Nature Newsblog
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Tumour growth blocked by anti-HIV agent.
A type of drug commonly used to treat HIV can slow the growth of cancer cells, researchers have found. The discovery raises hopes that drugs developed to fight one killer disease could help tackle another.
Read more here
DNA transfer from bacteria to animals is more common than thought.
Researchers have found a surprise hidden in the DNA of a fruitfly: what seems to be the entire genome of a parasitic bacterium called Wolbachia. Smaller bits of the promiscuous parasite's genetic material turned up in worms and wasps, too.
Cigarette habit may leave a molecular mark.
Gene expression changes brought on by heavy smoking may persist long after the smoker has kicked the habit, researchers have found. The results could provide a molecular explanation for the continued increased risk of lung cancer and other pulmonary ailments among former smokers.
First orchid fossil found on an entombed bee.
One day, fifteen or twenty million years ago, a bee dropped by an orchid and buried its head deep into the flower for a drink of nectar. A little later, the busy bee set out once again, this time to bring home some resin to help with hive construction. It would be the last errand it would ever run.
This week the Nature Podcast finds a new species trapped in ancient amber, reveals the sequence of the grapevine genome, counts down to space tourism, and discovers how protoplanetary discs get assembled.
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Super-sized animals may pave way for new drugs and bigger livestock.
It might sound like a cartoon scene from Tom and Jerry, but a biologist has come up with a real-life genetic recipe to create mice with four times more muscle than normal.
Read more here
http://www.nature.com/news/2007/070827/full/070827-2.htmlEarthworm invasion into North America could alter carbon sinks.
Earthworms have an unexpected impact on forests, researchers have found: they can change soil chemistry, and so are expected to affect how quickly carbon dioxide is emitted from a forest floor.
Read the story here
Clumps of mutant sperm-making cells help to explain Apert syndrome.
Researchers have delved into the human testis to help explain why fathers are so likely to pass a disease-causing mutation to their children.
Staff sergeant spotted neutron star before astronomers.
It was one of the most important astronomical discoveries of the twentieth century, and it became one of the more controversial when only one of the discoverers received a Nobel prize. Now a fascinating new footnote has been added to the story of how pulsars were discovered with the revelation that some had previously been observed by a US Air Force staff sergeant at a remote Alaskan outpost.
Vintage sequence could lead to improved pest resistance and new wine flavours.
A French-led team of geneticists has cemented the country's reputation as the world's wine capital — by compiling the complete genetic code of a Pinot Noir grape. Perhaps unsurprisingly, they have discovered that the species has a large repertoire of genes that produce compounds known to give complex flavours to fruit.
Gas giant's role in preventing asteroid collisions under scrutiny.
For more than a decade many astronomers have thought of Jupiter as a protective big brother for planet Earth. The gas giant's gravitational pull is believed to slingshot incoming Earth-threatening objects out of the Solar System. This has led many to suppose it shielded the young Earth from impacts, helping to support conditions for life.
The Marvel Universe has social webs similar to our own, says Philip Ball. In other words, they're sexist and elitist.
In which society do powerful males form a dominant, elitist network while females are relegated to peripheral roles?
That's it, I'm off. I've had a great week, as ever the conference didn't fail to surprise, impress (and exasperate). All good ingredients for a productive few days. I assume the delegates were equally as productive. We'll find out in New Orleans in March, I suppose.
Hopefully I'll make it home on time - please British Airways... I am anticipating a huge welcoming committee.
Elephantnose fish distinguish shapes in the dark with their electric-sensing chin.
The elephantnose fish, which finds its way at night using an electrical version of sonar, has sharp enough senses to assess the shape and size of objects in its tank in the dark, researchers have found. The fish can even identify shapes when they are present as simple wire frames rather than solid objects.
Camera trickery shows how easy it is to fool the mind.
Scientists have deliberately fooled people into feeling they are watching themselves from outside their own bodies, using virtual-reality technology. The achievement reveals how the brain can be confused as it struggles to integrate confusing information from the different senses.
Read more here
It's the last day of the conference, a sleepy atmosphere pervades the air. Or at least my head, which has up until now been filled with worms - but you'll have to pick up a copy of Nature next week to find out why I might be investigating worms at a chemistry conference. The suspense is unbearable, I know...
I saw some talks on antibiotics today. Resistance to antibiotics has one good thing going for it, that's for sure - chemists and biochemists are always going to be in a job. Talking to Gerry Wright after his talk really brought this home - we might find a way to beat drug-resistant bacteria, but the bugs are constantly beavering away working out ways to beat us back in return.
Software tool great for the public; not perfect for amateur astronomers.
The people at Google, who enabled us to look at our house from space, have now made it possible to look at space from our house. Google Sky, made available free online on Tuesday (downloads at http://earth.google.com), allows users to scan images of the entire night sky — including real images of stars, nebulae and galaxies — and to zoom in for up-close snaps.
There was a new session in the medicinal chemistry session today, called Hot topics in medicinal chemistry. I spoke to the session organiser, Jeff Zablocki, about the motivation for the session - he wanted to get industrial parties to come and talk about new results. This wasn't easy, he said, but he managed to pull together a session with five different companies come and talk about early results for five different drugs.
One of the talks was by Thais Sielecki, from Cytokine PharmaSciences. She was showing us new preclinical data for a type of molecule based on small molecule inhibitors of macrophage inhibitory factor, MIFs. Her impressive data showed that their orally-delivered drug could halt MS symptoms in mice, and actually show improvements in some symptoms. Sielecki told me that for a small company like Cytokine PharmSciences, a chance to present data like this is great for getting business partners. Of course there was a large chunk of data - such as the structure of the actual product - that she didn't show, but I noticed lots of furious scribbling going on in the room anyway.
It's always going to be hard to get pharma compnies to disclose information, but Jim McCarthy, programme chair for the Med Chem division is planning to encourage more openness - with the introduction of a session at the next meeting for companies to make first announcements about clinical compounds in medicinal chemistry. And take up has been good so far he says. But he knows that there will never be any disclosure of new target molecules. "This is industry" he says. Intellectual property rights will always keep peoples' mouths clamped tightly shut.
This week has driven me slightly insane, for a number of reasons. Included in those reasons is the vastness of the conference. We all say it, year in , year out and i've been trying to bite my lip. But really, ACS - can we have a conference that doesn't involve half-hour bus trips between venues?
Now that's off my chest let me tell you about ionic -liquid marbles. I saw some incredibly cool videos of droplets of ionic liquid being rolled in PTFE powder, and then forming marbles which are very hydrophobic and have amazing floaty properties on water surfaces. The work is being conducted by Tom McCarthy and Lichao Gao at the University of Massachusetts.
Some of the marbles they made were magnetic and could be dragged around - with potential for drug delivery. The coating of the marbles is held in place by magic. Well, actually, it is held in place by electrostatic forces (but i thought i'd inject a bit of children's storybook fantasy into this post), and this means that when an electrostatically-charged rod - rubbed on a pair of nylon trousers or something like that - is brought near the marbles they pop! And in drug delivery this could mean them being dragged to a target using the magnet, and then being allowed to release their bounty with the stroke of a charged wand...
Gene knockout gives mice OCD symptoms.
Mice with some of the hallmarks of obsessive compulsive disorder (OCD) have been bred by knocking out a single gene. While the mouse model isn't a perfect mimic for the human condition, researchers hope it will shed new light on our understanding of this debilitating disorder.
Gems in 4.3-billion-year-old zircon baffle geologists.
Diamonds have been found in some of Earth's oldest rocks, dating back to 4.3 billion years ago.
This week the Nature Podcast discovers that diamonds really are forever, meets a mouse with obsessive compulsive disorder and a new species of ape, and discusses what to do with overabundant elephants in Africa.
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Yesterday, I popped along to hear Roald Hoffmann (again) talking at his own birthday symposium. Also there was author and neurologist Oliver Sacks, who is not a chemist, but when i met him this morning was wearing a very natty periodic table t-shirt. It was in colour, much better than my white-on-red version. Note to self - update wardrobe.
Back to the facts. Roald Hoffmann got a Nobel prize for some very clever theoretical chemistry and some rules that explain, and can be used to predict ,why and how reactions proceed. But his first published paper was actually on the thermochemistry of cement. Fascinating.
Oliver Sacks has not only a periodic table t-shirt, but he told me that for the past 60 years has carried a periodic table in his wallet as well. I don't think it has been the same one all that time, because it was in very good condition. And haven't they added umpteen elements in the past 60 years?
here's a bit of gossip - Avogadro's constant, the one that lets you work out how much is in a mole of something, is under threat from a bunch of physicists who want to see it declassified as an absolute number, and instead tied to Planck's constant, which is altogether more complicated to explain but essentially is used in quantum mechanics to bunch things into packets, or quanta. Not very clearly explained, but i'm no physicist. Check out other definitions here and here.
The person who told me this shocking piece of news is a member of th ACS nomenclature committee. Before you all rush out and try to recaluclate the number of moles in your morning coffee - dont' panic. My source tells me that on a practical day to day basis, there will be no change, although explaining moles to a tenth-grader will be more difficult if the change ever makes it through.
The paper that started it all was apparently published in the journal Metrology, by Ian Mills, although i'm having trouble tracking down the paper.
From my brief conversation, it seems that the idea is to relate Avagadro's number to Planck's constant so that the number becomes a relationship between the two numbers rather than an exact number. The grandiose phrase i heard was that this would relate Avagadro's number to the invariants of nature. What would happen in your world if suddenly you had to redefine Avagadro's number? Anything? Nothing?
Apes distract themselves with play to resist temptation.
Chimps struggling to accumulate a large quantity of food deliberately keep themselves busy to avoid the temptation to gorge themselves straight away, researchers have found. The study shows that, like a shopaholic striving to resist the lure of the department store, our ape cousins welcome a distraction that takes the mind off the impulsive urge to splash out.
It's not the technology of gene therapy but the regulation of clinical trials that we should be most afraid of, says Apoorva Mandavilli.
Almost exactly seven years after the first death in a gene-therapy trial, another unexpected death hit the field late last month - followed quickly by panic, outrage and some calls for an end to gene therapy altogether.
But to blame and ban all gene therapy because of this would be rash and misguided. And it might risk missing the point. What we should be most outraged and scared by is the way this trial took place — and the similar mis-steps that seem to accompany a vast number of clinical trials, gene therapy or no gene therapy.
I have just worked out that, since saturday afternoon, all my meals have been sandwiches for one reason or another, although I almost ate a slice of cold pizza at one point, but didn't want cheese-related nightmares so declined. I have broken the cycle now thanks to a chocolate croissant in the press room.
My mind turns to food because a major thread of this conference is the genomics of obesity. In particular i was interested to learn that human adenovirus-36, known to be the "obesity virus", has now been shown to turn stem cells into fat cells. Magdalena Pasarica at the Pennington Biomedical Research Center and Nikhil Dhurandhar from Louisiana State university, took stem cells from the fatty tissue from a bunch of liposuction patients. Half of the batch of stem cells were exposed to Ad-36, and half not. The virus-infected stem cells developed into fat cells.
So does this mean, as long as i don't get the virus, that i can happily eat my chocoate croissants without worry of becoming obese? Or am i missing the point?
Ah, the poster session. I like these things; they have allowed me to perfect that useful social skill of marching up to strangers, thrusting a hand out in the hope it will be shaken, and saying "Hi, I'm Katharine. Who are you?" Once in a while the tactic pays off and you learn something incredibly interesting.
Tonight's session was slightly marred, not for the first time, by the realisation that members of the press had not been issued with drinks tickets. I had experienced this at the previous ACS meeting so should have anticipated it. Instead i had to charm one of the posterees into donating one of his tickets. In return i got to learn about rotaxanes that can be stacked up to make switchable liquid crystals, in a very elegant piece of chemistry. This is the first controlled, switchable liquid crystal to be made, and no surprise that the work, done by Ivan Aprahamian (thanks for the beer Ivan) comes out of the lab of Fraser Stoddart. The work was recently published.
The poster also had a molecular carousel - an incredibly complicated molecular machine with three "axes" joined at top and bottom each holding a ring that can move up and down, independently of the other rings. Hard to describe, but a carousel, where the rings represent the galloping horses, is a good analogy.
My favourite title of the evening has to be "highly absorbing superabsorbent polymers" by Thilini Mudiyanselage, from Bowling Green State University. These are hydrogels that can absorb thousands of times their own dry weight in liquid. The lightly cross-linked 3-D polymer nets expand a lot after soaking up all that water.
As usual, a huge mix of chemistry was showcased at the poster session - from a system that gets rid of bird poo, to a poster called "Girls in science" - bet you can't guess what that was about - and try saying it without using a Muppet-esque "Pigs in Space" voice...
Women show signs of physical change a decade before mental decline.
Researchers have found a simple physical symptom that accompanies the early, subtle brain changes that lead to dementia. Women who will go on to develop dementia begin to lose weight at least ten years before diagnosis, say researchers at the Mayo Clinic in Rochester, Minnesota.
The brains of hibernating hamsters don't keep time.
The body's clock may lose track of time during winter hibernation, scientists have found in a species of hamster.
I recently wrote a feature about storing hydrogen gas in incredibly porous materials (shameless bit of self promotion there, but one needs to keep the fans happy). But now I'm wondering whether I got it all wrong - a talk today by Bob Crabtree raised an interesting point - the motoring industry has an infrastructure that is all set up to revolve around liquid fuels, so why go after hydrogen as a fuel if one keeps it in the gaseous state?
Crabtree has a strategy to store hydrogen as a liquid, by using organic liquids that have readily-releasable hydrogen. In this case he has studied, both experimentally and computationally, nitrogen-containing cyclic molecules. The amount of nitrogen present can be changed so that the temperature at which hydrogen can be released is also changeable. There is much to say on this topic, I feel... but for now I must run - the monster-sized poster session is happening this evening and I'm hoping for a bit of excitement.
I think I've just encountered the highlight of my visit - a poetry reading by Nobel prize-winning chemist Roald Hoffmann.
Coincidentally, I've been thinking a lot about poetry lately, and how a poet can convey their thoughts. I am not brave enough to attempt to write anything other than a jaunty limerick myself, so I have a good deal of admiration for anyone who can convey a complex thought in an abstract, but senseful way.
And Hoffmann just spent an hour in the middle of a busy, bustling exhibition hall, packed full of people trying to sell mass spectrometers and the like, with a crowd of people captivated by his poems that cross from hard-core science to his childhood experience growing up in Poland during the war, to more philosphical matters. Check out the next issue of Nature's chemistry podcast, when it hits your ears in a few weeks to hear more.
Respiratory victims of Tokyo's diesel haze accept cash settlement.
Asthma patients in Tokyo today welcomed a monetary settlement from car manufacturers and the Japanese government, according to a report in Agence France Presse. The payment resolves a decade-long legal battle in which asthmatics blamed diesel traffic fumes for their illness.
Slightly later than planned welcome to the American Chemical Society's Fall 2007 meeting. (Yes it is August, so calling it Fall, rather than Summer rather goes against the Trades Description Act, but this is the US so maybe that doesn't count over here).
I'll be blogging throughout the conference with news, gossip and observations from the meeting.
I am later than planned thanks to British Airways who decided on my behalf that I would much prefer another night in London rather than get on to the flight I was booked on - perhaps they thought I'd like the chance to do some sightseeing, a stroll through the park, across the Serpentine, or something. Still, I wasn't the only one stranded, and here I am eventually. Unfortunately the chances of going to any of the sessions today are very slim, but let's hope the rest of the meeting is a chemistry-fest that will make up for today's no-show.
Rising CO2 makes a stink for mice.
Mice can smell carbon dioxide at levels just higher than that in normal air, thanks to specialized neurons in their nose.
ZIP protein makes rats forget a month-old memory.
Scientists have erased a long-term memory in the brains of laboratory rats, offering insight into how such memories are stored.
Serpents stay alert and strong without food.
Some snakes are known to be able to go without food for periods of nearly two years. Until recently, the mechanism behind this unique skill was unknown, but new research has revealed some previously-unknown serpentine tricks. These may form the key adaptation that has kept this highly specialized group alive since before the days of Tyrannosaurus rex, biologists say.
This week the Nature Podcast finds out how to make glass from germanium, discusses the possibility of life on Mars, discovers talc in the San Andreas fault and attends SciFoo - a science conference with a difference.
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Stellar streak tells of 30,000 years of history.
Astronomers have found an unexpected treat on a star first described more than 400 years ago - the streak of a 13-light-year-long tail.
Mineral shown to ease part of California's quake zone.
Talc, the balm that stops chafing for babies' bottoms, seems also to soften the rubbing along some faults within the Earth.
Study unpicks how AIDS causes dementia.
A study showing how HIV could prevent the brain from making new neurons offers an explanation for why some AIDS patients get dementia — and suggests a possible treatment.
Yawning isn't contagious for some of the socially impaired.
Do you feel a yawn coming on just looking at this picture? Yawning is known to be contagious — but the rule doesn't apply to autistic children. This finding could shed light on the social impairments of people with autism.
Small, flexible wafer-thin batteries made out of paper are the latest product of carbon-nanotube research.
Map of Angkor supports the notion of a sprawling city of a million people.
A comprehensive map of the ancient Cambodian metropolis of Angkor has been produced from a radar survey, supporting the notion that this sprawling city was irrigated to produce food for a substantial population.
Texan mesquite could offer cheap biofuel resource.
The mesquite tree is perhaps best known for its ability to lend that smoky flavour to an old-fashioned southern barbecue. But Texan researchers are now hoping that it might also help to relieve the dependence of the United States on fossil fuels.
Before it hit the mainstream, the green movement was often criticized as having its head in the clouds. Sure, saving the environment is a brilliant idea, but it's just too expensive and will inconvenience too many people. Ecologists, with their earnest messages about rainforests, corals and other delicate ecosystems, were seen as part of this.
Yet that picture might be changing. One of the main themes of this week's meeting was the idea of pragmatism in dealing presenting ecological solutions and recommendations to policymakers. That's reflected as much as anything by the sheer number of economists giving talks here.
Pragmatism is a key consideration in the emerging field of biofuels, which draws together economics, agriculture, ecology, climate change and fuel security. A headache for policymakers, and one that requires sensible, well reasoned answers.
Some are more willing to embrace pragmatism than others. The Society for Ecological Restoration, which co-hosted the meeting, suggested that ecological restoration be co-opted for the fight against climate change. But do the money and the timescale involved, is that really better than shorter-term options such asmonoculture forestry, or indeed biofuels?
Nevertheless, many pragmatic ecologists, whether concerned with trees, birds or economics, are worried about where the biofuels industry is going. The feeling is that policymakers, offering huge tax breaks to commercial ventures to make bioethanol from corn grain, are feeding the corn market to the detriment of efforts to preserve rangelands or even to grow biofuel grass crops on them. The government is not taking the pragmatic approach, they argue, by throwing money at getting fuel from a food crop that requires buckets of fertilizer and intensive farming methods. The fears are, however, that the horse has already bolted on this one, and herding it back in is a long-term effort.
Economists are hard at work trying to discover which solutions will be the best weapons against the looming energy crisis. If the infrastructure can be developed that allows species such as switchgrass to be harvested from poor-quality lands, then that might be a good bet for alleviating reliance on gasoline. But that will require presenting a thorough economic case to policy-makers - much as ecologists in other areas have to stress the monetary and social value of preserving wild ecosystems. As with so much of the modern green movement, you can't just ask policymakers to do things out of the goodness of their hearts - you have to tell them exactly how much financial damage they'll suffer if they don't take your ideas seriously.
Slightly helpful mutations in E. coli much more plentiful than thought.
Beneficial mutations in the bacterium Escherichia coli occur 1,000 times more frequently than previously predicted, according to research from a group in Portugal.
Read the story here.
Plants suffering in the heat could make global warming worse.
Global warming could cut the rate at which trees in tropical rainforests grow by as much as half, according to more than two decades' worth of data from forests in Panama and Malaysia. The effect — so far largely overlooked by climate modellers — could severely erode or even remove the ability of tropical rainforests to remove carbon dioxide from the air as they grow.
Read the story here.
Think about it for a second - what would be wrong with a synthetic version of the wilderness, if you can still go hiking and fishing there? How about a virtual reality program that allows you to witness the fall colours of New England without going there?
It sounds facetious but this is a genuine question for some conservationists. In 1973 the theorist Martin Krieger wrote a Science paper asking exactly what would be wrong with plastic trees. His argument was that preservationism, which is concerned with maintaining intact ecosystems for their own sake, is more expensive than pragmatic conservationism, which aims to deliver the most benefit for a given cost.
Even pristine wildernesses are partly a construct of society, he argued. Niagara Falls is an icon of the natural world precisely because people want to see it with their own eyes. Diamonds are valuable not just because they are rare, but because we attach emotional and economic value to them. It's the same with ecosystems such as state parks, Krieger's argument goes.
Might we then be better off taking an economically pragmatic approach to natural wonders? After all Niagara is eroding away through natural proceses - are we just going to let that happen when there's money to be made from people coming to see it? Can we predict when rockfalls might occur and turn them into a tourist spectacle?
In 1973 this was a pretty radical idea. But now it sounds less so. There is already a plastic-and-concrete forest in Florida called, inevitably, the Disney Wilderness Lodge. And some might argue that restored forests and wetlands are also, to a lesser extent, 'artificial'.
Krieger concluded that "there is little wrong with [plastic trees]". But was he right? Scott Cameron of Loyola Monument University doesn't think so. Although Kriger's argument sounds compelling in the terms in which he expressed it, even in today's plastic, Disneyfied world it still sounds shocking. And there must be a reason for that.
Part of the pro-plastic argument is that, if we can recreate a synthetic version of the original that gives people the same experience, then we would be snobs to demand the real thing. But leaving aside the fact that most humans are snobs, Krieger didn't realise the full price that we would pay for our pretend wildernesses. And why would you pay top whack for a fake diamond?
The hidden costs of fake wildernesses are not direct monetary ones. Instead, we lose ecosystem value further down the line. The idea of 'staying home to go outside', rather like watching a wildlife documentary on television, inevitably creates a two-tier society between those who get to experience the real thing in order to set about recreating it, and those who either witness the make-believe version or don't get to experience anything at all. Cameron argues that it's a slippery slope in which the poor never become engaged with the natural world at all, whereas the rich lose sight of the importance of natural wildernesses as they begin to believe the hype, the marketing message that the Disney version is better.
It also strikes me that while Krieger's argument might apply to wildernesses, from which the main ecosystem services to humans are recreational ones, it can't be extended to other sorts of ecosystems that deliver crucial benefits of other kinds. To put it more succinctly, you can't grow a plastic crop, eat a virtual steak, or drink a synthetic glass of water.
Improved climate predictions use observations for increased accuracy.
British researchers have substantially improved the performance of a global climate model by adding observations about the actual state of the ocean and atmosphere. The results are of seminal importance for those trying to produce reliable short-term 'climate forecasts' on global and regional scales, experts say.
Read more here.
Antidepressant drugs work as roadblocks for brain chemicals.
The way in which antidepressants exert their effects on brain cells has been revealed by two separate teams of researchers working independently of each other.
Read more here.
Worries over neural effects in children, but reassurances on other risks.
A US government-appointed scientific panel has said it has "some concern" that a compound found in many plastics may cause neural and behavioural abnormalities in infants and children at concentrations normally found in humans. But the panel found negligible concern that those exposed to typical levels of the compound, called bisphenol A, would develop reproductive problems or birth defects.
Read more here.
Bacteria presence seems curiously irrelevant to fly lifespan.
Fruit flies scrubbed clean of bacteria do not outlive their grubby siblings, according to researchers from the University of Southern California (USC), Los Angeles. The finding, published in this month's edition of Cell Metabolism, challenges a long-standing view that even harmless 'commensal' bacteria force the host organism to expend energy on their management, an obligation organisms find it harder to meet as they grow older.
Read more here.
Researchers discover that skeleton is actually an endocrine organ.
The traditional view of the skeleton as an inert frame is challenged by a new study showing that it also plays an important part in the body's hormonal system. Cells in the bone produce a hormone that influences blood sugar levels and fat deposition.
Read more here.
Why are scientists so dubious, wary, and even downright scared of journalists? While so many politicians, musicians and sportsmen seem to be in their element when talking to the press, attitudes to the fourth estate among the scientific community range from mistrust to open hostility and cynicism. Yet scientific issues have never been more important and newsworthy, and the public appetite for coverage of scientific issues has never been greater. So how can we get scientists to relax and feel comfortable speaking to the media?
It was this question that led to me finding myself sat on a panel last night alongside Wired magazine's Adam Rogers, freelance science journalist Thomas Hayden, and Paul Rogers of the San Jose Mercury News. Facing us were several dozen scientists, all keen to find out exactly what we look for in a story and how they can get their message across.
One of the main differences between scientists and journalists is the audiences they play to. Scientists care first and foremost about impressing their peers, while one of the main standards used by a newspaper reporter to assess a story's newsworthiness is "Why would my grandmother care about this?" This disconnect between the two audiences - one highly expert and highly critical, the other non-expert and mostly in search of interesting and entertaining information - often leads scientists to ignore the other golden questions of journalism: "who, why, what, where, how, and so what?"
Add to that the problem that scientists and journalists are fundamentally different in the way they go about presenting information. Every journalism student knows the 'inverted pyramid' model of news writing: present the crux of the story right up top, using short, punchy sentences, then fill in the caveats, back story, counter-arguments and other stuff as you proceed further down the page. Scientists, trained to present their reseach as 'intro-method-results-discussion-conclusion', frequently get their 'news' message completely topsy-turvy when interviewed by journalists.
We had fun asking some of the scientists present to summarize their latest piece of research as if they were pitching it to a harassed news editor. Then, perhaps a little unfairly, we then subjected them to a press conference-style grilling to try and uncover the news angle in their research. Suffice to say, it's not often I find myself demanding to know what security lessons Pentagon officials can learn from marmots...
So what's the answer then (to the main question, not the marmots one)? It seems that, for scientists to really communicate with journalists, they need to learn how to package and deliver a succinct, coherent message about what their research is and what it means. A well-thought-out quote means that you are more likely to get your exact views reproduced verbatim in the news. The caveats can come later, once you've got people's attention (and a good journalist will make a point of asking about them anyway).
Not that it should all be a one-way street, of course. Journalists, for their part, need to respect the trust placed in them by scientists who agree to give interviews. A valued contact won't be a contact for much longer if you misrepresent them or their work.
Most of all though, just as journalists shouldn't be afraid to delve into science in search of the real picture, scientists shouldn't be afraid to lend their considerable expertise. Some of the scientists attending the session say that they have simply not bothered to call journalists back when they get interview requests, for fear that they will be misquoted. But bear in mind that if you do that, someone else with less knowledge and a bigger mouth will step forward and get quoted instead of you. Expertise is a very sought-after commodity, and one worth using, if you know how.
This week the Nature Podcast discovers gender-bending mice, unearths two early Homo fossils, and finds the Earth’s crust being recycled in Samoan island lava.
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A survey of evidence for the 'memory' of liquid water casts little light on its putative role in homeopathy, says Philip Ball.
I suspect it will be news to most scientists that Elsevier publishes a peer-reviewed journal called Homeopathy. I also suspect that many, on discovering this, would doubt there is anything published there that it would profit them to read. But I propose that such prejudices be put aside for the current special issue, which collects a dozen papers devoted to the 'memory of water'. It's worth seeing what they have to say — if only because that reveals this alleged phenomenon to be as elusive as ever.
Read Phil's column here.
Homo erectus had an unexpected neighbour, and a surprising lifestyle too.
Two fossils unearthed in Kenya have added a new dimension to our view of life at the birth of our Homo genus. They show that two ancestral human species seem to have lived cheek-by-jowl in the same area, much as gorillas and chimpanzees do today.
Read the story here.
Mike Hopkin reports from the joint meeting of the Ecological Society of America and the Society for Ecological Restoration in San Jose, California.
We all know that saving carbon is good. But some ecologists think that we might be going about it in a rather misguided way. Restoring natural ecosystems, they argue, is vital as part of our efforts to cut the amount of greenhouse gas in our skies, and is greener than other schemes such as single-culture forestry or subsidized biofuel crops.
The Society for Ecological Restoration claims that restoring ecosystems is not just a good thing for the ecosystems themselves - it will also mop up carbon dioxide from the atmosphere as forests and wetlands are re-established and begin to store carbon as they grow and replenish themselves.
In the current political climate, we're used to being told that we have to take action against greenhouse emissions, and that technologies such as biofuels offer a fast track to making progress in this regard. But in politicians' (well, some politicians') eagerness to champion these ideas, they may be doing good in the short term, but harm in the long run, say the ecologists. "That's the same silver-bullet approach that got us into this position in the first place," says Steve Windhager of the University of Texas at Austin.
Of course, this is exactly the message one would expect to hear from an organization that promotes the restoration of ecosystems. Many outfits, from political parties to high street banks, have have taken pains to inform us all of their relevance and usefulness in the fight against global warming. And there is no doubt that short-term solutions such as forestry and biofuels are needed to help deliver the huge carbon cuts that climate forecasters tell us we need to make over the coming half-century.
In fact, the issue of timescale is a vexing one for advocates of ecological restoration who promote a holistic approach to tackling climate change. The problem is that restoring a forest to its pristine state usually takes centuries, and we need a solution much faster than that.
But the urgency of the problem can lead to problems in itself, says the society's chair, Keith Bowers. He points out that the extensive use of fertilizer to feed crops, including biofuels, could ultimately harm river ecosystems and even potentially contribute to the demise of marine ecosystems such as the Gulf of Mexico.
It all leaves the ecological restorationists in a bind. While most people would agree that natural is generally best when approaching almost any environmental challenge, the sheer scale of the climate-change threat means that hard-headed people want solutions now. And the problem is compounded by the fact that ecological restoration doesn't generate as much hard cash as biofuel farming or running a carbon-offsetting agency that earns money by planting forests. Natural might be best in many people's view, but even in the green world of the fight against climate change, money talks and deadlines matter. And ecologists might not have enough time or money to persuade people to restore wetlands instead of buying carbon offsets or biofuel cars.
Bacteria revived after 8 million years in the freezer
Microbes frozen in the oldest ice on Earth have been thawed out and brought back to life in the laboratory, providing new insights into how long living creatures can be frozen.
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Captive-reared birds struggle to reconnect with their own species.
California condors reared by puppets have social difficulties in adulthood, researchers have found.
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Researcher killed as Italian ship sinks in minutes.
A Russian marine biologist was drowned, and an Italian badly hurt, when the research vessel on which they were working was rammed by a cargo ship and sank off the coast of Sicily on 3 August.
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Laboratories under the spotlight as disease found on farm.
Foot and mouth disease has once again appeared in the United Kingdom, a country whose farming industry was devastated by an outbreak in 2001. On Friday 3 July, the country’s Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs (Defra) confirmed it had identified the disease virus in cows on a farm in Surrey. The virus is already suspected to have come from one of two nearby laboratories working on the disease and its vaccine.
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Knocking out pheromone sensor makes female mice act male.
Flipping one genetic switch in the brains of female mice makes them behave like sex-crazed males. The finding implies that females' brains have the same circuit that governs sexual behaviour in male mice — and that it's simple to convert one to the other.
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Reincarnated martian lander goes in search of water.
A mobile laboratory should leave for Mars this weekend, aiming to dig up water ice from beneath the planet's surface.
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Researchers disagree over whether predators reflect biodiversity.
Ecologists are divided over whether the predators inhabiting an ecosystem are a good guide to its total biodiversity. The debate may lead conservationists to reassess how they prioritize their efforts and design nature reserves.
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The date the common sea snail arrived in North America is still open to debate.
Researchers have renewed a century-old debate over whether the common periwinkle, a sea snail that has reshaped the ecology of much of the east coast of North America, was imported from Europe by humans.
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Sometimes you just have to wonder how PhD students come up with their thesis topic. Take Ian Gilligan of the Australian National University: he studies ice age climates and … clothing.
Turns out that clothing can actually tell you a lot about prehistoric humans. If you aren’t very advanced, you wear simple clothing: a cape or a robe made basically by scraping a piece of animal hide. If you’re smarter, you develop complex clothing: something sewn together and tailored to fit the body, which means you can wear multiple layers and better fend off the cold.
Gilligan has spent a lot of time thinking about the Neanderthals - the prehistoric humans who lived side-by-side with Homo sapiens for tens of thousands of years - and what they did when the winters got really cold. At the INQUA meeting, he even speculated that some of the famous European cave paintings show fingertips missing on the handprints because … they had been lost to frostbite.
It’s an interesting theory, and since no one else has a much better idea of what happened to the Neanderthals, being driven extinct by the cold has about as much credence as any other idea. So next time you slip into a couple of warm fleecy layers followed by a windstopping Goretex – be glad you weren’t a Neanderthal.
Disgraced biologist's cell line was first of its kind, but not cloned.
Genetic analysis has confirmed that disgraced biologist Woo Suk Hwang did not clone a human embryonic stem (ES) cell.
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Fatalities are an inevitable part of human spaceflight, and space tourism companies will have to face up to it, says Philip Ball.
The tragic deaths of three workers in an explosion at the Mojave Air and Space Port in California should not be seen as the first fatalities of commercial spaceflight. The accident occurred during a test on a rocket-propulsion system for a private spacecraft, but this was an industrial accident, not a failure of aerospace engineering.
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It ain’t easy working in the field of ancient DNA, as Alan Cooper of the University of Adelaide will tell you. His lab works on cool specimens such as Neanderthal teeth, bison bones, and moa poo, trying to extract signs of long-gone life.
But getting DNA out of old specimens is subject to many whims of fate, Cooper told the meeting in a plenary lecture today. One time his team tried to run sequences on a Viking skull from Greenland – and got 23 sequences from 23 separate individuals. “Probably 23 archaeologists,” Cooper jokes.
Technicians in ancient DNA laboratories have to take special care not to contaminate the material they’re working with. They suit up in clean suits, wear surgical gloves that they change regularly, and work in rooms with negative air pressure to blow contaminants out. Lab equipment has to be sterilized with ultraviolet radiation because it can be contaminated with mouse droppings. Visitors have to wear visors because the fluttering of eyelashes can spread DNA everywhere.
But if it’s done right, ancient DNA can reveal a lot about long-lost worlds – like the fact that different-sized moas can be just different sexes and not different species, or that bison in North America may have been starting to crash before human hunters ever showed up on the plains.
Findings like that are probably worth all the tidying up around the lab.
Apes modify their gestures depending on human response
When orang-utans want a human to hand over a tasty treat, they use a similar strategy to that used in the game 'charades', say researchers. They repeat signals that work, and modify those that don't, revealing surprisingly sophisticated communication skills.
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Conservationists usually like their species of interest to be alive, not dead. But a couple of presentations here at INQUA suggest that the past has much to teach the present.
Nick Porch of the Australian National University calls his field 'invasion paleoecology'. Basically, it's looking in the fossil record to see what animals lived where at certain times. And it can help modern conservationists get a better handle on whether species are truly 'native' to a particular area or not, he told the meeting today.
Take ants. The kingpin of all ant studies, E.O. Wilson, has apparently said that ants are invasive species in the Pacific islands east of Samoa, and that they show up only after European ships arrived some 400 years ago. But Porch has looked at the ant record on the island of Rimatara in French Polynesia. And it turns out that there are plenty of ants in the fossil record there: They showed up about 900 years ago, when Polynesians first populated the islands. So ants came with people, but with the Polynesians (not the Europeans) first.
You might not care about ants in the South Pacific, but how about agricultural pests in Hawaii? An insect known as the nigra scale (Parasaissetia nigra) supposedly was introduced to Hawaii from Africa within the past few centuries. But it wasn't, says Porch - his studies suggest it's one of the most common creatures in the fossil record of the islands.
And what about birds in Britain? John Stewart of University College London has looked at whether birds such as eagle owls - the largest owl in Western Europe - actually used to live in Britain. Some pairs have been seen there breeding in the past decade, but no one is sure whether they are new to the island or have simply come back after having been gone for many generations.
See here (subscription required) for an earlier story on this topic -- and one that ruffled Stewart's feathers! At the meeting he said he was unhappy at how he had been quoted in the piece...read it yourself and see if you think it's over the top.
There's something inherently fascinating about trackways. Whether they come from dinosaurs, humans, or some other creature, footprints convey a linkage to the past in ways that bones or tools just can't match.
As just one example, Steve Webb of Bond University presented here some findings about the Ice Age footprints in the Willandra Lakes area of southeastern Australia. This is a World Heritage site with the biggest collection of fossil footprints -- more than 700 of them! -- anywhere in the world. They show aboriginal children, teenagers, and adults walking around in what was once a wetland swamp but now is a dried-up lakebed.
Some sets of trackways appear to be converging, as if people were running toward the same point - could it have been a race? In another spot, Webb and his colleagues spent a long time pondering a strange mark which involved a footprint and another sort of hole-like depression. Their conclusion: A one-legged person was helping himself or herself along with a stick.
See some of the pictures of this vanished world in the appendix of the paper available online here.
In the discussion of dried-up Tibetan lakes and marine isotope excursions here at INQUA, one thing has been noticeably lacking: a sense of the bigger-picture context. In his plenary address today, Peter Barrett of New Zealand brought the crowd back to a sense of reality.
Barrett is one of those grizzled Antarctic geologists who look like they've spent their entire life on the ice sheet. And in fact he's been a key player in Antarctic research for many decades (back from the time when the Beatles and the Grateful Dead were fresh, as he reminded the INQUA audience today). But in the past year or two, Barrett has started to worry more about the future than the past.
As part of a tour through Antarctic climate history, Barrett ran through the various reasons why the southern continent is so important - as a constraint on sea level rise, as a control of global weather, and as a record of deep-time climate history. But then he started whipping out the IPCC graphs, showing carbon dioxide levels rising in the future and what that might mean for the Antarctic ice sheet. The audience began to murmur, and some looked a bit confused. Had they been out to lunch in February when the latest IPCC report came out? Or have they just not spent much time extrapolating from their studies of the Quaternary to what happens next?
Kudos to Barrett for introducing a bit of activism into the normally staid surroundings of a scientific conference.
This week the Nature Podcast reports on brain stimulation for a minimally conscious patient, explores the mouse HapMap, and finds brown clouds over Asia spell bad news.
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Deep-brain stimulation offers hope for minimally conscious patients.
Brain function has been improved in a patient who was in a minimally conscious state, by electrically stimulating a specific brain region with implanted electrodes. The achievement raises questions about the treatment of other patients who have been in this condition for years, the researchers say.
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Aerosols over Asia incriminated in Himalayan glacial melting.
Tiny particles of pollution may be causing as much warming as greenhouse gases over southern Asia. The clouds of aerosol particles are contributing to the potentially devastating melting of Himalayan glaciers, say researchers.
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Computer model pins AIDS on quick-and-dirty strains of HIV.
The strains of HIV that produce most progeny might not be the ones that cause AIDS. According to a new computer model, HIV must evolve to actually become less productive before it causes disease.
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Stealthy birds are better at detecting horizontal shifts in sound sources.
Barn owls are better at tracking sounds that move horizontally than those that move vertically, researchers have found. The technique used to make the discovery could one day be used to assess hearing and cognitive skills in humans who cannot communicate.
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