The Great Beyond

And it is the Brazilian government. Indeed, the Environment Ministry has released a list of the top 100 deforesters, and at the very top is the Institute of Colonization and Agrarian Reform, an arm of the government charged with overseeing land settlement (BBC, ABC).

Environment Minister Carlos Minc also released new evidence that deforestation rates continue to rise. The revelation that several years of progress in slowing deforestation had come to an abrupt halt sparked an uproar earlier this year, ultimately leading to the resignation of the previous Environment Minister Marina Silva.

Despite recent setbacks, the government is promising action, starting with a new initiative to halt deforestation by 2015. To help pay for all of this, President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva is requesting $21 billion from the international community. Earlier this month, Norway stepped up with $1 billion.

Halting deforestation seven years hence is tall order indeed, but Minc is certainly talking it up. This week he said the government would prosecute everybody on the top-100 list - presumably including government officials who are allegedly in cahoots with the loggers.

Posted by Jeff Tollefson
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Posted for Philip Ball

Whereas you might expect that scientists in the CERN theory group have their hands full predicting what the Large Hadron Collider is likely to brew up once it is finally up and running, it seems that some of them are too busy firefighting lunatic scare stories. It wasn’t enough to produce a fat document dismissing the concerns that the LHC will generate planet-gobbling strangelets or black holes; now they have had to demonstrate that the liquid-helium cryogenic system is safe too.

Continue reading "Do the Bose-nova (or rather, don't)" »

Posted by Katharine Sanderson
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A story about an invisibility cloak is always guaranteed to turn a few heads. Another way to grab the attention of headline-skimming eyes is to mention tsunamis. So guess what? Now we have the ultimate headline-grabbing paper – it’s an invisibility cloak for a tsunami. (press release).

The paper is published in Physical Review Letters, and details theoretical and experimental results for a structure that would shield off-shore rigs, even small islands and possibly coastlines from the shock of a tsunami.

The structure is a compound dyke made up of obstacles arranged in such a way as to bend the tsunami round the object they’re surrounding invisible to the waves – analogous to the way an invisibility cloak can send certain frequencies of light waves in weird directions to hide an object.

The story, even with its trendy buzz-words – has picked up only a small amount of attention. But it isn’t quantity, it’s quality. New Scientist has a good explanation about how it actually works, suggesting that the circular arrangement of pillars acts as a kind of whirlpool, taking the tsunami’s force and sucking it into the circles.

Science Daily has the story, and it’s hit the blogosphere as well.
The paper is not just a theoretical proposition – the authors have actually made a small version to test their proposals, but it’s difficult to guess whether any oil companies, or governments will take the idea on board or not.

Posted by Katharine Sanderson
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Posted for Laura Starr

The US has introduced legislation to stop exports of elemental mercury, in an attempt to protect the environment and people’s health. The ban will take effect from 2013 and comes only days after the European Union announced similar plans, with a ban on mercury exports taking effect in 2011.

Pick up in the mainstream press has been light, but it has made it into the Chicago Tribune, which tells us that the bill’s main sponsor is one Senator Obama.

Continue reading "Mercury export bans introduced" »

Posted by Katharine Sanderson
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By ‘eck. There’s trouble at t’Hubble

Old and weary, the Hubble space telescope was set to get a new lease of life on October 14th, when astronauts from space shuttle Atlantis planned to fit out the 18-year old telescope with lots of new kit, and repair numerous broken bits.

But then, at the last minute, Hubble stopped sending data from its data formatter and the telescope put itself into ‘safe mode’ and stopped work. To fix this bug would require expertise that those astronauts charged with carrying out the repairs don’t yet have. As a consequence the Shuttle trip to Hubble has been delayed until February next year at the earliest – which is when Discovery, the other shuttle, is going to be ready to act as a back up in case of emergency.

The astronauts were supposed to be going to visit Hubble for 11 days, to do 5 spacewalks. The telescope does have back up modes, but they haven’t been used for years says the Houston Chronicle .
The story has been widely picked up (LA TImes, New York Times, BBC – it seems that the telescope that has been sending us stunning images from space for the past 18 years has a special place in the hearts of the public.

Image: NASA

Posted by Katharine Sanderson
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Posted on behalf of Amber Dance

The Phoenix spacecraft, having collected evidence for water and ice on the Red Planet, is going for broke. NASA extended its mission today, allowing it to keep up its experiments until the diminishing sunlight, as Mars heads into winter, doesn’t provide enough power and renders it a mere weather station. But unlike the mythical bird, Phoenix is unlikely to rise again when winter’s over.

“The little lander is terminal,” said Doug McCuistion, director of the Mars Exploration Program. “It’s battling the weather and it’s battling the temperatures.” Currently, Phoenix basks in more than 20 hours of sunlight per Martian day, or sol. But that time is decreasing, which means that the lander can collect less solar energy. Simultaneously, the temperature is dropping, so Phoenix must expend more energy to keep its electronics warm. Eventually, the lander will lack the energy to keep going, and although it’s possible it will come back to life when the sun returns, engineers are not optimistic. It is expected to last until November or December. “We’re trying to literally make hay as the sun shines,” McCuistion said.

Continue reading "Mars Phoenix gets new lease on life" »

Posted by Alex Witze
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Posted on behalf of Erika Check Hayden

Tussles over the structure of the world’s largest funder of embryonic stem cell research continue, with a bipartisan commission saying it will scrutinize the California Institute for Regenerative Medicine.

On Friday, a California state oversight board, the Little Hoover Commission, said it will “explore the transparency and accountability of [CIRM’s] existing governance structure.” The commission told blogger David Jensen that it will also look at other issues, “including a discussion on ways to insure the most effective use of bond money”. The move had been requested by a watchdog group and by state legislators, who have largely remained impotent to do anything to influence the institute’s operations, thanks to masterful drafting of the ballot measure that created CIRM.

Scientists may be wondering whether this just another political move to slow embryonic stem cell research. But since CIRM’s creation, there have been concerns about the structure and operation of the agency that have nothing to do with politics, ranging from the unwieldy nature of agency’s 29-member board to the potential conflict created by the fact that many of the institutes receiving money from the agency also sit on that board (Nature).

Bob Klein, chair of the CIRM board, has headed off any major changes to the agency’s structure, although there have been minor tweaks, such as a grant review appeals process approved by the board on 25 September (CIRM, San Diego Union-Tribune). The Little Hoover Commission’s investigation into CIRM will be the most thorough and far-reaching yet, and the commission has a lot of clout. But some reforms would still have to go through the California legislature – a famously dysfunctional body. A public hearing in November should give a first taste of the inquiry’s intended scope and tone.

Posted by Alex Witze
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Posted on behalf of Ashley Yeager

It’s a plane. It’s a meteor. Nope, it’s Jules Verne.

The European Space Agency (ESA) craft, an Automated Transfer Vehicle (ATV), blazed across the sky and then smashed into the Pacific Ocean on Monday. Jules Verne, Europe's biggest, most sophisticated spaceship, was heading back to Earth with trash after stocking the International Space Station with food, water and other supplies. Scientists intentionally let the atmosphere shred Jules Verne to shed light on how natural fireballs like meteors explode as they enter Earth's atmosphere.

During controlled burns of spacecrafts, "we know their size and their impact speed, and we know the exact moment they're coming down," Peter Jenniskens, the Jules Verne observation campaign's mission scientist at NASA's Ames Research Center and the SETI Institute in Mountain View, Califofnia, told Space.com. "None of that happens with natural fireballs, so with these events you can set your cameras up and you can wait for it and observe it come in," he said.

The scientists are currently analyzing the data to learn about those natural fireballs and to understand how to safely destroy future ATVs. ESA has contracts with its international partners to design and use at least four more crafts to service the space station in the coming years. The next is due to launch in 2010. It's also likely that an ATV will help destroy the space station when it no longer can be serviced towards the end of the next decade, BBC News reports.

Image: ESA

Posted by Alex Witze
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Posted on behalf of Amber Dance

They didn’t cast a single vote, but Ecuador’s monkeys, tortoises (pictured) and orchids just acquired constitutional rights, along with the rest of the nation’s nature.

On Sunday, Ecuador’s human citizens voted their approval of a new constitution; reports vary but approximately two-thirds of people voted yes (New York Times). The document included language making Ecuador the first nation to legislate rights for nature:

“Nature or Pachamama [the Andean earth goddess], where life is reproduced and exists, has the right to exist, persist, maintain and regenerate its vital cycles, structure, functions and its processes in evolution. Every person, people, community or nationality, will be able to demand the recognition of rights for nature before the public bodies.”

Continue reading "Ecuador grants rights to nature" »

Posted by Alex Witze
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A U.S. District Court has thrown out the so-called "doomsday lawsuit" to shut down the Large Hadron Collider (LHC).

The lawsuit was filed in March by Walter Wagner, a Hawaiian botanist-cum-physicist who himself was indicted in February on a charge of identity theft. Wagner claimed that colliding the LHC's 7TeV proton beams could inadvertently destroy the world.

In a 26-page ruling (made public via Cosmic Log), federal district judge Helen Gilmore dismissed the suit. Basically the decision came down to an issue of jurisdiction: Wagner and a co-plantiff made their claim under the National Environmental Protection Act (NEPA). But NEPA only applies to "major federal actions," and the judge said that the US contribution to the LHC (US$531 million or about 10% of the overall cost) was too small to constitute a major federal project.

Judge Gilmore did believe that the debate was "of concern to more than just physicists", but she punted the issue over to the US Congress. It seems unlikely that much will happen there: America's economic meltdown means that Capitol Hill already has one end of the world to worry about. It won't have time to debate another.

Image: CERN

Posted by Geoff Brumfiel
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Posted for Laura Starr

The winner of the UK's Natural History Museum and the BBC's Wildlife magazine's Wildlife Photographer of the Year 2008 will be announced next month. Here are The Great Beyond's favourite highly commended images, which were announced today:

Bat house

This image was captured in Barro Colorado in Panama by Christian Ziegler, from Germany, and is highly commended in the Animals in their Environment category. We see a big-eared bat circling its roost, waiting until dusk so it can start hunting for a meal.

(more below the fold...)

Continue reading "Pretty animal pictures of the day" »

Posted by Katharine Sanderson
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Posted for Declan Butler

An international initiative announced today will help plug a glaring gap in efforts to secure nuclear materials worldwide from terrorists and proliferators.

The World Institute for Nuclear Security (WINS) plans to do for nuclear security what the World Association of Nuclear Operators (WANO) does for nuclear safety. WANO was created in the aftermath of the Chernobyl accident as an international forum for nuclear power plant operators, government agencies and nuclear experts to share their experiences of safety practices and adopt common best practices. WINS will take a similar approach, with nuclear players, including scientific experts; sharing sensitive security information among themselves. This, they hope, will strengthen accounting, control and physical protection of nuclear materials and facilities worldwide.

"Our message to everyone handling nuclear materials is that a terrorist nuclear attack anywhere in the world will cast a dark cloud over the entire nuclear community, no matter where the material originated," says Sam Nunn, a former Senator and co-chair of the Nuclear Threat Initiative (NTI), an influential non-profit organization in Washington DC. "WINS will help ensure that we can enjoy the benefits of nuclear energy while defending against its dangers."

NTI has been the driving force behind WINS. The money has come largely from two $3 million contributions from the Peter G. Peterson Foundation, a New York based charity, and the US Department of Energy. Operational funding will come from governments and the nuclear industry. Roger Howsley, former director for Security, Safeguards and International Affairs at British Nuclear Fuels, will be WINS executive director.

Continue reading "Agency set up to guard nuclear materials" »

Posted by Katharine Sanderson
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Posted for Laura Starr

Yesterday, the crew of China’s Shenzhou-7 spacecraft safely touched down by parachute in Inner Mongolia. The taikonauts were greeted as heroes, having victoriously carried out a historical landmark achievement – a spacewalk – a moment of pure symbolism marking a milestone in the nation’s space discovery. Their triumph has been greeted with substantial enthusiasm across the world.

What comes next for the conquering nation? China's manned space program spokesman, Wang Zhaoyao, announced plans to set up a simple space lab in 2011 and a manned space station by 2020 (Xinhua report).

Nature reported earlier this year that China does not yet have any official plans to place a man on the moon. However, recent developments show that this moon landing is still something many are keen on. Zhaoyao stated that “The moon landing is an extremely challenging and sophisticated task, and it is also a strategically important technological field. It is necessary for China to achieve something in this field.”

Posted by Katharine Sanderson
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Posted for Emma Marris

Don't you love sportscasters? They are always offering pearls of wisdom like "If they want to score, they've got to get that ball to the end of the field" and "What he really needs to do here is hit that ball."

For a more in-depth examination of what baseball players ought to be doing when they are racing to beat a ball to base or steal a base, we turn to Dave Peters, a mechanical engineer at the Washington University in Saint Louis – a sports crazy town if ever there was one.

Peters examines (press release) the age-old question of how to slide into base. Should one slide feet first
or

Continue reading "Stealing bases - head or feet first?" »

Posted by Katharine Sanderson
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They made it! SpaceX has successfully launched its Falcon-1 rocket and payload into an Earth orbit (press release). And not before time – this was the fourth attempt. (see Nature coverage of the last unsuccessful launch in August)

Private spaceflight is now set to be taken much more seriously, and the news has spread far and wide.

It’s also hit the blogosphere pretty widely as well – everyone is delighted. Congratulations says Bad Astronomy, while Gizmodo mentions fleetingly the story that I really want to know the answer to – did Scotty’s ashes go up as well this time?

Wired is very impressed, and focusses on those non-believers following three unsuccessful launches. Clearly Elon Musk, SpaceX founder and funder, is a man who isn’t shy when it comes to aiming high. “We are going to be taking over for the Space Shuttle when it retires,” Wired quote him as saying after the launch.

And that could happen – next up for SpaceX is their Falcon-9 rocket which is bigger and uglier than Falcon-1 and might be just able to take people to the space station. This is a good time to be Elon Musk.

Image: SpaceX

Posted by Katharine Sanderson
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Posted for Ashley Yeager

Hold on to those solar panels or they might show up on eBay. As energy prices soar and consumers turn to the Sun for their power, opportunistic thieves are cashing in on the new market by dismantling and reselling solar panels.

"I wouldn't say it's pervasive, but it's going on," California Solar Energy Industries Association executive director Sue Kateley told the Contra Costa Times in August. According to UK paper the Guardian a rash of thefts in California has led one wag to coin the term ‘grand theft solar’

California is the US leader for solar panel installations, with 33,000 across the state, the New York Times and the Guardian report. It’s no surprise, then, that California is also the US market leader for solar panel thefts. Note that figures are hard to come by and cases have been reported in Oregon, Minnesota and even in Africa.

On 22 September, in fact, the South African Sowetan reported that police caught an off-duty officer in Thohoyandou, Limpopo possessing solar panel band cutting equipment and suspected stolen property. Similar property thefts were reported by The New Vision Online, a Ugandan Web site.

Continue reading "‘Grand theft solar’" »

Posted by Daniel Cressey
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‘Physics For Current Writers’
The book ‘Physics for Future Presidents’ – featured by Nature here – is getting savaged for its physics-defying cover on the Photoshop Disasters blog.

“It is both extraordinary and terrifying that in just a few decades the world could lose half of all these species”
Over half of Europe’s amphibians could be extinct by 2050, reports the Telegraph.

“Academics around the world in a tree”
Network with Dawkins and Hawking on Academic.edu, reviewed on ARS Technica.

Posted by Daniel Cressey
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China’s Shenzhou-7 rocket blasted off from Gansu Province on Thursday, successfully carrying three taikonauts into space (see Nature: China's third manned space shot prepares for launch).

Today they started assembling the suit one of their number will wear when he braves the cold, dark vacuum of space. “If Shenzhou-7 mission is successful, China will become the third country after United States and Russia to accomplish a spacewalk, a crucial capacity if China is to have its own permanent space station,” says state news service Xinhua.

Of course, as a number of people are gleefully reporting, Xinhua has also already carried a first-person account of the launch, which was uploaded to their website before the Shenzhou had even lifted off.

AP says:

The piece titled "Sleepless Night on the Pacific, Sidelights on the Observation and Control of the 30th Lap of Shenzhou 7 Spaceship," which was available most of the day, has now been removed from the Xinhua Web site.

Other angles

Chairman Mao Zedong might have famously proclaimed that "women hold up half the sky," but China has no firm plans yet to send a woman into space even as it proceeds with its third manned mission.
- Reuters

What's driving China space efforts?
-Analysis from the BBC

Posted by Daniel Cressey
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The catchily titled ‘2008 International Science and Engineering Visualization Challenge’ has rolled around again. The winning entries are published in this week’s issue of Science and can also be seen on the NSF website.

Pictured here are the suction cups of the Loligo pealei squid, captured by Jessica Schiffman and Caroline Schauer of Drexel University. That’s the image they captured, not the squid. This was given an Honorable Mention in the Photography category and probably would have won if it wasn’t the stuff of nightmares.

More below the fold.

Continue reading "Picture special: squid suckers, cancer close ups and more" »

Posted by Daniel Cressey
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Obama outlines science spending boost
Nobel laureates endorse Democratic candidate and his plans for science.

Millenium development goals under scrutiny
At the halfway point of the global project to eradicate poverty, Nature asks how much has been achieved and how science can help.

Cell 'rebooting' technique sidesteps risks
Virus reprograms cells without disrupting genome.

Ancient water sites for next rover
Planetary scientists shortlist top landing sites on Mars.

Record-breaking rocks?
Radiometric dating suggests Canadian outcrop contains the world's oldest rock.

Posted by Daniel Cressey
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38 hours of non-stop Willie Nelson
Crazy guys make it across America fuelled by singer’s bio-fuel.

“Finally! I know Who mailed the anthrax!”
Another twist in the case of Bruce Ivans and the anthrax mailings.

Portuguese wave power
“The beach at Agucadoura, just north of Porto, is where electricity from the world's first wave farm is being cabled ashore,” says the BBC.

“One of them came along and took a bite out of my left shoulder.”
Andrew Rosindell, the UK opposition party’s animal welfare spokesman, has been savaged by a monkey.

Posted by Daniel Cressey
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There's coverage here and there about a new "dark flow" that astronomers have spotted out on the edge of the cosmos. A quick scan of the paper shows it to be pretty cool stuff.

Basically, the team tracked x-ray clusters of galaxies by watching how they scattered the Cosmic Microwave Background (CMB), the ubiquitous radiation left over from before the Big Bang. They found a "strong and coherent bulk flow" of those clusters that could well be billions of light years across.

Whatever's causing this cosmic slide is probably outside of the observable universe. That would appear to undermine a theory known as "inflation," which posits that a growth spurt moments after the Big Bang made the cosmos flat and homogeneous. As an alternative, the authors suggest that the galaxies may be responding to stuff that inflation pushed to beyond our universe's horizon.

Image: NASA/WMAP/A. Kashlinsky et al.

Posted by Geoff Brumfiel
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The latest global carbon budget numbers are just out, and they make interesting, if slightly depressing, reading. (Global Carbon Project site – will be updated at midnight)

Most striking is that, despite years of effort, carbon dioxide emissions are increasing at an alarming rate of 3.5% a year– faster than the 2.7% predicted by the IPCC in their worst case scenario, and miles ahead of the 0.9% annual rise in the 1990s. Worst still, current measures have been based on a middle-ground IPCC scenario. Pep Candell from the Global Carbon Budget told me that this was “astonishing”.

For the first time, we have hit 10 billion tonnes of carbon emitted annually.

The other thing to note is that China and India are galumphing their way up the table of biggest carbon dioxide emitters. Ten years ago the top four were: USA, China, Russia, Japan. Today that list reads: China, USA, Russia, India – and I am assured by Candell that next year India will have jumped into third place.

This is a worry – when the Kyoto Protocol was first talked about, the countries of the developing developed world were overwhelmingly the highest emitters of carbon dioxide. But in the meantime, whilst decisions were made, details argued out and paperwork signed, the developing world has taken pole position.

China has, since 2002, jumped from being responsible for 14% of the global carbon dioxide emissions, to 21%. At the same time the US has been hovering at around 20%.

Slightly good news is that our natural saviours - the oceans, forests and soil, are still doing a sterling job. In 1959, natural sinks removed just over 50% of the carbon dioxide man emitted. And today, they do the same - gobble up just over half. The efficiency of these natural sinks has dropped by about 5% in the intervening years, which isn't ideal, but that the overall news is not disastrous.

Response to the news – which will be officially announced tomorrow – from the media is widespread. It’s a ‘reality check’ according to the Daily Green; Zee News runs with the rise of India in the emission charts; while other reports tell it like it is: carbon dioxide emissions still rising.

Posted by Katharine Sanderson
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Product placement has ruined almost as many movies as Michael Bay. But if you think clumsy plugs for watches and cars are bad, at least they’re not killing you.

A new paper in the journal Tobacco Control reveals just how strong the links were between the cigarette industry and Hollywood. We’re talking strong like a Marlboro here (you can make up your own joke about leaving you with just as much of a bad taste).

Stanton Glantz, of the Center for Tobacco control Research and Education in San Francisco, and his colleagues have been wading through tobacco industry documents to work out how much companies paid to get endorsements from movie stars. Even though some presumably big money contracts like Cary Grant’s were missing they still toted up $218,750 between 1937 and 38, just for Lucky Strikes.

Continue reading "Flicks and cancer sticks" »

Posted by Daniel Cressey
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You may remember that climate science guru James Hanson recently came out in support of six Greenpeace activists who were charged with damage to a coal power station. His, and their, contention was that the damage was justified to stop the greater damage that the plant was doing to the world and the six were duly freed.

Now look who’s jumping on this bandwagon.

“I believe we have reached the stage where it is time for civil disobedience to prevent the construction of new coal plants that do not have carbon capture and sequestration,” Al Gore told a meeting at the Clinton Global Initiative (various, eg Reuters).

The NY Times quotes Gore saying civil disobedience should aim to stop construction of new coal plants, adding “Clean coal does not exist.”

As someone else might have put it:

How does it become a man to behave toward the coal power station today? I answer, that he cannot without disgrace be associated with it.

Posted by Daniel Cressey
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Colourful biologist Marc van Roosmalen is generating more headlines this week after he announced plans to name a monkey after the wonderful world of blogs.

No longer will the term ‘blog monkey’ be something my editors can hurl at me in the morning when they want coffee. Instead it will belong to Lagothrix blogii, if van Roosmalen gets his way.

Van Roosmalen hit the news in a big way last year when he was imprisoned by the Brazilian government for taking four monkeys from the rainforest without the correct permits (see this Nature story from August 2007). He was later released on appeal and since found the time to claim the discovery of a giant peccary (see this blog from November 2007). He says there have been two attempts on his life since then.

Now the blog monkey project has started up in the hope of raising enough money to get him back to work. Some of van Roosmalen’s methods of naming species have been slightly outside regular scientific practice, so it’s not clear whether Lagothrix blogii would be accepted by the world at large as the name of what he says is a new species of woolly monkey.

The campaign website notes:

The monkey is found in a part of the Rio Aripuanã region and is just one of many species in that location waiting to be discovered or recognized by science, so it is easy to see why we need to get Marc van Roosmalen back out there discovering and describing new species.

We know that we are trying to raise a lot of money but we think, and hopefully you do to, that this is a great way to show the importance of blogs and to get a lasting evidence of this – a monkey species named after the blogosphere.

Debate on the relative merits of the project is going on over at Pharyngula.

Image: the potential Lagothrix blogii

Posted by Daniel Cressey
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This year saw the 58th Meeting of Nobel Laureates descend on the island of Lindau, Germany. The meetings are supposed to allow young scientists to meet the giants of their field.

Nature sent a film crew to the island to make the first ever Nature documentary. Starting from October 3rd you can see five interviews in which students question Nobel Laureates David Gross, George Smoot, Gerardus t’Hooft, John Hall and William Phillips.

If you can’t wait there’s a teaser trailer already available here.

Image: Punchstock

Posted by Daniel Cressey
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A physicist has been arrested by the FBI on charges of illegally aiding China’s space programme.

According to the Department of Justice Shu Quan-Sheng, born in China but a naturalized American, violated arms control acts in helping the Chinese with their Hainan island space launch facility. A DOJ statement says:

According to the complaint, Shu has been involved in the PRC's systematic effort to upgrade their space exploration and satellite technology capabilities by providing technical expertise and foreign technology acquisition in the fields of cryogenic pumps, valves, transfer lines and refrigeration equipment, components critical for the use of liquefied hydrogen in a launch facility. Shu has also been instrumental in arranging for PRC officials to visit various European space launch facilities and hydrogen production/storage facilities.

Other allegations include attempted bribery and supplying data on hydrogen tanks and fuelling systems. Shu is the president, secretary and treasurer of the company AMAC International, headquartered in Newport News.

Continue reading "FBI swoop on ‘China space spy guy’" »

Posted by Daniel Cressey
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Posted on behalf of Ashley Yeager
Think dinosaur and the great T-Rex or towering Triceratops probably comes to mind. But size is not everything. Albertonykus borealis, a newly discovered dinosaur that roamed Alberta, Canada about 70 million years ago was the size of a chick, and is believed to be the smallest dinosaur to have lived in North America (press release).

Having jaws shaped like needlenose pliers, pick-like claws and bird feet, A. borealis was “really bizarre” and looked like it was a “creation of Dr. Seuss,” Nicholas Longrich, a paleontology research associate at the University of Calgary, told the Calgary Herald. The creature looks like different animals stitched together, he said in the article.

The tiny dino’s bones were unearthed in 2002 when paleontologist Philip Currie of the University of Alberta was digging at Dry Island Buffalo Jump Provincial Park, which is about 175 kilometres northeast of Calgary. But, the fossils were not what Currie was looking for at the time and were ultimately put in a drawer at the Royal Tyrrell Museum. Three years later, Longrich was going through the museum’s drawers, saw an interesting pick-like claw bone and determined it most likely belonged to a new type of dinosaur.

Continue reading "Dino of the day: teeny-tiny-osaurs" »

Posted by Daniel Cressey
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Ultrasmooth mirror could herald birth of a new microscope
Helium atoms could probe the smallest structures with a light touch.

Magnetar flashes astronomers
First optical signals spied from dead star.

Competition for sex hampers endangered species' recovery
Study challenges conservation management methods.

Posted by Daniel Cressey
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The UK's much anticipated "nuclear renaissance" may be about to get under way. As is being reported pretty much everywhere, the French energy giant EDF announced that it will take over British Energy for a whopping £12.4 billion (US$23 billion).

British Energy is the owner of pretty much every nuclear plant in the UK, but those ageing plants are of limited interest to EDF. Much more interesting to the company is the real-estate that the plants are built on. Because that land is already home to reactors, it should be much easier for EDF to construct new plants on the sites.

It's no coincidence that a French company is driving the UK's nuclear renaissance. Over 75% of France's electricity comes from nuclear power, and the company behind the French plants, Areva, is the obvious candidate to build the new British reactors.

Posted by Geoff Brumfiel
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A new first for Pharma; Eli Lilly, Indianapolis-based pharmaceuticals company, will be the first among its industry stable-mates to publicly disclose how much it pays in fees and royalties to doctors who give talks for it or advise it about patients. (press release, AP story)

This step will probably see names and home towns of doctors disclosed, says this Indystar report.

Over at Pharmalot, there’s a good run down on the back story, and the Physicians Payments Sunshine Act, which would set up a US-wide registry of cash going to medical practitioners from pharma companies. The story is getting lots of pick up in the US (New York Times, Wall Street Journal)

It’s not clear whether this is going to spill over to academic researchers as well, but the US Senate Finance Committee is still continuing its probe into conflict of interest in academic research. This report from Brown University mentions Martin Keller, embroiled in a controversial antidepressant drug trial of Paxil, made by GlaxoSmithKline. Keller faces accusations that some of his reports were ghost-written.

Image: Getty

Posted by Katharine Sanderson
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Over half of the clinical trials used to obtain drug-approvals from the FDA never get published, according to Californian researchers.

Kirby Lee of UC San Francisco and colleagues identified 909 trials in applications submitted in support of 90 eventually approved drugs. Only 43% every made it into journals within five years, the researchers report in PLOS Medicine.

Unsurprisingly there is also a bias towards favourably results, as fellow study author Ida Sim told Bloomberg:

We found that there was indeed a pattern that favourable studies were more likely to be published than unfavourable trials. This is something that is essentially structural in the way clinical trial information is disseminated to the public

Continue reading "Where have all the trials gone?" »

Posted by Daniel Cressey
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The offshore drilling debate rumbles on in the US. And it just got musical.

Republican phrase ‘drill baby, drill’ (mentioned here earlier this month) has been the subject of a Wired music contest. You can see the winning entries by Clay Corrello and Ken Sercy over on their website.

However that Wired story also links to this gem, which uses the same title as a previous Great Beyond post from August on this topic: Arron Tippin’s Drill Here, Drill Now. (At this point I should probably admit that I was totally unaware this was the title of a song when I used it. It’s also the title of a campaign by Newt Gringrich.)

Previously on Songs about Science
Songs about science
Songs of science part II
Songs about science part III: geology
Songs about science part IV: GeekPop08
Songs about science part V: singing scientists
Songs about science part VI: ‘Don’t go messing with our telescope’
Songs about science VII: ‘It’s a long way from Amphioxus’
Songs about pseudo-science
Songs about science part VIII: the astrobiology rap
Songs about science IX: Rollin’ to the Future

Posted by Daniel Cressey
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While its ancient Greek namesake had his own issues with winds, the gales braved by space probe Ulysses are on another scale entirely.

The joint ESA/NASA project has found solar wind is at its lowest levels since accurate recordings began 50 years ago, with strength of solar wind pressure down 20% on 1990s numbers. This stream of charged particles from the Sun creates a protective shield round the solar system, keeping pesky galactic cosmic rays away.

“With the solar wind at an all-time low, there is an excellent chance that the heliosphere will diminish in size and strength,” says Ed Smith, NASA’s Ulysses project scientist (press release). “If that occurs, more galactic cosmic rays will make it into the inner part of our Solar System.”

Continue reading "Ulysses becalmed" »

Posted by Daniel Cressey
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Whoopsy. An effort to bring endangered Mallorcan toads back from the brink of extinction has blighted them with an infectious fungus that is wiping them out.

A recent paper in Current Biology details how the captive breeding and subsequent reintroduction of the Mallorcan Midwife Toad – on the red-list of endangered species – has infected populations in the wild with Batrachochytrium dendrobatidis, a fungus that has been threatening amphibians worldwide for the past ten years.

The Digital Journal closes its piece on the subject by saying that the fungus hasn’t been as devastating to the midwife toad as to other amphibian species. But whether this is good fortune, or merely a time lag, isn’t clear.

Science gives a nice potted history of this particular hoppy critter, its discovery, and the initial success of the captive breeding programme which has gone so wrong.

The authors, led by Susan Walker from Imperial College London, use the paper to highlight the valuable lesson that breeding programmes must be monitored to make sure they don’t become hot beds of infections for the very species they are intended to save. Breeding oodles of endangered toads is great, they say, but please please please make sure they're free from infection before sending them back to their native environment.

Image: Mallorcan midwife toad by 'tuurio and wallie' via Wikimedia

Posted by Katharine Sanderson
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NASA’s deathless Mars rover Opportunity is heading off on a two year jaunt to a massive crater.

Having nearly not made it out of the last hole it was in Opportunity has clearly become something of a crater junky, and it is now en-route to one 20 times bigger in the hopes of seeing some nice rock layers when it gets there. It is heading away from Victoria and on to Endeavour.

“We may not get there, but it is scientifically the right direction to go anyway,” says Steve Squyres, PI for the rover’s science (press release).

“I would love to see that view from the rim. But even if we never get there, as we move southward we expect to be getting to younger and younger layers of rock on the surface. Also, there are large craters to the south that we think are sources of cobbles that we want to examine out on the plain.”

Of course this is a not to be missed Opportunity (groan) to revisit all those ‘plucky little rover / a bit like Wall-E’ tropes. ‘Little Mars rover that could heads to new crater’ simpers Reuters.

The New York Times has chosen to headline its coverage of this news ‘Georgia: Murder Conviction Upheld’. Perhaps they know something dark in Opportunity’s past of which we are not aware...

Image: NASA

Posted by Daniel Cressey
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“An unconscionable decision not based upon science or law”?
“The Environmental Protection Agency has decided there's no need to rid drinking water of a toxic rocket fuel ingredient that has fouled public water supplies around the country,” says AP.

Big robots, big rockets, big ideas
Wired reckons it has found “15 People the Next President Should Listen To”.

What if the LHC made everyone black out for two minutes?
ABC may be about to make a TV series where exactly that happens, says MSNBC.

How the space spider got its legs
Remember that weird shape on Mercury? Bad Astronomy knows where it came from, mostly.

Posted by Daniel Cressey
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Scientists have discovered a 650 million year old, 1 km wide reef, sitting in Australia’s outback. Fossils of ancient sponges or other early primitive animals may be awaiting discovery there, say antipodean researchers.

Jonathan Giddings, of the University of Melbourne, says the reef is of “internationally significant” because it dates from a 5-10 million year period between two major ice ages.

“It provides a significant step forward in showing the extent of climate change in Earth’s past and the evolution of ancient reef complexes – and it also contains fossils which may be of the earliest known primitive animals” says Giddings (press release).

“There is a good chance that the new fossils and organisms found in the reef will provide significant insight into the evolution of early multi-cellular life.”

Continue reading "‘Outback reef’ may hold earliest primitive animals" »

Posted by Daniel Cressey
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It seems we owe more to fish than we thought. As well as providing us with a source of sushi they may well have given us our fingers.

Previously it was suggested that land based tetrapods were the first animals to have fingers. Now a paper published in Nature shows that rough fingers were present in the fossil fish Panderichthys.

“This was the key piece of the puzzle that confirms that rudimentary fingers were already present in ancestors of tetrapods,” says study author Catherine Boisvert, of Uppsala University (press release).

Using CT scanning, Boisvert shows that a 380 million year old Panderichthys fossil has digit-like elements on the end of its right hand fin. This enabled the researchers to solve a tricky problem: most fossils of this species come from one quarry in Latvia where the clay is pretty much the same colour as the fish (AFP).

“With a nice big bone, that is not a problem,” study co-author Per Ahlberg told AFP. “But if you are interested in tiny, fragile bones at the outer end of the fin skeleton, it is nearly impossible to see what is going on.” Ahlberg has previously featured on the Great Beyond in “Fantastic four-legged-fish fossils”.

Those non-British readers confused by our country’s near-universal usage of the term ‘fish finger’ in headlines should read this article in the Financial Times. Then you will be fully up to speed with an item that fully confirms the bad opinion our continental cousins have of our cuisine.

Headline watch
Digital evolution: early fish had primitive fingers, says study – AFP
Fish Gave Us the Finger – Scientific American
Scientists discover why we all have fish fingers – Daily Mail

Image: reconstruction of Panderichthys fin endoskeleton / C. Boisvert and P. Ahlberg

Posted by Daniel Cressey
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Russian engineers have pinpointed the "most probable cause" for a dangerous malfunction of the Soyuz capsule.

The last couple of Soyuz coming back from the International Space Station have had rocky re-entries. Engineers fingered a faulty pyrotechnic bolt that was meant to separate the crew capsule from its service module. In July, the station's crew undertook a space walk to remove the bolts.

According to Aviation Week, it appears that charged particles whizzing around the station may have been degrading an igniter wire in one of the explosive bolts. The Russian's are planning to replace the bolt on future capsules and use a different re-entry profile that may alleviate the phenomenon.
Image: NASA TV

Posted by Geoff Brumfiel
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The world’s common bird species are in decline as a result of habitat loss, a global survey warns.

The assessment from BirdLife International, a conservation group, found that 45% of common European bird populations are falling, including the Turtle-dove which has seen a 62% drop in numbers of the last 25 years. On the other side of the world, Australian wading birds have seen population losses of 81% over the same time period, the assessment says.

In North America, 20 common bird species have more than halved in number over the last four decades, with the Bobwhite falling most dramatically by 82%.

Over the last sixteen years, Asian White-rumped Vulture populations have plummeted by 99.9%. The species is now classified as critically endangered.

The assessment, which is launched today at BirdLife international’s world conference in Buenos Aires, is the first update on the state of the world’s birds since 2004. It calls on the world’s governments to take urgent action if commitments to halt biodiversity loss by 2010 are to be met.

Continue reading "Common birds in global decline " »

Posted by Natasha Gilbert
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Posted on behalf of Amber Dance [with apologies for the lateness of posting– Ed.]

If you are easily startled by disturbing images or sudden noises, you might be a conservative. If you don’t react strongly to such stimuli, you might be a liberal.

So says a paper published in Science. John Hibbing of the University of Nebraska and colleagues tested 46 Nebraskans with strong political beliefs on their fear response.

The researchers selected participants that had strong political leanings, in either direction, based on a survey. They considered issues such as gun control, the death penalty and immigration, but not economic matters. The authors classified their subjects in terms of how much they wanted to “protect the existing social structure” – generally something conservatives strive for, while liberals are more amenable to change.

In one experiment, participants viewed a series of images, three of which were threatening: a giant spider on a person’s face, a person with a bloody face, and a maggot-filled wound. The scientists measured the skin conductance, a fear indicator, when subjects viewed the nasty pictures, and found it went up in the conservatives.

Continue reading "The physiology of personal politics" »

Posted by Daniel Cressey
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“Copying the LHC is absolutely senseless”
Russia’s science minister Andrei Fursenko isn’t impressed with Russian physicists’ suggestions that a bigger version of the LHC could be built near Moscow. His comment seems more pointed in the wake of the LHC’s unhappy week.

“Encouraging a cross-political consensus” or “hypocrisy of the purest strain”?
Business leaders including airport owners and power giants are calling for action on climate change, notes the Guardian.

Six State Science Survey: Nashville vs Denver
Does local science reporting exist in the states? Grad student Jeff Marlow is trying to find out on Nature Network.

Papers with good titles: Are Boys Becoming An Endangered Subspecies? (Sex ratio trends.)

Posted by Daniel Cressey
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It’s been a tense few days for wannabe Moon-visitors: a contractual battle between builders of the Ares moon rockets is threatening to hold things up. On Friday a report in the Orlando Sentinel told that a contract between United Space Alliance (USA), one of NASA’s main contractors principally for servicing the Shuttle programme, and ATK Launch Systems, due to end on Sunday 21st, wasn’t going to be renewed.

ATK is contracted to NASA to design and build the first stage of the Ares I rocket, for use in future manned-moon missions. USA employees are contracted to ATK to help in the programme. If the contract between the two companies isn’t renewed, work on the Ares rockets stops.

But since Friday, again according to the Orlando Sentinel, it seems that a temporary truce has been called for a week, while details are argued out.

The dispute has been burbling for a while. USA is unhappy that ATK wouldn’t agree to a long term contract to work on NASA’s constellation programme. USA also accuses ATK of poaching their staff. In August, USA filed a suit against ATK for breach of contract.

Interestingly, the second Orlando Sentinel report suggests that since USA said it would no longer work on Ares, ATK has had a rush on job applications. The implication is that workers fretting about the retirement of the Shuttle fleet are now looking for the next spacecraft with long term job prospects.

We will wait and see what is decided in the next week. Meanwhile, there’s still a moon rocket that needs to be built.

Posted by Katharine Sanderson
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The row over which of the big things floating round the Sun can be called planets is still going on. Not that this is stopping people naming individual wotsits.

The International Astronomical Union has decided that ‘dwarf planet’ 2003 EL61 should henceforth be known as Haumea (press release). Haumea is a Hawaiian goddess of earth and fertility and, as MSNBC notes, was one of the triggers for the whole ongoing ‘what is a planet anyway’ debate.

Astronomer Mike Brown has an amazing tale of discovering the dwarf planet, being scooped on claiming it by a Spanish team and then being embroiled in skulduggery and international craziness as allegations emerged that some people (possibly but not necessarily the Spanish team) had been using his telescope logs to infer that he had found something interesting.

Continue reading "Say hello to Haumea" »

Posted by Daniel Cressey
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Dictionaries’ days are probably numbered in this age of the world wide webbytubes. Nevertheless, there’s always interest in which new words are incorporated ever year, chosen by the lexicographers as reflective of our age.

This year Collins – the Rolling Stones to Oxford’s Beatles in the UK dictionary world – are shaking things up a bit. Rather than bringing in words they’re threatening to chuck some out.

“We’ve been fiddling around with the typeface to try to get more in, but it is at saturation point,” says Cormac McKeown, Collins’ senior editor (Daily Telegraph, see also Times). “There is a trade-off between getting them in and legibility.”

But in a nice little publicity stunt, Collins is letting people try to save the words. If any of the 24 words set for defenestration appear six times in the company’s database of recent word usage in the media then they will be spared execution (although presumably mentioning them in stories like this one won’t count).

If any biologist is studying fubsy animals that may have a tendency to skirr or exuviate (leaving skin as recrement) and this is apodeictic maybe your next paper could use these words a bit more?

Skirr – move rapidly, especially with a whirring sound.
“I'm a very keen birdwatcher,” poet Andrew Motion told the Telegraph. “Birders do use this word from time to time so I thought it might have a better chance than others, such as vilipend. I saw 10,000 knot flying over The Wash in the evening recently and the noise they made was a skirring noise.”

Apodeictic – clearly established or beyond dispute.
“... by virtue of demonstration” adds the Times.

Exuviate – (of an animal) shed (a skin or shell)

Fubsy – fat and squat

Recrement – a waste product of an organism

Definitions from the Oxford English Dictionary, as that’s what we had in the office.

Image: all 24 words, run through Wordle

Posted by Daniel Cressey
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As of Saturday morning, the situation in Geneva is looking a touch grim: according to the CERN press release repairs to the LHC after Friday's accident will require two months or so of downtime, which given that the machine is expected to shut down in December for a winter break anyway means that proton-proton collisions may be off the menu until 2009.

It seems that as the magnetic fields were being increased in the machine as part of the commissioning (there was no beam in the machine at the time) there was a massive quench in sector 3-4 of the machine. A chart of the spectacular temperature rise can be seen here. According to the Resonaances blog

LHC-progress addicts report that pretty scaring entries were appearing in the LHC logbook this morning (fire alarm, power failure, helium leaking into the tunnel), though all the record seems to be deleted now.

When a magnet quenches it stops being superconducting and is reduced to being merely conducting -- at which point it starts to resist the current flowing through it, and heating up in a hurry. As Cosmic Variance points out, this is something you'd expect to happen to the magnets now and then, and they are designed to withstand it. But a basic part of withstanding it would be not rupturing the cooling system and leaking helium out into the tunnel, which is what seems to have happened, with a loss of about a tonne of helium, according to physicsworld.com (which is apparently home to some of the LHC-progress addicts of which Resonaances speaks: respect). According to CERN, "a faulty electrical connection between two magnets ... probably melted at high current leading to mechanical failure".

The question now, I assume, is faulty component, faulty installation -- or faulty design? Doubtless we'll know a bit more soon.

Posted by Oliver Morton
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Posted on behalf of Amber Dance

Scientists, tired of trekking to animal traps and flying back and forth in airplanes, are turning to satellite imagery to monitor endangered giant kangaroo rat populations in California (Associated Press).

Researchers have used satellite imagery before, to find large animals like lions and giraffes (NASA). In this case, scientists won’t be hoping to spot the rats themselves, but the large, cleared, circular areas around their burrows.

Giant kangaroo rats, which are about 15 centimetres long not including the tail (and that’s big, for a kangaroo rat), gather seeds in the San Joaquin Valley, and occasionally hop on their back legs (hence the name). They are well-suited to their desert habitat, extracting all the moisture they need from seeds and the air they exhale. When farmers came to the valley, they brought their own moisture via canals. Agriculture pushed the animals up into the hills, and they now inhabit only 10 percent or less of their original range.

The animals are a keystone species, which is rare for a creature so small, says Tim Bean, a graduate student at UC Berkeley. Their burrows also shelter squirrels and lizards, and they make a tasty meal for kit foxes. “Without them the entire ecosystem would go out of whack,” Bean told the Associated Press. He plans to title his thesis “Counting Rats from Space,” and writes on his lab website that it will likely “become an international phenomenon, spawning everything from a board game to a Top 40 dance hall burner.”

Image: Tamara Nunes, Caltrans

Posted by Alex Witze
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Thanks to the well pedigreed (and well connected) founders of 23andMe, genomics has become quite a hit with the rich and famous. Despite a recent ‘for the masses’ price cut to 23andMe’s genotyping services (now $400 as opposed to $1000), wealthy trendsetters are still taking it to the spittoon in this delightful New Yorker vignette

But a new development yesterday indicated an unexpected philanthropic effect of all this moneyed interest. Sergey Brin, husband to one of 23andMe’s founders and a Google founder himself revealed on his blog that his genome contains a mutation associated with elevated risk for Parkinson’s disease. His mother has the disease. In a very personal note, and quite aware of the uncertainty that pertains to this variant he discusses the opportunities that this knowledge affords:

I know early in my life something I am substantially predisposed to. I now have the opportunity to adjust my life to reduce those odds (e.g. there is evidence that exercise may be protective against Parkinson's). I also have the opportunity to perform and support research into this disease long before it may affect me. And, regardless of my own health it can help my family members as well as others.

According to a New York Times story on the announcement, Brin has already donated money for Parkinson’s research, endowing a chair at the University of Maryland School of Medicine where his mother is being treated. Donors have generally given generously for causes that affect them personally. Perhaps this interest in genomics will mean more philanthropic endeavours based on speculation.

Posted by Brendan Maher
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The Large Hadron Collider is running into problems again. And not just with people who don’t like its name.

Given the Hammer of the Higgs has only been switched on for a week it’s a bit embarrassing that so far it has been hacked into and one of its transformers has gone wrong. Now a problem with a magnet has sent helium from the cooling system leaking into the tunnels of CERN.

The Times says:

While a faulty transformer that had hindered progress for much of the past week has now been replaced, as first reported by The Times, the magnet failure is potentially more serious. Supercooled helium that chills the LHC’s magnets to 1.8C above absolute zero was released into the accelerator’s 17-mile (27km) tunnel in the incident.

Posted by Daniel Cressey
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Posted for Jeff Tollefson

The US Geological Survey this week released its results from a five-year grizzly bear study maligned by Republican Presidential candidate John McCain, and the people that one would expect McCain to represent are quite pleased.

It turns out that an isolated population of grizzly bears in northwest Montana is doing much better than previously believed; after completing a DNA analysis of grizzly bear hair samples and then running a statistical analysis, the USGS came up with a figure of 765 bears, compared to previous estimates of 200-300.

The study will surely be cited as evidence that all is well by those who are arguing that it’s time to remove the bear from the threatened species list, a program that has long been criticized by many Republicans as overly burdensome. The Associated Press cited the Montana Farm Bureau making that exact point; AP says it was unable to get a response from the McCain campaign.

USGS based its analysis on samples taken from what they call “barbed wire hair traps” and “natural rub trees.” Scientists build the former by stringing barbed wire around a series of trees at knee height and then placing something smelly in the centre. When bears came through to investigate, they would kindly leave a hair sample or two. Natural rub trees are just that: trees on which bears chose to rub their back.

McCain has long opposed wasteful government spending, particularly in the form of “earmark” projects that are secured by members of Congress. Funding for the grizzly bear project was requested by members of the Montana delegation, but it’s not entirely clear why McCain disdains the project as much as he does.

To see the bears in action while listening to lead researcher Kate Kendall discuss the project, check YouTube.

Image: USFWS

Posted by Daniel Cressey
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Plants seem to dose themselves with a chemical similar to aspirin when they get stressed. They don’t get stressed by migraines or stubbing their toes but drought, pathogens or extreme temperatures have them reaching for their own version of the pill bottle.

“Unlike humans, who are advised to take aspirin as a fever suppressant, plants have the ability to produce their own mix of aspirin-like chemicals, triggering the formation of proteins that boost their biochemical defences and reduce injury,” says Thomas Karl, a researcher at the US National Center for Atmospheric Research (press release).

Karl says that although it has previously been known that plants in labs can produce methyl salicylate, a type of acetylsalicylic acid (aspirin), it hasn’t been seen in the wild before. But Karl reports in Biogeosciences that instruments set up to measure plant emissions of other volatile organic compounds also picked up methyl salicylate.

The study could also add weight to suggestions that methyl salicylate is used by plants to signal each other about threats.

“These findings show tangible proof that plant-to-plant communication occurs on the ecosystem level. It appears that plants have the ability to communicate through the atmosphere,” says NCAR scientist Alex Guenther, a co-author of the study.

They’re talking now, soon they’ll be getting organised and then we’re in real trouble.

News coverage

Plants make their own painkillers - MSNBC
Stressed plants produce an aspirin-like chemical – AP
Stressed plants release aspirin-like chemical – Reuters

Image: One of NCAR’s plant emission measuring towers / Carlye Calvin, ©UCAR

Posted by Daniel Cressey
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Let us greet over 100 new sharks and rays, introduced to our race thanks to DNA analysis by Australian scientists. Our happiness at having so many new cartilaginous friends though should be tempered by the knowledge that some of them will go straight onto the ‘critically endangered’ list.

Jaws, we hardly knew thee.

“One species - Parascyllium elongatum (collared carpetshark) - was so rare that the only known example was found in the belly of another shark,” notes The Age.

Peter Last, of Australian government’s science agency the Commonwealth Scientific and Industrial Research Organisation, has been updating the Sharks and Rays of Australia book, using DNA sequences to differentiate between similar species.

“Additional taxonomic information like this is critical to managing sharks and rays, which reproduce relatively slowly and are extremely vulnerable to over-fishing and other human impacts,” says Last (press release). “Their populations are also sensitive to small-scale events and can be an indicator of environmental change.”

“It’s like finding out that there are a hundred new whale and dolphin species out there. It is a major scientific breakthrough,” says WWF-Australia fisheries manager Peter Trott (press release).

“This is the 21st century and still we lack even the most basic information for almost all species of shark. We urgently need them to become the top priority for science-based research and the top priority for management in order to safeguard their populations.”

More coverage
Scientists name 100 new shark and ray species – Reuters
100 new species of sharks and rays – Adelaide Now

Image top: Maugean Skate / Zearaja maugeana (CSIRO)
Image lower: Southern Dogfish / Centrophorus zeehaani (CISRO)

Posted by Daniel Cressey
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Posted on behalf of Amber Dance

US senator Patrick Leahy says he does not believe the FBI theory that researcher Bruce Ivins acted alone in carrying out the 2001 anthrax attacks in the US.

Robert Mueller, director of the Federal Bureau of Investigation told the US Congress this week that he was confident of his agency’s conclusion. But senators and representatives were not so convinced, as they quizzed him on the “Amerithrax” investigation that ultimately led the Bureau to conclude Bruce Ivins, a researcher at the US Army Medical Research Institute of Infectious Diseases who recently committed suicide, was the sole perpetrator of the 2001 anthrax mailings.

Senator Patrick Leahy (D-Vermont), whose office received one of the anthrax-laced envelopes, told Mueller, “If he is the one who sent the letter, I do not believe in any way, shape or manner that he is the only person involved in this attack on Congress and the American people” (New York Times).

Continue reading "Did anthrax mailer act alone?" »

Posted by Daniel Cressey
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Posted on behalf of Amber Dance

What starts with 316, ends with 511, and has no factors besides itself and one?

The biggest prime number ever, that’s what.

Edson Smith of UCLA, in conjunction with the Great Internet Mersenne Prime Search (GIMPS) will share a $100,000 prize offered by the Electronics Frontier Foundation (EFF) for the first 10-million digit prime. One of the 75 computers Smith manages (Scientific American), running GIMPS’ free distributed computing software that utilizes processor downtime, discovered the number on 23 August, but it took three weeks to verify. It was a photo finish — Hans-Michael Elvenich of Langfelden, Germany, discovered another 10-million-digit prime just two weeks later. While Smith’s number clocked 12,978,189 digits, Elvenich’s was a puny 11,185,272 digits long.

Mersenne primes, which fit the equation 2^n -1, are the (relatively) easiest to prove prime because there’s a “simple” test for their primeness. The first four Mersennes, 3, 7, 31 and 127, were discovered BCE, and mathematicians have been adding to the list since the 15th Century. Computers speed up the process a bit—in its 12 years GIMPS has been running, it’s discovered a dozen Mersenne primes.

Continue reading "Big prime nets big profit" »

Posted by Daniel Cressey
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Since Michael Reiss, an ordained minister, ‘stepped down’ from his job as director of education at the Royal Society a lot of hand wringing has been going on.

Reiss was forced from his job after widespread misinterpretation of his comments about the treatment of creationism in science classes (full story on Nature News).

As we noted on this blog last week and on Nature News yesterday a lot of the reporting seemed to take his comments slightly out of context, and now some newspapers are trying to redress the balance...

Continue reading "Eating the cake you already have" »

Posted by Daniel Cressey
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Ностальгия for the cold war appears to be hitting new highs in Russia this week. Russia is already set to once again be the dominant player in human space flight when the shuttle retires, much to US chagrin. The country is also flexing its military might, sending long-range bombers and one of its massive nuclear powered navy vessels into America’s back yard (maybe).

Just in case you missed the obvious parallels the Russians are also coming to Cuba. With missiles.

“We have tentatively discussed the possibility of assisting Cuba to build its own space centre,” says Russian space agency chief Anatoly Perminov (RIA Novosti).

Perminov added, “With our Cuban colleagues, we discussed the possibilities of joint use of space equipment ... and the joint use of space communications systems.” (Itar TASS, via Reuters).

Posted by Daniel Cressey
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Sarah Palin has won a not-so-coveted award for her conservation work.

Charity and pressure group the Center for Biological Diversity had awarded her the 2008 Rubber Dodo Award for “done the most to drive endangered species extinct”.

“Governor Palin has waged a deceptive, dangerous, and costly battle against the polar bear,” says Kieran Suckling, executive director of the CBD (press release).

The award citation states:

For seeking to block Endangered Species Act protection for the polar bear, lying about, then suppressing state scientific review, and denying that greenhouse gas emissions cause global warming.

No statement from Palin has yet been forthcoming.

Posted by Daniel Cressey
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Unconvinced that Large Hadron Collider was a good name, the Royal Society of Chemistry decided to run a poll to find a something better. Leaving aside the shameless bandwagon jumping (surely this was a job for the Institute of Physics if anyone?) the slightly uninspiring choice of the public was ‘Halo’.

In a statement the RSC says:

Some reports say that the RSC is suffering from ‘professional jealousy’ [over the LHC]; far from it. The RSC congratulates the physics community with nothing but admiration for their amazing project - it just has a very boring name.

The name Halo was suggested by Aaron Borges of Black Mesa, Rhode Island, USA, who doesn’t seem to be deliberately plugging the Microsoft video game of the same name. Other popular entries were Deep Thought, The Particrasher, E=M25, The Big Banger and Big Bang Two Point Oh.

Sadly the RSC obviously has no power to rename the LHC, so LHC it will stay. “We’re flattered that the RSC should take such an interest in our public image, and we find the name Halo to be apposite. However, the LHC will not be changing its name,” says a spokesman (Daily Telegraph).

Jumping onto the bandwagon with their own bandwagon (and pushing my metaphor use to breaking point) is Wired:

No offence to Aaron, but I just can't get excited about this: Beyond the fact that Microsoft probably owns the word by now, it's a little too cute.

Wired Science is therefore proud to announce our own Large Hadron Collider Renaming Contest.

Black Mesa, another video game reference, is doing well, but ‘Chuck Norris's Roundhouse Kick Simulator’ is close behind. That may not mean anyone who doesn’t follow internet in-jokes.

If you still want more alternative LHC names, head on over to Digg for more discussion of the matter.

Image: cern

Posted by Daniel Cressey
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The contentious offshore drilling issue in the US is moving on apace, with the House of Representatives passing legislation allowing drilling within 80 km of a coastline with state permission.

No state permission? No problem. Just stay another 80 km out and you’re good to go. While 189 opposed the bill, 236 said ‘drill baby, drill’.

“We are opening up to 400 million acres off the Atlantic and Pacific coasts to drilling and expanding the availability of oil by at least 2 billion barrels,” say Democrat Nick J. Rahall II (NY Times). “And we have done so in a balanced, reasonable and responsible manner.”

Republicans though are crying foul, with House Minority Leader John Boehner calling the measure “nothing more than hoax on the American people” (SF Chronicle). Their main objections are that states won’t profit from drilling and you still can’t come in closer than 80 km.

The Houston Chronicle is one of many pointing out that the bill is a bit of a U-turn by House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, who has been dead against offshore drilling in the past. But Pelosi heralded her shift by saying “It is time for an oil change in America” and anyone who can pun like that should be encouraged to turn as much as possible.

Posted by Daniel Cressey
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Starvation is putting UK seabirds on the attack, according to ‘disturbing’ research (press release).

In the Royal Society’s Biology Letters journal Kate Ashbrook and colleagues say fish shortages have more guillemots foraging for food and leaving chicks unattended.

“Although non-breeders and failed breeders sometimes provided alloparental care, unattended chicks were frequently attacked by breeding guillemots at neighbouring sites, often with fatal consequences,” they say.

Ashbrook’s study was conducted on the Isle of May, off the coast of Scotland. She found 66% chicks that hatched did not survive and attacks by neighbours accounted for 69% of these deaths.

Tim Birkhead, of Sheffield University, told the Guardian: “It is one of the most extraordinary behaviours I have ever heard about and it really flags up that something monumental is happening out at sea. All one can do is watch in despair as this catastrophe unfolds.”

More coverage
Infanticide rife in guillemot colony – Daily Telegraph
Seabird chicks 'killed over food' – BBC
Starving guillemots push rival chicks off cliffs – Guardian
Starving seabirds fling neighbours' chicks from cliffs as severe food shortages make them aggressive – Daily Mail

Previous sea-bird nastiness on the Great Beyond
Super-evolved mega-mice threaten island birds

Images: top – guillemot, lower – unattended chicks / Kate Ashbrook

Posted by Daniel Cressey
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The Vatican has denied it ever condemned ‘biological change over time’, but insists it will not be apologizing to Darwin.

Catholic Archbishop Gianfranco Ravasi said, “Evolutionary theory is not incompatible a priori with the teaching of the Catholic Church, with the message of the Bible and theology, and in actual fact it was never condemned.” (Catholic News Agency.)

Last week it was reported that the Anglican church would apologise to Darwin “for misunderstanding you” and for “getting our first reaction wrong” to On the Origin of the Species (Daily Telegraph.)

According to the Times, Ravasi said the Anglican apology was “curious and significant” and showed “a mentality different than ours”. He also told a Vatican endorsed conference on Darwin, “Maybe we should abandon the idea of issuing apologies as if history was a court eternally in session.” (Reuters.)

Current Pope Benedict has apologised for comments that appeared to link Islam and violence and has also apologised for child abuse by priests. Past Pope John Paul II previously apologised for condemning Galileo, among other things.

Posted by Daniel Cressey
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NASA has unveiled its latest mission to Mars. The $485 million MAVEN (Mars Atmosphere and Volatile EvolutioN) spacecraft will arrive at the Red Planet in 2014 if all goes to plan, and aims to collect information on the atmosphere, or what’s left of it. The dense atmosphere believed to exist there in the past is long gone, having disappeared billions of years ago (BBC).

“The loss of Mars’ atmosphere has been an ongoing mystery,” says Doug McCuistion, director of NASA’s Mars Exploration Program (press release). “MAVEN will help us solve it.”

However AP is reporting that things have not got off to the smoothest start after a mysterious and unexplained conflict of interest caused a 9 month delay to the project’s approval. “The price of the probe increased by $10 million, its launch was postponed by two years, and the science-gathering mission will be cut in half to one year, an official said,” the wire service notes.

NASA says:

After arriving at Mars in the fall of 2014, MAVEN will use its propulsion system to enter an elliptical orbit ranging 90 to 3,870 miles above the planet. The spacecraft's eight science instruments will take measurements during a full Earth year, which is roughly equivalent to half of a Martian year. MAVEN also will dip to an altitude 80 miles above the planet to sample Mars' entire upper atmosphere.

Bruce Jakosky, of the University of Colorado at Boulder, is the PI for the project.

“We are absolutely thrilled about this announcement,” said Jakosky (CU-Boulder press release). “We have an outstanding mission that will obtain fundamental science results for Mars. We have a great team and we are ready to go.”

Image: NASA

Posted by Daniel Cressey
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Australian researchers are trying to find out if captive bred sharks could help maintain wild populations.

They are releasing captive bred specimens of the strangely named (and even stranger-featured, looking like the offspring of a mop and a catfish) wobbegong shark and tracking the cute little things to see if they behave as a proper shark would.

According to the Sydney Morning Herald six wild tagged wobbegongs (it’s not clear what type of wobbegong these are) are already being monitored in what is the first attempt to compared captive-bred shark behaviour with the behaviour of their wild brothers and sisters.

"We're going to release the wobbegongs and tag some wobbegongs from the wild, and we'll be able to compare the movements and migration to see if those [captive] wobbegongs behave naturally,” Charlie Huveneers, from the Sydney Institute of Marine Science, told the paper.

Continue reading "Will weird wobbegongs work in the wild?" »

Posted by Daniel Cressey
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As the crossfire on the US election trail becomes ever nastier, will one of the bodies by the wayside be a planetarium?

Candidate John McCain took aim at these unlikely targets this week when discussing rival Barack Obama’s attempt to obtain earmarks for certain projects. Some estimates put Obama’s earmarks at over $900 million, meaning Obama has not a leg to stand on when attacking on Republican potential vice-president Palin on the same issue, says McCain.

“That’s nearly a million every day, every working day he’s been in Congress,” he says (AP). “And when you look at some of the planetariums and other foolishness that he asked for, he shouldn't be saying anything about Governor Palin.”

Theoretical physicist JoAnne Hewett writes on the Cosmic Variance blog that McCain seems to be talking about Obama’s plans to provide cash for a refurb of the Adler Planetarium in Chicago.

“Quite frankly, I am left speechless at the phrase: ‘planetariums and other foolishness’,” says Hewett.

“... Sorry, but replacing 40 year old equipment at one of the leading science education facilities in this country (the Adler Planetarium is located in downtown Chicago and is the oldest planetarium in existence today) is one of the best investments in the future that I can think of. I’ve always equated planetariums with science education - an area where the US seems to be lacking.”

I’ll try and get the Adler to say something about this...

Related
John McCain: literally antiscience – Bad Science
Space: It's an issue of national security – Florida Today
McCain bashes Obama on NASA – Boston Globe

Posted by Daniel Cressey
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“Ridiculous, chilling and unconscionable.”
Researchers are disturbed that a woman in India has been convicted of murder based on a brain scan, says the NY Times.

Big bird
“Several pairs” of eagle owls “the largest owls in the world” are breeding in Britain, says the Independent.

“US must enhance investment in research and education”
California state representative Zoe Lofgren and Symantec’s chief technology office Mark Bregman get political in the Mercury News.

Posted by Daniel Cressey
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The Indonesian government has thrown in the towel in its fight to stop the ‘mud volcano’ that has devastated a huge area in East Java.

“The government has given up in terms of efforts to stop the mudflow, but will never give up when it comes to taking care of the people,” Reuters quotes vice president Jusuf Kalla as saying.

The government had previously tried dropping ‘choke chains’ into the mud (see Nature) but this has failed to slow the eruption, which some have blamed on drilling in the region. (For more see: Mud volcano floods Java, Java mud volcano seems unstoppable.)

Australian energy firm Santos owns 18% of the gas drilling venture in the region and has been forced onto the defensive following a leaked UN Environment Programme report that put the economic damage of the mud volcano at 3.4 billion dollars.

AFP says it could cost Santos “830 million dollars [US$670m], the report said, while the firm has declared provisions of just 88.5 million dollars to the Australian Stock Exchange to cover the clean-up cost”. Bloomberg notes that Santos has “dropped 57 cents, or 2.9 percent, to A$18.80 in Sydney trading, the largest decline since Sept. 4”.

The study also suggests that the only way to deal with the problem might be shipping the mud 14 km to the ocean and turning it into wetland.

In a statement the company said:

Santos is not in a position to comment specifically on the UNEP report. However, given the conditions at site and current activities being conducted, Santos believes that the provision remains an appropriate estimate of its potential liability associated with the incident. As Santos has indicated previously, the situation remains dynamic, complex and uncertain.

Posted by Daniel Cressey
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Presidential contender John McCain has weighed in on the '14 questions' on science and technology posed to both candidates by a coalition of science interest groups. You can read his answers side by side with Barack Obama's at the Science Debate 2008 website here.

Researchers wondering what a President McCain would do for them will note that he ticks off many of the major usual check boxes of concern: that he supports increased research funding, with shout-outs for the Department of Energy, the National Science Foundation, and the National Institutes of Health; that he explicitly mentions (when prompted) restoring scientific integrity to federal research; that he notes humanity's role in global warming and then lays out details of his cap-and-trade system that would reduce greenhouse gas emissions 60 percent below 1990 levels by 2050.

Much of the rest is standard boilerplate campaign material, but when someone is just weeks away from possibly being elected president, that boilerplate assumes greater importance.

Continue reading "Where John McCain stands on science" »

Posted by Alex Witze
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Via Andrew Revkin’s DotEarth blog we meet Richard Alley of Penn State, aka The Singing Climatologists. This is ‘Rollin’ to the Future’, described by Alley as “a musical review about the problem of scarce resources”.

Revkin says:

Besides being a lead author on several reports from the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, Dr. Alley led one of the groups that first discerned in Greenland’s ice layers how the climate has seen extraordinary jogs in temperature, particularly shortly after the end of the last ice age. ... Now he’s moving into multimedia communication on climate, and earth sciences more generally, not just with video, but with a guitar.

For our younger readers, this is what he’s referencing although this version is clearly better.

Previously on Songs about Science
Songs about science
Songs of science part II
Songs about science part III: geology
Songs about science part IV: GeekPop08
Songs about science part V: singing scientists
Songs about science part VI: ‘Don’t go messing with our telescope’
Songs about science VII: ‘It’s a long way from Amphioxus’
Songs about pseudo-science
Songs about science part VIII: the astrobiology rap

Posted by Daniel Cressey
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In a strange twist to the start up of the Large Hadron Collider, it appears that the Compact Muon Solenoid (CMS), one of the collider's two all purpose detectors, has come under attack from purportedly Greek hackers.

The hacking attack apparently took place September 9 and 10 in the lead-up to the official LHC switch-on. According to The Telegraph, the perpetrators identified themselves as the GST (short for Greek Security Team). The "team" says that it is 2600 strong, slightly larger than the CMS collaboration, but it doesn't appear to be related to the end-of-the-world paranoia surrounding the LHC's startup on 10 September.

The GST apparently got through to the metasystem that monitors CMS software as it takes data. That system was separated from the detector's main controls by a firewall, and physicists quickly cut off the attack. "No harm was done," CMS spokesperson Jim Virdee told me.
Image: CMS

Posted by Geoff Brumfiel
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Posted on behalf of Meredith Wadman

There’s nothing like having old friends in high places. And Pat Schroeder, the former congresswoman who has been president and chief executive officer of the Association of American Publishers (AAP) for the last eleven years, certainly has such a friend in John Conyers. Conyers is the chairman of the House Judiciary Committee; he and she were sitting side by side as the committee’s two most senior Democrats when she left Congress after 24 years in 1996.

Which may go some way toward explaining why Conyers, a liberal Democrat whom one might expect to be on the other side of this issue, is taking harsh aim at a new National Institutes of Health (NIH) policy requiring NIH-funded scientists to archive their published papers in a publicly accessible database within a year of publication. The policy went into effect in April, after being passed as part of the bill that funded NIH in 2008.

Those long five months ago, open access advocates breathed a sigh of relief. Yesterday, that may have morphed into a gasp of horror. At a Capitol Hill hearing, Conyers announced the introduction of a new bill. The Fair Copyright in Research Works Act would illegalize the NIH policy by amending US copyright law. In essence, it forbids federal agencies from conditioning funding agreements -- like NIH grants --- on a requirement that authors make copies of their peer-reviewed articles public. Which, of course, is precisely what the NIH policy does. (The impetus behind it: the populist notion that US taxpayers shouldn’t have to pay to get access to the results of the work that they already fund once through grants from the $29 billion agency.)

Continue reading "Open access: public good or publishers' evil?" »

Posted by Alex Witze
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This morning, NASA Administrator Michael Griffin addressed all of his employees in an open forum, and took nearly an hour’s worth of questions from employees in Washington and from some of the far-flung NASA centers.

He talked a little bit about his worries as Hurricane Ike rolls towards Houston and the Johnson Space Center, which has been closed (Ike pictured here, from the International Space Station): “Complete flooding of the center to the depth of several feet is not out of the realm of possibility,” he said.

But Griffin spent most of his time talking about the ongoing Space Shuttle saga. The key question: Plow ahead on the next set of moon rockets, called Constellation, with money saved by retiring the expensive shuttle in 2010? Or, in the wake of icy US-Russia relations, extend the Space Shuttle program so that NASA doesn’t need Russian help in getting to the space station?

Continue reading "NASA's Hurricane Mike" »

Posted by Eric Hand
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Can a dinosaur get lucky through mass extinction? Apparently the answer is yes, at least according to a paper published in Science.

In this paper Stephen Brusatte, of the American Museum of Natural History, and colleagues report that the dinos were lucky. Specifically, they found that the reason dinosaurs prospered at the expense of crurotarsan archosaurs (crocodiles’ great-to-the-power-n ancestors) was probably luck.

“If we were standing in the Late Triassic, 210 million years ago or so, and had to bet on which group would eventually dominate ecosystems, all reasonable gamblers would go with the crurotarsans,” says Brusatte (press release from Bristol University, where much of the work was done).

Continue reading "Dinos were super-lucky-o-sauruses" »

Posted by Daniel Cressey
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UPDATE – It has arrived!

As Hurricane Ike careens towards Texas after smashing Cuba NASA braces for impact.

Unfortunately this bracing means more delays for a planned mission to re-supply the International Space Station using a Russian ‘Progress’ craft, launched on Wednesday. NASA’s Johnson Space Center in Houston was supposed to control the docking with the ISS but has had to be closed due to Ike’s approach (NASA statement).

A temporary control centre near Austin has been fired up until Ike moves on and while this could control the docking it was decided to delay till Wednesday to allow NASA staff time to get out of Houston, says LiveScience.

“We will assess any damage, and decide when it's safe to come back,” says spokesman Kelly Humphries (Houston Chronicle).

CBS notes:

Another team of flight controllers will be stationed at the Marshall Space Flight Center in Huntsville, Ala., to take over if the Johnson Space Center loses power and the ability to relay communications to and from the backup center near Austin.

But some systems cannot be commanded from the backup control center, including precision control of solar array orientation. Such control is needed to "feather" the arrays before visiting spacecraft can dock to prevent contamination by rocket exhaust plumes.

Valery Lyndin, spokesman for Russian Mission Control told Reuters: “Apparently our American partners have some technical concerns, and of course spaceships are not this kind of area where you should rely on the off-chance. So, it’s better to ensure ourselves against any risks.”

Credit: Hal Pierce, SSAI/NASA

Posted by Daniel Cressey
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UPDATED - SEE BELOW FOR STATEMENT FROM REISS

As Scientific American put it recently – to the rage of the Discovery Institute – “If it's September, it's time for creationism in schools. That's how some would like it, anyway.”

And so it came to pass after Michael Reiss came out in favour of allowing discussion of creationism in UK science classes. Reiss is director of education at the Royal Society. He is also a minister with the Church of England.

In a speech to the British Association Festival of Science he says:

My central argument of this article is that creationism is best seen by a science teacher not as a misconception but as a worldview.
...
So when teaching evolution, there is much to be said for allowing students to raise any doubts they have (hardly a revolutionary idea in science teaching) and doing one's best to have a genuine discussion. The word 'genuine' doesn't mean that creationism or intelligent design deserve equal time. However, in certain classes, depending on the comfort of the teacher in dealing with such issues and the make up of the student body, it can be appropriate to deal with the issue.

Continue reading "Churchman creates creationism controversy" »

Posted by Daniel Cressey
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NASA engineers on Wednesday were touting the latest stepping stone in their effort to build a rocket to return astronauts to the moon. The agency announced that the Ares 1 rocket, part of the Constellation program, had passed a preliminary design review. "This is a critical step for development of the Ares I rocket," said Rick Gilbrech, associate administrator of the Exploration Systems Mission Directorate in Washington. [Nasa press release]

But according to the AP, the program left one engineering issue hanging: how to deal with resonant shaking during the launch. Critics have used the issue as a way to call the entire design into question, though NASA engineers say they have a satisfactory solution. That issue will be reviewed next year.

The next major milestone will be a critical design review in 2011. A bigger issue is whether the Ares rockets will get the money they need to be built. NASA had been counting on paying for the rockets with the $3 billion spent every year on the Space Shuttle, due for retirement in 2010. But US tensions with Russia, which will be responsible for ferrying astronauts to the International Space Station, has some representatives in Congress arguing vehemently for extending the costly shuttle program.

Image: NASA

Posted by Eric Hand
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The magnitude 7.9 earthquake that shook China in May has significantly increased the chances of another major quake in the region.

Geologists have used computer models to assess the impact of the Wenchuan quake and say that stress in three other fault systems in the Sichuan region has shot up, doubling the risk of a quake (press release).

“We tend to think of earthquakes as relieving stress on a fault,” says Ross Stein of the US Geological Survey, one of the authors on a paper describing the findings in Geophysical Research Letters.

“That may be true for the one that ruptured, but not for the adjacent faults. ... One great earthquake seems to make the next one more likely, not less.”

A Nature paper from July also tackled this issue, and featured on our podcast in that month (podcast, transcript).

News coverage
China's big earthquake doubles chances of more – Reuters
Quake… Again? – Wall Street Journal Blogs

Posted by Daniel Cressey
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Posted on behalf of Amber Dance

Employees at the US Minerals Management Service (MMS) engaged in illicit sex and cocaine use, alleges a 10 September report. Oh, and they fixed contracts, too.

Earl E. Devaney, inspector general for the Department of the Interior (DOI), has been after the service for years (see New York Times 2006). In particular, his new report says, employees at the Royalty-In-Kind (RIK) program held themselves above government ethical policies.

MMS collects royalties from energy companies, either as cash or as oil or natural gas and RIK is responsible for selling those in-kind payments on taxpayers’ behalf. Lowball prices companies paid MMS likely cost taxpayers millions, the report says.

Employees told investigators the ethics rules didn’t apply to them because their “unique” positions required them to socialize with industry reps (Washington Post).

Continue reading "Fast Times at the Minerals Management Service" »

Posted by Daniel Cressey
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The brightest explosion ever seen sent a blast of gamma rays directly towards the earth, according to a paper in this week’s Nature.

Caused by a dying star halfway back to the big bang, the gamma ray burst was visible on Earth for 40 seconds to anyone who looked to the right point in the sky in March 2008.

“It definitely broke some records,” says Dieter Hartmann of Clemson University in South Carolina, who is not an author on the paper (MSNBC). “The luminosity was a million times that of the whole galaxy, which is astounding.”

Luckily for researchers the narrow beam of rays was pointed pretty much directly at Earth, allowing them to study it in considerable detail. “It’s like shooting a gun with a deadly laser beam embedded within a lethal spray of buckshot,” says Sky and Telescope.

In a News & Views article about the burst Jonathan Grindlay notes that the optical emission of the burst was 100 brighter than the previous record holder. Knowledge of this burst and its dual-jet nature – an inner beam just 0.4 degrees wide sheathed inside another wider beam about 8 degrees wide – may challenge our current understanding of gamma ray bursts.

Continue reading "Biggest bang ever seen challenges cosmic assumptions" »

Posted by Daniel Cressey
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Criminal damage in the name of climate change is not a criminal offence, according to a shock ruling from a British court.

A jury yesterday acquitted six Greenpeace activists who claimed that the threat of global warming was a ‘lawful excuse’ for the damage they caused while protesting at a coal power plant (see this blog post for background).

Climate change scientist James Hansen had previously backed the six: he released a statement declaring “We will need our Mercedes-driving lawyer friends to tell us if the verdict has greater significance -- but the jurors were common people, not politicians.

“The main point, that the government, the utility, and the fossil fuel industry, were aware of the facts [of climate change] but continued to ignore them are more generally valid worldwide. It raises the question of whether the right people are on trial.”

Continue reading "Shock climate change verdict acquits Hansen’s heroes " »

Posted by Daniel Cressey
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The Large Hadron Collider (LHC), the giant particle accelerator outside of CERN, has only just started on its scientific adventure, and it's already got theorists fighting with each other.

Most physicists believe that the LHC is going to find something called the Higgs particle. If it exists, the Higgs would endow all other particles with mass, and it would help to complete the so-called standard model of particle physics.

But not everyone thinks the Higgs is there to be found. On Tuesday, famous cosmologist Stephen Hawking announced he was betting US$100 that the LHC wouldn't find the Higgs particle. What's more, he said it would be "more exciting" if physicists didn't find it.

Peter Higgs, the man for whom Higgs is named, didn't find that very funny. As it's being widely reported, Higgs called Hawking's work "not good enough" yesterday during a press conference in Edinburgh.

Part of the disconnect stems from the fact that Hawking is a cosmologist and Higgs a particle physicist. Hawking has "gone to war" with particle physicists before, claiming for example, that black holes can destroy information. The particle physicist-come-string-theorist Leonard Susskind was so incensed that wrote a book about the topic.

I suspect that this is the first of what will be a lot of spats between theorists in the coming year or two. People's careers all depend on what the LHC finds, and as those findings draw near, the theoretical community will grow ever more agitated.

Posted by Geoff Brumfiel
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Posted on behalf of Amber Dance

Want to save the planet? Grab a can of white paint — and a ladder. At the Global Climate Change Conference this week in Sacramento, California, scientists from the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory presented a plan to offset 44 gigatonnes of atmospheric carbon dioxide with a hefty dose of whitewash.

The study is the first to put numbers on what people have known for years — whiter roofs reflect more solar radiation, thus reducing global warming while saving money on air conditioning bills (Los Angeles Times). The research paper is in press at Climate Change.

White-topping the roof of an average family home is like sucking 10 tonnes of carbon dioxide out of the air, says study author Hashem Akbari. It also cuts energy costs by 20 percent, says co-author Art Rosenfeld of the California Energy Commission (East Bay Business Times). If major cities in tropical and temperate zones adopted paler roofs and pavements, the authors estimate, it could offset 44 gigatonnes’ worth of atmospheric carbon dioxide. That’s more than the world emits in a year.

California has required flat-topped, commercial buildings to go white since 2005, and will require new and retrofitted buildings to use cool-color roofing starting in 2009. These shingles and coatings look like their high-absorbing counterparts, but reflect more of the sun’s rays.

However, those white shingles have to be clean to work their magic, and the chore of regular roof-washing could eliminate the appeal of less power use. Akbari’s group reports on its web site that manufacturers have come up with self-washing white shingles.

“I call it win-win-win,” Akbari says. Cities are cooler and more comfortable, home- and business owners save on their summer electricity bills, and everyone feels good about slowing the process of climate change. The scientists hope to persuade the United Nations to help get cities to go white.

Image: Briny Breezes, Boynton Beach by Christopher Dick, via Flickr

Posted by Alex Witze
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Posted for Emma Marris

Black widow spiders, Latrodectus Hesperus, weave two different types of web, depending on whether they are ravenously licking their fangs in anticipation of hapless prey or curling up with a full belly.

University of Akron researchers, working with hundreds of hungry and full black widows, showed that the starving spiders wove webs of "sticky gumfooted threads" in more or less a single dimension. The stickiness ensnares insects. Satiated spiders wove "nonsticky, tangle-based webs" in which to chill out and avoid predation. They controlled for the possibility that the "fed" spiders were larger by starving big ones and feeding little ones. See the paper and the University of Akron's story on it.

Black widow webs aren't your classic Charlote's Web web—those are woven by orb-weaving spiders. The black widow is a cobweb spider.

This isn't the first study on web design and spider hunger. In 2000, Takeshi Watanabe of Kyoto University looked at an orb-weaving spider called Octonoba sybotides and found that "The spider appears to increase the tension of the radial threads so that it can sense smaller prey better when hungry."

Continue reading "The Dire Web of the Hungry Black Widow…and the cosier web of the full black widow" »

Posted by Daniel Cressey
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Putting out a science press release on the day the LHC takes over the world seems like a pretty bonehead play for a PR officer. Unless that is they’ve decided this a ‘good day to bury bad news’ (copyright the UK government).

Just in case this is their terrible plan, here are the stories they didn’t want you to read...

The winners of the Kavli prizes in astrophysics, nanoscience and neuroscience have been presented with their awards in Oslo. “Let these prizes be a token of thanks and gratitude for moving us along the path of greater understanding of the human being, nature, and the universe,” says Fred Kavli, founder of the Kavli Prize.

Scientists from a whole host of institutes have come up with “a novel way to improve survival and recovery rate after a heart attack”.

Germany wants its young researchers to come home from the US. “The door to Germany is wide open,” says Matthias Kleiner, president of the Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (the German Research Foundation).

Posted by Daniel Cressey
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Mining company Rio Tinto has been given a severe dressing down by the Norwegian government, which is ditching its shares in the company due to its environmental record.

Norway’s ministry of finance has sold all the shares the government pension fund has in the company, worth nearly 5 billion Kroner (over $800 million). This amounts to nearly half a percent of the market capitalisation (Reuters).

“Exclusion of a company from the Fund reflects our unwillingness to run an unacceptable risk of contributing to grossly unethical conduct,” says (government statement). “The Council on Ethics has concluded that Rio Tinto is directly involved, through its participation in the Grasberg mine in Indonesia, in the severe environmental damage caused by that mining operation.”

The statement adds, “There are no indications to the effect that the company's practises will be changed in future, or that measures will be taken to significantly reduce the damage to nature and the environment.”

Continue reading "Norway attacks Rio Tinto" »

Posted by Daniel Cressey
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Back in April, though sadly not on the 1st, we noted that both candidates for US President had made noises that could give support to the ‘vaccines cause autism’ crowd.

So it’s pleasing to see that at least one of them has taken a step back towards science.

From the Respectful Insolence blog:

It appears that Barack Obama has ticked off the antivaccine contingent. ... Apparently, he's gone a long way towards redeeming himself for his previous gaffe when it came to vaccines and autism, and the antivaccine zealots over at Age of Autism are all in a tizzy over it:
...
I just wonder who his medical advisors are; clearly they've educated him about his past missteps with regard to the messages of antivaccine fearmongering with which the AoA and Generation Rescue crew have been bombarding the Presidential candidates.

Image: Alamy

Posted by Daniel Cressey
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Nature’s leading blagger-of-foreign-travel Geoff Brumfiel is still over near Geneva blogging the LHC. The rest of the world is still going crazy for the smasher too, you know you’ve made it in geek-land when you’re the subject of an XKCD comic strip

So press play on the embedded video (Pop Goes the World set to a music video about the LHC) and read on...

Continue reading "LHC: License for Huge Coverage pt 2" »

Posted by Daniel Cressey
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If you don’t like particle physics look away now. In fact, if you don’t like particle physics turn off all electronic equipment, burn your newspaper and go and sit in the bottom of a well for a least the next week because there is no escaping the Large Hadron Collider at the moment.

Nature’s leading blagger-of-foreign-travel Geoff Brumfiel is over near Geneva to witness the momentous turning on of the largest / most important / groundbreaking / awesome / sexy / amazing / powerful / expensive / etc / etc / etc experiment ever.

They’re all clapping and cheering over there right now, he says.

Here’s what the rest of the world says...

Continue reading "LHC: License for Huge Coverage" »

Posted by Daniel Cressey
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It’s been a while since we touched on the US elections here at the Great Beyond, but there are a few developments you may find interesting (or worrying).

First up, The Scientist has been asking which biologist would be the best president of the United States. (We shall soon address the fact that chemists obviously have a much better skill set and are far more suited to rule.)

At the moment microbiologist Rita Colwell is out in front, with 25% of the roughly 200 votes cast. Harold Varmus is in second place on 16.l% and E.O Wilson and Craig Venter are in third and fourth. Lipid gurus Brown and Goldstein are in last place, which seems to indicate power-sharing is not something the American public are keen on.

More politics below the fold.

Continue reading "Vote Venter?" »

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The media feeding frenzy that is the British Association Festival of Science has kicked off. Katrina Charles is there for Nature and has thus far enlightened us about fossilised forests in Illinois coal mines and why science in science fiction films is a bit silly.

There’s far more to cover than one person alone can manage. Here’s a round up of the rest...

Continue reading "BA Festival of Science round up" »

Posted by Daniel Cressey
Categories: Biology & Biotechnology, Chemistry, Health and medicine, Neat technologies, Physics & Mathematics | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

“People want to take a picture of everything just in case.”
The LA Times says that CT scans might be bad medicine in some cases.

“Labs make mistakes. Scientists make mistakes.”
The Baltimore Sun looks at problems in the city’s forensic labs.

‘Raising vegetables under Canada's midnight sun’
Reuters journeys to North America's northernmost commercial greenhouse.

Inside the Gagarin Cosmonaut Training Centre
Photographer Linda Nylind visits Russia’s Star City for the Guardian. A subject also featured in Wired.

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NASA’s mission to repair the Hubble telescope faces a higher than usual risk of being smashed by space junk.

Shuttle program manager John Shannon says a mission to the International Space Station comes with a 1 in 300 chance of a catastrophic debris strike. For the Hubble mission the odds are 1 in 185 (Reuters).

“It’s worse for Hubble because we fly higher. We’ve had some vehicle breakups on orbit, and they have made the (debris) environment worse,” says Shannon (Space.com / USA Today).

Both Reuters and the USA Today point the finger at a Russian spy satellite’s self-destructing and a Chinese satellite-killer missile test for much of the debris.

Showing how seriously the risk is being taken, NASA has another Shuttle – Endeavour – on standby in case it has to launch a rescue mission. “It’s just nice extra insurance to have since we’re in a position that we can have a vehicle on the pad ready to go launch. ... We don’t expect to use it, but if we do, we feel very confident we could,” says Shannon (Florida Today).

Atlantis commander Scott Altman told USA Today, “That comes with the mission. Hubble is where it is. … We’ve got to go where the work is.”

Image: rollout Atlantis viewed from inside the Launch Control Center / NASA Kim Shiflett

Posted by Daniel Cressey
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NASA top dog Mike Griffin is not a happy man. His anger about the retirement of the space shuttle has surfaced as yet another email leaks out of the space agency.

“Exactly as I predicted, events have unfolded in a way that makes it clear how unwise it was for the US to adopt a policy of deliberate dependence upon another power for access to ISS,” writes Griffin in the email obtained by the Orlando Sentinel. “In a rational world, we would have been allowed to pick a Shuttle retirement date to be c consistent with Ares/Orion availability...”

In other words: stopping flying the Shuttle before its replacement is ready is a bonehead move. Griffin even goes on to claim that “retiring the Shuttle is a jihad rather than an engineering and program management decision” for the President’s Office of Science and Technology Policy and the Office of Management and Budget.

If he was that angry before the email leaked he must be apoplectic now his private thoughts are all over the internet...

Continue reading "Griffin claims there is a ‘jihad’ against the Space Shuttle" »

Posted by Daniel Cressey
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‘Top 10 Amazing Physics Videos’
Wired’s list scandalously omits what are truly the two greatest physics videos of all time (copied below the fold, in case you want to see them).

Green activists ‘keeping Africa poor’
The UK’s ex-chief scientist doesn’t care to mince his words anymore.

“Dude, I’m not doing science.”
Constance Steinkuehler of the University of Wisconsin thinks computer gamers have become scientists, says Wired.

Genome Quilts
“Beverly St. Clair has originated a way of encoding genetic information in quilt designs,” says her website. See the evidence for yourself.

Continue reading "Ones that got away" »

Posted by Daniel Cressey
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Cross posted from Geoff Brumfiel at In the Field

It's only a few days before the official "start up" of the LHC, and people everywhere are getting all excited. Unfortunately, a lot of that excitement is focused around a single, erroneous question: "Will the LHC destroy the world?"

The answer, of course, is no. Even the Sun, the silliest of British tabloids, knows that (although they do have some pretty good ideas about how to pass the end of days, think Super Mario Brothers).

Nevertheless, there's a vocal and determined group of folks who are doing their best to convince the public that there really isn't going to be a 11 September. Some of them will post shortly on this blog I'm sure, and fair enough; it's a free world. But others are going too far. In the past few days, reports have come out that a few physicists at the LHC are recieving death threats from hardest of the fanatics.

Enough is enough. Leave your case to the courts and stop trying to scare the poor physicists.

Image: cern

Posted by Daniel Cressey
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International law is not up to the task of protecting our polar regions, according to scientists meeting in Iceland at a UN conference. As more and more people head to the poles for tourism, research or commerce delegates to the meeting are fretting over over-fishing, pollution and invasive species.

“Many experts believe this new rush to the polar regions is not manageable within existing international law,” says A.H. Zakri, director of the UN University’s Institute of Advanced Studies (press release). “Pressure on Earth's unique and highly vulnerable polar areas is mounting quickly and an internationally-agreed set of rules built on new realities appears needed to many observers.”

A number of those attending the conference believe that the current suite of laws is not clear enough, which could have devastating consequences if, for example, oil spills resulted from drilling.

“Oil in particular and risks of shipping in the Arctic are big issues,” conference chairman David Leary told Reuters. He added, to AFP, “With the area being more accessible, there's more activity and thereby more risk of some form of accident, like a vessel sinking or even a new oil spill along the lines of Exxon Valdez.”

A list of recommendations is being drawn up at the meeting and should be agreed by Tuesday.

More coverage
Arctic countries shouldn't have sole control over North, conference to hear – Canadian Press

Image: Daily Arctic sea ice extent for September 3, 2008, was 4.85 million square kilometers (1.87 million square miles). The orange line shows the 1979 to 2000 average extent for that day. From the NSIDC.

Posted by Daniel Cressey
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European space probe Rosetta flew by the Steins asteroid on Saturday and totally failed to take high resolution pictures of it.

As the European Space Agency notes right at the bottom of its very upbeat press release:

Science team members noted that the Narrow Angle Camera (NAC) appears to have switched to safe mode a few minutes before closest approach, but switched back on after a few hours.

AP knows the truth: Rosetta is “an unlucky tourist” that has produced “a second-rate image because the hi-res camera failed”.

Still, the images that were produced are quite nice, if unsurprisingly asteroid-esque. Particularly excited is Bad Astronomy’s Phil Plait:

Continue reading "Rosetta’s stone" »

Posted by Daniel Cressey
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China is planning its first ever space walk as part of its next manned mission later this month. This will be just the third manned mission the country has flown since becoming a space race player with its first in 2003.

“All the major systems involved in the launching are now in final preparations,” says a spokesman from Jiuquan Satellite Launch Center (Xinhua). “The main tests for the spacecraft, the Long March II-F rocket, suits for the space walk and a satellite accompanying the flight have been finished.”

Exactly how much later this month the Shenzhou VII rocket will blast off is unclear. State media put it between the 25th and 30th. However other newspapers in the region say it could be as early as the 17th, the closing day of Paralympics.

Space Daily has a detailed analysis of the launch dates and what fire might be underneath all the smoke:

The abrupt announcement of a change in launch date, with the new launch slated for just weeks after the announcement, is suspicious. It smacks of sudden interference in a carefully planned schedule. ...

The muddled stories could reveal a potential conflict between China's politburo and its rocket scientists. Chinese government officials may have demanded a last-minute change in the Shenzhou 7 launch date, buoyed by the attention the Olympics generated, and knowing the propaganda value of the flight. But they may not have understood the complex logistics required for a space launch.

Posted by Daniel Cressey
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The US Environmental Protection Agency yesterday released the first modern emissions standards for small engines, proving that even lawn-mower titans like Briggs & Stratton can only avoid regulation for so long (Boston Globe).

Small fry? Not at all. These engines are so filthy that the National Association of Clean Air Agencies estimates that this regulation alone is equivalent to removing one in five cars from US roads. The Environmental Defense Fund says one lawnmower typically pollutes as much as 34 vehicles. To be sure, both lungs and the climate stand to benefit when the regulations go into effect in 2010.

The Associated Press offered a brief history of how Republican Senator Kit Bond has delayed action for the past several years (for a more complete account, check this 2006 story in the New York Times). Bond maintained that putting catalytic converters on lawnmowers could cause wildfires, even though they have been standard equipment on vehicles for the past three decades or so.

Not surprisingly, Briggs and Stratton manufactures many of its engines in Bond’s home state of Missouri. And as it happens, the company has been pushing a more consumer-oriented approach to reducing emissions, which would include not filling up the fuel tank and keeping the machine out of the sun.

Posted by Jeff Tollefson
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More on the physics of Usain Bolt.

Papers with good titles: Onward, Christian penguins (wildlife film and the image of scientific authority)

Posted by Daniel Cressey
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Via Steinn Sigurðsson’s Dynamics of Cats blog this rather excellent piece of Friday-fodder has surfaced. Philosopher of science Santiago Ginnobili and his colleague Christián Carlos Carman have constructed this awesome demonstration of the power of epicycles.

For those of you not au fait with ancient cosmology, epicycles are a way of explaining the motions of planets using only perfect circles. Assuming planets moved in perfect circles did not explain what was seen in the sky, so astronomers added secondary and tertiary circles, smaller and smaller, to try and create patterns which agreed with observation.

In theory any curve can be constructed using this method, if you’re prepared to add enough circles.

This exercise appears to be tied up with ideas of refutability and falsification in science, but to be honest my language skills aren’t up to translating philosophy of science papers in other tongues. Just enjoy the video for now.

Posted by Daniel Cressey
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Posted for Natasha Gilbert

Tests carried out on the two mummified foetuses found in the tomb of King Tutankhamun are beginning to yield results.

Research presented at the pharmacy and medicine in ancient Egypt conference at Manchester University, UK, earlier this week show the children could have been twins despite one being much larger than the other.

The results add weight to suggestions that the stillborn foetuses were the teenage Pharaoh’s children, and is due to be published in the journal Antiquity in January 2009.

Last month, Egyptian scientists announced they were to conduct DNA paternity testing on the foetuses. The results are due December. The foetuses were found by Howard Carter when he discovered the King Tut’s tomb in 1922, but very little has been found out about them since.

Continue reading "Tut’s tots could be twins" »

Posted by Daniel Cressey
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This could be the start of a palaeontological cold war. A paper published this week is claiming that the last woolly mammoths to roam the earth were not Russian but American.

“For more than a century, any discussion on the woolly mammoth has primarily focused on the well-studied Eurasian mammoths,” says Régis Debruyne of McMaster University in Canada (press release). “Little attention was dedicated to the North American samples, and it was generally assumed their contribution to the evolutionary history of the species was negligible. This study certainly proves otherwise.”

In Current Biology Debruyne and his colleagues report their DNA analysis of 160 mammoths from across ‘Holarctica’ (the Northern bits of Europe, Asia and North America). They say that during the end of the Pleistocene about 10,000 years ago New World mammoths replaced endemic Asian mammoths, meaning the Team USA’s tuskers were the last woolly mammoths standing.

“Migrations over Beringia [the land bridge that once spanned the Bering Strait] were rare; it served as a filter to keep eastern and western groups or populations of woollies apart,” says fellow paper author Hendrik Poinar (press release). “However, it now appears that mammoths established themselves in North America much earlier than presumed, then migrated back to Siberia, and eventually replaced all pre-existing haplotypes of mammoths.”

And as Poinar tells the NY Times: “I’m not sure the Russians would be happy that their iconic woolly mammoth has North American origins.”

Continue reading "America’s mammoth invasion of Russia" »

Posted by Daniel Cressey
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The space shuttle Atlantis has returned to the launching pad.

If all goes to plan it will blast off on October 8 on a mission to upgrade / repair the veteran Hubble Space Telescope, putting in new instruments, repairing existing ones and swapping new batteries for old. This will be the last ever mission to the Hubble and NASA says (slightly ambiguously) it will put in place technology that “improves
the discovery power of Hubble by 10 to 70 times”.

Those interested in this mission should also check out what is possibly the cheesiest crew photo of all time (below the fold).

Images: NASA

Continue reading "Pic of the day: welcome back to Atlantis" »

Posted by Daniel Cressey
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The black hole at the centre of our Milky Way is tricky to study for a couple of reasons. First and foremost, it's shrouded in a cloud of debris. Second, it's relatively small compared to other stuff in the galaxy.

A new study in this week's issue of Nature takes on these problems head on. Radio astronomers have seen a tiny cloud of gas swirling near the black hole. The researchers found the cloud using Very Long Baseline Interferomety (VLBI), a technique that can network radio telescopes around the world (though in this case, only US telescopes were used). The VLBI has unprecedented resolution, and the radio wavelengths it operates at allows it to see through stuff that appears opaque to the naked line.

The discovery getting a lot of media attention all over the place. We also chat with the authors on this week's podcast.

Image: University of Arizona, T. W. Folkers

Posted by Geoff Brumfiel
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