The Great Beyond

Leslie Orgel, head of the Chemical Evolution Laboratory at the Salk Institute, has died. Orgel pioneered the theory that RNA preceded DNA as a replicating molecule. At the time of his death his work was focused on searching for a precursor to RNA

He was also one of the first to suggest that life on Earth might have been seeded by extraterrestrials. His name is attached to Orgel’s rules:
“Whenever a spontaneous process is too slow or too inefficient a protein will evolve to speed it up or make it more efficient.”
&
“Evolution is cleverer than you are.”

LA Times obituary
Salk Institute statement
The Scientist obituary

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Wooooooooh. It’s Halloween!

Over at AP Seth Borenstein reveals that scientists now know more than ever before about “what’s going on inside our brains when a spook jumps out and scares us”. Borenstein also has another piece on David Zald, professor at Vanderbilt University, who every year “turns his house in Nashville, Tenn., into a Halloween fear lab”. Zald previously featured on the Great Beyond for his work on why fear gets noticed faster than other emotions (along with his not very scary actually music).

Over at the Technician online Emily Kiser has another piece on “The science of fear”. Inside Higher Ed reviews new book Haunted Halls: Ghostlore of American College Campuses. They better add those nice people at Idaho State University who have set up a haunted laboratory for students with children to celebrate Halloween “the physics style way” (KPVI).

Wired has some terrifyingly impressive geek jack-o'-lanterns while NBC5 has a slightly bizarre video item about a science store selling robotic rats and glow in the dark worms. “And also here is dad shopping for that moveable lawn ornament that he will use to scare his son’s friends right out of their bodies!”

Finally, to wrap up these terrifying proceedings, here’s one you may have missed from a few days ago: film director David Lynch has teamed up with pop star Donovan to teach transcendental meditation in British schools.

Image: Punchstock

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It’s a good day for tiger news, less good for the tigers themselves. Here’s the run down...

China
Authorities in China have set up check points around the area where a rare South China Tiger was reportedly photographed recently. A team of State Forestry Administration experts is to be sent in to conduct a special investigation, state news agency Xinhua reports. The Times dredges up questions over the authenticity of the original photograph, citing a blog by a botanist from the Chinese Academy of Sciences which voices doubts about size of vegetation shown in the photo. Xinhua also covered doubts on this a while ago.

Indonesia
Tigers - along with elephants, sun bears, tapirs, golden cats and clouded leopards - have been detected in forests allocated for the chop in Indonesia. Scientists from the Zoological Society of London detected at least five different tigers on camera traps placed in 2000sq km of forest already partially logged and recently earmarked for clearance. Sarah Christie, ZSL carnivore programme manager, said, “This work shows that the criteria for developing land in Sumatra need to be urgently reassessed. Just because forests have been logged does not mean they have lost their value for biodiversity” (press release, coverage in Telegraph, Guardian).

However Xinhua was told by Forestry Minister Malam Sambat Kaban “Should the animals found in the non-forestry areas that will be used for palm oil plantation, the animals must be relocated.” Good luck with that minister...

India
England’s slightly tardy paper the Independent has noticed that there are only 1,300 tigers left in India (the story is splashed across its front page today). Similar figures have also surfaced recently in:
Reuters ‘India's tigers need miracle to survive’ 1 October
Washington Post ‘Poaching and Population Threaten India’s Tigers’ 16 October
The Hindu ‘There is hope for the tiger yet’ 14 October

Image: US Fish and Wildlife Service

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Following the news that a vital joint on one of its solar power arrays appears to be gently tearing itself apart, a rip has been found in a new panel being installed on the international space station. This leaves just one set of panels problem free on the power hungry station (AFP, AP, BBC, NY Times).

NASA halted deployment of the new, third, array after the damage was spotted (statement). Deployment was about 80% complete at the time. The panel is continuing to supply 97% of the power that it should, according to news reports, suggesting given its 80% deployment it is providing about 78% of its possible supply. Keeping the panels partly extended could cause additional problems, as they are not designed to operate in that position

The station has panels attached in arrays on both sides. Joints allow these to rotate and face the sun. One side is already locked down after astronauts found metal shavings inside its joint. Now the other side, where the new array was being added, has been hit with what we can prematurely call the curse of the ISS panels.

Mike Suffredini, ISS program manager, apparently came up with the not-entirely reassuring statement that these problems aren’t as serious as the computer glitches that bugged the station last year (Space.com). “I have in my mind a path through the wilderness on both of these problems. It will take time, but I have a path through the wilderness,” he said. Readers with long memories may be reminded of Skylab’s problems back in the 70s when only heroic work managed to fix the damaged sustained during launch, which included the total loss of a main solar panel

UPDATE – 01/11/07
NASA is leaving the joint problem well alone to focus on the torn array and things to do not look good (NASA statement). They can’t leave it alone and they can’t just extend it. Suffredini is now talking about jettisoning the whole array if it can’t be repaired (NY Times, Houston Chronicle). Appropriately the Houston Chronicle has a photo of flight engineer Clayton Anderson wearing a deathly black cape (for Halloween) as he works aboard the space station. The Chronicle also has a nice editorial on the ‘can do’ attitude of those now called upon to be engineers, builders, and electricians in space.

Image: damaged solar array wing / NASA TV

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A fake press conference staged by the US Federal Emergency Management Agencyhas claimed its first victim. Last week FEMA held a press conference on the California fires with 15 minutes notice and therefore no reporters present (CNN, Time, and everyone else). In the absence of the fourth estate the agency’s own staff asked less-than-difficult questions.

John Philbin, FEMA’s public relations chief last week, will now not be taking up a new role at the Office of the Director of National Intelligence. Philbin has admitted he realised there were no reporters at last week’s conference. “I should have jumped up regardless of how awkward it would had been and said, ‘Wait a minute, time out’,” he said (NY Times).

FEMA’s administrator David Paulison has put out a statement apologising “for the inexcusable actions and remarkably bad judgment exhibited”. Whether this is enough to save heads from rolling remains to be seen. FEMA was already unpopular after its perceived mishandling of the New Orleans disaster and the US press are lining up to take shots at them.
- Rochester Democrat and Chronicle calls it “new evidence of FEMA ineptness”.
- SF Chronicle reckons “This was a doozy even by the standards of an administration that has created a culture of contempt for the role of the press in the workings of democracy.”
- The Fort Worth Star Telegram says “Halloween came early at FEMA.”
- Updating on developments MSNBC ends with a low blow: “No press conferences are scheduled at this time.”

Currently no one is suggesting that this was all done deliberately rather than merely by incompetence, Hanlon’s Razor being called into play again. We called up a press officer we know who said using your own employees to make conferences look busy is common practice, but getting them to ask question is quite another...

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The internal organs of a 53 million year old spider have been imaged by researchers from Belgium and the UK. After being trapped in amber the spider fell into the clutches of David Penney from Manchester University, who subjected it to ‘Very High Resolution X-Ray Computed Tomography’.

If there was any justice in the world this would have resurrected it as a rampaging super-spider. However as this was not a B-movie we are instead left with these rather impressive images that Penney thinks could revolutionise the study of amber fossils. The level of detail revealed by the new techniques could help in revising modern taxonomy and in classifying long-extinct beasts.

“This technique essentially generates full 3D reconstructions of minute fossils and permits digital dissection of the specimen to reveal the preservation of internal organs,” said Penney (press release). “My colleagues in the department of Subatomic and Radiation Physics at Ghent University in Belgium have significantly increased the resolution of the technology, bringing some quite amazing results. This is definitely the way forward for the study of amber fossils.”

This is apparently the first time the technique has been applied to fossils in amber, although some imaging work has been undertaken in Texas. A rather wonderful database of their and other images is available at Digimorph (thanks to Wired for pointing that out).

Coverage of this really quite cool story has been hampered by the fact that Penney is now in the African jungle for an indefinite period and therefore unable to get to a phone (stories have made it on to the BBC and Wired). As the press release notes, Penney actually has a slightly younger spider named after him: a 20 million year old species found by a colleague in Mexico was named Episinus penneyi in his honour.

Images: The University of Manchester / Ghent University

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Organic food advocates have been celebrating today after a major new study appeared to show their choice is better than non-organic food. Previously there has been little or no evidence that pricier organic options had any health benefits for consumers. Now a study funded by the European Union apparently shows organic foods have more antioxidants and nutrients than non-organic foods.

The study has yet to be peer reviewed and I haven’t unearthed a press release yet so the best guess I can provide is that the current (mainly British) media storm has been led by articles over the weekend in the Sunday Times (one, two). One of these opines: “The evidence from the £12m four-year project will end years of debate and is likely to overturn government advice that eating organic food is no more than a lifestyle choice.”

That was then followed up other reporters. The BBC notes that “researchers did admit the study showed some variations”, although variation in what it doesn’t say. Other coverage is lacking even this caveat, the Guardian says organic fruit and vegetables contained up to 40% more antioxidants than non-organic examples while organic milk contained over 60% more antioxidants. Discussion of whether or not antioxidants actually benefit health seems to be missing from most coverage (read what the National Cancer Institute and Medline think, or just go straight to New Scientist’s The antioxidant myth: a medical fairy tale).

Organic advocates are having a field day. Patrick Holden, director of the Soil Association, says the EU project builds on what his organisation has been doing for years and he comes up with this odd quote:

Continue reading "Organic food ‘better for you’" »

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SEE ALSO – More space station woes

The International Space Station is facing a power crisis after problems were found with a key solar panel component. Metal shavings were found in a joint that allows some of the station’s massive panels to rotate and face the sun. “It’s quite clear. There’s metal-to-metal scraping, or something, and it’s widespread,” said Daniel Tani, who investigated the joint on a space walk (various sources).

To alleviate possible damage to the joint NASA has cut the number of times it is allowing the joint to rotate (Reuters, NY Times, Houston Chronicle). The problem is this also cuts the amount of power the panels generate. Another set of panels is in place and a third set is being moved into position by astronauts currently aboard ISS (AP). A fourth set of panels is due to be in place by late 2008 / early 2009. However, unless the problems with the joint can be sorted there may not be enough juice generated to properly power laboratories due to be put in place later this year.

In December the European Columbus laboratory is scheduled. Japan has its Kibo laboratory pencilled in for launch early next year. Both could face delays. “You couldn’t add another element [in the current situation]. We’d be way under-powered,” said NASA station program manager Mike Suffredini (Florida Today).

There is a neat interactive graphic showing the evolution of the station doing the rounds on a number of US papers.

UPDATE – 30/10/07
NASA has extended the current shuttle mission to the ISS to allow astronauts more time to inspect the damaged joint. The move will shorten the launch window for the next shuttle mission (Reuters).

However ISS program manager Mike Suffredini told reporters that the panel problems will not impact the delivery of the Columbus laboratory later this year (AFP). Early reports that there might not be enough power to run Columbus may have been premature. According to Space.com, "The disabled component now limits the space station's power-gathering abilities, but Suffredini said there should be no issues in having enough power to attach the Columbus module in December."

This is lucky because the European Space Agency’s TV service proudly announced today: “Columbus is ready for launch ... excitement is building for the launch of ESA's Space Laboratory Columbus. Europe is poised for the start of the most intense period of human spaceflight since Spacelab.”

Image: ISS in June this year / NASA

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Full fathom five thy father lies;
Of his bones are coral made:
Those are pearls that were his eyes:
Nothing of him that doth fade,
But doth suffer a sea change
Into something rich and strange.
Sea-nymphs hourly ring his knell

Those words from Shakespeare’s Tempest were first spoken some time in the early 1610s – at a time when, full fathom five or so below the seas off Iceland, a clam that would one day be called Ming was reaching its teenage years. Dredged up last year and since studied at the University of Bangor, Wales, this quahog clam – named after the dynasty ruling China in its youth – seems to be the oldest animal ever to have had its lifespan measured, having enjoyed a long enough span to listen to some 3.5 million hourly knells.

By counting its growth lines researchers put Ming’s age at between 405 and 410 years (press release). This dwarfs the previous oldest animal record. The Guinness Book of Records has a 220 year old quahog specimen listed and a 374 year old quahog has also been discovered in an Icelandic museum. Mere whippersnappers next to Ming, though all pale into insignificance next to some trees, which have clocked up ten times his age.

As the research was funded by charity Help the Aged we are of course obliged to speculate that Ming may even provide insights into human aging. “What's intriguing the Bangor group is how these animals have actually managed, in effect, to escape senescence,” researcher Chris Richardson told the BBC. “One of the reasons we think is that the animals have got some difference in cell turnover rates that we would associate with much shorter-lived animals.”

The Telegraph has dedicated an opinion piece to the memory of Ming while the Times’s leader on the subject is rather derogatory of the clam’s taste for the quiet life. We are left to mourn an animal that may have lived happily for many more years, had it not been cruelly dredged from its happy home. As the eternally sarcastic Register remarks, “We can conclude from this that to live a long and healthy life, it would be advisable for a person to avoid being sliced in two by someone intent on counting one’s rings.”

Image: Ming / Bangor University

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Biochemist Arthur Kornberg has died at the age of 89. Kornberg won a Nobel prize for medicine in 1959 for his work with Severo Ochoa on the biological synthesis of DNA. His contribution to his field is detailed in a Nature Reviews Molecular Cell Biology piece from 2006 (subscription required).

“Dr Kornberg was one of the most distinguished and remarkable scientists in American medicine,” said Philip Pizzo, dean of the Stanford University School of Medicine where he worked for many years (Stanford press release).

“Fellow scientists say in 200 years, the world will remember the name of medical researcher Dr Arthur Kornberg ... the same way it does Albert Einstein and Nicolaus Copernicus,” says the Democrat and Chronicle, local paper of Rochester. Kornberg studied at the University of Rochester as an undergraduate.

Kornberg’s son Roger is also a Nobel recipient, having won the chemistry prize in 2006 (Nobel citation, Nature – subscription required).

More Coverage
SF Chronicle
Arizona Republic
San Jose Mercury
Daily Telegraph
The Scientist

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What’s been on The Great Beyond this week and a few extras...

Monday October 22
Cracks in Shuttle, and NASA unity / All the leaves are brown... / Solar powered race sets off / Cod ‘recovery’ claims

Tuesday October 23
California sues for cleaner air / ‘Evidence ignored’ in badger cull row / Save the dinosaur! / Vibrating mice get thinner

Wednesday October 24
California fires from space

Thursday October 25
Global warming = mass extinctions / Saturn’s moonlet belt / Wildlife photographer of the year / Kyoto’s failings / 'I have been much blessed' - Watson retires

Friday October 26
Primates in trouble, including us / “Lesbian nematodes”

Other Nature blog posts you may have missed
Peer to peer: Should regulation of research be left to peers?
Nascent: Kitchen science in a comic style
Nautilus: Research in Mainland China and Hong Kong

Ones that got away
Marine sanctuary menaced by a Texas-size garbage patch, from Ars Technica
‘Future fibres’ feature, from the BBC
Tokyo scientists build ‘womb on a chip’, from the Boston Globe

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Scientists have created ‘lesbian worms’ in a new development that some are suggesting could shed light on the nature vs nurture debate over sexuality, according to a number of licentious news sources (Sidney Morning Herald for example). University of Utah researchers tweaked nematode worms to make them attracted to worms of the same sex and appear to have demonstrated that sexual orientation is hard wired, at least in nematodes (abstract, pdf). “The conclusion is that sexual attraction is wired into brain circuits common to both sexes of worms, and is not caused solely by extra nerve cells added to the male or female brain,” says biologist Erik Jorgensen (press release).

The ‘lesbian worms’ line is a bit of red herring. There aren’t true females in the C. elegans nematodes used, only hermaphrodites and (rare) true males. “A hermaphrodite makes both eggs and sperm,” says Jorgensen. “... Most of the time, the hermaphrodites do not mate. But if they mate, instead of having 200 progeny, they can have 1,200 progeny.”

As attraction in the worms is based on smell Jorgensen and co monkeyed around with male worms to find out whether their attraction to hermaphrodites was influenced by core nerve cells, accessory nerve cells, or a combination of the two. The answer was both. They also took hermaphrodite worms and turned on the genes that determine maleness, these then became the famous ‘lesbian worms’, chasing after other hermaphrodites. (The Daily Utah Chronicle notes that Jorgensen calls hermaphrodites “females” because they reproduce independently.)

The Salt Lake Tribune is one of those taking on whether this means human sexuality is hard wired. Basically the answer is only “maybe”, but it adds some credence to the idea.

Image: hermaphrodite (top) and male (bottom) pair of worms / Jamie White

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Some people have a gift for the arresting figure: exhibit a) the report from international conservation experts which points out that every member of the 25 most endangered primate species on the planet could fit into a single football stadium (though they don’t let on as to whether you need a superdome or just a set of high school bleachers). Exhibit b) is the UN’s latest environmental audit, which reveals that the most numerous primate may be degrading its environment past the point where recovery is possible.

The few:
The World Conservation Union has issued a new report entitled Primates in Peril: The World’s 25 Most Endangered Primates—2006–2008. “You could fit all the surviving members of these 25 species in a single football stadium; that’s how few of them remain on Earth today. The situation is worst in Asia, where tropical forest destruction and the hunting and trading of monkeys puts many species at terrible risk. Even newly discovered species are severely threatened from loss of habitat and could soon disappear,” says Russell Mittermeier, chair of the union’s Primate Specialist Group (press release).

Mittermeirer reckons it wouldn’t take much money to make a big difference – just a few thousand dollars in some cases. “With what we spend in one day in Iraq we could fund primate conservation for the next decade for every endangered and critically endangered and vulnerable species out there,” he told Reuters. Putting a silver lining in the cloud, AP notes that nine primates from the last report in 2004 have now been taken off the list. Coverage has also reached the BBC, the Telegraph, the Times.

The many:

Continue reading "Primates in trouble, including us" »

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In the wake of his incendiary comments about race and intelligence, James Watson has retired from Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory. The full text of his resignation letter is below the fold. CSHL have also issued a statement and Nature’s editorial on this is now available to all.

Our sister blog Action Potential has heard some interesting noise following Watson’s resignation

Word coming out of CSHL suggests that this clean break may not be so clean. Watson will keep his house on campus until he dies, will maintain his office with a secretary, and most likely, much of his salary. In other words, to the outside world, Watson is gone, while on the CSHL inside, the only thing that has changed is the nameplate on the door (removing the word "Chancellor").

The NY Times has, as you would expect, an authoritative run down of the resignation. Wired’s interestingly off the wall take on events somehow manages to invoke the modern film classic Princess Mononoke in Watson’s defence. For local paper Newsday cash rules everything – Watson's “ability to tap rich donors” was compromised and “it was going to cost the lab way too much money if Watson stayed connected”.

Continue reading "'I have been much blessed' - Watson retires" »

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“Time to ditch Kyoto”. Putting that headline on a commentary by eminent economists social scientists* was always bound to excite debate and that is what Nature has done this week. The gist of the argument has already been broken down on our sister blog Climate Feedback (please post any comments there).

Science policy expert Roger Pielke Jr. calls the commentary “brave and challenging” on the Prometheus blog, but doesn’t add much else. Meanwhile countries that are anti-Kyoto have unsurprisingly taken the work to heart, ABC in Australia and CanWest in Canada for example. This has been somewhat assisted by comments from one author, Gwyn Prins from the London School of Economics, who according to ABC said Kyoto had become useful for people looking to kick US president George W. Bush and his Australian counterpart John Howard, “But here again the inconvenient truth is they did the right thing.”

Those looking for some audio can head to Radio 4’s Today programme segment on the topic and should also check out the new Nature Podcast.

*Corrected 26/10
Gwyn Prins is director of the LSE Mackinder Centre for the Study of Long Wave Events.
Steve Rayner is director of the James Martin Institute for Science and Civilization at the University of Oxford.

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The annual Shell Wildlife Photographer of the Year prize has really excelled itself this year. To put the standard of things in perspective, none of the stunning images that I’ve chosen to use here were winners in their respective categories. Seriously, these were not judged to be the best pictures on offer...

This photo from Paul Nicklen, entitled ‘Love of a leopard seal’, is the result of an unlikely infatuation. “From the first time I got in the water with this massive female leopard seal in Antarctica, it seemed to attempt to communicate with me,” says Nicklen. “Every day, it would offer me penguins, dead and alive, like this chinstrap. When I kept refusing to eat the offerings, it looked agitated before going to get me another penguin.”

I’d have eaten the penguin – you don’t want annoy something that size.
© Paul Nicklen / Shell Wildlife Photographer of the Year 2007

Normally fisheye lenses strike me as cheating, but when they produce pictures like this one by Jeff Yonover who can really argue?
© Jeff Yonover / Shell Wildlife Photographer of the Year 2007

Arne Naevra’s ‘polar meltdown’ image is probably destined to illustrate features on climate change for years to come.
© Arne Naevra / Shell Wildlife Photographer of the Year 2007

See all the photos from the competition, run by the Natural History Museum and BBC Wildlife Magazine, at the official gallery website.

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In an interplanetary attempt to keep up with the Joneses, Saturn has, with the help of some University of Colorado astronomers, revealed more moonlets in its rings.

Earlier this month we reported that moonlets expected to be seen in a NASA fly-past of Jupiter were mysteriously absent, although some ‘moon-like’ lumps of material were found.

Saturn’s moonlets were probably created when a larger moon was annihilated in a collision with a comet or asteroid, according to Miodrag Sremcevic, lead author of a study published this week over at Nature proper (subscription required). “There was probably a bigger moon of at least 20 miles (32 km) in diameter or larger orbiting at that place. And that moon had the unfortunate fate to be struck by a large meteoroid [sic] or comet and was destroyed into pieces. And now what we see today are the remaining shards of that moon,” Reuters reports him saying.

The moonlets’ presence is indicated by propeller-like features that form in the ring around them. Although four of these features were detected in 2006, new evidence shows that there is actually an entire belt of moonlets around Saturn, probably consisting of thousands of mini-moons ranging from the size of “semi-trailers to sports arenas”, according to the UCB press release. However the moonlets were probably not formed by a single massive collision, as they are not spread uniformly. Instead their distribution supports a cascade of collisions in the ring, triggered by the more recent break up of a large moon. “We all expected they would be everywhere in the ring. Our study shows they are concentrated in certain regions in the ring like a belt,” Sremcevic told Space.com.

Image: Propeller features / NASA/JPL/Space Science Institute/University of Colorado

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Climate change could cause a mass extinction in the near future, UK scientists are warning. Their research found global biodiversity was relatively low during warm greenhouse periods and that in these periods extinctions have been relatively high. Of five previous mass extinctions, four correlated with increased temperatures.

“Our results provide the first clear evidence that global climate may explain substantial variation in the fossil record in a simple and consistent manner,” says Peter Mayhew of the University of York. “If our results hold for current warming — the magnitude of which is comparable with the long-term fluctuations in Earth climate — they suggest that extinctions will increase.”

In fact, if temperatures predicted for the next few centuries do come to pass over 50% of animal and plant species could be put to the climate sword according to the press release, although at a quick glance I can’t find this figure in the paper (abstract, PDF). The story is getting wide coverage, mainly in the UK press (Guardian, BBC, Reuters, Times, Independent, Herald Sun, AP).

It’s worth noting that the mechanism for link is, as the paper notes, “still unclear, and only when they become clearer we will be in a position to comment confidently on the implications for future climate change”. Equally it’s not immediately clear how the relatively long periods of time detailed in the extinctions and warming in this paper relate to our current situation, which some people are already calling a sixth mass extinction, and Charles Petit is asking the question ‘what about the asteroids’.

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The massive scale of the wildfires devastating southern California has been made clear by these new satellite images from NASA.

This first image shows smoke from at least 14 separate fires ranging from north of Los Angeles to south of San Diego.

Fuelled by strong winds, the fires grew rapidly, as shown in these two images. The one on the left shows the situation at 11.35 on October 21 while the right image shows the same area at 14.50 on the same day, just over three hours later. See the NY Times for more on the importance of the local Santa Ana winds. For other wind stories see Charlie Petit’s run down.

AP has an overview of the fires and both the LA Times and the San Diego Union Tribune have a huge amount of space dedicated to this story.

Images: NASA

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Why bother exercising when you can just stand on a vibrating platform? This is potentially the question raised by a paper published this week in PNAS. In it Clinton Rubin, of State University of New York, Stony Brook, and colleagues report that putting mice on a vibrating platform for 15 minutes every day made them leaner than a control group (AFP, National Geographic). There was a small reduction in overall weight but the vibrated mice also had 27.4% less fat in their torso than controls.

The paper suggests the vibration inhibited the formation of fat cells from stem cells. “It’s very exciting. It's a whole new concept of fat moving from one depot to another," study author Clifford Rosen told his local paper the Portland Press Herald.

There are some points to raise though. The paper says differences in food consumption between the two groups cannot be the cause but it would seem possible that the vibrating could tone up muscles slightly, resulting in increased energy use. Also, the paper has not been traditionally peer reviewed, it’s published as a ‘communicated’ paper. This means a member of the NAS has submitted it along with two reviews of the member’s choosing.

Some sceptical scientists are present in New Scientist's coverage.

So don’t run out and buy a vibrating bed just yet. Firstly because the vibrations used in this study are much softer than those in commercial products. Secondly because Rosen has already set up a company and submitted a patent for his own products...

Image: Getty

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China has completed a giant earth dam designed to prevent erosion destroying valuable fossils near its Russian border. According to the state news service, every year erosion washes away bones from Dinosaur Mountain, which sits on the Heilongjiang River dividing Russia and China. Now, however, a 1,450 metre long dam has been completed on the Chinese bank of the river.

“The embankment could effectively protect the Dinosaur Mountain from threats of water erosion and floods, thus, the dinosaur fossils are rescued from being washed away,” said Li Jinshan, vice director of Jiayin Dinosaur National Geologic Park Administrative Bureau (Xinhua).

Thousands of bones have been excavated from Dinosaur Mountain, previously named The Mountain of Dinosaur Bones according to Xinhua. There may be enough fossils left to construct 100 or more additional skeletons. Although a Reuters pick up of this story has generated a lot of coverage, further details are in short supply.

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The UK government’s chief scientist stands accused of allowing political expediency to overrule good science after recommending the culling of badgers (BBC, Independent, Daily Mail, Daily Telegraph). There has been a long running debate on the British Isles over the merits of killing badgers to stop the spread of bovine TB, which they carry. Farmers’ groups have argued that the animals should be culled to safeguard cattle.

Earlier this week an independent scientific advisory group came down on the side of letting the stripy Typhoid Marys live, saying targeting one site would only encourage badger movement around the country. However the government’s chief boffin Sir David King thinks culling could be effective where badgers are contained, maybe by the sea or motorways. John Bourne, the author of the independent group report, said King’s conclusions were not in line with the science and were “consistent with the political need to do something about it”, many reports note. King’s comments do seem strange given badgers’ well known ability to cross or tunnel under roads.

The Telegraph points out that Bourne and King will appear together this week at an all party inquiry hearing. We can only hope that sparks will fly.

Continue reading "‘Evidence ignored’ in badger cull row " »

Posted by Daniel Cressey
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California has finally got bored of waiting for permission to enforce higher environmental standards on car manufacturers. Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger is now moving to sue the Environmental Protection Agency, who have to issue a waiver to national laws so he can limit greenhouse gas emissions from new cars. This is getting massive play in the local press (for example: Copley News Service, SF Chronicle).

“It is almost two years since we asked for this waiver,” said his spokesman Aaron McLear (Reuters). “The governor feels we have been patient enough. He has met with the EPA administrator and with the president on this and has sent letters to them both. We have done everything we can and now it is time for action.”

The state appears to be generally backing Schwarzenegger. An editorial in the Mercury News notes, “It's not often we cheer the filing of a lawsuit between two government agencies. But ...”

If the EPA does give the go ahead there could be a knock on effect. As AP points out California has a unique status allowing it to enact its own air pollution rules, providing the EPA agrees. But other states can follow either national or Californian standards and a number are hoping to adopt Arnie’s air.

This is not California's first run in with auto makers. Last month a judge threw out a lawsuit from the state seeking to hold them responsible for global warming. For some, the temptation to wheel out catchphrases is too great. Wired have run with “Governor Arnie to EPA: Hasta La Vista, Bureaucratic Delay Monkeys”.

Image: Getty

Posted by Daniel Cressey
Categories: Earth, environment & ecology, Policy | Permalink | Comments (1) | TrackBacks (0)