIT, considered a founder of the field, gave an inspirational keynote address laying out some of the near-term goals for the budding enterprise:
Scientists need to better marry the principles of engineering and biology. Define useful layers of abstraction so that scientists interested in delving into details on a certain aspect of biology, say signalling kinetics, don’t have to worry too much about what geneticists are doing and can essentially pull ready-to-use easily manipulated genes from the shelf to conduct their work. Imperative in this is standardizing practices so that what the genetics folks create, signalling folks can use. Achieving the kind of modularity that exists for electronics engineers is the goal here, and computer design, unsurprisingly, was a recurring comparison.
The good news he said, is that biology is already doing this. Natural selection has been able to employ modularity of genes and gene components, he said. Otherwise, it would be impossible to deal with the complexity of ‘building’ working structures.
Knight called for new tools in chromosome design, in metabolic design, in protein design, and in engineering safeguards for newly manipulated organisms (such as non-standard genetic code). He also underlined the imperative to make new parts freely available, reiterating the vaguely dirty sounding message on the backs of the biobricks stickers that had been going around. “Share your parts!”
This was the third synthetic biology conference, and the organizers announced plans to hold the fourth in Asia in October of 2008. When prodded for an exact location, Drew Endy also at MIT said the tentative plan is to hold the conference in Hong Kong. Until then!
Unusual gait could reduce stress on the limbs of large animals.
Despite their cumbersome appearance, elephants can run. And, researchers have found, they break into that run at surprisingly slow speeds.
Official concern voiced over iron fertilization of seas.
The scientific advisory group for the parties of the London Convention, the main treaty governing ocean dumping, has for the first time questioned the use of 'iron fertilization' in combating climate change. The group's statement, released on 22 June, will not in itself interfere with plans by Planktos, a San Francisco-based company, to create a large plankton bloom with the technique in the coming months. But this official statement of concern could strengthen calls for further regulation under the terms of the treaty when the partners meet later this year.
This morning, I noted the huge amount of combinations that could possibly occur for a 100 nucleotide RNA sequence. Peter Seeberger of ETH Hönggerberg, where Synthetic Biology 3.0 is being held, kicked the complexity up a notch by talking about carbohydrates. The trouble with carbohydrates is synthesis. Proteins and nucleotides are generally quite easy to synthesize through either chemical or biologic means. Carbohydrates present a formidable challenge however.
Here comes the math again. So, for a 6 nucleotide sequence there are 4ˆ6 or 4096 possible combinations. For a protein sequence there are 64 million. A carbohydrate chain six units long has 192,780,943,360 potential combinations according to Seeberger, give or take. In order to synthesize carbohydrates without simply going crazy, his group had to define a standard set of building blocks that could essentially mimic most of the necessary carbohydrate componentry. They landed on five including N-glycans, O-glycans, and glycosphingolipids. That makes the space for creativity significantly smaller, although his team has been able to engineer additional changes, bonds, linkages to proteins, and more to mirror nature in sugar production.
One of the projects he has been working on is a carbohydrate based malaria vaccine. The method by which a malaria parasite enters an erythrocyte appears to be controlled by Glycosylphosphatidylinositols (GPIs). By synthesizing a similar protein-carbohydrate molecule and setting up ways to produce high volumes of it, they might be in clinical trials in humans by 2008. Moreover, the work on GPIs indicate to some extent why Malaria might be so deadly. Free malaria GPIs bound to uninfected cells may be triggering immune response and inflammation. People were buzzing about it. I’ll be interested in seeing where this work goes.
It may be hard to top some of this morning’s sessions, but we’ll see what the after-lunch crew has to add. I’ll be posting soon about some amazing carbohydrate work by Peter Seeberger of ETH Honggerberg, where the conference is being held, but I just wanted to direct to some of the other blogs covering Synthetic Biology 3.0.
The seven stones, a blog associated with the journal Molecular Systems Biology.
http://blog-msb.embo.org/blog/
The blog of the ETC group.
http://www.etcblog.org/
Prism Webcast
http://prismwebcastnews.com/pwn/?p=910
Ocrampal
http://ocrampal.com/
Now, to learn about human artificial chromosomes.
The third and final day of Synthetic Biology 3.0 in Zürich, Switzerland is designed to address applications for synthetic bio. I was just blown away by a nice demonstration in the first talk this morning by Michael Famulok, of the University of Bonn.
Famulok works on RNA catalysts, or ribozymes, working to design and refine them via selection in a test tube, in some ways modelling the conditions that might have existed in an early RNA world – of course, in a much accelerated way. He gave some indication of the range of molecules such a system could possibly choose from.
In a 100 nucleotide sequence of RNA, there are obviously 4^100 possible combinations of sequence. That’s 10ˆ60 RNA molecules each 100 nucleotides long. That many RNA strands would weigh something on the order of 10^38 kilograms which is roughly the mass of the Milky Way. Wow!
In vitro selection is a powerful process, but it can’t possibly test the full combinatorial space of an RNA sequence this size.
Clever experiment shows altruism in great apes.
Humans are often thought of as the only truly altruistic species. We help others out — by giving blood, donating to the poor, or committing to recycling — for no immediate payoff, and often at a cost to ourselves.
I couldn’t resist snapping a shot of this poster put up by Etc. group for the evening poster session at Synthetic Biology 3.0 in Zürich, Switzerland.
Etc. is an advocacy group that has been urging caution on the synthetic biology front. In general, their arguments are fairly interesting, if not leaning a bit towards radical socialism. But this poster, wedged between serious scientific presentations, seemed over the top enough that conference goers were requesting I take their picture beside it. I waited around for someone from Etc. to come ‘walk me through it.’ But no one showed up.
Incidentally, during the panel discussion this evening, someone from the audience mentioned learning a lot from a poster that Etc. was presenting. I don’t think this is the one she was talking about. Maybe I can get Jim Thomas to explain it to me tomorrow on the last day of the conference.
“When is secrecy justifiable?” asks Laurie Zoloth, a bioethicist from Northwestern University in a hurried presentation on the ethical challenges presented by synthetic biology at the third annual meeting on the topic in Zürich, Switzerland. She characterized the main arguments that have been made for and against synthetic bio referencing everyone from Kant to Sissela Bok, and Disney to Lucas.
Zoloth delineated the battle lines between scientists who think the technology is ‘cool,’ call them enthusiasts, and academics, ethicists, and pundits who urge caution. One person urging caution, Jim Thomas of the Etc. advocacy group (who has contacted me and even posted links to his own blog on my previous posts), got his say in the panel session that followed the talk. Some fireworks ensued.
Zoloth defined the most visible battle lines nicely: Scientists are generally enthusiastic about what they’re doing. They think synthetic biology is ‘cool,’ and are usually eager to carry on. Groups like Etc, and ethicists like Zoloth urge caution. There are the theologics who urge against trying to play God, those that argue terrorists might take control of new knowledge, and those that warn against the slippery slope and sorcerer’s apprentice scenarios (enter the Dis). What Jim Thomas is warning against falls along the lines of synthetic biology proceeding apace and stepping on the little guy (the archetype for the little guy being poor farmers in Southern Africa who neither benefit from, nor welcome the encroachments of modern technology). For him, unchecked progress of synthetic biology is a power play of developed nations with the potential to quash something ‘natural’ and human. Their motives were made pretty clear by their press release calling attention to the infamous Venter patent application, about which, I’m surprised to say, still not much has been said in open session.
The synthetic biology conferences that have been held to date (there have been two previous) have made efforts to discuss societal and ethical implications, and open a dialog with the public. Thomas complained, however, that these efforts have taken an elitist approach aiming the technical language far above what the average citizen can understand. This may be true, and one of Zoloth’s proposed solutions to the ethical and safety issues of synthetic bio certainly seem to widen this divide. Zoloth offers what she calls a Jedi theory of governance (welcome to the party, Lucas) in which the deep dark secrets of synthetic biology are kept within the ken of a chosen few, a priesthood if you will of synthetic biology.
There was argument from one commenter, Wayne Materi from the National Research Council, Canada, that such secret-keeping engenders exactly the kind of rage that might turn the fruits of synthetic biology against humanity a-la bioterrorism. But Zoloth was firm when I pressed her on the point after the talk. Some secrets just need to be kept, she said, noting that she’s glad that she, for one, doesn’t know how to make an atomic bomb.
George Church of Harvard Medical School, might take a pass on the role of Obi Wan in the synthetic biology knighthood. He was less inclined to form some sort of Jedi clan on the subject. In fact, he’s promoted a full open-access model in synthetic bio, to the point that he’s invited Etc, and “other three letter groups” to come to his lab, watch what he and his lab mates do, and report it to the world (or even keep the secrets to themselves – he doesn’t even want to know or influence what they find). It’s certainly interesting to watch a nascent field address these concerns so early in its development. Parallels have been made to Asilomar for molecular biology, the Manhattan Project for nuclear weaponry, but it’s definitely a different animal. Tonight, for the first time that I’d heard it, parallels were made to stem cell biology.
Zoloth said she’s been through the stem cell wars and seen what it’s like to have moratoria and hyper regulation descend upon a field. She doesn’t want to see the same happen for synthetic biology unnecessarily. Bottom line, she quotes Sydney Brenner who instructed scientists thusly: Don’t lie, and try to make something good for humanity.
I didn’t get a chance to ask what Thomas thought of this advice. How do you think things will turn out for synthetic biologists?
Intestinal worms collect heavy metals from the sea.
Parasitic worms inside the guts of sharks are absorbing high concentrations of toxic heavy metals, researchers have found. The worms could be useful to scientists trying to check up on the health of ocean waters. And they could be saving the sharks from metal poisoning — at least for now.
Fossils reveal the flightless birds' early migration to the tropics.
Fossils show that giant, 1.5-metre-tall penguins lived on the beaches of Peru some 35 million years ago, when the equatorial region was relatively warm.
Group calls for end of poppy eradication strategy
Encouraging Afghan villagers to make morphine legally from poppies could help stem the illegal opium trade and free farmers from the clutches of the Taliban, suggests a report released today.
Read the story here
In all the session on intellectual property at Zurich’s Synthetic Biology 3.0 meeting didn’t quite have the inspirational flair of its science based predecessors, but one talk in particular stood out. Stephen Maurer, a lawyer and adjunct faculty member at Berkeley presented as a case study for the murky intellectual property issues raised by synthetic biology a pending $500 million proposal by the UC school to partner with BP (the B stands for Beyond, now, not British as was formerly the case). For background see here, here and here.
BP is looking to capitalise on synthetic biology for the creation of biofuels and is looking both at Berkeley, considered one of its major hubs at the moment, and the University of Illinois to start setting up shop in an academic setting. Maurer has an intimate vantage, and an interesting point of view.
The deal would place so-called ‘closed’ BP labs on the campus. These would be run by BP scientists. There would also be ‘open’ labs run by established biologists at Berkeley. The proposal also calls for a so-called ‘applications lab’ an odd gray area grouping, which as I understand it, is where translational research that may be of high interest to BP could flow more easily behind the walls of the ‘closed’ labs. For the sizable chunk of money, which comes both from BP and public sources, BP would be granted non-exclusive royalty-free license to patents on technologies in BP’s area of interest. Exclusive licensing could be negotiated, and Berkeley proposes a capped fee. Maurer took a moment to voice his worst nightmare, where the solution to the world’s energy crisis ends up generating a couple of hundred thousand dollars for Berkeley.
So, the proposal has had the Berkeley campus protesting, and for the most part said Maurer, protesting for the same reasons that people have opposed these kinds of deals in the past – limiting the freedom of academic pursuits, misdirecting research funds, etc. But Maurer said that there seemed to be new, more troubling aspects to this proposal which Berkeley has defended by calling, ‘a standard contract.’ Part of the problem for Maurer is that the new field, Synth biology seems poised to benefit most by openness of ideas and sharing of the ‘parts’ generated by scientists around the world. The development of biological parts presents a situation that if patenting becomes the norm would likely create a tipping market scenario leading Berkeley and BP into dangerous antitrust waters. Biotechnology has adopted whole heartedly the patenting schema, which Maurer says isn’t really as common in innovative fields like chemistry. He told me he thought Berkeley should demand more openness in the plan and asked all in attendance to check out the proposal and if they felt the same way to call their colleagues at Berkeley and make it known. I’ve linked a summary of the proposal here. I’ll try to update with a better link when Maurer gets back to me.
His dissidence was worth the price of attendance. The price of attendance was missing out on a public policy and ethics roundtable discussion going on down the hall. I made it in time for questions, and a second session of the same ilk is starting right now.
Questions about the infamous Venter patent didn’t come up at Hamilton Smith’s talk this morning. Smith, a Nobel Laureate and well known as J.C. Venter’s right hand man talked about an ongoing project at the Venter Institute to define a minimal set of genes needed for life. The minimalist Mycoplasma genitalium has been the focus of study for its already sparse genome (it’s about 580 kb long and contains just under 500 genes).
Smith talked about three ongoing projects on M genitalium: 1) reducing the genome to its lowest number of necessary genes, 2) synthesizing and assembling a new M. genitalium genome from scratch for the purpose of 3) transplanting it into a recipient cell and creating essentially a new organism which Smith called M. laboratorium.
So, number 2 has proved quite tricky and I’ll get back to that, but the group at the Venter Institute has made quite a leap in the transplant area. They took two, somewhat easier to grow species of Mycoplasma – Mycoplasma capricolum and Mycoplasma mycocides – and they plugged the genome from the latter into the cell of the former. Rather than remove the M. capricolum genome from the hybrid cell, they hoped that the cell would essentially divide leaving one daughter cell with a completely new genome. Based on the evidence Smith showed it seemed to work quite well, and not that inefficiently. The idea that another organism’s genome could essentially boot up the cytoplasm of cell and establish itself, is nothing short of amazing.
The question remains whether they can do this with a laboratory synthesized genome copy of M. genitalium. They built the genome in 101 pieces painstakingly checking for errors through sequencing, and they’ve been working hard trying to put those pieces together since at least the last time I’d heard Smith talk, which was in 2005.
One had to note the irony in the placement of the second talk, then, in which Miroslav Radman of Necker Institute, France, discussed the epic genomic reconstitution abilities of Deinococcus radiodurans. After blasting this bacterium with something on the order of 14kiloGrays of radiation, Radman showed how the genome completely reconstitutes itself in a matter of about 4.5 hours. His work has been showing to some extent how this organism pulls this mighty feat off through synthesis dependent strand annealing thanks in part to a protein for recombination recA that has evolved to survive extreme dessication.
This kind of genome reassembly that happened naturally would be a pretty neat trick for Smith et al. as at least one questioner noted in the questions session following Radman’s presentation. If I recall correctly, the Venter team had been considering using the amazing qualities of radiodurans, but in Smith’s presentation, the process described was more along the lines of traditional molecular biology techniques. It would be neat if they could create the synthetic organism that they’ve claimed a patent for, but alas they haven’t yet.
Now, I’m going to learn more about the property rights issues synthetic biologists are facing.
From a quiet Sunday morning, the synthetic biology meeting in Zürich Switzerland quickly exploded to roughly 300 in attendance. I had a chance to grab Tom Knight of MIT who demurred only slightly when asked about his involvement with synthetic biology. You might call him a founding father of the field. “I gave it a name at least,” he told me as we waited on a long lunch line amongst the other synth biologists grumbling that the cafeteria would only accept Swiss francs.
He was happy to give me some help in trying to define the field.
Coming from an electrical engineering background himself, he sees the approach to synthetic biology as fundamentally different from genetic engineering. The synthetic biologist is at heart an engineer, an inveterate tinkerer for whom understanding only comes with the act of building from the bottom up. He also said it was important to delineate synth bio from systems biology, to which it has often been compared. Systems biology has more of an emphasis on modelling, he says, which is important in synthetic biology, but not its end goal.
He offered a comparison of continuity that seemed helpful. I’m paraphrasing a bit, but the gist is this: Classic biology is a matter of discovery and collecting of facts to put them in an understandable framework. Systems biology looks to model that framework in a way that allows predictions to be made. Synthetic biology looks to create the system anew.
As if to immediately confuse that point, lunch was followed by a sprinter’s paced keynote address by George Church, also of MIT (actually, I believe Harvard Med is his primary affiliation, sorry), and one of the editors of Molecular Systems Biology (full disclosure Nature Publishing Group has a hand in this journal). Church has been placed at the forefront of both synthetic and systems biology, and he buzzed through maybe six projects going on in his lab that may speak to both, including engineering all of the amber (UAG) stop codons out of E. coli to “free up the genetic code,” and make those codons available for other amino acids generally unused by E. coli. His team has made, he says, 25 mutations changing G to A in a single strain, thanks in part to a novel recombination method that works at the replication fork. Wild stuff! He wasn’t sure if they’d need to hit all 326 known ambers, but mutating the release factor that responds to UAG during translation is still lethal in the strain with the 25 mutations. He’s not sure why yet. Church is also working on developing a mirror image of a polymerase to synthesize left handed DNA (no, not Z-DNA), and has been studying the co-evolution of bacterial strains engineered to rely on each other for specific metabolic processes.
The afternoon sessions also saw the first mention of minimal cells, a topic likely to cause a few ripples over the next couple of days. Giovanni Murtas of the University of Rome spoke about his group’s efforts to engineer liposomes with just the right mix of cellular components that they might become self sufficient and replicate. Having watched this field for some time, it’s clear that progress is slow. This bottom up approach is different from that at the J. Craig Venter Institute which has been trying to reduce the genome of a known organism Mycoplasma genitalium to its minimal needed parts. The group made waves recently when they attempted to patent the list of genes thought to be necessary for the bacterium to live, considering the novel organism a chassis for biofuel efforts. We’ll hear more about that tomorrow, when Hamilton Smith of the Venter Institute gives an 8:00am keynote.
Perception of pitch and spatial orientation are linked.
The way that people talk about 'high' and 'low' notes makes it sound as though musical pitch has something to do with physical location. Now it seems there may be a reason for this: the same bit of our brain could control both our understanding of pitch and spatial orientation.
Synthetic Biology 3.0 started today in Zürich, Switzerland and runs until Tuesday. This is the first European site for a meeting looking to unite biology and engineering under the umbrella of a breakout new field (1.0 and 2.0 were at MIT and UC Berkeley, respectively).
I tend to think of synthetic biologists as something akin to computer hackers, because they are looking to understand living cells in a more thorough sense by precisely designing manipulations to natural biological systems. They’re trying to write code for new biological functions and in a sense are hacking the cell. But that’s probably an imprecise definition.
Indeed, definitions in this field, as for most new fields, have been something of a moving target and in speaking with meeting goers, already I’m told there are diverging opinions as to what synthetic biology entails and how it differs, really, from classic bioengineering as done over the past two or three decades. I’ll try and pin down a definition by the end of the meeting.
Things are just getting underway with a couple of morning tutorials. I’m sitting in on a short course about yeast, Saccharomyces cerevisiae. Stefan Hohmann from Göteborg University is easing a crowd gently into the rich history of yeast genetics. The many tools already available for the single celled eukaryote make it a great organism for hacking (much work so far has focused on bacteria and phage systems).
ETH Hönggerberg serves as an idyllic conference site. The HCI building, in which the majority of the meeting will be held is a monument to science, engineering, and architecture in stainless steel and granite (I’m reminded of a kitchen I’d some day like to own). Five enormous fingers of the building jut into the Swiss countryside overlooking a field of wheat and a pasture with a group of grazing cows. I believe the building is somewhat new as google maps showed it still under construction (HCI is on the Southeast corner of campus). Between the fingers of the giant building, deep pits house what looks like representations of different Swiss ecosystems: a shallow lake, another with spots of vegetation, one filled with grasses, and another with trees and ferns. I’ll see if I can’t find out their significance.
Behind scare stories of building synthetic life lies the issue of who owns the biological parts.
"For the first time, God has competition", claimed the Action Group on Erosion, Technology and Concentration (ETC Group) two weeks ago. With this catchy headline, it aimed to raise the alarm about a patent on "the world's first-ever human-made species", a bacterium allegedly created "with synthetic DNA" in the laboratories of the Venter Institute in Rockville, Maryland.
A quake or melting ice could have drained a Chilean lake away
A glacial lake in the Andes has disappeared mysteriously, prompting local geologists to head to Bernardo O'Higgins National Park in Patagonia, Chile, to find out what happened.
Read the story here
Early immune resistance may have helped to set stage for modern pandemic.
Humans may be susceptible to infection by HIV because our ancient ancestors evolved resistance to another virus.
Social standing within a family affects average intelligence scores.
Eldest sibblings are, on average, 2.3 IQ points more intelligent than their younger brothers and sisters, says a study of Norweigan kids. And it's not necessarily being born first that makes the difference — it's being raised as the eldest child.
Senate may yet override decision, but House falls short of needed votes.
For the second time in less than a year, President George W. Bush yesterday vetoed legislation that would lift restrictions on US federal funding for human embryonic stem-cell research. The bill, passed by the Senate and the House, allows government funding for research on stem cells derived from embryos that are left over at fertility clinics and slated for destruction. "I will not allow our nation to cross this moral line," Bush said.
Bob Lanza, scientific head of ACT, says he's generated three embryonic stem cell lines without destroying embryos - which would be proof of the concept he announced in principle he announced in 2006. The data hasn't been released yet, but Lanza made the statement at the stem cell conference in Australia. Read more in Nature's blog entry from that conference.
This week the Nature Podcast takes a step towards a lunar telescope, makes car fuel out of carbs, and discovers a way to get drugs to the brain.
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Really? A telescope? Made from liquid? On the Moon?
Scientists have found a liquid that they say is perfect for building a telescope on the Moon — once we go back there and build a base, of course.
Read the story here
New route turns crop sugars into a fuel that beats ethanol
A biofuel that outperforms ethanol could be easily made from fructose and, in future, glucose derived from the woody parts of plants, researchers claim.
Read the story here
Last legal step begins for health workers appealing Libyan verdict.
The long-running case of six foreign health professionals sentenced to death in Libya enters its final legal phase today, with the first hearing of their appeal by the country's Supreme Court in Tripoli.
Developing nation overtakes America, and is set to rise.
China has overtaken the United States as the world's top annual emitter of carbon dioxide, according to a report from the Netherlands Environmental Assessment Agency.
Violent wounds tell story of the Spanish conquest of Inca peoples.
Archaeologists have dug up a skeleton from an Inca cemetery in Peru with a hole in its head. The wound suggests that this is the first documented gunshot victim in the New World.
Collaboration with Eskimo hunters shores up theory on long-lived whales.
A 100-year-old patented harpoon point, a dead bowhead whale and a unique collaboration between traditional hunters and scientists has helped to prove the theory that northern-latitude whales are among the world's longest-lived mammals.
Can forensic science rely on the evidence of bugs?
Lynn Kimsey was one of 137 witnesses called to testify in the murder trial of Vincent Brothers, who stood accused of killing his wife, mother-in-law and children in Bakersfield, California. Brothers said that he was in Ohio at the time of the murders; he had rented a car there, and driven it no further west than St Louis, Missouri.
As space shuttle returns to Earth, NASA is still puzzling over breakdown.
All seems normal on the International Space Station today, as the space shuttle Atlantis prepares to return to Earth, leaving the usual allotment of astronauts behind to mind the station. But engineers are still working hard to understand the cause of a computer glitch that for some 48 hours or so put the station in what was arguably the greatest peril it has ever faced.
Attacks on Estonian networks prompt high-level discussion.
Recent attacks on the electronic information networks of Estonia have forced NATO (North Atlantic Treaty Organization) to consider the question of whether this form of cyberattack could ever be construed as an act of war.
Is there wisdom in repugnance? Or is disgust 'the nastiest of all emotions', offering nothing but support to prejudice? Find out!
FEATURE
The depths of disgust
EDITORIAL
Evolution and the brain
Take a test to see how prone you are to disgust — and help researchers collect data.
Plants and animals show big spring-time shift over a decade.
Spring-time in the Arctic is arriving earlier than it did a decade ago, say ecologists working in Greenland. Processes that mark the beginning of spring, such as flowers blooming and egg-laying, are now happening an average of more than 14 days earlier in the calendar than they did as recently as 1996, as a result of rising temperatures.
Read more here
Testosterone sharing in the womb has knock-on effects.
Any woman with a brother could tell you that boys can be noisy, unruly and annoying. Now it seems that women with twin brothers have an extra reason to complain: they lower her chance of getting married.
Influenza 'accidentally' hit on drug resistance through natural evolution.
Influenza resistance to a powerful group of antiviral drugs, the adamantane family, has worryingly jumped from 2% to 90% in recent years around the world. This dramatic shift was initially attributed to drug selection pressure: throwing adamantane drugs at viruses should select for influenza strains that evade those drugs. But a new study hints that this isn't the cause of the increased resistance; instead it seems viruses developed the resistance on their own accord.
The disgraced South Korean scientist Woo Suk Hwang, found out for publishing fraudulent research, actually did achieve an important first, according to scientists at the meeting of the International Society for Stem Cell Research - just not the one he claimed.
The human embryonic stem cells he made came from a parthenote, or an activated, unfertilized egg. And he really was first to do that.
Read all about it and leave comments on Nature's stem cell blog - The Niche.
Join Monya Baker, news editor for Nature Reports Stem Cells, at the interntional conference of stem cell research going on this week in Cairns, Australia. Check her diary meeting reports on the Nature stem cells blog - The Niche.
I'll be posting some of her entries here too.
Some people literally feel what they see.
'Mirror touch' synaesthesia is a strange but real condition, and it might be wide-spread, psychologists have found. So-called mirror-touch synaesthetes actually feel a touch on their own skin when they watch someone else being touched. Perhaps as a consequence, they also show more emotional empathy than normal people.
A 'vaccine court' case on autism could have disastrous consequences if people confuse its verdict with scientific consensus.
Why are there so many more cases of autism now than there were 30 years ago? It's a question the best scientific minds have been unable to answer. But I'm afraid a US court now looking at that question may settle it on the basis of emotion rather than science.
After one panda dies, China considers which to release next.
Chinese officials confirmed this week that they intend to continue releasing captive-bred pandas into the wild, despite the tragic death of the programme's pilot panda earlier this year.
News@nature.com rounds up key decisions from this week's conference on international trade in endangered species.
This year's meeting of the Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species (CITES) drew to a close today after more than a week of tough negotiations. Representatives from 171 member states haggled over some 40 proposed changes to regulations governing the international trade of plants and animals, resulting in changes to the treatment of many (see slideshow).
Eris is bigger and heavier than our Solar System's 'ninth planet'.
Whether you call it a planet or not, Pluto has officially been overtaken by a more massive planetary object — Eris (previously nicknamed Xena).
Read the story herehttp://www.nature.com/news/2007/070611/full/070611-10.html
This week the Nature Podcast unearths a giant bird-like dinosaur, decodes the results of the ENCODE project, and washes up in Mars’ equivalent of the Mediterranean.
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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This week the Nature Podcast unearths a giant bird-like dinosaur, decodes the results of the ENCODE project, and washes up in Mars’ equivalent of the Mediterranean.
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
'Stuff' not made of particles could be seen soon, in theory.
The universe could be filled with stranger stuff than anything physicists have ever seen: stuff that, unlike all known matter, isn't made of particles. Howard Georgi of Harvard University calls it 'unparticle stuff'.
Researchers identify protein that signals cold-induced pain.
Whether the pain comes from holding an ice cube for too long or staying out on a frigid winter day, the source is clear: it's the cold that hurts. Now researchers have found a protein responsible for provoking pain in response to extreme cold in mice.
Chinese researchers unearth a surprising find.
Researchers in China have unearthed the bones of a gigantic bird-like dinosaur, dwarfing anything else in its category.
It's not just animals that can tell siblings from strangers.
Telling apart relatives from strangers is crucial in many animal species, helping them to share precious resources or avoid inbreeding. Now it seems that plants can perform the same trick.
No hope for better measurement of Gliese 581c.
Astronomers who had been anxiously keeping an eye on the dwarf star Gliese 581, in hopes of observing an Earth-like planet pass in front of it, have been met with disappointment so far. The star's light, as viewed by the Canadian Space Agency's MOST space satellite, has been remarkably constant - meaning the recently spotted planet 581c has not passed between the star and Earth. Data collected from such a pass would have allowed a precise determination of the planet's size and composition.
Power savings for those willing to relinquish control over home computing
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Study shows how habitat shape is as important as size.
Corridors designed to connect animals in isolated and fragmented habitats are not necessarily the simple conservation solution they appear to be, suggests a new study.
Monkey studies highlight multiple stem cell abilities.
Human stem cell transplants have eased the symptoms of Parkinson’s disease in a monkey model of the brain disorder. The study, which brings the prospect of human trials one step closer, hints that stem cells do more than just replace cells — they may help persuade the brain to heal itself.
100-million-year-old fungus brings hints of Cretaceous ecology.
OREGON An unusual fossil-hunting team has hit upon an unusual discovery: the oldest found mushroom fossil yet, encased in amber along with a striking example of a parasite feeding upon a parasite. Dated to 100 million years ago by the age of material surrounding the amber, the mushroom joins the exclusive company of just a handful of fossilized fleshy fungal bodies ever found.
Mudslide in Kamchatka wipes out some study sites.
Teams of scientists have been sent to the Valley of Geysers, on the Kamchatka Peninsula in the far east of Russia, to report on the condition of the World Heritage site after a massive landslide in the Kronotsky national reserve.
Astronomical instruments were probably made after Chaucer's designs, not before.
Want to see the astrolabe used for astronomical calculations by Geoffrey Chaucer himself? You'll be lucky, says Catherine Eagleton, a curator at the British Museum in London.
Famed chemist celebrates his 65th birthday by showcasing next generation of scientists.
When you hit 65, the typical celebration might go something like: gather family and friends at home, eat cake, drink champagne, maybe play a round of golf. But Fraser Stoddart, professor of chemistry at the University of California, Los Angeles, and one of the world's top chemists, decided instead to gather together the best of the next generation of chemists to showcase their research.
In Brazil, influenza epidemics don't start in the crowded cities.
The notion that flu epidemics start in areas of high population density and spread outwards may not hold true for the tropics, hints a study from Brazil.
Study helps mollify one concern about pest-killing crops.
Crops modified to produce insecticides against pests are relatively kind to other insects, an analysis of 42 field experiments suggests. Fields of transgenic cotton and corn contain more non-target insects than those of traditional crops sprayed with insecticides, the study shows. But both have fewer such insects than traditional fields that aren't sprayed at all.
Cannabinoids provide relief for a mouse's itchy skin.
The chemicals that give marijuana its mood-altering kick might also be an option for treating skin allergies, according to a study done in mice.
Hurricane activity today looks much the same as the long-term average.
The increased hurricane activity over the tropical North Atlantic during the past 12 years may have less to do with climate change than is often assumed. The series of stormy seasons experienced since 1995 could just be a return to normal conditions, following a long unusually calm period throughout the 1970s and 1980s, a new study suggests.
Unfertilized eggs have long been the limiting resource for attempts to make genetically tailored human embryonic stem cells. If a new technique for cloning mice from fertilized eggs works in humans, they might not be necessary.
Few women are willing to give their unfertilized eggs to scientists. But many researchers believe these are the only suitable source material for making genetically tailored human embryonic stem cells (ES cells) — cells that could help us understand the biology of disease or, perhaps some day, be used in cell-transplant therapy. The shortage of eggs has spawned bitter debate over whether women should be allowed to donate, barter, or even sell their eggs to research laboratories.
A pair of Jupiter-sized planets has been put together from a surprisingly light mixture.
Astronomers have discovered a star that has managed to build two giant planets despite a dearth of the ingredients often thought to be needed for the job.
The particle-smashing project designed to look for the mysterious particle that gives objects mass will not be seeing any live action this year.
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Climate change and human intrusion converge to imperil birds.
With wild eyes and a dishevelled hairdo, Africa's white-crested hornbill (Tropicranus albocristatus) has a distinctly disgruntled look. Whatever is doing the disgruntling, though, has so far not been seen as life threatening. The bird is numerous and secure enough to have been declared of "least concern" by the conservation group BirdLife International.
But that may be about to change...
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Ancient Polynesians may have brought birds to the Americas.
The discovery of chicken bones with Polynesian DNA at an archaeological site in Chile has added hard, physical evidence to the controversial theory that ancient seafarers from the south Pacific visited the New World long before Columbus.
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Pairs of magpie-larks use choral skills to intimidate rivals.
Pairs of Australian magpie-larks (Grallina cyanoleuca) that sing in tune and in tempo are more threatening to rivals whose territory they move in on than pairs that can't quite get their twittering coordinated.
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Small quick trials may help shape the development of new drugs.
New clinical-trial results offer not just a modicum of hope for some future cancer patients, but also encouragement for those looking at more efficient techniques for developing new drugs.
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Astronomer shows when and where his ancient counterparts worked.
Using modern techniques — and some rocks — a US astronomer has traced the origin of a set of ancient clay tablets to a precise date and place. The tablets show constellations thought to be precursors of the present-day zodiac.
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Fetal immune system not so naive after all.
When a pregnant mother receives her recommended flu vaccine, she's not the only one whose immune system gears up to battle the virus. Her fetus can also mount an immune response against the flu, say researchers in the United States.
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Discoverer of the double helix blazes trail for personal genomics.
Nobel laureate James D. Watson peered deep into his genome yesterday. And soon, anyone else interested in his genetic makeup will be able to do the same.
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