The Great Beyond

Posted on behalf of Roberta Kwok

News outlets are swarming around a new study showing how locusts form giant hordes that can wreak havoc on crops.

The key is serotonin, a brain chemical that influences moods in humans. Now, researchers have shown that it also changes "what are essentially large grasshoppers living in the desert into swarming, destructive pests", says co-author Stephen Rogers at the University of Cambridge, UK (Reuters).

Previous studies have shown that locusts will start swarming at the sight and smell of other locusts or the tickling their hind legs receive from bumping against their compatriots. As reported in Science, the team found that the locusts' serotonin levels went up when the insects crowded together. Locusts injected with serotonin-blocking drugs stayed to themselves, while solitary locusts treated with extra serotonin underwent a "Dr. Jekyll to Mr. Hyde transformation" and formed swarms (AP).

The serotonin boost during swarming would be "pharmacologically similar to being on antidepressants, and on Ecstasy", says co-author Stephen Simpson of the University of Sydney in Australia (Science News).

Locusts have plagued humans through the ages and are still afflicting China, Australia, and Africa. A swarm 3.7 miles long feasted on crops in Australia last year (Independent), and Africa spent $400 million in 2004 to wipe out the pests (Reuters).

The study could help scientists devise new eradication strategies by, for instance, blocking the insects' serotonin receptors. But the treatment would need to be applied while the locusts are still solitary, which might be more difficult than the current method of blasting huge swarms with pesticides (National Geographic News).

Images: left: gregarious phase locust / right: solitarious phase locust both copyright Tom Fayle.

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

One of the researchers behind last year’s pioneering stem cell windpipe transplant has revealed an early interest in medicine.

Anthony Hollander, of the University of Bristol, has revealed that as a child in 1973 he wrote to British children’s TV programme – and national institution – Blue Peter to request help, with better spelling than mine at age nine:

This may seem very strange, but I think I no how to make people or animals alive. Why Im teling you is because I cant get the things I need.

A list of what I need.
1. Diagram of how evreything works (inside youre body)
2. Model of a heart split in half, (both halvs)
3. The sort of sering [syringe] they yous for cleaning ears (Tsering must be very very clean)
4. Tools for cutting people open
5. Tools for stiches
6. Fiberglass box, 8 foot tall, 3 foot width.
7. Picture of a man showing all the arteries.

Continue reading "‘This may seem very strange, but I think I no [sic] how to make people or animals alive.’" »

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

Posted for Adam Rutherford.

Late last year, Nature Video filmed an exclusive interview with Sir David Attenborough about his views on Darwin, evolution, and how the Bible has put the natural world in peril. It’s now live on Nature’s YouTube site.

He talks about his new television programme "Charles Darwin and the Tree of Life", which will be broadcast in the UK on BBC One on February 1st 2009 at 9pm, and singles out the book of Genesis as the root cause of man's exploitation and devastation of the planet. He also explains that understanding evolution is vitally important because it inextricably places man as part of the natural world, rather than our having dominion over it.

This is an exclusive to Nature Video, and was produced and edited by Charlotte Stoddart. Enjoy!

Posted by Daniel Cressey
Categories: Earth, environment & ecology | Permalink | Comments (8) | TrackBacks (0)

I think I’m beginning to get RSI from typing the phrase “more woe in the pharmaceutical industry”.

AstraZeneca has now announced it is cutting more jobs. Most reports put the number of job losses at 6,000. However AstraZeneca’s statement says that that “business reshaping activities” would deliver “a reduction of approximately 15,000 positions by 2013”, this includes 7,600 redundancies announced in 2007 meaning around 7,400 new cuts.

Continue reading "Pharma Phynancial Phaliure" »

Posted by Daniel Cressey
Categories: Chemistry, Financial Crisis, Policy | Permalink | Comments (1) | TrackBacks (0)

UK universities will only win funding for research graded 'internationally recognised' or better in last year’s Research Assessment Exercise (RAE) – the nation’s principle audit of research quality, funding chiefs have announced.

At a meeting on Wednesday, the Higher Education Funding Council for England (HEFCE), which allocates the public coffers for research to English universities, broadly outlined the how it will convert the RAE results into cash for institutions.

But universities will not find out the size of their slice of the £1.5 billion (US$2.2 billion) per year up for grabs until 5 March.

Continue reading "Excellent research guaranteed cash " »

Posted by Natasha Gilbert
Categories: Policy | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

Posted on behalf of Roberta Kwok

University endowments are again in the news this week, thanks to a new survey that estimates just how hard the recession has hit. The report, issued by the National Association of College and University Business Officers, surveyed 435 institutions and found that endowments fell by an average of 22.5% from July to November 2008.

The New York Times calls it the "Worst Drop Since '70s", according to John S. Griswold Jr., executive director of the Commonfund Institute. "These are unprecedented numbers," Griswold told the Times, adding later: "It's a rolling contagion that hit us."

U.S. News & World Report takes a somewhat perkier tone, saying that endowments have fallen by "only" about 25% in the last year and a half, compared to the US stock market plunge of more than 40%. But they also cite predictions from the credit rating agency Moody's saying that 2009 "will be a rough year for colleges". Donations, financial aid, and grants will probably drop, Moody's says.

Continue reading "Gloomy days for university endowments" »

Posted by Daniel Cressey
Categories: Policy | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

Fake finger reveals the secrets of touch
Fingerprints help amplify vibrations detected by nerves deep under the skin.

Feather colour indicates survival strategy in birds
Colourful plumage linked to immune response in tawny owls.

Short RNAs protect chemical memory of genes
Epigenetic changes to plant DNA preserved through successive generations.

Posted by Daniel Cressey
Categories: On Nature News | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

“Emergency is too strong a word for Pfizer's $68 billion agreement to buy Wyeth, but not by much.”
The Wall Street Journal isn’t impressed by the latest pharma industry mega-merger.

“All of this is consistent with climate change, and all of this is consistent with what scientists told us would happen.”
Australia’s Climate Change Minister Penny Wong lays the blame for repeated heatwaves at the door of climate change (Reuters).

“The National Park Service is using members of the public to solve with rifles that which should be the bailiwick of wolves.”
Rob Edward, of the WildEarth Guardians group, complains about plans to use ‘volunteer sharpshooters’ to cull elk in the Rocky Mountain National Park (Colorado Independent).

Posted by Daniel Cressey
Categories: Quotes of the day | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

Today’s image comes from 13 million light-years away, via the European Organisation for Astronomical Research in the Southern Hemisphere. Combining new data from the Atacama Pathfinder Experiment (APEX) with visible and X-ray observations produces this picture.

As the Bad Astronomy blog explains:

The composite image is false color. The visible light (shown in more or less true color) is from stars and gas in the galaxy (and foreground stars in our own galaxy). The blue is from Chandra, showing high energy X-rays. See how the jets are blue near the center? When they erupt from near the black hole they have tremendous energy and glow in X-rays. Measurements of how the gas is behaving indicate that the gas is moving outwards from the core at half the speed of light.

The APEX results are presented in this paper.

Credit: ESO/WFI (Optical); MPIfR/ESO/APEX/A.Weiss et al. (Submillimetre); NASA/CXC/CfA/R.Kraft et al. (X-ray).

Posted by Daniel Cressey
Categories: Space and astronomy | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

Perfluorinated chemicals (PFCs) are back in the news again: a study published in Human Reproduction [pdf] has linked two of them to human fertility problems.

Researchers from UCLA measured levels of perfluorooctane sulfonate (PFOS) and perfluorooctanoate (PFOA) in blood samples taken from 1,240 pregnant Danish women from 1996-2002. Those with higher levels of the PFCs in their blood had taken longer to become pregnant than those with the lowest levels.

The link is ‘tenuous but interesting,’ according to Tony Rutherford, chairman of the British Fertility Society. As The Times reminds us, correlation does not prove causation.

"There are probably things in the environment that are affecting us in ways we don't know about, but you have to get to the basic biology of what's the mechanism of action - that's the missing link," Jamie Grifo, director of reproductive endocrinology at New York University Medical Center, tells the Washington Post. "The problem with the study is, it creates more anxiety and fear, but it doesn't answer [that] question."

Continue reading "Perfluorinated chemicals linked to pregnancy delays" »

Posted by Richard Van Noorden
Categories: Health and medicine | Permalink | Comments (2) | TrackBacks (0)

NASA’s Mars rover Spirit is playing up on the Red Planet.

On Sunday Spirit received driving commands but failed to move, according to a statement from the rover-wranglers. In addition the rover did not record what it actually got up to on Sunday in its “non-volatile memory” which is supposed to work even when power is off.

“We don't have a good explanation yet for the way Spirit has been acting for the past few days,” says Sharon Laubach, who heads the team that writes and checks commands for the rovers. “Our next steps will be diagnostic activities.”

As Spirit has spent 1,800 days on Mars – on what was allegedly a 90 day mission – some news sources are accusing it of “growing senile” and suggesting the problem is due to its “aging”.

However, as NASA points out, what actually happened was Spirit “did not report some of its weekend activities” and is “having some behavior issues”.

Maybe the rover is just entering that difficult teenage phase. Maybe it’s growing tired of being told what to do all the time. “Sweep up this dirt, go over there, find me a glass of water.” Can you blame it if it wants a lie in on a Sunday? Give the poor thing some freedom.

Image: latest photo from Spirit, if you look carefully you can see the rover has written ‘no one understands me’ in the dust / NASA.

Posted by Daniel Cressey
Categories: Space and astronomy | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

Posted for Emma Marris

You might recall a neat site we profiled last July that ranked journals not by citations but by value for money—the eigenfactor.

Well the team behind the eigenfactor have not rested on their laurels. Instead, they have teamed up with data visualization whiz Moritz Stefaner of Well-formed data to make super-sexy looking visualizations of how and how much journals and fields cite one another, which journals are the best value, and how a given journal's importance has risen and fallen over time.

See them in all their glory at well-formed.eigenfactor.org and read Stefaner's notes on how he approached the project at his blog.

Carl Bergstrom, the lead player in the eigenfactor team, says the intended audience is curious scientists as well as data-visualization enthusiasts. "What we are experimenting with here is how good algorithms and good data can combine with intelligently designed and aesthetically beautiful ways of displaying that data."

Bergstrom left all the aesthetic decisions, such as which colours to use, strictly to Stefaner. "Moritz is the designer," he says. "I shouldn't be allowed to do these things. My wife could tell you that."

Meanwhile, in other impact-factor news, Public Library of Science ONE has recently announced (registration required) that it will add a grab-bag of "alternative impact data" from Scopus, user ratings, press coverage and the like to each article. The Scientist quotes Peter Binfield, the journal's managing editor, as saying "Our idea is to throw up a bunch of metrics and see what people use."

Update: Carl Bergstrom has asked us to make the following clear: "We also rank by citations. We just have additional features that let you take price into account. But the basic Eigenfactor scores as visualized at the new site are purely citation-based, and independent of price." Apologies for any confusion. Ed.

Image: citation patterns for Nature (click for larger version).

Posted by Daniel Cressey
Categories: Neat technologies | Permalink | Comments (2) | TrackBacks (0)

Posted for Erika Check

Is gene therapy inching its way towards a comeback? Today, doctors report that they have used the technique to cure 8 children with one form of the rare illness called severe combined immunodeficiency, or SCID. And the achievement is so far free from the complications that accompany gene therapy to treat a form of SCID caused by a different genetic glitch.

The result is welcome positive news for gene therapy, which has been struggling to rehabilitate its image after some stunningly bad news rocked the field 6 years ago. At that time, doctors treating SCID patients were cautiously optimistic that they were writing gene therapy’s first success story by infused corrective genes into patients with so-called “X-linked SCID.” But the success stories were marred in 2002 when one of the X-linked SCID patients developed cancer. The trials were later allowed to restart, but five of 20 patients treated with gene therapy have since developed cancer, and one has died.

Today, doctors led by Maria-Grazia Roncarolo of the San Raffaele Telethon Institute for Gene Therapy in Milan publish the results of gene therapy trials in children with a different form of SCID that is caused by a deficiency of an enzyme called adenosine deaminase. Children with this version of SCID can be treated with bone marrow transplants and enzyme replacement. But in 8 of 10 children who lacked a matching donor, doctors report, treatment with a corrected adenosine deaminase gene allowed them to survive without enzyme injections.

“The prospects for continuing advancement of gene therapy to wider applications remain strong,” write two scientists who were not involved in the study in a commentary accompanying the report.

Coverage
Gene therapy cures form of 'bubble boy disease' – AP

Posted by Daniel Cressey
Categories: Health and medicine | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

Los Alamos National Laboratory (LANL) in New Mexico is warning thousands of employees and visitors of a possible exposure to hazardous beryllium dust.

Letters were sent on Wednesday to nearly 2,000 people notifying them that, between 2001 and the end of 2008, they may have been exposed to a fine beryllium powder found in a room used for storing old and surplus materials. The powder can cause the uncurable Chronic Beryllium Disease, a progressive, debilitating and occasionally deadly lung disease.

"Chronic Beryllium Disease is very rare, and a very small percentage of the population is susceptible," said LANL spokesman Kevin Roark. "The vast majority of the people that were in there, were there for very short periods of time. We're not really expecting anyone to have an exposure."

Only about 2 percent of the general population has a genetic susceptibility to the disease, and, of those, only a small fraction end up being sickened, depending on the duration and severity of exposure to the dust, says Roark. More information about beryllium exposures can be found here.

The notification letters were sent to 240 people who regularly worked in the room, as well as 1,650 visitors to the room -- which includes about 1,000 current and former LANL employees as well as 650 non-lab visitors.

The last time the room had been screened for beryllium was in 2001, so the lab went back to logbooks to find everyone who had entered it. Beryllium, a strong and light metal, is used in things such as golf clubs, bicycles -- and nuclear weapons. It is only dangerous when inhaled as a dust.

The threshold the lab has set for beryllium contamination is 0.2 micrograms per 100 square centimetres. Checks in November and December found levels as high as several hundred micrograms per 100 square centimeters, Roark said.

He encouraged those notified to contact the lab, and to take a free genetic test to see if they are susceptible to the disease. The storage facility is being decontaminated and is set to re-open in February.

Posted by Eric Hand
Categories: Policy | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

You lucky people, there are two Nature podcasts for you this week.

Nature Podcast - This week on the Nature Podcast, how iron in the oceans could clean up carbon, the genome of the hardy plant sorghum is revealed, chemists make a nausea-inducing molecule and we talk to news editor Mark Peplow about stem cell trials, abandoned plutonium and mimicking the sun’s fusion.

NeuroPod, the neuroscience podcast from Nature – This month, we celebrate fifty years of pheromones, discover how brain cells know who to network with, why imaging might be giving us a misleading picture of brain activity, and how sleeping lightly at night could be making you forgetful the next day.

Posted by Daniel Cressey
Categories: On Nature News | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

Employees at the National Science Foundation aren't just looking at spreadsheets. In at least six cases, employees have viewed pornography on work computers, and in one case, an employee participated in extensive online pornographic chats, according to a report from Politico, based on a semi-annual report from the NSF inspector general, dating to September 2008, which can be found here.
The report documents multiple instances of pornographic images and videos being saved on network drives. One employee reported hearing sexually explicit sounds coming from another employee's computer speakers. The employee who participated in the explicit online chats acknowledged charging $40,000 to his own credit card, over two years, to pay for his habits. Inspectors estimated that over that time, he spent 20% of his work hours involved with pornography -- worth more than $58,000 in his taxpayer-supported salary. Inspectors called for installing Internet filtering and changes to "IT training".
On Tuesday, Senator Chuck Grassley, ranking Republican on the Finance Committee from Iowa, fired off a letter to the NSF, demanding explanations for what he termed a "systemic issue."

Posted by Eric Hand
Categories: Policy | Permalink | Comments (3) | TrackBacks (0)

The medical condition ‘cello-scrotum’ has been unveiled as a hoax by its perpetrators.

Back in 1974 Elaine Murphy and John M Murphy read a letter to medical journal the BMJ detailing the music-related chafing condition ‘guitar nipple’. Deciding that this was probably a spoof they submitted a letter noting a similar phenomenon in cellists.

“Anyone who has ever watched a cello being played would realise the physical impossibility of our claim,” they write in a new letter to the BMJ. “Somewhat to our astonishment, the letter was published.”

Not only was the 1974 letter published, it was later cited and – despite doubters – seemed about to become medical cannon canon before the Murphy’s new intervention.

Noel Bradshaw, a cellist with the London Symphony Orchestra, told the Times, “You would have to be doing something fairly extreme to get that by playing the cello. Otherwise, given the angle of the cello, you would have to have pretty enormous bollocks.”

Can you spot which of the following musical medical conditions is fictional?

Fiddler’s Fingers – skin inflammation from allergy to ‘exotic woods’ used in fiddle construction. True?
Violin Face – elongated faces from playing the violin. True?
Horn heart – arrhythmia caused by playing the French horn. True?
Punk piercing – unintentional stabbing associated with punk-music fashion. True?
Baton bulge – swelling in conductors’ thumbs from vigorous waving of their batons. True?

Answer below the fold.

Best headline - Medical hoax: 'Cello scrotum' was just a test tickle, AFP.

Elaine Murphy is now a Baroness and is on the oversight board of the National Health Service. John Murphy is chairman of St Peter’s Brewery.

Continue reading "‘Scrotum-gate’ hits the headlines" »

Posted by Daniel Cressey
Categories: Health and medicine | Permalink | Comments (1) | TrackBacks (0)

The British government’s latest drive to improve its citizens’ perception of science is a campaign entitled ‘Science [So What? So Everything]’.

The effort, led by the Department of innovation, universities and skills (Dius), is the end-product of a 2008 Science and Society consultation. “There is still the perception among many of our people that science is too clever for them or elitist in some way,” science minister Paul Drayson said [press release] at the Downing Street launch. He was joined by some pretty high-profile and all-round good egg science communicators – Terry Pratchett, David Attenborough and Bill Bryson, amongst others.

Guardian columnist George Monbiot told the BBC that he hoped the campaign wouldn’t be a propaganda vehicle for promoting vested interests. So far, however, it has merely consisted of a roundtable celebrity discussion and the launch of a cuddly website. Its four headline answers to Science: So What?

So he [a baby] can be big and strong
So we can be champions
So we can play
So we can keep in touch.

So that’s all clear now.

Posted by Richard Van Noorden
Categories: Policy | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

Astronauts who spend months on the international Space Station need to take care when coming back to earth that they don’t do so with too much of a jolt. Joyce Keyak, orthopedic surgery and biomedical engineering professor from the University of California Irvine says that astronauts who are up there for months at a time are losing “alarming amounts of hipbone strength” (press release).

Alarming indeed: “on average, astronauts’ hipbone strength decreased 14 percent. Three astronauts experienced losses of 20 percent to 30 percent, rates comparable to those seen in older women with osteoporosis,” we are told.

It has long been known that the microgravity conditions in space vehicles cause bones to weaken. But density, rather than strength, has been the measure used so far, we are told. Bone strength, as measured by Keyak’s computer programme hooked up to a CT scanner, deteriorates more than bone density. This loss of strength will make those astronauts more susceptible to bone fractures in later life, especially in their hips, which are most vulnerable.

Back in 1985, a Nature News and Views article, The skeleton in space, by A. W. Goode and P.C. Rambaut, stated “With astronauts now making multiple short trips and with the prospect of their undertaking recurrent 3-month tours of duty on the Space Station, an understanding on the influence of gravity on the skeleton becomes urgent.”

So here we are, 24 years later, being alarmed. There’s progress.

Image: Punchstock

Posted by Katharine Sanderson
Categories: Space and astronomy | Permalink | Comments (1) | TrackBacks (0)

“Just as people respond better to the personal touch, cows also feel happier and more relaxed if they are given a bit more one-to-one attention.”
Catherine Douglas, of Newcastle University, comments on her research showing that cows given names can produce an extra pint and a half of milk a day. Of course this probably just indicates that farmers who name their cows are generally nicer to them (Daily Mail).

“Even though we could not find a definitive explanation for this higher incidence, the existence of other ‘twin towns’ around the world – most of them in remote isolated areas with high levels of inbreeding just as Linha São Pedro – shows that external influence is not needed for this to happen.”
Ursula Matte, of the medical genetics unit at Porto Alegre Hospital in Brazil, rejects suggestions that Josef Mengele created a ‘tribe of twins’ in the city of Cândido Godói (New Scientist).

“I hereby declare a state of national emergency with particular emphasis on the existing and potentially affected counties.”
Liberia's president Ellen Johnson-Sirleaf takes action against a crop-devastating caterpillar problem (BBC).

“I think that whalers will be satisfied by this quota.”
Iceland Fisheries Minister Einar Gudfinnsson comments on a six-fold increase in whaling quotas (AFP).

Posted by Daniel Cressey
Categories: Quotes of the day | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

The Hubble Space Telescope is now working again after a fashion, following its little bit of downtime last year.

What should it look at next? You can decide.

“In 1609, Galileo turned his telescope on the night sky for the first time. Now, 400 years later, your vote will help make the momentous decision of where to point modern astronomy's most famous telescope,” proclaims the website for Hubble's Next Discovery -- You Decide, part of International Year of Astronomy.

Your six choices, in order of their current ranking, are:

Interacting Galaxies: Arp 274
Star-Forming Region: NGC 6634
Spiral Galaxy: NGC 5172
Edge-on Galaxy: NGC 4289
Planetary Nebula: NGC 6072
Planetary Nebula: NGC 40

[Hat tip: Bad Astronomy.]

Image: NASA

Posted by Daniel Cressey
Categories: Space and astronomy | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

Science minister wants focus on fewer disciplines
Plan would concentrate UK funds on research of benefit to the economy.

Stem cells ready for prime time
US regulatory agency gives the go-ahead for first clinical trials of a human embryonic stem-cell treatment.

Pfizer to buy Wyeth in $68-billion deal
Drug giant chases stake in biologics.

Goodbye Galapagos goats
Conservationists complete the largest-ever eradication of an island-invasive mammal.

Posted by Daniel Cressey
Categories: On Nature News | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

Triceratops went head to head with their kin in prehistoric fights, according to new research.

Andrew Farke, of the Raymond M. Alf Museum of Palaeontology in California, says exactly how the dinosaurs put their three horns to use has been a matter of some debate. But by comparing damage on triceratops skulls to a related species, centrosaurus, he may have provided an answer.

Writing in PLOS One, Farke and colleagues report that triceratops have significantly more damage to their squamosal bone, part of the frill, than centrosaurus.

“Paleontologists have debated the function of the bizarre skulls of horned dinosaurs for years now. Some speculated that the horns were for showing off to other dinosaurs, and others thought that the horns had to have been used in combat against other horned dinosaurs,” says Farke (press release).

“Our findings provide some of the best evidence to date that Triceratops might have locked horns with each other, wrestling like modern antelope and deer.”

Continue reading "Triceratops tête à tête" »

Posted by Daniel Cressey
Categories: Biology & Biotechnology | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

If you really want to go down the "technological fix" route with respect to climate change, which proposed schemes for cooling the planet offer the most bang? A new study by Tim Lenton and Naomi Vaughan at the University of East Anglia seeks to answer that question by looking at the various options on offer in terms of pure energy -- how many watts per square metre of warming can they counteract?

Caveat: this is a study of bang pure and simple, not bang-per-buck and not oh-dear-that-bang-seems-to-have-blown-my-hand-off. Arguments against the various proposals will be the subject of another forthcoming paper. That said, the main take home message from this study is that schemes which evenly weaken the sunlight over the whole planet, either with particles in the stratosphere or spacecraft in orbit, are the winners. Brightening clouds has some serious potential, too, as do truly massive forestry schemes; but ocean-fertilisation techniques, of which a variety have been discussed, are largely ineffectual (which is to say they deal with only about 10% of the forcing due to greenhouse gases already in the atmosphere, to say nothing of those as yet to be added). Burying biochar, as recently recommended by Lenton's mentor Jim Lovelock, isn't that much better (though it has other benefits too).

More detail in a longer post over at Climate Feedback. Or if you want to go elsewhere the story is covered by the Eastern Daily Press (local paper for the University of East Anglia) and the Natural Environment Research Council's web site. The wires have it too (AFP|Press Association|Reuters)

Posted by Oliver Morton
Categories: | Permalink | Comments (3) | TrackBacks (0)

The solar industry continues to provide us with a confusing round of alternating good news/bad news stories.

Over the past few weeks, a number of solar energy companies announced they were laying off staff, and things didn’t look so good for the industry that had shown phenomenal growth over the past decade. (See ‘not so sunny after all').

One of those companies was SunEdison, based in Beltsville, MD. Earlier this month SunEdison laid off an undisclosed number of staff in what they called a “minimal adjustment of workforce”. News now reaches us that SunEdison has acquired Business Institute Solar Strategy (BISS) in Germany. (press release).

This “provides SunEdison with 38 MW of solar photovoltaic (PV) projects under development in Italy and Spain and direct access to 300 MW of project opportunities in Europe.” The news has had some pick up in the cleantech media (PV-tech.org). It will be interesting to watch if this move is part of a trend for companies in the sector to merge.

These two seemingly contradictory moves by SunEdison are probably completely unrelated. Still, other bad news/good news stories in this industry also continue. Suntech Power Holdings, a Chinese solar company, recently cut 10% of its workforce and lowered its Q4 estimates for 2008. But now the company has changed its mind, and says that things weren’t actually as bad as they thought (Forbes). And Suntech, along with Firs Solar, another favoured thin-film solar cell company, were recently chosen to provide panels for Masdar City, the zero-emissions project in Abu Dhabi.

The overall outlook from some financial observers, however, is still one of tough times for the industry.

Image: solar eclipse / NASA/Goddard Space Flight Center

Posted by Katharine Sanderson
Categories: Earth, environment & ecology | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

Chemicals company Rohm and Haas is trying to force Dow Chemical to finish its billion dollar acquisition of the firm.

Andrew Liveris, Dow’s chief executive, announced at the end of last week that the takeover would not be completed by the end of today (Tuesday 27th January). In a statement Rohm and Haas says it will “pursue all available alternatives” to make sure the $15.3 billion deal goes through.

It has already asked a Delaware court to force Dow to finish the buy up, which Dow says is proving difficult due to the current financial situation (court document). In its statement last week Dow said “recent events have made closing untenable at this time”.

More below the fold…

Continue reading "Rohm to Dow: Du Haas mich" »

Posted by Daniel Cressey
Categories: Chemistry, Financial Crisis | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

The colony of emperor penguins that starred in March of the Penguins could become extinct by next century due to shrinking sea ice. The species as a whole has a better chance of survival, though that’s not the message of many media headlines.

Emperor penguins rely on sea ice both as a platform to breed on, and because krill – the penguins’ main food source – thrive by grazing algae that grow on the underside of the ice. When the ice shrank suddenly in the 1970s, for instance, half of the emperor penguins in the Adélie Land were wiped out.

The chances of sudden sea ice fluctuations happening again are higher as the climate warms, according to various scenarios from the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change. Using these models to simulate the Adélie Land colony’s future, Stephanie Jenouvrier, of the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution, and colleagues report in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences that the poor penguins have at least a one-in-three chance of being 95% wiped out by 2100.

"Unlike some other Antarctic bird species that have altered their life cycles, penguins don’t catch on so quickly," Jenouvrier adds – so the chances of the penguins coping with melting ice by migrating or shifting breeding patterns, for instance, are slim.

Other emperor penguins may be more fortunate. Gerald Kooyman of the Scripps Institution of Oceanography in San Diego tells Science that many of Antarctica’s 400,000 or so emperor penguins live further south, where it’s colder. ‘Are emperor penguins as a species in trouble? I don’t think so,’ he says.

“[Emperor penguins] are to Antarctica what the polar bear is to the Arctic,” Rockefeller University’s Joel Cohen tells the BBC. “This study takes our knowledge, puts it together, gives us some insights, arouses concern and suggests that we ought to be understanding this situation a lot better."

Image courtesy of Samuel Blanc.

Posted by Richard Van Noorden
Categories: Earth, environment & ecology | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

“This is a long-awaited day for the world of ocean research.”
Robert Gagosian, president of the Consortium for Ocean Leadership, comments on the sea-trials of re-fitted research vessel JOIDES Resolution (NSF press release; hat tip: Deep Sea News).

“It’s not the only explanation. But there is a discernible and substantial role of genes in your social network position.”
Study author Nicholas Christakis of Harvard on his research, which seems to show that popularity might depend on genes (Scientific American).

“There’s been an unusually high number of births and we’re extremely pleased about it. It’s a postwar baby boom.”
Virunga National Park Director Emmanuel de Merode on a boom in gorilla numbers in the strife-ridden Democratic Republic of Congo (Bloomberg).

Posted by Daniel Cressey
Categories: Quotes of the day | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

Much like the sins in Pandora’s Box, once carbon dioxide is out, it’s not going away anytime soon. And it has real and quantifiable impacts.

In this week’s PNAS, Susan Solomon, of the US National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, and her colleagues report that “the climate change that is taking place because of increases in carbon dioxide concentration is largely irreversible for 1,000 years after emissions stop”. [Link should go live soon – ed.]

Using two different climate models the team show that peak carbon levels that could be hit this century will lead to “to substantial and irreversible” decreases in rainfall in some areas and “unavoidable inundation of many small islands and low-lying coastal areas”.

Solomon looked at carbon dioxide levels peaking at 450 to 600 parts per million by volume. As the NY Times notes many think 450 is “virtually inevitable” and 600 “difficult to avoid”.

“It has long been known that some of the carbon dioxide emitted by human activities stays in the atmosphere for thousands of years,” says Solomon (press release). “But the new study advances the understanding of how this affects the climate system.”

Continue reading "No way back from climate change" »

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

Here’s a handy tip for religious fundamentalists who question evolution: you’re not going to win any friends by telling an 82-year old man beloved by pretty much the whole of the UK that he’s going to “burn in hell”.

Wildlife documentary maker and general good egg David Attenborough has admitted he receives hate mail from Christians for not giving due credit to God in his programmes.

Continue reading "Attenborough gets hate mail" »

Posted by Daniel Cressey
Categories: Earth, environment & ecology | Permalink | Comments (2) | TrackBacks (0)

Posted on behalf of Roberta Kwok

The Texas State Board of Education appears to be of two minds over whether the merits of evolution should be debated in schools. On the one hand, board members got rid of a 20-year-old line in the science curriculum last week requiring that teachers cover the "strengths and weaknesses" of scientific theories. On the other hand, that decision was immediately followed by a successful proposal to teach arguments "for and against" the idea that all organisms evolved from a common ancestor.

"How that differs from the old language of 'strengths and weaknesses' is not readily apparent," notes a New York Times editorial, which says the board "fumbled" the decision.

We've heard these arguments before. But Texas, the latest battleground state in the evolution curriculum controversy, is a bigger fish than most because it's so, well, big. The state has 4.7 million public school students (Houston Chronicle), making it one of the top textbook buyers in the country (New York Times). A Texas board decision could affect what publishers include in science textbooks nationwide.

The amendment to include arguments against common ancestry in the curriculum "could provide a small foothold for teaching creationist ideas and dumbing down biology instruction in Texas," says Kathy Miller, president of the Texas Freedom Network, a nonprofit that campaigned against the "strengths and weaknesses" requirement (Dallas Morning News). The other side begs to differ: "This isn't about religion," says board member Barbara Cargill, who supported the proposal to cover arguments against common descent (Houston Chronicle). "It's about science. We want to stick to the science."

A final vote on the curriculum is scheduled for March.

Image: Nature

Posted by Daniel Cressey
Categories: Biology & Biotechnology, Policy | Permalink | Comments (1) | TrackBacks (0)

First IVF pregnancy after rapid egg screening
Colourful procedure finds missing or extra DNA.

Farmer defies GM 'ban'
Environmentalists see red over maize harvest in formerly GM-free Wales.

Cutting calories may improve memory
Elderly people benefit from caloric restriction.

Humans and sponges may share a slimy ancestor
Placulan origin re-roots the tree of life.

Posted by Daniel Cressey
Categories: On Nature News | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

Green energy in Britain took some faltering steps today. Some of them went in a positive direction, and some of them went in a negative direction. Deciding which was which is up to you.

The Severn Barrage tidal power project took a step forward, with five possible plans being unveiled today. The Guardian thinks about 5% of Britain’s electricity could be generated by tapping the tides of the Severn, at a cost of around £15 billion.

“This would make an important contribution to our renewable targets,” energy secretary Edward ‘Ed’ Miliband told the Sunday Times. “We can’t rule out anything when it comes to climate change.”

However some people are already complaining. Friends of the Earth Cymru want large offshore tidal lagoons considered as well as the five plans shown today and Welsh opposition politicians want things up and running before the current planned date of 2030 (News Wales).

Meanwhile, on the other side of the UK, what is potentially the world’s largest off-shore wind-farm is “on a knife-edge”.

The Financial Times reports:

Eon UK, the British arm of the German energy group, said the viability of its London Array project, a planned 1,000MW wind farm in the Thames estuary, had been called into question by the falling prices of oil, gas and carbon dioxide emissions permits.
…
Paul Golby, chief executive of Eon UK, told the Financial Times that the company was still committed to the Array, but warned: “The economics are looking pretty difficult.” His concerns are shared by other energy companies. Centrica, the owner of British Gas, estimates that each megawatt of wind power capacity costs about £3m to build: more than the equivalent cost for a nuclear power station.

Image: wind turbine stock photo / Getty

Posted by Daniel Cressey
Categories: Policy | Permalink | Comments (1) | TrackBacks (0)

“Epidemiological tests show that the patient previously had exposure to live poultry markets.”
The Chinese Health Ministry comments on the sixth human case of bird flu detected in China this year (Reuters).

“They do come on slowly and if there are steps or objects in the way, people can fall over, have accidents and that's the biggest danger.”
David Adams, spokesman for The Royal National College for the Blind, isn’t happy about European plans to do away with traditional light bulbs (BBC).

“Call it a gut feeling.”
The LA Times puns its way through the news that DNA from human gut parasites can be used to track human migrations.

Posted by Daniel Cressey
Categories: Quotes of the day | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

The ‘white nose syndrome’ that has been killing off bats in America is spreading. Previously reported in New York, bats have now been found with the mysterious disease in Pennsylvania.

“To date, no dead bats have been found in Pennsylvania,” said Carl Roe, the Pennsylvania Game Commission's executive director, last week (press release). “That’s a plus, but it comes with no promise of what will or won’t follow. In New York and New England, the disorder seems to arouse bats from hibernation prematurely. Once they depart from caves and mines, they quickly sap their energy reserves and die on the landscape.”

Things aren’t any better back where the problem was first noticed. The Philadelphia Inquirer says:

A day after Pennsylvania officials confirmed the presence of a fungus linked to the deaths of tens of thousands of bats in New England, New Jersey officials yesterday revealed that the situation was much worse on their side of the river. Hundreds of bats are dying at two Morris County caves that in winter are home to the state's two largest hibernating bat populations. The populations had looked fine in November.

“Bats have survived for more than 50 million years because they are tough mammals,” Lisa Williams, a Game Commission wildlife diversity biologist, told the Boston Globe. “But they have become increasingly vulnerable. White-Nose now presents more uncertainty for bats. Quite frankly, we’re not sure yet that we can help them survive this threat.”

Previously
Fungus linked to bat deaths identified - October 31, 2008
‘White Nose Syndrome’ threatens America’s bats - January 31, 2008

Photo: Al Hicks / USGS

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

Posted for Richard Van Noorden

In his latest reversal of Bush policy, Barack Obama looks set to allow California to enforce its own limits on greenhouse gas emissions from cars.

Along with thirteen other states, California wants to cut greenhouse gas emissions from car exhausts by 30 percent from 2009 to 2016 - something that car makers aren't too happy about. But in December 2007, the state was denied its necessary waiver from national standards by the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA). Obama is telling the EPA today to reconsider that decision – and the agency’s regulators are expected to grant a waiver after formal review, the New York Times reports.

Obama is also telling the Transportation Department to speed regulations for federal standards, passed in 2007, that aim to raise average fuel efficiency to 35 miles per gallon by 2020. California’s standards would be stricter than that: the Los Angeles Times reports that “some estimates” say the necessary caps on carbon emissions would effectively require vehicles to reach as much as 42 mpg by 2020.

‘We think we should have our decision in hand by late May,’ Mary Nichols, the head of California’s Air Resources Board, tells Reuters.

Obama is also highlighting renewable energy investments in his $825 economic stimulus plan.

“With the fuel economy measures and clean energy investments in the recovery package, President Obama has done more in one week to reduce oil dependence and global warming than George Bush did in eight years,” Daniel Weiss, director of climate strategy at the US liberal thinktank Center for American Progress, tells the New York Times.

Image: Getty

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

Posted on behalf of Roberta Kwok

To celebrate the 400th anniversary of Galileo Galilei's first use of a telescope, the great astronomer will be… exhumed?

Yes, curious scientists have applied for permission to take a DNA sample from Galileo's body, which currently lies in the basilica of Santa Croce in Florence. He's not the only one up for un-entombment: 16th-century Danish astronomer Tycho Brahe could also be exhumed for a belated autopsy to determine whether he was murdered by a shifty cousin acting on the King of Denmark's orders.

Why the sudden interest in deceased stargazers? In Galileo's case, a team of scientists wants to figure out how the astronomer's eye problems might have distorted his observations. "If we knew exactly what was wrong with his eyes we could use computer models to recreate what he saw in his telescope," says Paolo Galluzzi, director of the Museum of History and Science in Florence (Reuters). Galileo's eyesight, which went downhill starting in his 40s and left him blind by the time he died, could explain why the astronomer mistakenly thought Saturn had bulges rather than a ring, Galluzzi says.

Brahe's case is a bit more scandalous. The astronomer may have been offed by his cousin at the command of Christian IV, the King of Denmark, because of an affair between Brahe and the king's mother, says scholar Peter Andersen at the University of Strasbourg (The Times). Andersen says he found "details of the attack and, indirectly, the murderer's confession" in the diary of Brahe's cousin last year (Telegraph). Analysis of a sample of Brahe's hair, preserved by a Czech museum, suggests the likely murder weapon was mercury. But the rest of Brahe is in a Prague cathedral vault, so a team of archaeologists has requested permission to open it and settle the question of his death.

News outlets appear to be competing to see who can come up with the oddest biographical detail about Brahe. The astronomer "is said to have worn a prosthetic nose of gold and silver," says the Times, "after losing his own at the age of 20 in a rapier duel resulting from a row over a mathematical formula." Not to be outdone, the Telegraph notes that Brahe kept a "supposedly clairvoyant dwarf named Jepp" at his castle and owned a pet moose, which died falling down the stairs after getting drunk on beer.

Image: Galileo, from Astronomy Picture of the Day

Posted by Alex Witze
Categories: Space and astronomy | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

Posted on behalf of Asher Mullard

A two-tonne satellite specifically designed to study climate change was successfully launched today from Japan.

Orbiting at a level of 666km, the greenhouse gases observing satellite (GOSAT) will monitor the levels of carbon dioxide and methane in the atmosphere in a 5-year study.

The satellite was launched today from Tanegashima Space Center in southwestern Japan at 12:54 pm, Bloomberg reports.

Japan spent 18.3 billion yen ($205 million) developing Gosat, which has also been dubbed “Ibuki,” the Japanese word for “breath.” The solar-powered satellite has a wing-span of 13.7 meters and weighs 1,750 kilograms (3,858 pounds).

An American climate-change satellite, dubbed the Orbiting Carbon Observatory (OCO), is scheduled to launch in February.

OCO will be able to pinpoint key locations where carbon dioxide is being emitted and absorbed.

Top image: The spacecraft carrying GOSAT takes flight. JAXA.

Posted by Katharine Sanderson
Categories: Earth, environment & ecology, Space and astronomy | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

Just days after inauguration, it's looking increasingly like President Barack Obama's pick for NASA administrator may fail to launch. Retired Air Force General Jonathan Scott Gration, a former fighter pilot and Obama's buddy, was rumoured to be the new president's first choice to run the space agency.

But Gration's lack of space experience caused Florida Democratic Senator Bill Nelson to express some scepticism. Now it appears that another powerful senator with strong NASA interests—Barbara Mikulski (Democrat, Maryland)—has expressed doubts, along with other unnamed sources, according to the popular blog NASA Watch.

The senators matter because they can approve or reject any of Obama's political appointment. Fortunately they gave a big thumb's up to Nobel-laureate-turned-energy-secretary Steven Chu.

credit: USAF

Posted by Geoff Brumfiel
Categories: Policy, Space and astronomy | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

“We don't comment on marketplace rumor."
Pharma company Pfizer is purportedly trying to buy rival Wyeth for $60 billion dollars, but a Wyeth spokesman refuses to comment.

“I think we are seeing a funding future that is a reflection of the world's current economy.”
Jules Duga has co-authored a report suggesting that the US will spend less on R&D in 2009, the first decrease in a decade.

Anti-evolution biologist has his court case against his old bosses dismissed, again.
An appeals court has upheld a ruling that Nathaniel Abraham's lawsuit, claiming he was asked to resign from Woods Hole Oceanographic Institute for telling his supervisor that he didn’t believe in evolution, was not filed in time.

"Our goal is to develop, form and finance one or two companies a year.”
Johnson & Johnson is the latest member to join a global consortium of pharma companies that will fund research together and co-own the results, says Daphne Zohar, founder of PureTech. The total in the pot is now $52 million.

Posted by Asher Mullard
Categories: Quotes of the day | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

Old plutonium found in dump
Weapons-grade material discovered at Hanford nuclear site.

Europe failing to meet research targets
Europe could struggle to keep up with emerging economies.

North American tree deaths accelerate
Mortality increase correlates with climate change.

Atom takes a quantum leap
Ytterbium ion is the first element to be teleported over a distance.

Posted by Asher Mullard
Categories: On Nature News | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

“We are seeing some signs that consumers and patients are becoming more frugal.”
William Weldon, Chief Executive of Johnson & Johnson, explains why his company has seen its first revenue decline in 76 years.

Vietnam is the most vulnerable nation to global warming
A sea level rise of 1 meter could potentially displace about 10.8% of the Vietnamese population, according to a World Bank report.

“We are calling for international assistance to combat these insects.”
Ravenous caterpillars are destroying crops and terrorizing villagers in Liberia, says Agriculture Minister Christopher Toe.

Posted by Asher Mullard
Categories: Quotes of the day | Permalink | Comments (1) | TrackBacks (0)

Posted on behalf of Heidi Ledford
A controversial lawsuit got the green light to move forward yesterday when the California Supreme Court rejected Wyeth’s protests against a previous ruling that Wyeth could be held liable for side effects caused by a drug it did not make.

Plaintiff Elizabeth Conte says that she developed a neurological condition (called tardive dyskinesia) after taking a drug called metoclopramide. Metoclopramide is sold under the brand name Reglan by Wyeth, but Conte took a generic version of the drug manufactured and sold by other companies.

Nevertheless, Conte alleges that her doctor relied on drug labelling and a write-up in the Physician’s Desk Reference that were supplied by Wyeth. That labelling, she says, underplayed the risks of the drug. She tried to sue the generics manufacturers as well, but was unable to satisfactorily show that her doctor paid any attention to their labelling. The doctor did recall reading Wyeth’s labels, and so a California Appellate Court decided last November that her case against Wyeth could proceed.

Continue reading "Bewildering pharmaceutical case free to proceed" »

Posted by Asher Mullard
Categories: Health and medicine, Policy | Permalink | Comments (2) | TrackBacks (0)

Posted on behalf of Emma Marris

The inhabitants of Cusco, Peru, are notoriously protective of their region's indigenous flora and fauna. In July 2007, they banned GM potatoes, fearing that they might contaminate the many native varieties that grow there. The Andes, you see, were among the birthplaces of the potato.

Now comes a report that the Cuscovians—if that is the proper term—have outlawed "biopiracy" in their region. Biopiracy generally means something like "the plundering of native species for commercial gain, including patenting resources or the genes they contain," as the SciDev.Net article puts it. Sounds reasonable.

It is a concept not without its critics, however. A few years ago, scientists working in the Brazilian Amazon complained that biopiracy fears made it impossible for them to ship biological samples out of the country for analysis. And this year a proposed entomological survey of the Western Ghats Mountains in India failed for the same reason.

For a great long form article about biopiracy in Peru, read Viagra Natural, from the now-defunct Legal Affairs.

Top image: City of Tempe.

Posted by Asher Mullard
Categories: Policy | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

A Chinese court has sentenced two men to death for their roles in producing and selling melamine-tainted milk, which killed at least 6 children and made around 300,000 ill.

Babies began suffering from kidney problems caused by the melamine in late 2007 and doctors were blaming the powdered milk by July 2008.

Sanlu, the now-bankrupt state-owned company at the heart of the scandal, allegedly failed to recall products despite knowing that they were contaminated because Party officials wanted them to keep quiet about the scandal.

The two men who were sentenced were Zhang Yujun and Geng Jinping, the BBC reports. Zhang Yujun was convicted for producing 600 tonnes of fake fatal protein powder, from which he earned £715,000. Geng Jinping was sentenced for producing and selling the toxic products to milk companies.

Continue reading "Two sentenced to death in China over tainted milk" »

Posted by Asher Mullard
Categories: Health and medicine | Permalink | Comments (4) | TrackBacks (0)

Posted on behalf of Roberta Kwok

Environmental projects in cash-strapped California are at a standstill after state financial officials froze hundreds of millions of dollars in funding last month, newspapers are reporting. The freeze, which forbids releasing money to any state project operating on borrowed funds, is intended to relieve California's massive budget crisis.



According to the San Jose Mercury News, more than 4,000 environmental and water projects are feeling the pinch, including an extensive wetlands restoration effort (above, in red and green) in the San Francisco Bay. The project came to an almost complete stop in December, and the executive project manager has been working without pay for two months.

In the Los Angeles area, $420 million for projects such as water cleanup and fish population restoration have been halted (Los Angeles Times). Most of the funds are from voter-approved bond measures. "The will of the people has been completely ignored," Mark Gold, president of the nonprofit Heal the Bay, told the Times.

Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger has also proposed bypassing standard environmental studies for 10 highway construction projects, which his aides say would create 22,000 jobs over the next three years (Los Angeles Times). Such a move would mean waiving the California Environmental Quality Act, a law that has been previously suspended for the 1984 Los Angeles Olympics and the 1994 Northridge earthquake (San Jose Mercury News).

"The truth is that California is in a state of emergency," Schwarzenegger said in his State of the State address last week (AP). He said the budget deficit, which officials estimate could reach $40 billion in the next year-and-a-half, is "a rock upon our chest and we cannot breathe until we get it off."

Image: the Cargill salt ponds, from the NASA Earth Observatory site

Posted by Alex Witze
Categories: Earth, environment & ecology | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

"This image reminds me of the vast and incredible power of the neocortex, and of the amazing capability of the human body."
An anonymous neuroscientist shows off his Ramon y Cajal drawing of a human motor cortex pyramidal cell - in tattoo form.

"Africa is the most politically correct region in which to develop [the United Nations' Clean Development Mechanism] projects and we want to be there"
CarbonStream Africa, a South African/Norwegian initiative to boost carbon emissions trading in sub-Saharan Africa and raise the continent's lagging profile in the $120 billion global carbon market, launches

Posted by Katharine Sanderson
Categories: Quotes of the day | Permalink | Comments (1) | TrackBacks (0)

Reversing helps bacterial swarms to spread
Social microbes march forwards by taking a few steps back.

A fly by any other name
Drosophila experts argue over reclassification proposal

$630-million for push to eradicate polio
Gates Foundation leads group of donors promising cash for vaccination, monitoring and research

Cheating bacteria could treat infections
Freeloading microbes could help their hosts by undermining cooperation between pathogens

Brain imaging measures more than we think
Anticipatory brain mechanism may be complicating MRI studies.

Posted by Katharine Sanderson
Categories: On Nature News | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

Eight words in President Barack Obama’s inauguration speech delighted scientists yesterday — “We will restore science to its rightful place.”

Along with an international crowd of around 300 evolutionary biologists, I watched the inauguration at an impromptu closing session for a meeting on the Evolution of Society, held by the Royal Society in London. As Obama promised a rosy future for science (at 7:14 in the speech), elated applause and cheers flooded the full room.

The science blogosphere is similarly abuzz. BBC Newsnight’s Susan Watts, for instance, provides a meaty overview of a light at the end of the tunnel after 8 long years for scientists. Pseudonymous Kyle Finchsigmate, on The Chem Blog, has a shorter and cruder, but equally poignant, post.

Continue reading "Scientists rejoice!" »

Posted by Asher Mullard
Categories: Policy | Permalink | Comments (1) | TrackBacks (0)

Huntingdon Life Sciences (HLS) is returning its HQ to the UK after being forced to move to Delaware in the US eight years ago. “We are an English company – we shouldn’t be based in America,” Andrew Baker, chairman and CEO is reported saying in the Telegraph.

HLS has survived despite being the subject of ongoing attacks from animal rights activists. The company does contract research for testing pharmaceuticals and agricultural chemicals, among other things, on animals. HLS was forced to relocate its headquarters to the US in 2001 after the Royal Bank of Scotland (now in a whole load of unrelated trouble) cut ties with the company because their staff were threatened. A list of shareholders in the company was obtained by animal rights activists, and many of those shareholders got rid of the shares. Unable to raise funds or hold a bank account in the UK apart from with the Bank of England, HLS moved to the US where shareholders were given more anonymity.

But recent trials of some of the activists have made the atmosphere in the UK better for HLS to return, although the economic climate is still pretty hostile.

Continue reading "Homecoming for Huntingdon Life Sciences" »

Posted by Katharine Sanderson
Categories: Biology & Biotechnology | Permalink | Comments (3) | TrackBacks (0)

The Nazca lines in Peru sit high and dry in the Nazca desert, and have been there since as early as 200 AD. These weird geoglyphs can only be seen from the air, and show images of huge animals – monkeys, spiders, llamas and other creatures.

But after recent heavy rains, the Nazca lines have been damaged. Water washed off the Pan-American highway and pushed sand and clay onto the geoglyphs.

This story has come from a scientist at Peru’s National Cultural Institute who spoke to AP and has picked up lots of coverage, although all seem to come from the same source. (MSNBC, Telegraph, Physorg.) Details of remedial action for the UNESCO world heritage site aren’t clear. The scientist, Mario Olaechea, says this is the first case of rain damage to the Nazca lines.

Image: National Cultural Institute of Peru

Posted by Katharine Sanderson
Categories: Earth, environment & ecology | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

Obama-mania is stretching as far south as Antarctica. Scientists aboard the research ship Laurence M. Gould, off the coast of the Antarctic peninsula, have named their temporary research stop ‘Ocean Station Obama’.

For three days, this Obama will play host to a range of oceanographic studies, from deploying plankton nets to sending out an underwater glider. It’s all part of a long-term ecological study, which for the past 17 years has returned annually to study climate, oceanography and marine ecosystems in the same 200-by-500-kilometre region. (See the cruise blog here.)

Doug Martinson of Lamont-Doherty Earth Observatory, chief scientist for the cruise, sent out an update announcing the new Station Obama this morning. “We are excited to celebrate the Inauguration,” Martinson says. “The project scientists have decided to dedicate the station to President Obama and his administration to recognize their vital interest in the problem of climate change.”

While the team is missing the excitement in Washington – the inaugural parade is shortly to pass just a block from Nature’s DC offices – they have plenty of interesting company of their own. Some of the research team have decamped from the Gould and are staying instead on nearby Avian Island, where they will count penguins “and other seabirds that forage in the Obama region”.

Image: Jon Higdon, from the cruise website

Posted by Alex Witze
Categories: Policy | Permalink | Comments (1) | TrackBacks (0)

Green light for UK stem-cell trial
Stroke patients to be treated with tailor-made brain cells.

Secondary forests are worth saving
Biodiversity there isn't as rich as untouched rainforest, but should still be conserved, some argue

Posted by Katharine Sanderson
Categories: On Nature News | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

"For the Persians to kill 20 men in a space less than 2m high or wide, and about 11m long, required superhuman combat powers - or something more insidious"
News reaches us that in the 3rd century AD, Persians used chemical weapons against the Romans.

Today's announcement apparently formalizes the project's status, as we're about to enter a new administration -- and that may not be coincidental.
More big money for a user facility upgrade at the US Department of Energy: A $1 billion construction project for a neutron source, the Oak Ridge National Laboratory Spallation source.

City boffins send worms into orbit
University of Nottingham, UK, scientists plan to use worms aboard the Space Station to study muscle wasting.

Posted by Katharine Sanderson
Categories: Quotes of the day | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

Posted for Heidi Ledford

Our DNA sequence may not be the only ‘genetic’ information that we inherit from our parents, according to a study published online this week by Nature Genetics. An analysis of identical and fraternal twins shows that epigenetic changes – in the form of a chemical modification to DNA called methylation – are also passed on to the next generation.

DNA methylation can affect gene expression, and changes in DNA methylation have been linked to everything from normal developmental changes to illnesses including cancer. Zachary Kaminsky at the University of Toronto and his colleagues analyzed DNA methylation in different cells types taken from 114 identical twins and 80 fraternal twins. The researchers found that identical twins were more likely to share DNA methylation patterns.

Now, it’s still possible that these DNA methylation patterns are more similar in identical twins simply because the underlying DNA sequence is more similar. (Methylation typically occurs where a ‘C’ lies next to a ‘G’ in the DNA sequence.) But the authors argue that their results, combined with previous data from animal models, suggest that DNA methylation is inherited.

Continue reading "The same, but different" »

Posted by Katharine Sanderson
Categories: Biology & Biotechnology | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

The Democratic Republic of Congo’s government has cancelled almost 60% of its timber contracts in an attempt to halt illegal, and environmentally devastating, logging, the BBC and others, report.

After a 6-month long review, backed by the World Bank, DRC ministers found that from 156 requested deals, only 65 were viable, according to Reuters.

The report also quotes DRC Environment minister, Jose Endundo talking at a press conference. “"I will proceed within the next 48 hours to notify those applicants having received an unfavorable recommendation from the interministerial commission through decrees cancelling their respective conventions," he said.
"Upon notification of the cancellation decision, the operator must immediately stop cutting timber."

Logging in the Congo is a huge problem, politically, and environmentally. Our very own ex-reporter Mike Hopkin wrote about a tribe of pygmies threatened by logging in 2007. The article is well worth a look for a wider look at the environmental consequences of illegal logging.

The Congo Basin, which holds the world’s second largest tropical rainforest, could now be allowed to recover from the devastating logging. The deals for these contracts were made at time of great unrest in the country, and accusations of rampant corruption are being levelled at both the logging companies and the interim government, which had power after the war that ended in 2003.

Posted by Katharine Sanderson
Categories: Earth, environment & ecology | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

A couple of Reuters journalists are down in the Antarctic taking a snoop around at the moment. (British Antarctic Survey release)

One of their stories tracks the demise of the Wilkins Ice Shelf. “We've come to the Wilkins Ice Shelf to see its final death throes," David Vaughan, a glaciologist with BAS told Reuters.

Continue reading "Wilkins ice sheet hanging by an icy thread" »

Posted by Katharine Sanderson
Categories: Earth, environment & ecology | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

Here in London at The Great Beyond HQ news is trickling through to our ever-open ears that something is happening in the US today. I think it’s called an inauguration.
For those gripped by Obama fever, take a look at Nature's coverage leading up to today. There’s a special, put together late last year, a commentary and a taste of Nature’s take on the handover, including three features looking back at Bush’s legacy for science. (One, two, three)

Obama’s inauguration is dominating news headlines, but science is also sneaking into the limelight. In the UK’s Observer, science editor Robin McKie bagged an interview with James Hansen, head of NASA's Goddard Institute of Space Studies, New York City, and famed for his no-nonsense approach to climate science.

Continue reading "Obama who?" »

Posted by Katharine Sanderson
Categories: Policy | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

Dinosaur fossils suggest speedy extinction
Arctic find challenges the idea that the massive reptiles declined slowly.

Tiny springboards detect viruses in fluids
Wobbily cantilevers 'feel' pathogens lock onto their targets.

Posted by Katharine Sanderson
Categories: On Nature News | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

"The virtual cows have been named Myrtle, Buttercup, Jesse, Ethel, Daisy and Boris"
New Zealand scientists make fake cows to look into methane emissions. These faux-beasts have artificial stomachs, the contents of which ferment to leave nicely filled "poo jars".

Malvinder Singh, Ranbaxy’s chief executive, said he aimed to “take products back to the US market at the earliest possible time.”
Indian generics company Ranbaxy hopes to get around the FDA's ban on imports from the company by buying production facilities in the US, or in another country where those facilities have already approved by the FDA.

Posted by Katharine Sanderson
Categories: Quotes of the day | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

A new world record has been set for solar cell efficiency, or so we are told by researchers at the Fraunhofer Institute for Solar Energy Systems, Germany. They have revealed a triple-junction cell that has a conversion efficiency of 41.1% (press release).

Solar cell efficiencies are notoriously hard to pin down. Claims are often made, but not considered ‘official’ until they are independently verified by a recognised body. A quick search online, for example led me to a claim from a consortium that includes the University of Delaware of a cell with 42.8 % efficiency.

So what’s the real answer? And do these incremental advances mean anything?

Continue reading "Baffling solar cell efficiencies are broken" »

Posted by Katharine Sanderson
Categories: Neat technologies | Permalink | Comments (1) | TrackBacks (0)

Iraq has signed up to the Chemical Weapons Convention, an international deal that “aims to eliminate an entire category of weapons of mass destruction by prohibiting the development, production, acquisition, stockpiling, retention, transfer or use of chemical weapons by States Parties”. (Press Release).

Iraq, as we’re reminded by Global Security Newswire, is “a nation that once used blister and nerve agents in war and against its own people”. So the news that Iraq is committed to make sure that chemical weapons are eradicated from the country has been welcomed by the UN Secretary General , and the US government.

The news has also been widely reported internationally (Xinhua, Press Trust of India, Reuters). Iraq's official entry to the convention will be on February 12th.

Posted by Katharine Sanderson
Categories: Policy | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

The universities of Oxford and Cambridge could lose around £8.5m a year each in research funding, according to figures reported by the media today.

UK universities are waiting to see how much funding from the government’s £1.5bn pot for research the institutions will win or lose after last year’s Research Assessment Exercise (RAE) – Britain’s major audit of university research quality. The official allocations based on the result of the RAE, are due in March.

But a report in the Times quotes figures draw up by Research Fortnight, a newspape specialising in academic research policy, speculating that the UK’s leading universities could be hit hard. It estimates that less research intensive universities, such as Wolverhampton, could see their funding go up from £138,000 a year to £2.4m.

Continue reading "Top UK universities could lose millions in research funding " »

Posted by Natasha Gilbert
Categories: Policy | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

Mike Griffin, NASA’s chief administrator, has said his farewells to NASA staff in an all-hands meeting.

You can read a transcript of his entire speech over at Spaceref.com. Mike seems like a funny guy, from all the ‘[laughter]’ inserts there are in the transcript. He also has a lot of people to thank for being ‘inside his head’. It must be quite full in there.

It is no secret that Griffin wanted to stay on at NASA under the Obama administration (he offered his resignation to Obama, as is usual for political appointees); even his wife campaigned for him to stay when, late on Christmas Eve, she sent an email to a bunch friends and family to ask for their help to keep her husband in his job.

But Obama accepted the resignation, and Mike has to go. Not before having his say and a pop at some of his critics: “I am, despite what you read on the blogs, not actually an idiot,” he said. [Laughter.]

He acknowledged the difficulties some of his staff have had with him and his decisions, and admitted that he has a problem “connecting with people”.

Griffin is still strongly in favour of establishing a base on the Moon as a place to hop off to Mars from. And for that matter, he’s pretty sure that NASA scientists will find life out there (New Scientist).

Griffin came to NASA in the aftermath of the Columbia shuttle disaster and he praised all at NASA for “the way that we have managed to pick ourselves up after Columbia and find technically solid ways to return to the Shuttle to flight”. (LA Times) Part of Griffin's legacy is the end of the Shuttle programme to service the space station, which has also met with criticism. Griffin is instead doggedly determined that men should get to visit Mars.

So, farewell Mike. Whatever you end up doing next. We will leave this post with his final words as administrator:

“Thanks again, everybody. Thanks for coming today.
[Standing ovation.]“

Image: NASA/Renee Bouchard

Posted by Katharine Sanderson
Categories: Space and astronomy | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

In one of the last acts of George W. Bush's presidency, the United States has signed a "123 agreement" for nuclear co-operation with the United Arab Emirates. That will make the UAE the first Arab state to enjoy full rights to US nuclear energy technology, according to the Financial Times.

Given that the UAE is sitting atop the world's sixth largest oil reserves, it may seem surprising that they would seek to build costly nuclear reactors. But as we've written, it is more cost-effective for many Gulf States to export their oil and use the profits for alternative sources of energy.

123, for those who don't know, refers to the section of the United States Atomic Energy Act that authorizes nuclear cooperation with signers of the nuclear non-proliferation treaty. The UAE has signed the treaty, and moreover it has relinquished rights to fuel cycle technologies such as uranium enrichment, which could also be used to produce nuclear weapons.

It's pretty clear from the remarks made by Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice at Friday's signing ceremony that the US hopes the UAE can serve as an example to other Gulf Staes.

What will the UAE use all that power for? Probably to run their uphill water slides.

Posted by Geoff Brumfiel
Categories: Policy | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

"There is not much we do in space any more that is really new, but this is really new."
The US Defense Department is using 'top secret' microsatellites to inspect a crippled US spacecraft, says John Pike, head of a military think tank.

"The change is to underline our 'excellence with impact' agenda."
Chloë Somers, from Research Councils UK, discusses new requirements whereby grant seekers have to assess the economic and social impact of their work.

"The Mesopotamians had different-coloured farm animals 5,000 years ago and, in that regard, they were no different to Paris Hilton, who has a pink Chihuahua…"
Ancient farmers may have selectively bred coloured animals to make them easy to spot or for amusement’s sake, says Greger Larson, of the University of Durham.

Posted by Asher Mullard
Categories: Quotes of the day | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

ESA seeks to join US dark energy mission
Deal would boost JDEM budget but scupper Europe's Euclid.

Hong Kong inaugurates Institute for Advanced Study
Nature talks to university president Paul Chu about his vision of a 'mecca for great scholars'.

Europe set to crack down on pesticides
Controversial rules that could ban many agents are a step closer to approval.

FDA ready to regulate transgenic animals
Agency unveils path to approval after decade-long delay.

Science wins big in US economic plan
Congressional stimulus package includes billions in extra research funding.

Posted by Asher Mullard
Categories: On Nature News | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

Everyone knows that America loves its rhetorical wars—in between actual military actions, the US has fought wars on cancer, drugs, and poverty, to name a few. But the war on science is now officially over, according to the guy who declared it.

In a piece appearing yesterday on Slate, Chris Mooney, author of the Republican War on Science and one of Wired's ten sexiest geeks in 2005, wrote that Barack Obama's election will end years of George W. Bush's distortion and outright muzzling of science. He rightly points out that Obama has already named several scientists to key positions in his administration (whereas Bush took over a year to settle on even a scientific advisor).

Meanwhile, over on Capital Hill, California Democrat Henry Waxman has announced plans for "quick and decisive" climate change legislation. The times they are a changin'.

Posted by Geoff Brumfiel
Categories: Policy | Permalink | Comments (1) | TrackBacks (0)

Scientists can’t just talk the talk, they have to walk the walk, argues marine biologist Giovanni Bearzi, from the Tethys Research Institute in Italy. In an editorial published in Conservation Biology he calls for conservation biologists to take action and, among other things, stop eating swordfish. He writes:

We think of ourselves as professionals who are aware of environmental problems and work hard to solve them, but we pay little heed to what we do, buy, and consume. Some of my reputable colleagues drive SUVs to the office every day, possibly where they write about climate change. I know excellent biologists who spend much of their professional lives condemning unsustainable fisheries or reporting high levels of toxic contaminants in marine megafauna, yet when eating at a restaurant they order swordfish or tuna from overfished and declining stocks.

Continue reading "Teaching conservation biology to conservation biologists" »

Posted by Asher Mullard
Categories: Earth, environment & ecology | Permalink | Comments (2) | TrackBacks (0)

Posted for Heidi Ledford

Watch out, woolly mammoth: the Tasmanian tiger is hot on your heels. Using DNA samples culled from museum specimens, researchers have sequenced DNA from the long-extinct Tasmanian tiger. The results were published online this week by Genome Research.

The ‘tiger’ – not really a tiger but a dog-like marsupial with charming stripes – has been extinct since 1936, but it’s not the first time that researchers have decided to muck around with its DNA. Last May, scientists in the United States and Australia plucked a DNA sequence from preserved Tasmanian tiger tissue and inserted it into transgenic mice.

Now, a different team has sequenced the full mitochondrial genome using samples from two ‘tigers’. The results hint at a high degree of inbreeding in the Tasmanian tiger population, a sad but common scenario for a species heading for extinction. The work has generated lots of media coverage (eg. The Scientist; Reuters) and the usual speculation about possible resurrection of the species. (They’ll be “freak shows”, worries The Examiner.)

Pennsylvania State University researcher Stephan Schuster has worked on both the ‘tiger’ and the woolly mammoth genome projects, and has referred to his approach of sequencing from museum specimens as ‘museomics’. There was a time, years ago, when a new ‘omics’ word would often be met with rolled eyes and a groan in the lab break room. Since then, I feel like many of us have come to accept increasingly contrived ’omics as just a fact of life in an era of high-throughput biology. But Jonathan Eisen (who himself coined the term ‘phylogenomics’) is not so complacent -- check out this posting on his latest award, “Worst New Omics Word Award”, and his list of new proposed ’omics.

Image: wikipedia

Posted by Daniel Cressey
Categories: Biology & Biotechnology | Permalink | Comments (1) | TrackBacks (0)

Fish are crucial in oceanic carbon cycle
Chemistry models need to incorporate new discovery.

Crops that cool
Could shinier farmland help combat global warming?

Scientists weave invisibility cloak
Metamaterial sheet shields objects from prying microwaves.

Nuke code cracks stellar mystery
A nuclear weapons lab program simulates the birth of massive stars.

Posted by Daniel Cressey
Categories: On Nature News | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

“Do you have a grove of bamboo that is taking over your property -- at least an acre or more?”
The Washington Post reports on the fact that the National Zoo is running out of food for its pandas.

“Photos from the accident site, which happened in the Altai region on January 9, give the initial impression that passengers in the crashed helicopters were hunting for Argali mountain sheep.”
The WWF wants an investigation into the deaths of a party of senior Russian politicians in a helicopter crash. It says they may have been illegally hunting endangered sheep (Reuters).

RIP Arne Naess
The Norwegian philosopher “whose ideas about promoting an intimate and all-embracing relationship between the earth and the human species inspired environmentalists and Green political activists around the world” died on Monday, reports the NY Times.

“Here's a way to increase the available funding to NIH without increasing the NIH budget: halt funding to NCCAM, the National Center for Complementary and Alternative Medicine. “
An online attempt to get Barack Obama to stop funding research on alternative medicine has begun (hat tip: Pharyngula).

Posted by Daniel Cressey
Categories: Quotes of the day | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

"Life on Mars" exclaimed the British tabloid the Sun in a headline this morning, reporting on the detection of seasonal methane gas in the atmosphere of Mars. The journal Science, in which atmospheric scientist Michael Mumma describes his discovery this week, then decried the Sun for nearly breaking an embargo on the news. "In the interests of supporting excellence in science communications," an email from the journal's publishing society states, "we urge all registered journalists in good standing to adhere to the Science embargo-release time, and refrain from validating this unfortunate tabloid teaser."

Let's slow down a bit, both of you. First off, methane doesn't necessarily mean life. Yes, on Earth, atmospheric methane is mostly the work of cows, and microbes in the soil can also burp up the stuff. But on Mars, biology is not necessarily any more likely as a source of methane than geology, since water can create methane by breaking down certain volcanic minerals. What's interesting about the methane discovery is that there could potentially be a lot of it. Mumma, of Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Maryland, claims to have discovered variability in the methane concentrations in both space and time. Methane would normally mix and breakdown in the atmosphere over time. But Mumma, using Earth-based telescopes, spotted seasonal plumes of methane concentrated in hotspots: it implies the work of tens of thousands of cows, or their geological equivalent.

As far as the embargo break, in this case it's a little silly to complain about it. Both Nature and Science try to enforce strict embargoes on their journal articles to create news events. But science is a slow process, with as many zigs and zags as eurekas. And Mumma has been talking about his methane work for years. In fact, I wrote about this methane discovery in October, after Mumma gave a talk at a conference at Cornell University.

For me, the more interesting question is: Will NASA switch its Mars exploration mantra from "follow the water" to "stalk the methane"? The Mars Science Laboratory, due for launch in 2011, is equipped with an instrument that can detect methane at levels of parts per trillion. But a potential landing site, in the same region as one of Mumma's hotspots, was thrown out of consideration months ago. Time to reconsider? "Now we've got these little signposts saying: 'Look, here I am. Come here!'" Mumma told me in October.
Image: USDA/Keith Weller

Posted by Eric Hand
Categories: Space and astronomy | Permalink | Comments (7) | TrackBacks (0)

Posted on behalf of Roberta Kwok

James Hansen isn’t shy about speaking up, and now the American Meteorological Society is rewarding him for it.

Hansen, a NASA climate scientist known best for his outspoken criticism of the Bush administration, received the 2009 Carl-Gustaf Rossby Research Medal yesterday, the highest award given by the AMS. The society commended him for his contributions to climate modeling but also his “clear communication” to the public.

“The debate about global change is often emotional and controversial, and Jim has had the courage to stand up and say what others did not want to hear,” said Franco Einaudi, director of the Earth Sciences Division at NASA Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Maryland (NASA press release). “He has acquired a credibility that very few scientists have.”

Continue reading "Outspoken climate scientist gets props" »

Posted by Daniel Cressey
Categories: Earth, environment & ecology, Space and astronomy | Permalink | Comments (2) | TrackBacks (0)

In the latest installment of an ongoing saga, Gray wolves have been taken off the endangered species list in most of the United States, putting responsibility for their survival on state - rather than federal - authorities.

The move means wolves in Wisconsin, Minnesota, Michigan, Idaho and Montana are no longer protected under the Endangered Species Act. This may not last long though, as environmental groups are inevitably promising to sue if soon-to-be-President Barack Obama doesn’t reverse the decision. Obama spokesman Nick Shapiro says there will be a review of “all 11th-hour regulations” (LA Times, Chicago Tribune).

Deputy Secretary of the Interior Lynn Scarlett responded: “We would hope that because that evidence and data is there to support the decision that the next administration will not turnaround and go another direction. But it is their right and ability to do.” (Idaho Statesman.)

One place they won’t be going wolf hunting is Wyoming, where the Fish and Wildlife Service has determined that “if it moves kill it” does not constitute a management plan, although it phrases it slightly differently:

Wyoming’s state law and wolf management plan are not sufficient to conserve Wyoming’s portion of a recovered northern Rocky Mountain wolf population.

More responses below the fold.

Continue reading "Wolves off endangered species list (again)" »

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

The US Food and Drug Administration is taking a kicking this week after a report found its oversight of potential conflicts of interest for clinical trial researchers was really not up to scratch.

An assessment of the financial interests of researchers disclosed as part of 118 drug marketing applications approved in 2007 certainly does not reflect well on the FDA (report pdf).

The Office of Inspector General of the Department of Health and Human Services, which undertook the assessment, found that the FDA could not even determine whether clinical trial sponsors had submitted financial information for all clinical investigators. Some 42% of approved marketing applications were missing information.

Continue reading "FDA = Failed Diligence Agency" »

Posted by Daniel Cressey
Categories: Chemistry, Policy | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

The UK's most successful independent satellite manufacturer has been swallowed whole by a European defence conglomerate.

Only a handful of small companies have been able to make it in the space business, and one of them was Surrey Satellite Technology Limited, based in Guilford, UK. Since its founding in 1985, SurreySat, as its employees call it, has been building so-called microsats weighing between 10-100kg. Where others have foundered, it's succeeded: in 2006 (the last year for which stats are available) the company brought in around £20 million in revenue and generated a roughly £500,000 profit.

But SurreySat's success was a problem for the University of Surrey, which held an 85% stake in the company. The university had supported the start-up in its early years, but wanted to divest as it grew in size.

Last year, aerospace behemoth EADS announced that it would buy the university's stake in the company for a mere £40-50 million. That's peanuts to the Franco-German giant, whose revenue topped €39.1 billion (with a b) in 2007. The deal has just passed muster with the European Commission, who are satisfied that competition will be unaffected by the merger.

It remains to be seen exactly what this means for Europe's plans for its own GPS, Galileo. SurreySat and EADS had been rival bidders for the project.

credit: ESA

Posted by Geoff Brumfiel
Categories: Space and astronomy | Permalink | Comments (1) | TrackBacks (0)

Lisa Jackson, President-Elect Barack Obama’s pick to lead the US Environmental Protection Agency, delivered a simple message to senators on Wednesday: “If I am confirmed, I will administer with science as my guide.”

And barring a late-breaking controversy, Jackson is virtually certain to be confirmed as early as next week. Her confirmation hearing before the Environment and Public Works Committee went off without a hitch, and despite some isolated opposition, nobody on either side of the aisle questions her qualifications. Trained as a chemical engineer, Jackson served for 15 years at the EPA and recently headed the New Jersey Department of Environmental Protection.

But Jackson’s appointment is perhaps one of the few major points of agreement on this panel. Indeed, the fact that a statement endorsing science would spur much reaction at all is a testament to some very deep and longstanding divisions that will surely make Jackson’s job as administrator of the EPA difficult in the years ahead.

Continue reading "Jackson: Guided by science" »

Posted by Jeff Tollefson
Categories: Policy | Permalink | Comments (1) | TrackBacks (0)

Posted for Emma Marris

Tom Vilsack, former governor of Iowa, had an appointment on Capitol Hill this morning: a two and a half hour confirmation hearing. He's Obama's pick for secretary of agriculture.

Vilsack is a fairly uncontroversial nominee for most Americans, but he has riled up many opponents of genetically modified foods for being a friend to biotech. As governor, he hoped to position Iowa as a leader in agricultural biotechnology research, wooing New Zealand biotechs to set up shop in the state and funnelling state money towards biotechnology efforts at Iowa universities.

In fact, the Biotechnology Industry Organization named him governor of the year in 2001, in part for putting together a now-defunct group called the Governors' Biotechnology Partnership "to increase public understanding and support for the benefits of agricultural biotechnology". Among others, the Organic Consumers Association opposes him. (There is also a support site.)

Proceedings were, to put it mildly, non-confrontational. Tom Harkin, head of the Senate Agriculture Committee where the hearing was held, is also from Iowa and is a pal of Vilsack's. "I just couldn't be more proud," he said "to contemplate you being secretary of agriculture."

Continue reading "The Wonderful Wizard of Ag " »

Posted by Daniel Cressey
Categories: Policy | Permalink | Comments (1) | TrackBacks (0)

Nature Podcast - This week we uncover a fishy fossil head, build a synthetic cellular clock, discover that natural killer cells have a memory, and ponder how science has fared under the Bush administration and it's future in the hands of Obama.

Science tipped to score in Obama cash stimulus - Premium content
Researchers jockey for a piece of the US economic package.

Genetic 'clock' made in lab
Synthetic metronome keeps time inside mammalian cells.

Ocean fertilization experiment suspended
German science ministry demands environmental assessment before nutrient dumping can begin.

Study fails to catch plants making methane
Greenhouse gas emitted from plants might just be passing through.

Posted by Daniel Cressey
Categories: On Nature News | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

Reports in the British media that grant applications to create hybrid human – animal embryos for research were turned down on moral grounds, have been rejected by the funding bodies and scientists involved.

The story broke in the Independent newspaper on Monday, which claimed Stephen Minger, a leading stem cell scientist at King’s College London, said that the grant applications may have been blocked by scientists on the funding committees who are morally opposed to the creation of cloned hybrid embryos.

But when Nature spoke to Minger he said the Independent misinterpreted his comments, adding he did not have any evidence that moral objections led to his proposal being rejected.

“I was not saying that religious or moral opposition to the proposal led to its rejection,” he said.

Continue reading "Moral objections to hybrid embryo research claims rejected " »

Posted by Natasha Gilbert
Categories: Biology & Biotechnology, Policy | Permalink | Comments (2) | TrackBacks (0)

The ever-vocal Project on Emerging Nanotechnologies, based in Washington, DC, is the latest organisation to produce a report bemoaning the lack of regulation of engineered nanoparticles in commercial products (press release).

This time, the US Food and Drug Administration are under fire for not being up to the task. The report “A hard Pill to Swallow: Barriers to Effective FDA Regulation of Nanotechnology-Based Dietary Supplements” pulls no punches, kicking off in the summary with the following: “This paper addresses the issue of whether FDA is equipped to meet the emerging regulatory challenge of dietary supplements that use engineered nanomaterials. The short answer is no.”

The three main problems the report authors, William Schultz from legal practice Zuckerman Spaeder and his colleague Lisa Barclay, identify include:

1. FDA does not have the capacity to identify nano-based dietary supplements that are being developed and marketed, unless manufacturers submit to the pre-market notification process for new dietary ingredients.
2. To the extent that FDA is aware of nano-based dietary supplements, it has little regulatory authority over them.
3. Even if it were granted increased regulatory authority, FDA lacks the scientific expertise and resources to effectively regulate nanomaterials in supplements.

Continue reading "Nanotech regulatory woes continue" »

Posted by Katharine Sanderson
Categories: Neat technologies | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

To coincide with the International Year of Astronomy, the British Royal Astronomical Society is highlighting an unsung pioneer. Thomas Harriot, who lived from 1560 to 1621, was the first person to draw a celestial object through a telescope, says University of Oxford historian Allan Chapman.

This image is his map of the Moon. Although this was probably not finished till 1613, one of Harriot’s sketches was made in 1609 several months before Italian Johnny-come-lately Galileo Galilei, says Chapman. Harriot would later say Harriot's friend William Lower would later write to him, saying of the Moon, “she appears like a tarte that my cooke made me the laste weeke”.

Chapman has noted previously that the exact dates of Galilei’s observations are not entirely clear. And Harvard historian of science Owen Gingerich, says Harriot’s “telescopic drawings of the moon were strongly influenced by what he saw in Galileo’s Sidereus nuncius”.

Whoever was first, there is here, as Gingerich notes, a motto for all scientists: publish or perish.

More
'English Galileo' maps on display - BBC
Did an Englishman beat Galileo to the first moon observation? – Guardian
We like the moon - video

Chapman's new article on Harriot will be published in the February edition of 'Astronomy and Geophysics'.
Image: Lord Egremont

Posted by Daniel Cressey
Categories: Space and astronomy | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

Drug giant Pfizer is to slash up to 8% of its research staff, the company has announced.

This follows on from last year’s announcement that the pharma company would be narrowing its focus onto certain specific disease areas such as diabetes, and cutting and running from others, such as heart disease.

“R&D is the lifeblood of pharma but Pfizer has not been that productive. So it may be a case that they are trying to eliminate non-productive assets,” Les Funtleyder, an analyst for Miller Tabak, told CNN. “I would imagine the scientists would say the problem is with management.”

By the end of 2009, between 5% and 8% of Pfizer’s 10,000 researchers will have to have started looking for new jobs (Financial Times). They’re going to have to look hard, as other pharma companies are also laying people off.

Continue reading "Pfizer to fire hundreds of scientists" »

Posted by Daniel Cressey
Categories: Chemistry, Financial Crisis | Permalink | Comments (1) | TrackBacks (0)

Carbon emissions need to be cut dramatically by 2050 and “go negative” after that if we are to avoid catastrophic climate changes, says the Worldwatch Institute in its latest report.

The Washington D.C. based Worldwatch Institute, an independent research organization, has called for industrialized countries to slash their emissions by 90% by 2050, Reuters reports. These cuts, which could keep the global mean temperature from rising more than 2 degrees Celsius, are deeper than those called for by many climate experts and policymakers. President-elect Barack Obama, for instance, favours an 80% drop in U.S. carbon emissions by 2050.

The global mean temperature has already risen 0.8 degrees Celsius since 1850 and so the drastic cuts are needed now, co-author of the report William Hare told Reuters.

Hare said that global greenhouse gas emissions would need to hit their peak by 2020 and drop 85 percent below 1990 levels by 2050, and keep dropping after that. He said carbon dioxide emissions would have to "go negative," with more being absorbed than emitted, in the second half of this century.

Continue reading "Radical emissions cuts needed, says Worldwatch Institute" »

Posted by Asher Mullard
Categories: Earth, environment & ecology | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

“It would be inappropriate for me to comment further right now.”
Angela Sekson, an Eli Lilly spokeswoman, remains tight lipped about speculation the drug company will soon pay $1.4 billion to settle charges it illegally marketed on of its drugs (NY Times).

“We try to think of organisms as engaging in a work of self-preservation. To be living is to be engaged in that work. To die is to cease to be engaged.”
Bioethicist Gilbert Meilaender tells Wired why the definition of death is being changed.

“In my view, this is the earliest archaeological evidence for the use of chemical warfare, which was later used by the ancient Greeks.”
Simon James, of the University of Leicester, says the Persians used chemicals in a vicious fight with the Romans in 256 (Science News).

“Even if caffeine were responsible for hallucinations in some way, the part it plays would be small compared to other factors in life.”
Simon Jones, of Durham University, plays down his research suggesting a link between nasty instant coffee and hallucinations (BBC).

Posted by Daniel Cressey
Categories: Quotes of the day | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

Posted on behalf of Roberta Kwok

Nuclear energy and coal will continue to provide US electricity needs even as research into carbon capture, nuclear waste disposal and renewable energy is conducted, Steven Chu told a Senate committee at his confirmation hearing today.

Chu, who was nominated by President-elect Barack Obama as Secretary of Energy last month, faced questions from the Senate Committee on Energy and Natural Resources about nuclear power, coal plants, the electrical grid, nuclear waste clean-up and US relations with China. Biofuels and renewable energy, which Chu has championed, took a backseat to issues surrounding current mainstream energy systems.

The hearing began with effusive praise from Senators Dianne Feinstein and Barbara Boxer, who represent Chu’s home state of California. “There is no one brighter or better-equipped than this man to become Secretary of Energy,” Feinstein declared. Boxer added: “When we demand good science, up-to-date science, we can trust that he knows it.”

But the hearing quickly turned to tougher questions about Chu’s stances on nuclear energy and coal, which supply the bulk of US electricity today.

Continue reading "Steve Chu" »

Posted by Alex Witze
Categories: Policy | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

The US National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration today accused six foreign nations of illegally fishing.

In a first-of-its-kind report submitted to Congress, NOAA says France, Italy, Libya, Panama, the People’s Republic of China, and Tunisia “engaged in illegal, unreported, and unregulated” fishing in the last two years.

The next step will involve NOAA either being satisfied that these countries are “adopting effective measures to stop IUU [illegal, unreported, and unregulated] fishing” or declaring that they are still doing it. If it’s the latter Barack Obama may find himself denying these countries’ ships entry into US ports or prohibiting imports of their fish.

“Illegal fishing is a global problem that is depleting fish stocks and hurting the economies of nations and the livelihoods of people who depend on sustainable fishing,” says Jim Balsiger, NOAA’s acting assistant administrator for fisheries (press release). “Our report is part of stepped up efforts called for by Congress to work with other nations to stop illegal fishing on shared fish stocks.”

More
6 nations accused of fishing violations – AP

Image: detail from ‘Shad-fishing at night on the Susquehanna River’ / NOAA Historic Fisheries Collection

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

Mike Griffin, the administrator of NASA, is making the farewell rounds. While this blunt, irascible leader with a self-described "difficult user-interface" isn't prone to emotional outbursts, make no mistake: he will miss his job.

Speaking at a breakfast press briefing Tuesday, sponsored by the Space Foundation, he confirmed that as of noon on 20 January -- president-elect Barack Obama's inauguration -- he'll be gone. He has submitted his letter of resignation, as is customary for political appointees, and has not been asked to stay by the incoming administration. He's planning a final address to his employees at NASA headquarters on Friday, and then will take off for a few days of skiing. After that, he says, "I'll go home and start looking for another job."

In terms of a successor, the Obama transition team has so far been quiet, and so until someone is named, associate administrator Chris Scolese will be at the helm. Of course, speculation is rife, and plenty of names have been thrown around, everyone from former NASA science chief Alan Stern, to former NASA earth science division leader Charles Kennel, to astronaut and retired US Marine General Charlie Bolden.

Griffin would not comment on the qualities that he thinks are important in an administrator, but did say: "I love this space agency, I love NASA, I love the program. If they pick someone who loves it as much as I do, that will be the most important thing." I'm not going to say I heard his voice tightening or cracking, but that's about as emotional as I've heard him.

Asked about the immediate challenges a successor would face, Griffin mentioned some of the usual things: dealing with a continuing budget resolution, which will soon result in contractor layoffs; retiring the Space Shuttle by the end of 2010; and looking to continue the International Space station past 2015.

But he also mentioned a fairly narrow science mission, the Alpha Magnetic Spectrometer (AMS), that I wrote about at length a few months ago. Not later than late spring, Griffin says, NASA needs guidance on AMS, an anti-matter detecting magnet that needs a ride to the ISS so it can start start tracking the cosmic rays that fall through its maw. Shuttle managers need 18 months of lead time to prepare for any specialized cargo like AMS, but right now, no flight is on the books. Obama mentioned adding an extra shuttle flight in his campaign rhetoric, and Congress, in its new NASA authorization act, mandated an extra flight for AMS. But congressional appropriators have yet to pay for one. Reading between the lines, it's possible that Griffin wants to make sure paying for an AMS flight doesn't come out of an existing NASA budget. "I've been working for three years to keep the option to fly that flight open. If they want to fly the flight, somebody has to send money, and they also have to send a specific direction to do so."
Image: NASA/Renee Bouchard

Posted by Eric Hand
Categories: Space and astronomy | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

What is the link between autism and testosterone?
Controversial theory of autism makes headlines, but leaves scientific community unconvinced.

Venus may have had continents and oceans
Granite highlands point to past water — and perhaps life.

Brain imaging studies under fire
Social neuroscientists criticized for exaggerating links between brain activity and emotions.

Posted by Daniel Cressey
Categories: On Nature News | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

“A key question for us is ‘where has all the Australian poo gone?’”
Alan Cooper, director of the Australian Centre for Ancient DNA, discusses research on faeces from giant extinct birds (University of Adelaide ).

“I almost fell off my chair. I could not believe what I was seeing.”
John Coates, of the University of Cambridge, departs from the traditional cry of ‘eureka’ upon discovering financial traders with shorter ring fingers seem to lose the most money (ScienceNow).

“They’re a complete mystery to me. I think they must divide their minds.”
Atheist-du-jour Richard Dawkins talks to the LA Times about religious scientists, and other things.

“We’re not giving up.”
Rick Doblin, president of the Multidisciplinary Association for Psychedelic Studies, wants to grow marijuana for medical research in Massachusetts, and he isn’t planning on letting the DEA stop him (Boston Globe).

Posted by Daniel Cressey
Categories: Quotes of the day | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

The impact of human hunting on wildlife populations doesn’t end with the individual animal deaths — it also forces harmful evolutionary changes on animal populations, according to new research.

Although previous research has shown that hunted species evolve in response to predation, it was unclear whether hunting affects the rate of evolution.

Thus, evolutionary biologist Chris Darimont of the University of California, and his colleagues assessed how morphological characteristics of 29 species — including fish, limpets, snails, bighorn sheep, and two plants — changed over time.

Their findings, published in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, show that human-hunted species have undergone the most rapid change, and that this has forced dramatic shifts in features such as average size and age of reproductive animals.

"The public knows we often harvest far too many fish, but the threat goes above and beyond numbers," Darimont said in a press release. "We're changing the very essence of what remains, sometimes within the span of only two decades. We are the planet's super-predator."

Continue reading "Human hunting speeds up evolution of prey" »

Posted by Asher Mullard
Categories: Biology & Biotechnology | Permalink | Comments (1) | TrackBacks (0)

Posted for Erika Check

John Reed will resume his work on the board of the California Institute of Regenerative Medicine after a state commission found that a letter he wrote in 2007 “raises ethical concerns”, but does not violate state ethics laws.

In August 2007, Reed, president of the Burnham Institute for Medical Research in La Jolla, California, asked CIRM staff to appeal its decision that a Burnham-affiliated scientist was ineligible for a grant. The Santa Monica-based group Consumer Watchdog asked the state Fair Political Practices Commission to investigate the move and Reed recused himself from the CIRM board that December.

On 7 January, Kourtney Vaccaro, chief of the commission’s enforcement division, sent a warning letter to Reed via his attorney. “In our view, by submitting a “letter of appeal” to CIRM staff, Dr Reed intended to influence a decision that had the potential to affect his economic interests,” Vaccaro wrote. However, because the decision had already been made, Vaccaro said, it could no longer be influenced, so the commission will close the complaint without further action.

CIRM modified its appeal process last year in the wake of the controversy.

“We are delighted that with the completion of the review by the Fair Political Practices Commission Dr John Reed will reengage in his role as an ICOC [board] member,” CIRM board chairman Robert Klein said in a statement. “As CIRM matures, we continue to review and enhance our policies and procedures to avoid potential problems in the future.”

Posted by Daniel Cressey
Categories: Health and medicine, Policy | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

A physicist who filed a sexual discrimination lawsuit over maternity leave has reached a settlement with her former employer.

Sherry Towers says that she was the victim of sexual discrimination while at a postdoctoral position at the State University of New York at Stony Brooke. According to her complaint, filed in the US District Court Eastern District of New York, Towers faced retribution after asking a supervisor for time off following the birth of her second child.

Towers also got some ink in our pages last year, after she published a paper on the popular preprint server ArXiv.org, which claimed that female high-energy physicists did more grunt work and got less recognition than their male counterparts.

Although the terms of the settlement are confidential, Towers says via e-mail that both SUNY and she are "mutually satisfied with the agreement." She says that she's now going to start a new career teaching science at public school. "I've been substitute teaching this year, and have found that I quite enjoy it," she says.

Posted by Geoff Brumfiel
Categories: Policy | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

Credit crunch be dammed! Mere days after announcing its endowment is expected to be down by 20 to 30% this year Stanford has unveiled plans for a $100 million new research institute.

The Precourt Institute for Energy – named for oil and gas executive and donor Jay Precourt – will bring together researchers in areas ranging from solar cells to policy. The money will be used to endow five new professorships and bring in 20 new grad students, as well as to fund research (Stanford Daily).

“Energy is certainly one of those issues, posing a threat to our economy, to national security and, through the use of fossil fuels, to our environment,” says university president John Hennessy (press release). “Addressing the challenge of energy will require research on a wide range of issues, from energy efficiency to development and deployment of renewable sources, to reducing the effect of fossil fuels.”

Continue reading "Stanford launches $100m energy institute" »

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

The controversy over whether Robert Gallo was robbed of a Nobel Prize in Medicine may end up lasting as long as the drawn-out battle over the discovery honoured by that prize.

A letter published in Science last week is the latest salvo in the flap over the Nobel, half of which was awarded last October to Françoise Barré-Sinoussi and Luc Montagnier for the discovery of HIV, the virus that causes AIDS. Both scientists were at the Pasteur Institute in Paris in the 1980s; Gallo, at the time, was at the US National Cancer Institute. The French and US scientists fought for years over who actually deserved credit for the discovery, and finally agreed to share credit in 1987. But the Nobel committee seems to have broken the truce by shunning Gallo and instead giving half the prize to German Harald zur Hausen for his work on the human papilloma virus.

The Science letter calls Gallo “an unsung hero” and argues, “Without Gallo's contributions, the relevance of this virus to AIDS might not have been recognized for years… Gallo's contributions should not go unrecognized.”

Continue reading "Nobel Prize row rumbles on" »

Posted by Daniel Cressey
Categories: Health and medicine | Permalink | Comments (1) | TrackBacks (0)

Steven Chu prepares for power
Energy agency may be in for a shake-up.

How to spot moons far, far away
The search for life on another planet is about to be extended – to moons.

Mars rover needs a date
NASA's Mars Science Laboratory needs more money to reach the launch pad, and has less time.

Posted by Daniel Cressey
Categories: On Nature News | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

Rocket company SpaceX raised its Falcon 9 launcher to vertical on Saturday in Cape Canaveral, Florida. The rocket is not going anywhere at the moment though, as this was just a trial run to make sure they could get it up with no hitches.

“We encountered no show-stoppers or significant delays,” says company CEO Elon Musk (press release). “I am highly confident that we will achieve our goal of being able to go from hangar to liftoff in under 60 minutes, which would be a big leap forward in capability compared with the days to weeks required of other launch vehicles.”

Falcon 9 follows the successful launch of Falcon 1 last year (after several attempts). For those wondering about Falcons 2 through 8, the names come from the number of engines on each type of rocket.

Image: SpaceX

Posted by Daniel Cressey
Categories: Space and astronomy | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

“Cyprus will in fact become more like Abu Dhabi or other states that we know because there is just not enough water.”
Geophysicist Manfred Lange sees trouble ahead for the Mediterranean island (Reuters).

“Our study shows that between 2000 and 2007 there has been widespread ecosystem devastation and decades of conservation effort compromised.”
Dana Bergstrom, of the Australian Antarctic Division, says the removal of cats from a sub-Antarctic island has caused a devastating increase in rabbit numbers (BBC).

“We anticipate Roche will ultimately be forced to offer in excess of $100 a share to secure Genentech board approval.”
Analysts at Morgan Stanley comment on the latest moves on what is potentially the biggest biotech deal ever (Reuters).

Posted by Daniel Cressey
Categories: Quotes of the day | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

The scientists studying them might be in decline (see ‘Shroomers in peril), but fungi in the UK look set to have a safe future thanks to a protection strategy (press release). The news came to The Great Beyond courtesy of the BBC, the foremost source for UK fungus news, but has seen little coverage elsewhere so far.

The protection comes in the guise of a forum, set up by UK environmental groups. “Put simply, without fungi, the world would not exist as we know it. 90% of plants depend on fungi, and we depend on them for so much and yet know so little about their ecology,” says Jayne Manley, from Plantlife, who is leading the campaign.

Part of the programme will see the creation of the world’s largest fungi collection, at the Royal Botanic Gardens in Kew. And apparently fungi are much maligned: “should you ever need antibiotics or an organ transplant, the chances are you will have a fungus to thank for your recovery. We would like to see better appreciation of these extraordinary and life-giving organisms and their role in the health of our ecosystems, through education and awareness raising,” the campaign release notes.

So the public image of fungi is going to get a revamp, but it’s hard to see what that might involve besides endless puns on “fun” and “guy”. Oh, how we laughed.

Image of the fly agaric fungus: Wellcome library, London

Posted by Katharine Sanderson
Categories: | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

Posted on behalf of Roberta Kwok

Scientists have found the first late-onset Alzheimer’s genetic risk factor specifically linked to women, but it doesn’t necessarily explain why more women get the disease.

The gene is PCDH11X, and it’s found on the X chromosome. That’s bad news for women, who carry two X chromosomes while men only have one. According to the study, published in Nature Genetics, the high risk only kicks in if the patient has two copies of a particular PCDH11X variant.

“What you have in a nutshell is the first study showing a gene on the X chromosome and the first sex-specific effect [for Alzheimer’s],” senior investigator Steven Younkin, a consultant-researcher at the Mayo Clinic’s Florida campus, told HealthDay. “It does not mean women are at increased risk for Alzheimer’s.”

Continue reading "Clue to Alzheimer’s on X chromosome" »

Posted by Daniel Cressey
Categories: Health and medicine | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

It turns out that grumpy people who say cellphones are destroying life as we know it may be on to something. According to the Washington Post, “Cellular telephones are perhaps the biggest threat to survey data that epidemiologists have confronted in years.”

The problem is that it is much easier to do surveys with landlines than it is with cellphones (or mobile phones, as the British are wont to call them). Given 16% of adults in the US live in houses that only have cellphones that could be a problem.

According to the Post it takes nine calls to cellphones to get one completed entry in the Federal Behavioral Risk Factor Surveillance System survey, which tracks health and behavior. As it only takes five calls to landlines it costs a lot more if you want to include cellphones in your survey, which you have to if you want accurate data. An additional complication, says the newspaper, is that “people answer the same question differently depending on how you reach them”.

Read the full article here.

Image: Getty

Posted by Daniel Cressey
Categories: Health and medicine | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

A third researcher involved with the Pentagon’s controversial use of anthropologists in Afghanistan and Iraq has died.

'Human Terrain' researcher Paula Loyd was burned in an attack last year and her colleague Don Ayala is currently charged with murder for allegedly killing her attacker.

“Paula Loyd, 36, a BAE Systems social scientist, died January 7 at the Brooke Army Medical Center in San Antonio, Texas. Loyd, of San Antonio, was severely injured November 4, 2008, in an unprovoked attack in Afghanistan,” says BAE Systems, Loyd’s employer, in a statement issued last week.

Continue reading "‘Human Terrain’ anthropologist dies" »

Posted by Daniel Cressey
Categories: Policy | Permalink | Comments (1) | TrackBacks (0)

TechNewsWorld spoke to Wissner-Gross, who says: “For some reason, in their story on the study, the Times had an ax to grind with Google. Our work has nothing to do with Google. Our focus was exclusively on the Web overall, and we found that it takes on average about 20 milligrams of CO2 per second to visit a Web site.”

Performing two Google searches from a desktop computer can generate about the same amount of carbon dioxide as boiling a kettle for a cup of tea, according to new research.

The paper cites work by Harvard physicist Alex Wissner-Gross, who claims that Google’s vast set up of servers means the average search puts out 7g of carbon dioxide vs a kettle’s 15g.

“Google operates huge data centres around the world that consume a great deal of power,” says Wissner-Gross. “A Google search has a definite environmental impact.”

The search company disputes the claim, with Urs Hölzle, senior vice president of operations, claiming in a blog post that the number is “*many* times too high”. Leaving aside that one of the most high-tech companies in the world can’t find a better way add emphasis than *…*, Hölzle says a Google search is equivalent to about 0.2 grams of carbon dioxide.

Continue reading "Search the internet = destroy the world" »

Posted by Daniel Cressey
Categories: Earth, environment & ecology | Permalink | Comments (4) | TrackBacks (0)

Ocean fertilization experiment draws fire
Indo-German research cruise sets sail despite criticism.

Grooming your way to the top
Nice chimps can be leader of the pack.

VIDEO: A waterway for one-way waves
There's no way back in a row of water-powered see-saws.

Posted by Daniel Cressey
Categories: On Nature News | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

Posted on behalf of Roberta Kwok

A European court ruled last month that it was a violation of human rights for the UK police to keep DNA records of innocent people. But that hasn’t stopped the US from heading down a similar path. As detailed today in the Los Angeles Times, a new Justice Department policy will allow the US government to collect DNA samples from detained immigrants, as well as from people arrested for – but not yet convicted of – federal crimes.

Granted, the cases are a bit different. The UK ruling stated that genetic information about suspects who were later cleared of crimes should be wiped from the government database. The new US policy allows the government to collect DNA from people who have not yet been put on trial, making the procedure as routine as fingerprinting. In the past, the US government took DNA only from convicted criminals.

Not surprisingly, representatives from the American Civil Liberties Union aren’t happy about the move, telling the Times they have “grave concerns” about privacy rights and may file a lawsuit. But Arizona senator Jon Kyl, who spoke to the New York Times about the proposed regulations in April, says the DNA samples will help “save lives, prevent crimes, and bring justice for victims and their families.”

The Associated Press reports that the new policy will add about 1.2 million DNA samples to the government database each year.

Posted by Alex Witze
Categories: Policy | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

Drug regimes that increase the production of stem cells may circumvent some present limitations to a stem cell therapy, a new study suggests.

Stem cells have been hailed of late as the cures of disease and the saviours of patients. Yet researchers still face many obstacles before these new therapeutic tools can be put to work. For instance, what is the best way to generate stem cells, and how do you get them into the patients who need them? A study in Cell Stem Cell now shows that we may be able to side-step both of these issues by spurring bone marrow to boost stem cell production.

Previous studies have shown that treatment with granulocyte colony stimulating factor followed by recently approved Genzyme Corporation drug Mozobil can increase blood stem cell production. Sara Rankin, of Imperial College London, and her colleagues now show in mice that a different regime — endothelial growth factor followed by Mozobil — induces bone marrow to pump out two other types of stem cell.

Continue reading "Drug combo boosts stem-cell production" »

Posted by Asher Mullard
Categories: Biology & Biotechnology, Health and medicine | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

Mike Griffin’s wife may want him to keep his job as head of NASA when America’s new supreme ruler takes his post, but many people think that’s not going to happen.

Inevitably someone has set up a website where you can nominate and vote for the man or woman you think should be the next administrator of the space agency. Equally inevitably, the denizens of the internet are not taking it very seriously.

Bad Astronomy blogger Phil Plait’s lobbying campaign has clearly been effective, as he leads his nearest rival, the Star Trek actor Wil Wheaton with 2,240 votes to 558. This is despite suggesting that he might “embezzle several billion dollars and disappear” if he is put in charge.

Mrs Griffin is unlikely to be happy, as her husband is currently behind Rick Astley, with just 160 votes.

Posted by Daniel Cressey
Categories: Policy, Space and astronomy | Permalink | Comments (1) | TrackBacks (0)

The administration of George W. Bush has come under considerable fire for allegedly muffling its scientists over the years (you can start here, for example, and then follow the string). Apparently the Commerce Department is trying to set things straight before the president leaves office.

The department issued a memorandum last month indicating that many - but perhaps not all - weather and climate scientists within the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration are free to talk to the media. This according to the government watchdog Public Employees for Environmental Responsibility, which obtained and posted a copy of the email.

More specifically, the memorandum applies to employees represented by the National Weather Service Employees Organization, which represents not only the Weather Service but also some NOAA attorneys and hurricane researchers. As for oceanographers and other marine researchers, they will have to abide by the current policy and request permission before talking to reporters.

Or not.

Posted by Jeff Tollefson
Categories: Policy | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

Mosquitoes looking for love adjust the sound of their whine to woo partners, researchers report.

Male and female mosquitoes both have distinctive flight tones, which they make be beating their wings at different speeds. Whereas female Aedes aegypti mosquitoes beat at 400 Hz, males beat at 600 Hz. Surprisingly, Ronald Roy of Cornell University in Ithaca and his colleagues now report in Science that love struck males and females increase their wing beat frequency to a 1,200 Hz — a shared harmonic (or multiple) — when they are brought near one another.

Because mosquitoes normally zip around, unusual measures were taken for the study, Hoy told NPR.

First, the insects were anesthetized. "You make them a little bit chilly," Hoy says, "then they don't fly or walk around." Next, he and his colleagues applied a small amount of superglue to the backs of the test mosquitoes, then affixed them to a tiny tether and suspended them in the air.

Once the mosquitoes began to beat their wings and produce their gender-specific flight tones, the scientists moved the insects close to each other.

The authors also found that mosquitoes’ Johnston’s organs — their equivalent of ears — are sensitive up to 2,000 Hz. These findings challenge previous conceptions that mosquitoes can’t hear anything above 800 Hz, and might even be deaf.

Continue reading "Amorous mosquitoes make sweet harmonious whine" »

Posted by Asher Mullard
Categories: Biology & Biotechnology | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

An expert advisory committee of the Food and Drug Administration will today consider anti-clotting treatment ATryn, which is already approved for use in Europe.

“On the basis of the development activities and data generated over the last 16 years, the Applicant maintains that ATryn has been shown to be safe and efficacious,” says an FDA advisory committee in a report released on Wednesday (pdf). “As such, ATryn should be recommended for licensure for the treatment of a rare plasma protein disorder to prevent serious and potentially life-threatening venous thromboembolic events.”

The GM goats produce human antithrombin in their milk, which can then be used to treat patients with hereditary antithrombin deficiency, a genetic condition that can lead to life-threatening blood clots.

Continue reading "Nurse! Get me 5 cc of Goat, stat!" »

Posted by Daniel Cressey
Categories: Health and medicine | Permalink | Comments (2) | TrackBacks (0)

A rather battered looking Space Shuttle Discovery heads to the Vehicle Assembly Building, where it will meet its external fuel tank and rocket boosters in preparation for a planned 12 February launch.

More on mission STS-119.

Image: NASA/Jim Grossmann

Posted by Daniel Cressey
Categories: Space and astronomy | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

The recent food crisis, which saw crop prices sky rocket in 2007/08, demonstrated the fragile nature of the world’s food system. Coping with the short-term challenges of food price volatility is daunting, but the longer-term challenge of avoiding a perpetual food crisis due to global warming could be far more serious.

Temperatures in crop growing seasons across the world will exceed the most extreme seasonal temperatures on record by the end of the century, new research suggests.

Read more on Nature's Climate Feedback blog...
Read more on Nature News...

Posted by Daniel Cressey
Categories: Earth, environment & ecology | Permalink | Comments (2) | TrackBacks (0)

A never-ending dance of RNA
The recreation of life's origins comes a self-catalysing step closer.

Temperature rises threaten global food security
Climate changes predicted to trigger food shortages across the world.

Earliest Americans took two paths
Genetic analysis suggests there were at least two migrations into the Americas.

Skin cancer on the rise
Increase in melanoma cases not due to better diagnosis.

Posted by Daniel Cressey
Categories: On Nature News | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

Barack Obama is gearing up to take over the White House, and he comes with a giant checkbook. That’s the message of today, in which Obama gave a major speech at George Mason University laying out his plans to help revive the American economy – or so he hopes.

Scientists are already thrilled that his economic recovery plan includes plenty of money for them: notably a call to double renewable energy production within three years, while bringing three-quarters of federal buildings up to higher energy-efficiency standards. Unspecified ‘investments in science, research and technology’ also play a role.

Obama claims that his plan will ‘save or create’ 3 million jobs. That remains to be seen, and as 4.6 million Americans are receiving unemployment benefits, it’s not about to help everyone in need. But that hasn’t stopped research advocates – like everyone else around Washington – from trying to get as much out of the plan as they possible can. The chairwoman of the MIT earth, atmospheric and planetary sciences department, Maria Zuber, was even on Capitol Hill this week to make the case for R&D investment.

Stay tuned to Nature over the next weeks for full coverage of science and technology in the Obama administration.

Posted by Alex Witze
Categories: Policy | Permalink | Comments (1) | TrackBacks (0)

Nature’s space-man Eric Hand is blogging from the American Astronomical Society on our In the Field blog. Here’s what he’s been up to recently…

Don't be shy, cuddle up to an M dwarf

Some 70% of the stars in the galaxy are M dwarfs, and so exoplanet surveys will be targeting these relatively cool, small stars. But the habitable zone for Earth-like planets in these systems will be at least five times closer to the M dwarf than the Earth is to the sun. ...read on...

The death rattle of the first stars?

The 10-foot-tall tub, full of 500 gallons of liquid helium, dangled underneath a high-altitude balloon over the skies of Texas for just a few hours. But the bucket came back with a big mystery. ... read on ...

Posted by Daniel Cressey
Categories: Space and astronomy | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

A new study performed atop Mount Everest shows that humans can survive with far lower blood oxygen levels than expected. These findings, hope the doctors who made them, may have important implications for treating critical care patients.

Setting out on an extreme scientific mission, Mike Grocott, a UCL Senior Lecturer in Critical Care Medicine, and his colleagues scaled the Himalayan summit to examine how altitude affects the body. Metres from the apex, at temperatures around -25°C, the climbing doctors unzipped their down suits are collected blood from the femoral artery in the groin. Back at base camp, they found that the average blood oxygen level at 8,400 metres was 3.28 kilopascals (kPa), and the lowest value was 2.55 kPa. These findings are reported in The New England Journal of Medicine.

"This is far below what was previously thought possible,” Grocott told The Telegraph. “Previous speculation had been that humans could not function if the levels dropped below 3.9 kPa.”

Continue reading "Doctors drop trousers on top of the world — for science" »

Posted by Asher Mullard
Categories: Health and medicine | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

Giant flying reptiles took off by running along on all four limbs rather than using a bird-like method to get airborne, according to a new study by Michael Habib.

“Using all four legs, it takes less than a second to get off of flat ground, no wind, no cliffs,” says the Johns Hopkins scientist (press release). “This was a good thing to be able to do if you lived in the late Cretaceous period and there were hungry tyrannosaurs wandering around.”

Habib thinks pterosaurs – which are definitely not dinosaurs – had much stronger ‘arms’ than ‘legs’. Comparing the bone strength of birds and pterosaur species he suggests that the reptiles folded their wings and hobbled around on their knuckles and did what would probably have been a highly comical series of “leap-frogging long-jumps” before sticking out their wings and taking off.

“They kind of pitch forward at first, the legs kick off first, then the arms take off,” he says (AP).

Not everyone is convinced. Sankar Chatterjee, of Texas Tech, told MSNBC he still believes they either jumped off cliffs or ran down and incline on two legs to get flying. However Mark Witton, of the University of Portsmouth, says he’s behind Habib:

The idea that pterosaurs were weather- or topography-dependent for takeoff and that they weren't strong flapping fliers - being essentially giant gliders - just doesn't make any sense. For one thing, the biggest pterosaurs, like the 500-pound critters Mike's been playing with, are often found miles and miles and miles from the nearest cliff:

… In fact, Mike's research was a big relief to me: My own research was pointing to the very controversial conclusion that some of the biggest pterosaurs were massing in the 250-kilogram / 500-pound ballpark, so when he told me that he'd found a way to get such a critter into the air I was very happy.

The research has been published in Zitteliana, but doesn’t appear to be online.

Image: Mark Witton.

Posted by Daniel Cressey
Categories: Biology & Biotechnology | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

Did black holes form before galaxies?
Astronomers work on universe's chicken-and-egg problem.

Quantum force gets repulsive
Casimir–Lifshitz effect could help nanoengineers out of a sticky situation.

SPECIAL REPORT: Biotechs feel the pain - Premium content
The biotechnology industry is weathering the financial crisis better than some. That doesn't mean it's in great shape, reports Heidi Ledford.

European boost for particle therapy - Premium content
Treatment centres poised to use carbon-ion beams to tackle cancer.

Posted by Daniel Cressey
Categories: On Nature News | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

Readers may remember that in May last year 500 ducks died on a toxic Canadian pond used by the Syncrude oil company as a ‘settling basin’ for its tar sands operations. Now non-profit Ecojustice has launched a private prosecution of the company, punning that Syncrude “cannot duck” its responsibility for the deaths (press release).

“Pollution from tar sands extraction is making the environment too toxic for birds and people,” says Alberta resident Jeh Custer, in whose name the prosecution is being launched. “The regrettable failure of the Alberta and federal governments to enforce their own environmental laws means that ordinary Canadians must act”.

Continue reading "Canadian duck-death scandal to get its day in court" »

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

Following last year’s woolly mammoth genome in Nature and the raft of coverage about the potential for Jurassic Park-style resurrections, the British press is getting in a tizzy over a list of 10 extinct animals we could see again.

The list – which includes Neanderthals and the dodo – has been produced by New Scientist, which says:

Assuming that we will develop the necessary technology, we have selected 10 extinct creatures that might one day be resurrected. Our choice is based not just on feasibility, but also on each animal's "megafaunal charisma" - just how exciting the prospect of resurrecting these animals is.

Even those quoted in the article are not entirely convinced by the choices. “I find the idea of resurrecting the Neanderthal so ridiculous that any speculation on surrogate mothers is superfluous,” says Svante Pääbo of the Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology in Leipzig, Germany.

Sadly the magazine has not attempted to factor in another key consideration, namely how tasty these things might be to eat.

Full list and coverage below the fold.

Continue reading "The Lazarus list " »

Posted by Daniel Cressey
Categories: Biology & Biotechnology | Permalink | Comments (3) | TrackBacks (0)

Posted on behalf of Declan Butler

Iran has summarily tried two of the nation's HIV researchers with communicating with an “enemy government,” in a half-day trial that started and ended on 31 December in Tehran’s Revolutionary Court. There will be no further court hearings, and a verdict is expected within days.

The brothers, Arash and Kamiar Alaei, who have achieved international acclaim for their progressive HIV-prevention programme, have been held in Tehran’s notorious Evin prison since their arrest last June (see Nature story, subscription required). Kamiar, the younger of the brothers, holds a master's degree from the Harvard School of Public Health and was to have resumed doctoral studies at the University of Albany's School of Public Health in New York. Arash, former head of international education and research cooperation at the Iranian National Research Institute of Tuberculosis and Lung Disease, runs a clinic in Tehran. The brothers are not thought to have been politically active.

Jonathan Hutson, a spokesman for the Washington-based Physicians for Human Rights (PHR), points out that the six-month detention itself breached human rights, as it was “largely incommunicado.” Moreover, whereas Iranian law forbids anyone to be held in detention for longer than four months without charges being brought, it only filed the charge of communicating with an “enemy government” in early December.

At the trial, the prosecution also indicted the men on new secret charges. The trial denied the men the right to defend themselves against the new accusations and the right to due process, says Hutson. “The trial was unfair even by the draconian standards of Iran's penal code," he says.

In August, the prosecutor publicly accused the men of fomenting a velvet revolution, arguing that they had collaborated with other scientists around the world, including some in the United States, attended international AIDS conferences, and met frequently with AIDS NGOs. “Those are not crimes, that's good medicine,” says Hutson, adding that it has casts a chilling effect on academic collaboration between Iran and the rest of the world. IIn December, the US National Academies suspended visits to Iran after the temporary detention of one of its officials in Tehran (Nature).

Several human-rights organizations, including PHR and Amnesty International, have called on Iran to allow the men access to lawyers and the right to contest their detention before a judge. The call has been taken up by several scientific bodies, including the International AIDS Society, the Foundation for AIDS Research and the American Association for the Advancement of Science, and thousands of scientists and physicians have signed an online petition.

Posted by Alex Witze
Categories: Health and medicine | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

Nature Podcast - As the International Year of Astronomy kicks off, we look into the role of self-gravity in star formation, and discover a pair of unusual meteorites in Antarctica. Plus: what happens when you ‘over-squeeze’ photons, and our predictions for science in 2009.

China builds inland Antarctic base
Kunlun station to open later this month atop the frozen continent's oldest ice.

Companies racing into India's nuclear market
Deal between India and United States spurs investment rush.

Posted by Daniel Cressey
Categories: On Nature News | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

Posted on behalf of Roberta Kwok

“Obesity wonder drug Leptin revived,” crows the Telegraph, and that’s the gist of most headlines about a new study out of Children’s Hospital Boston that could bring an appetite-suppressing hormone back from the dead.

What’s leptin? Circa 1995, it was thought to be a possible treatment for obesity. The hormone dials down people’s longing for food, and in short-term trials, it appeared to help patients shed weight. The catch: Their brains soon became resistant to leptin, and the pounds came right back.

Continue reading "Hope flares anew for chubby mice (and humans?)" »

Posted by Daniel Cressey
Categories: Health and medicine | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

China’s first coal-to-liquid plant is up and running, according to a new statement from its owner.

Shenhua Group’s Inner Mongolia plant apparently started turning coal into fuels and chemicals on December 30 (press release). Only South Africa also converts coal to oil.

Last year the Chinese government issued a moratorium on new coal to liquid facilities, but allowed the Shenhua Group to build its Inner Mongolia plant and continue a venture with South Africa’s Sasol company (Nature News). Bloomberg notes this and also says the second plant will likely open in 2013.

Researcher Ning Chenghao told the state news agency China Daily in December that a barrel of oil from the plant would cost about $45, although is could fluctuate due to coal prices.

Energy experts Platts say the plant currently produces around a million barrels of oil a year, with plans to ramp up to 20 million over 2012-2015 and 100 million by 2020.

Continue reading "China joins exclusive coal-to-liquid club" »

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

“The worldwide trend is to kill two birds with one stone by investing in action against global warming and linking that to taking care of both the environment and the economy.”
Ichiro Sumikura, a Japanese environment ministry official, outlines plans to go green to beat the credit crunch (Reuters).

“This was the first human bird flu case reported in Beijing since 2003.”
State news agency Xinhua on the latest bird flu death in China.

“We are not saying that people with [Post Traumatic Stress Disorder] should play Tetris but we do think it is hugely valuable to understand how the brain works and how it produces intrusive flashback memories.”
Emily Holmes of Oxford University comments on research that suggests playing Tetris may reduce the impact of traumatic stress (BBC).

Posted by Daniel Cressey
Categories: Quotes of the day | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

Nature’s space-man Eric Hand is blogging from the American Astronomical Society on our In the Field blog. Here’s what he’s been up to recently…

Fermi finds new pulsar classes

In just a matter of months, the Fermi gamma ray observatory since its launch has found dozens of new pulsars -- spinning, magnetized remnants of supernovae -- that emit a flashing signal in the gamma-ray part of the spectrum only. This new class of pulsar has revolutionized scientists' view of its general structure: Early in a pulsar's lifetime, it blasts a broad gamma-ray signal rather than a narrow polar one, as was previously thought.

An Australian Space Agency?

Dr. Penny Sackett began her term as Australia's chief scientist in November 2008 -- a government position akin to the presidential science adviser in the US -- but still feels enough of an allegiance to the community from which she hails (astronomy) to come and give an invited talk at AAS on Tuesday. Towards the end of the talk, which was an overview of Australian science and its place in the world, she mentioned in passing that the government is considering establishing a national space agency.

A century of night

Many AAS sessions here are emphasizing temporal astronomy -- the idea that the heavens are by no means as static as was once thought. Two new projects, LSST and Pan-STARRS, will exploit wide fields of view and scan vast swaths of the sky night after night in the hopes of catching variable stars, supernovae, pulsars, even the occasional killer asteroid.

More AAS 2009.

Image: NASA / Fermi / LAT Collaboration / Dana Berry

Posted by Daniel Cressey
Categories: Space and astronomy | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

Like the cast of a cheap zombie movie, British scientists want your braaaaaaains.

At a press conference in London, researchers said a lack of healthy and diseased brains was holding back work on Alzheimer's, autism and other conditions.

“There’s a great opportunity to facilitate important research to discover cures and treatments which would go unfulfilled if we don't increase the number of brains available for research,” Paul Francis, from King’s College London (Daily Telegraph).

Payam Rezaie, of the Neuropathology Research Laboratory at the Open University, says the situation is dire (BBC):

For autism, we only have maybe 15 or 20 brains that have been donated that we can do our research on. That is drastically awful. We would need at least 100 cases to get meaningful data. But that is just one example. A lot of research is being hindered by this restriction.

Only the Guardian seems to have noticed that a special “telephone helpline” will be set up to help people donate their brains to science. Always willing to lead by example, I will be offering up my brain to journalism researchers, provided that the helpline doesn’t have one of those awful systems which asks you to, “Press one to donate your brain to a chemist, press two to donate your brain to a biologist, press three to donate your brain to a medical researcher.”

More
Nature's Kerri Smith visited a brain bank at UCL for last month’s NeuroPod.

Image: Getty

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

Earthquakes caused 88,070 fatalities in 2008, the highest number since 2004, the US Geological Survey reports.

The year’s strongest and most destructive earthquake — which had a magnitude of 7.9 and struck Eastern Sichuan, China — claimed at least 69,185 lives, injured 374,171 people and left 18,467 victims missing and are presumed dead.

Killer earthquakes also struck in 13 other countries — Algeria, Colombia, Democratic Republic of the Congo, Greece, India, Indonesia, Iran, Japan, Kyrgyzstan, Pakistan, Peru, Russia, and Rwanda — across 4 continents.

Although 2008 saw only 12 earthquakes above a magnitude of 7 during 2008, compared with an annual average of 18, these resulted in high levels of fatalities because of where they struck. 2004, the worst year for earthquakes since the 1970s, killed 228,802 people — 227,898 of whom died in the resulting tsunami waves in Asia.

In total, more than 220,000 people died as a result of natural catastrophes in 2008.

Top image: Leaning apartment blocks, caused by an earthquake in Japan in 1964. NGDC.

Posted by Asher Mullard
Categories: Earth, environment & ecology | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

Researchers have discovered the first vertebrate to use mirrors rather than lenses to focus light in its eyes.

In this month’s Current Biology, Hans-Joachim Wagner, of Tübingen University in Germany, reports that the deep-sea spookfish (Dolichopteryx longipes) focuses light onto its retina using a multilayer stack of reflective plates.

“This is the first report of an ocular image being formed in a vertebrate eye by a mirror,” the research team write.

The paper was published early online in December when New Scientist noted that the fish appears to have four eyes – two looking up and two looking down. However, “It turns out that the spookfish actually has just two eyes, but each eye has two parts, one looking upwards and the other down. … The spookfish is the only deep-sea fish with eyes that have been shown to produce a focused image when looking both up and down.”

In a new press release, research member Julian Partridge, of the University of Bristol, says, “In nearly 500 million years of vertebrate evolution, and many thousands of vertebrate species living and dead, this is the only one known to have solved the fundamental optical problem faced by all eyes - how to make an image - using a mirror.”

Of course, as the paper notes, invertebrates have been known to use mirrors for ages.

Image: Tammy Frank, Habor Branch Oceanographic Institution

Posted by Daniel Cressey
Categories: Biology & Biotechnology | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

Posted on behalf of Roberta Kwok

It may gall some environmentalists to admit it, but George W. Bush could go down in history as one of America’s greenest presidents. When it comes to the sea, that is.

The not-completely-lame-duck president anointed about 52 million hectares of U.S.-owned ocean as marine national monuments, which together will constitute the largest such preserve in the world (Seattle Post-Intelligencer blog). The protected pockets, extending 80 kilometres beyond the shores of various remote islands and atolls in the Pacific, will be shielded from oil drilling and commercial fishing (Washington Post). Creatures sheltered from harm include coral reef inhabitants, rare whale species and a bird that uses volcanic heat to warm its eggs.

If you’re still skeptical, take it from Joshua Reichert, managing director of the Pew Environmental Group, who told the New York Times: “George W. Bush has done more to protect unique areas of the world’s oceans than any other person in history.” That’s quite a plaudit for a president who has been attacked for refusing to curb greenhouse gas emissions and lifting bans on off-shore drilling.

Of course, not all environmental groups are so enthusiastic. Brendan Cummings, oceans programme director at the Center for Biological Diversity, tells the BBC that without measures to combat global warming, “any benefit coral reefs receive from this monument designation will be bleached away by warming seas.”

Image: NOAA

Posted by Alex Witze
Categories: Earth, environment & ecology | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

Howard Kurtz, the media critic at the Washington Post and the host of the CNN weekend show Reliable Sources (thus making him a most reliable source of his own, of course), is reporting that Barack Obama has offered the post of surgeon general to Sanjay Gupta, who has reportedly accepted.

Gupta is a neurosurgeon best known for his 'House Call' segment on CNN. He's the expert the network turns to when it needs to explain the latest surgery on the president's knee or what a torn rotator cuff means for a star basketball player. He would be perhaps the most prominent person of scientific or medical background to join Obama's cabinet, eclipsing even Nobel prizewinner Steven Chu -- who, while undoubtedly smarter, is not immediately recognizable to millions of American television viewers.

The post of surgeon general is an odd one. The surgeon general heads the Public Health Service Commissioned Corps, a uniformed service, and generally serves as the most public face on public health issues. How powerful the position is depends heavily on who occupies it. The post has been empty since mid-2006, when Richard Carmona quit. The year after, he testified in front of Congress about what he called political interference in decisions at the agency, involving hot-button issues on embryonic stem cells and sex education among others. Such issues are not confined to Republican administrations; during the Clinton years, surgeon general Joycelyn Elders lost her job after calling masturbation a natural part of human sexuality that should perhaps be taught in schools. Under Reagan, C. Everett Koop drew fire for his attempts to educate the American public about AIDS/HIV.

CNN is reporting that Gupta would have more involvement in developing health policy than prior surgeon generals. This would be a departure from past tradition -- in which the surgeon general has to sell the president's already-established health ideas to the public -- but one for which Gupta is likely prepared: He served as a health policy fellow in the Clinton White House.

Image: CNN

Posted by Alex Witze
Categories: Policy | Permalink | Comments (2) | TrackBacks (0)

Pink Iguana discovered on Galapagos Islands, say the headlines. What the stories only get to later, if at all, is that they were discovered over 20 years ago.

Park rangers first spotted the land-based rosada (pink in Spanish) iguana in 1986. Now, Gabriele Gentile, of Rome's University Tor Vergata, and his colleagues report in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences that these reptiles represent a “unique” species of iguana.

On the basis of genetic analysis, the researchers show that the pink iguanas are genetically distinct from the two known species of land iguana found on the Galapagos — Conolophus pallidus and Conolophus subcristatus — and estimate that they diverged some 5.7 million years ago.

Continue reading "Newly discovered iguanas not so newly discovered" »

Posted by Asher Mullard
Categories: Biology & Biotechnology | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

RIP pharmalot
The interweb will be missing one of its best pharma-industry blogs this year.

‘3 Cheap, Safe Ways to Destroy Deadly Explosives’
Wired looks at ingenious solutions to a global problem.

“We’re certainly hoping not to find any human bits inside, but you never know.”
Tom Trinski, marine curator at Auckland Museum, is going to dissect a shark live on the internet (Times).

“We’re a little freaked out by this. We’ve never seen anything like it.”
Rebecca Dmytryk, of the nonprofit WildRescue, discusses a bout of mysterious pelican deaths in California (LA Times).

Posted by Daniel Cressey
Categories: Quotes of the day | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

New measurements of the Milky Way show that our galaxy is rotating 160,000 km per hour faster than previously thought, says the US National Radio Astronomy Observatory. And we thought we were going at 800,000 km per hour already.

Researchers used highly accurate observations of radio bright points to see how quickly these points were moving. "These measurements use the traditional surveyor's method of triangulation and do not depend on any assumptions based on other properties, such as brightness, unlike earlier studies," says Karl Menten of the Max Planck Institute for Radio Astronomy in Germany.

If we’re going that much faster the galaxy must also be heavier, otherwise there wouldn’t be enough gravitational pull to keep hold of the Sun (NY Times). This means our galaxy is as big as neighbouring Andromeda, leading to lots of bragging in the media.

“No longer will we think of the Milky Way as the little sister of the Andromeda Galaxy in our Local Group family,” says Mark Reid, of the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics (press release).

So to people in Andromeda reading this in about 2 million years on the transmissions leaking from Earth, as AP says, “Take that, Andromeda!”

But wait! There’s a downside to this, as the press release notes...

Continue reading "We’re going too fast! We’re going to crash!" »

Posted by Daniel Cressey
Categories: Space and astronomy | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

The main suspect behind the US anthrax attacks is back in the news again. Bruce Ivins killed himself last year as authorities were building a case against him over the 2001 attacks that left five dead.

The New York Times has taken an extended look at Ivins:

That examination found that unless new evidence were to surface, the enormous public investment in the case would appear to have yielded nothing more persuasive than a strong hunch, based on a pattern of damning circumstances, that Dr. Ivins was the perpetrator.

Focused for years on the wrong man, the [FBI] missed ample clues that Dr. Ivins deserved a closer look. Only after a change of leadership nearly five years after the attacks did the bureau more fully look into Dr. Ivins’s activities. That delay, and his death, may have put a more definitive outcome out of reach.

AP has, like the Times, been poring over documents from the case. It says records from the Frederick Police Department show Ivins “tormented his wife with rudeness and behaved erratically in the weeks before the Army scientist took his own life by overdosing on Tylenol”.

Previously from Nature
Did anthrax mailer act alone? - 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, 19 September 2008.
Too close for comfort - Nancy Haigwood, director of the Oregon National Primate Research Center, describes her encounters with anthrax suspect Bruce Ivins, 21 August 2008.
FBI to reveal anthrax data - Science of case will be submitted to peer-reviewed journals, 19 August 2008.
Anthrax: the FBI's case - The US Department of Justice today released a set of documents describing how its investigators linked Bruce Ivins, who died last week (Los Angeles Times), to the 2001 anthrax mailings, 06 August 2008.

Posted by Daniel Cressey
Categories: Biology & Biotechnology | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

Nature's Eric Hand is blogging this year's American Astronomical Society conference over on the In The Field blog. This image just had to be cross posted.

The sharpest images yet of the central 300 light-years of our galaxy, courtesy Spitzer and Hubble space telescopes. Say no more.

Image: NASA / ESA / Q.D.Wang / JPL / S.Stolovy

Posted by Daniel Cressey
Categories: Space and astronomy | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

Science arts centre opens in a blaze of colour
Gallery launches Linz as European City of Culture.

'Mini-hibernation' essential for winter survival
A daily dose of torpor helps desert-dwelling marsupials make it through chilly nights.

Galaxies' collision history revealed
Massive mergers sparked bursts of star formation when the Universe was half its age.

Posted by Daniel Cressey
Categories: On Nature News | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

Posted for Alison Abbott

The new year has barely started, but political troubles have already re-erupted at Europe’s largest university, La Sapienza in Rome.

This time last year, the university hit the headlines when 67 faculty members and a battery of students protested the invitation of Pope Benedict XVI to speak at the inauguration of the university year. The Pope chose to avoid confrontation by withdrawing his acceptance.

Now the new rector, Luigi Frati who took office in October, has sent out a challenge. He has issued the Pope a new invitation to visit the university – and at the same time sent an internal order rescinding an invitation by a professor of history to a former Red Brigades terrorist, Valerio Morucci, to speak to young students. Morucci has distanced himself from his violent past and gives lectures to discourage youths from following terrorist paths.

Continue reading "Trouble at La Sapienza" »

Posted by Daniel Cressey
Categories: Policy | Permalink | Comments (1) | TrackBacks (0)

OK, I smell a rat from the Mars rovers Spirit and Opportunity, recently celebrating five years trundling around on Mars.

Here’s what I think really happened: Five or six years ago some clever PR person told NASA scientists planning their rover mission to keep quiet about the fact that this was a ten year mission, and suggested instead telling the public that the rovers were only going to roam around on Mars for 3 months.

“Imagine the headlines in five years’ time!” the PR person would have said. “These dirty little robots would become world famous. I can see it now, headlines like ‘After 5 years, Mars rovers still going’ (Arizona Republic), or even ‘Rovin; rovin’ rovin’ – Mars explorers don’t want to stop’ (Sydney morning Herald).”

“From the first anniversary of landing, guaranteed fame at least once a year," clever PR person would predict, "And if the rovers take some nice pictures, or measurements of some sort, I guess that would be a bonus.”

Well done clever PR person, for these little robots have really captured the hearts of the space-loving newshounds. Including me: I have been astounded, amazed, worried, relieved and a whole range of other emotions about these rovers as they encounter cliffs, craters, sand storms and survive time and again. And they are providing us with some stunning images. Now they’ve been up there for five years, though, I begin to think I should have saved myself some of the heart ache.

It is a relief that in the swathes of coverage the word “plucky” has been kept to a minimum, with just one sighting that I found courtesy of Yahoo! News, picked up at Space.com as well. (Not to be confused with plucky UK football team Blackburn Rovers).

Whether intended or not, five years is quite an achievement. I raise my hat to you Spirit and Opportunity. Happy anniversary!

Image: Opportunity crawls out of Victoria crater, credit NASA/JPL-Caltech

Posted by Katharine Sanderson
Categories: Space and astronomy | Permalink | Comments (2) | TrackBacks (0)

“No-one goes to prison for the crime of trafficking wild animals, or to put it another way, a crime against humanity is not considered a serious matter.”
Marcelo Rocha, of Brazilian NGO SOS Fauna, discusses the country’s illegal wildlife trade (BBC).

“Third-hand smoke.”
A new term has been coined for nasty cigarette residue that lingers even after smoke has dissipated (NY Times).

“We have also been able to reproduce the sound of someone speaking or clapping in Stonehenge 5,000 years ago.”
Rupert Till, of Huddersfield University in the UK, joins the long line of people who think they’ve worked out what Stonehenge was for (Daily Telegraph).

Posted by Daniel Cressey
Categories: Quotes of the day | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

Nanodiamonds that have been discovered in ancient sediment provide new support for a divisive theory that a giant space rock wiped out humans and animals thousands of years ago.

The ‘Clovis’ culture, which thrived in North America on a diet of mammoth, bison and horse, disappeared suddenly 13,000 years ago. While several theories have been offered to explain this perplexing vanishing act, some two dozen scientists controversially proposed in May 2007 that these people and the beasts they hunted were killed by space rocks that exploded on or above North America, changing the climate. With the discovery of fresh evidence, reported in Science, the debate looks set to continue (press release).

“We've discovered nanodiamonds that are not normally produced through average processes on the surface of the Earth," James Kennett, a geologist at the University of California, Santa Barbara, and an author on the Science paper, told the BBC. "They indicate there was an extra-terrestrial event on Earth 12,900 years ago."

Continue reading "Did killer comets bring the bling?" »

Posted by Asher Mullard
Categories: Earth, environment & ecology, Space and astronomy | Permalink | Comments (1) | TrackBacks (0)

Mike Griffin isn’t going to be happy…

Just weeks ago the NASA boss apparently got upset at the merest hint from Obama’s advisors that the Shuttle-replacement Ares I rocket might be scrapped under the new president. Now rumours are flying that Barack might look to save money by modifying existing launch vehicles.

Bloomberg says barriers between civilian and military space programmes could be smashed, with NASA using modified versions of the Delta IV or Atlas V rockets to send people to the Moon. These rockets are used by the military to throw up spy satellites but are also used by NASA and commercial companies for everything from Mars probes to telecoms sats.

“Obama’s transition team is considering a collaboration between the Defense Department and the National Aeronautics and Space Administration because military rockets may be cheaper and ready sooner than the space agency’s planned launch vehicle, which isn’t slated to fly until 2015, according to people who’ve discussed the idea with the Obama team,” says Bloomberg.

Continue reading "Ares vs Atlas" »

Posted by Daniel Cressey
Categories: Policy, Space and astronomy | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

Barack Obama has hit a snag as he moves towards his, hopefully science-friendly, new administration.

His pick for Commerce Secretary has withdrawn amid allegations of skulduggery and sleaze. Bill Richardson, who was secretary of energy under Bill Clinton, would have had oversight of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration and various other important aspects of government science.

Instead he will continue for now to be Governor of New Mexico and to deal with allegations surrounding the fact that that, in AP’s words, “a California company that contributed to Richardson's political activities won a New Mexico transportation contract worth more than $1 million” (see also: Chronology of key events).

In a statement issued to the press Richardson said, “Let me say unequivocally that I and my Administration have acted properly in all matters and that this investigation will bear out that fact.”

Reaction below the fold.

Continue reading "Obama in the market for a new Commerce Secretary" »

Posted by Daniel Cressey
Categories: Policy | Permalink | Comments (1) | TrackBacks (0)