The Great Beyond

This year's battle over climate legislation has begun in the US Congress, with the introduction today of draft legislation to control greenhouse gases through a cap-and-trade system.

The bill, introduced by Henry Waxman (Democrat, California) and Edward Markey (Democrat, Massachusetts) in the House of Representatives, would among other things cut greenhouse emissions 20 percent from 2005 levels by 2020. That's more ambitious than President Barack Obama's stated goal of a 14 percent cut -- though both bills would target an 80 percent cut by 2050. (New York Times)

It's the first entry in what could be several competing bills to set up cap-and-trade systems prior to international climate negotiations in Copenhagen this December (Nature).

Posted by Alex Witze
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Posted on behalf of Rex Dalton and Roberta Kwok

After nearly 20 years, US scientists have won approval for a law that seeks to protect vertebrate fossils found on federal lands. The US Vertebrate Paleontological Resources Preservation Act was included in omnibus land management legislation signed into law on 30 March by President Barack Obama.

The bill means a permit is needed to collect any scientifically significant vertebrate fossil, officials say. But it would allow ‘casual collecting’ of common fossils. Details of how the law will be applied are yet to be finalized. Officials at the Society of Vertebrate Paleontology have pushed for the legislation because of the widespread practice of commercial collecting, where important specimens may be sold and not recorded in the scientific literature.

Among its hodge-podge of other items the bill also designates about 800,000 hectares of land as wilderness, preventing oil and gas development in those areas, and protects more than 1,600 kilometres of rivers. It establishes a new national monument in New Mexico's Robledo Mountains, where 280-million-year-old animal footprints have been found.

A significant chunk of the bill is dedicated to marine research, including initiatives for ocean exploration, ocean and coastal mapping, observing systems, and ocean acidification research and monitoring.

True to the catch-all nature of such 'omnibus' legislation it also, through the Christopher and Dana Reeve Paralysis Act, gives authority to the National Institutes of Health to coordinate paralysis research.

Posted by Alex Witze
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Posted on behalf of K.S. Jayaraman

A leading Indian biotechnologist has demanded that a review article in Annals of Botany be retracted because his work was not cited in it. The journal’s chief editor, Pat Heslop-Harrison of the University of Leicester, has denied the charge and rejects the allegation that the journal suppressed novel ideas coming from scientists in developing countries.

Vetury Sitaramam, former head of biotechnology at the University of Pune, has nevertheless filed a formal complaint with the Committee on Publication Ethics (COPE) in Guildford, UK. The Indian watchdog agency, Society for Scientific Values, says it will voice its concern if the journal refuses to publish Sitaramam’s rebuttal without giving a good reason.

The article in question is a review of research on the role of mitochondrial respiration in drought and crop yield. In his complaint to COPE, Sitaramam alleges that his papers were left out because they challenged the need for genetic modification to create drought-tolerant plants. He also says the issue at stake is more than a simple argument over citation. “The whole point is why are alternate views to molecular breeding, especially from developing country scientists, becoming difficult to publish?” he asks. “This is an example of a growing trend of West marginalizing novel work from the East,” says Nandula Raghuram of GGS Indraprastha University in New Delhi and managing editor of the journal Physiology and Molecular Biology of Plants.

Heslop-Harrison refutes any allegation that Annals of Botany suppresses ideas, and in particular does not publish ideas coming from developing country scientists. “There is no evidence whatsoever for this damaging statement,” he told Nature. “Indeed I expect we publish more important science from developing countries than many other journals.”

Posted by Alex Witze
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“We’re just very proud to build this, do some testing and demonstrate to America that we're moving beyond the space shuttle onto another generation of spacecraft.”
Don Pearson, project manager for the Post-Landing Orion Recovery Test, comments on the unveiling of a full-size mock-up of NASA’s new space vehicle on the National Mall in Washington (Reuters).

“These ancient lions were like a supersized version of today's lions, up to 25 per cent bigger than those we know today and, in the Americas, with longer legs adapted for endurance running.”
Ross Barnett, of the University of Oxford’s Department of Zoology, discusses his research on the skulls of cats (Daily Telegraph).

“What is going on has an adverse effect on our work.”
Cosmonaut Gennady Padalka says diplomatic squabbles are preventing Russians on the International Space Station from using American toilets or sharing their food (AP). [Hat tip – NASA Watch]

“It was like nothing we’d ever seen before.”
Owen Gilbert, a grad student at Rice University, discusses his research on a giant colony of clonal amoebas (NY Times).

Posted by Daniel Cressey
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North Korea is gearing up to launch its first satellite atop its brand new Unha-2, a three-stage rocket based on earlier technology. Nobody knows exactly when the launch will happen, but it will likely be soon: satellite images released by the always useful Institute for Science and International Security show that there's something big on the pad at the North Korean's launch site in Musudan-ri.

What, exactly, that something might be has proved a really fun guessing game for the folks over at Arms Control Wonk. They've been speculating about the blurry stick, but so far, about all they've figured out is that it is definitely a three-stage vehicle. A nice analysis by David Wright over at the Union of Concerned Scientists, sums up what little else can be said about the Unha-2: It's probably capable of carrying 100kg into orbit, and it is based on the North Korean's earlier missile, the TaepoDong-2. The TD-2 was only flight tested once before in July of 2006, and on that occasion it failed spectacularly and wound up in the Pacific Ocean.

That is unlikely to happen this time around in part because the US and Japan are vowing to shoot down any debris using their own missile defence technology. Aegis destroyers are moving into positions where they could intercept the launch with a Standard Missile 3 (see right), and the Japanese have even deployed Patriot missile batteries around Tokyo. All this has really ticked off the Norks, who, with characteristic hyperbolae have warned that shooting down their rocket "precisely means a war." Stay tuned, the next few weeks promise to be interesting to say the least.

Image: U.S. Navy

Posted by Geoff Brumfiel
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Things are heating up in London as some of the world’s most important political leaders get ready for the G20 meeting. Amid discussions of economic woe, fireworks, meals cooked by celebrity chefs and threats to walk out if they don’t get what they want, they may spare some time to discuss scientific issues.

There are certainly some who would like them to consider climate change. Leading climate experts want economic stimulus measures tied in to green issues (see yesterday’s Nature story: Stern message for G20 summit).

Continue reading "G20 Watch: it’s getting hot in here" »

Posted by Daniel Cressey
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Astronomy fans are preparing to burn the midnight oil, using night-vision-friendly red lanterns of course, for 100 hours of astronomy outreach in the form of open-telescope nights, astronomer question and answer sessions, and online webcasts starting 2 April.

Anyone armed with an internet connection can take control of one of nine observatories remotely and snap photos of their favourite quasar or sunspot.

Headline projects will include a 24-hour live webcast called Around the World in 80 Telescopes on 3 Apri, in which astronomers from 80 different observatories will tell stories and share images of their work, and a 24-hour Global Star Party 4 April in which local astronomy clubs are encouraged to organize their own local outreach star-gazing events in unusual locales ranging from city cafes to retirement homes.

The project is part of the International Year of Astronomy, coordinated by the International Astronomy Union and UNESCO and the IAU counts on at least 1500 local events taking place in over 130 countries.

Image: morning sky over ESO’s Very Large Telescope in Chile / ESO/Y. Beletsky

Posted by Lucas Laursen
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Experimental design could reduce need for animal tests
Accounting for environmental changes may be better than trying to control them.

Anti-HIV protein made in plants
One greenhouse could produce a million doses of virus-blocking chemical.

Stern message for G20 summit
Stimulus packages must focus more resources on clean energy and averting climate change, report says.

Posted by Daniel Cressey
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The US military could become a major player on the green-energy scene, says AFP. According to the news service, the Pentagon is actively seeking ways to save energy and to switch to renewable sources.

The Pentagon, says AFP, is already trying to reach a target of obtaining 25% of its electricity from renewables by 2025. There are strong reasons to go green beyond climate change too: a 1% decrease in fuel consumption would mean 6,400 fewer soldiers in fuel convoys at risk of insurgent attacks.

“When you don’t use as much fuel, not only does it not cost you as much, but it also saves lives and injuries of those people who would have to deliver fuel through hostile territory,” says Keith Eastin, assistant army secretary for Installations and the Environment.

AFP also notes that Obama’s stimulus package earmarked $300 million for Defense Department research on renewable energy. Some of the research from this may eventually lead to clean-tech in the non-military sector.

“Just by nature of the fact that we are big, we can be a test bed for a whole lot of things that normally wouldn't seem to make a lot of powerful economic sense,” says Eastin.

Full article: Gas-guzzling Pentagon going green.

Image: modified from aerial photograph of the Pentagon by Tech. Sgt. Andy Dunaway, U.S. Air Force / DoD

Posted by Daniel Cressey
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Both the NASA Watch and Bad Astronomy blogs are highlighting this new image of the International Space Station, released by NASA on 25 March.

Not wanting to miss out on the party, I thought I’d best join in. This picture shows the ISS, in NASA’s words, “backdropped by the blackness of space and the thin line of Earth’s atmosphere”.

Image: NASA

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“It has been an incredibly difficult challenge.”
Richard Jenkins comments on setting a new wind-powered land speed record of 126.1-mph (Wired).

“What we've done is pin down where the dust comes from – it comes from Patagonia.”
David Sugden, of the University of Edinburgh, explains his researching showing South American glaciers are responsible for layers of dust in Antarctic ice (Reuters).

“We were really sorry for causing any hassle and we are in the process of paying for the slight damages that the triceratops sustained whilst we lifted it over the fence.”
Steve Fry, student at Kingston Maurward College in England, apologises for ‘borrowing’ a giant dinosaur from the Dinosaur Museum in Dorchester (Daily Mail).

“The fish oil affects the methane-producing bacteria in the rumen part of the cow's gut, leading to reduced emissions.”
Lorraine Lillis, of University College Dublin, explains how feeding cows omega 3 oils might reduce their greenhouse gas emissions (Daily Telegraph).

Posted by Daniel Cressey
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Video games might improve your eyesight, according to a paper published by Nature Neuroscience.

Daphne Bavelier, of the University of Rochester in New York, and colleagues found that study subjects who played action video games (either Unreal Tournament 2004 or Call of Duty 2) had improved ability to detect small changes in shades of gray on a uniform background, so-called ‘contrast sensitivity’. Those who played a more sedate game (The Sims 2) showed no improvement.

“Unfortunately, contrast sensitivity is one of the aspects of vision that is most easily compromised,” says Bavelier (Independent). “This problem affects thousands of people worldwide, including those with professional activities requiring excellent eyesight, and ageing populations, along with individuals who are clinically evaluated for vision problems such as amblyopia.”

The new study suggests playing certain video games might help with contrast problems. After 50 hours of playing the action-game group had improved their ability to see shades of gray by 43%.

“[Contrast sensitivity function] improvements are typically brought about by correction of the optics of the eye with eyeglasses, contact lenses or surgery,” the researchers write. “We found that the very act of action video game playing also enhanced contrast sensitivity, providing a complementary route to eyesight improvement.”

Gary Rubin, of the University College London Institute of Ophthalmology, told the BBC, “Contrast sensitivity is a very basic visual function, and usually they are more difficult to alter in adulthood. This is a small study, showing a small effect, but it was carefully done, and merits further investigation.”

Image: Punchstock

Posted by Daniel Cressey
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Fungus farmers show way to new drugs
Ant colonies could be key to advances in biofuels and antibiotics.

Methane-producing mineral discovered on Mars
But it may not explain the presence of the gas on the Red Planet today.

Geometer wins maths 'Nobel'
Abel prize awarded to Mikhail Leonidovich Gromov.

Posted by Daniel Cressey
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The seemingly endless attempts by certain elements of America to caveat the teaching of evolution continued last week. As we noted:

Half of Texas's Board of Education voted [Thursday] to support the teaching of "strengths and weaknesses" of evolution in high school classrooms. But because the vote was a tie, an earlier decision to leave out the evolution-doubting component stands.

Then on Friday, The Dallas Morning News notes, “social conservatives lost another skirmish over evolution”:

In identical 8-7 votes, board members removed two sections written by Chairman Don McLeroy that would have required students in high school biology classes to study the "sufficiency or insufficiency" of common ancestry and natural selection of species. Both are key principles of Charles Darwin's theory of evolution.

However the board also voted to encourage scrutiny of “all sides” of scientific theories. This didn’t go down well with Eugenie Scott, executive director of the California-based National Center for Science Education, who said, “I think we’ve seen some classic examples of politics interfering with science education.” (AP.)

Continue reading "Texas creationism: losers win?" »

Posted by Daniel Cressey
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The space shuttle Discovery touched down safely in Florida on Saturday, marking the end of mission STS-119.

And as one mission comes home, another is just starting, as a Russian Soyuz docks at the International Space Station, carrying space tourist Charles Simonyi. All did not go smoothly however, notes AFP:

"One of the engines had a fault which the computer considered was serious and it began to move the Soyuz away from the ISS at a rate of one metre per second," mission control official Vladimir Sovlov told RIA-Novosti news agency.

"We decided not to allow that and asked the crew to intervene. The commander judged the engine was working normally and we authorised him to approach in manual mode, which was carried out successfully."

Mission control spokesman Valery Lyndin told Reuters, “This is not unusual. Now everything is fine.”

Image: NASA

Posted by Daniel Cressey
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A three-legged dog named Trooper overseeing experiments on humans? An ethics committee named “Phaké Medical Devices” and based in “Paynesville, South Carolina”? No problem, sign right up.

It was a sting operation tailor-made for congressional theatrics, and the US House of Representatives Committee on Energy and Commerce obliged yesterday as they heard accounts of an undercover operation to expose weaknesses in the country’s fragmented system of human research oversight.

In the United States, such research is overseen by institutional review boards (IRBs, known as ethics committees in many other countries). Traditionally, IRBs were based at the hospitals and universities conducting the research, but in recent years the push for speedier review of research protocols has led to a burgeoning industry of independent, for-profit IRBs. In 2007, Congress tasked the Government Accountability Office with investigating the for-profits. That’s where Trooper came in.

Continue reading "US government investigates human research protections" »

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“The investigators are not to blame. They can't tell if a cotton bud has DNA sticking to it.”
Ulrich Goll, justice minister for the state of Baden-Wuerttemberg in Germany, announces that a woman sought by police after her DNA was found at six murder scenes may be an innocent if careless employee in the factory that produces swabs for collecting DNA samples from murder scenes (BBC). [Hat tip: Good Morning Silicon Valley.]

“By saying that condoms exacerbate the problem of HIV/AIDS, the Pope has publicly distorted scientific evidence to promote Catholic doctrine on this issue.”
Medical journal The Lancet wades in on the Pope’s recent condom comments (AFP).

“With vertebrates we are asked to err on the side of caution and I believe this is the approach to take with these crustaceans.”
Bob Elwood, of Queen's University in Belfast, comments on his research suggesting hermit crabs can feel pain (BBC).

“…to increase the effectiveness of cooperation with the border agencies (coast guards) of neighboring states in the fight against terrorism on the high seas, combat smuggling and illegal migration and defend marine life and resources.”
The Russian National Security Council explains why retreating ice means it is considering a new Arctic military force (Wired).

“As a scientist it was my priority on this project to develop tools to help us predict eruptions and ultimately reduce the loss of lives. As a musician and artist too, it was a natural step for me to take these seismic sonification sounds and apply them to the arts.”
Domenico Vicinanza explains why he worked to get a modern dance company moving to music generated from seismic data (press release).

Posted by Daniel Cressey
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Ever since WWF asked Sydney residents and government officials to turn out the lights for an hour in 2007, critics and fans have debated the merits of the publicity stunt, called Earth Hour, which is meant to draw attention to energy use. This year's event is scheduled for Saturday at 8:30pm local time, all over the world.

Astronomers think it's a great idea, of course, because it dovetails nicely with their dark-sky campaigns. And major tourist attractions in cities around the world have jumped on the bandwagon.

But others, including climate change skeptic Bjorn Lomberg, point out that the campaign, with its widespread advertising, could actually have an emissions footprint that outweighs the energy that would have been spent during Earth Hour.

One Earth Hour promotional campaign at a Malaysian shopping mall has drawn attention for offering tickets to an F1 race event to patrons spending over 1,000 ringgit (US$277) that day. F1 races are considered one of the most emissions-heavy sporting events, according to Reuters, which carried the story.

Unshaken, a WWF spokesperson told eWeek that "It is not about how much energy is saved, it is meant to be a symbolic gesture to global leaders about climate change."

Image: Your Light Switch Is Your Vote by Shepard Fairey under creative commons.

Posted by Lucas Laursen
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The gathering and migration of a gigantic fish shoal has been observed for the first time by US scientists. Hundreds of millions of herring were watched using an acoustic observation system developed by Nicholas Makris of MIT and Purnima Ratilal of Northeastern University.

“As far as we know, this is the first time we’ve quantified this behaviour in nature and over such a huge ecosystem,” says Makris (MIT press release).

Iain Couzin, a researcher at Princeton University who was not involved in the research, told New Scientist, “I don’t know anything that’s close to this scale.”

The image right shows the sequence of shoal growth from ‘there’s nothing there’ to an ‘oh my god that’s huge’ group kilometres long. This happens in the space of an hour.

“It’s not gradual; it’s – BANG,” says Makris (Science News).

Continue reading "‘It’s not gradual; it’s – BANG’" »

Posted by Daniel Cressey
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Settling of dust warms tropical Atlantic
A decline in aerosols could account for most of the rise in regional ocean temperatures.

Q&A: Steve Squyres on planetary priorities
Chief of Mars rover missions talks about short-listing missions for US planetary science.

Could nanomachines give friction the slip?
The quantum stickiness between very close surfaces produces no drag when they move, researchers claim.

Geometer wins maths 'Nobel'
Abel prize awarded to Mikhail Leonidovich Gromov.

Posted by Daniel Cressey
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Ten members of the 18-member President's Council on Bioethics have criticised US President Barack Obama's recent executive order lifting the restrictions on federal funding for human embryonic stem-cell research.

In their statement, the ten say Obama's order is "a step backward" with regards to "the progress that had been made in reconciling the needs of research and the moral concerns of many Americans". Obama's order reversed a policy put in place by George W. Bush in August 2001, which permitted federal funding for research on human embryonic stem cells, but only on cell lines that had been derived by the date of his speech.

Much of the dispute centers on the source of the embryos that could be used for such research. Obama's order does not specify the source of the embryos: whether they are leftover embryos from in-vitro fertilisation clinics, or are created for the purpose of research. This is the source of much of the council criticism. The story has been picked up predominantly by the conservative press (Weekly Standard).

The statement did not come from the council itself, but rather from ten of its members speaking out on their personal beliefs. The council, created in its current form by Bush in 2001, has come under fire before, for instance in 2004 when one of its members was dismissed after speaking out against Bush's stance on stem-cell research (Nature). The council in its current form is constituted through 30 September 2009.

Posted by Alex Witze
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Half of Texas's Board of Education voted today to support the teaching of "strengths and weaknesses" of evolution in high school classrooms. But because the vote was a tie, an earlier decision to leave out the evolution-doubting component stands.

Social conservatives had argued that the state curriculum should contain qualifications about the acceptance of evolution. Seven Republicans voted in favour of the proposal, and three Republicans and four Democrats against it. The dramatic vote included a video vote from a board member who had heart surgery last month (Dallas Morning News).

Final votes are expected Friday on a number of amendments to the state textbook standards, including one that would require students to "analyze and evaluate the sufficiency or insufficiency of natural selection to explain the complexity of the cell" (Associated Press). Texas Citizens for Science, an activist group, has a good round-up on its website.

Because Texas is such a large textbook market, decisions by its board of education tend to resonate nationwide (New York Times story from last summer).

Posted by Alex Witze
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Posted on behalf of Roberta Kwok

The columns of ash and gas spouting from volcanoes may have something in common with storms that produce tornadoes: an internal vortex called a mesocyclone. Mesocyclones could explain why volcanic plumes sometimes spin, form sheaths of lightning, and give off waterspouts and dust devils, according to a new study in Nature.

The researchers based their study on both historical and new satellite data. An 1811 report from a sea captain in the Azores archipelago described a volcanic column that rotated "like an horizontal wheel" and issued lightning flashes and waterspouts. Such features, which have since been seen separately but never for one volcanic plume, are similar to those of tornado-producing storms containing mesocyclones, the team says.

Satellite images of Mount Pinatubo's 1991 eruption in the Philippines showed that the top of the ash column, called an 'umbrella', became wavy around the edges. This suggests that a mesocyclone formed in the plume, causing it to rotate and distort the umbrella's shape, the researchers say. An outer ring of lightning spotted around the 2008 eruption of the Mount Chaiten volcano in Chile could also be due to mesocyclones, which are thought to create similar lightning sheaths around thunderstorms called supercells.

Mount Redoubt (pictured), which erupted this week in Alaska, "might be powerful enough" to create mesocyclones, says co-author Pinaki Chakraborty of the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign (National Geographic). But Michelle Coombs, a geologist at the Alaska Volcano Observatory, says they have not seen any lightning or cyclones yet.

Scott Bryan, a vulcanologist at the University of Queensland, Australia, says the rotation phenomenon is "not surprising" because similar effects are seen in water and ocean currents. Mount Pinatubo is near the equator, he notes, and even stronger plume rotation might be seen at higher-latitude volcanoes (Cosmos).

Image: USGS

Posted by Alex Witze
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Posted for Ananyo Bhattacharya

Hopes for a £1 billion science stimulus in the next UK budget are dimming, the country’s chief scientific adviser says. John Beddington was speaking at a panel discussion yesterday at the UK’s Royal Society, along with Harold Varmus, co-chair of the US President's Council of Advisors on Science and Technology - there in part to plug his new book, 'The Art and Politics of Science'.

Beddington says the government cannot ignore warnings by Mervyn King, the governor of the Bank of England, that the UK cannot afford (Guardian, Times) an expensive package of measures to boost the economy in its budget announcement on 22 April. “I’m not confident that it will definitely happen,” he said – adding that if there was going to be a stimulus, science should be prioritized. Beddington also criticized the quality of government scientific advice in Europe, pointing out that only Ireland and the United Kingdom have chief scientific advisers and that both the European Council Presidency and the European Commission’s various directorates lacked a similar post.

Varmus too warned against expecting big boosts to the base budgets of US scientific institutions such as the National Institutes of Health in future. “We do have an economic catastrophe on our hands,” he said. “Base budgets may not see the sort of increases we’d like to see.” He also urged scientists to think big to capitalize on the current stimulus funds. The NIH has recently asked for applications for “Grand Opportunities” – grants for projects costing no less than $500,000 per year, funded with the stimulus money. Varmus said he would suggest one of these grants to go towards building up a complete database of monoclonal antibodies for mice and humans. Mark Walport, director of the UK medical charity the Wellcome Trust – who was also sharing the panel with Varmus and Beddington – said that he would like to see stimulus cash used to sequence the genomes of all known cancers.

During his speech – centered on Obama’s pledge “ to restrore science to its rightful place” - Varmus revealed that early on in the campaign that, Obama had told him, “I expect science to be the centerpiece of my administration”.

Asked about the teaching of evolution in schools Varmus said that Obama would be addressing the issue is considering addressing science more generally in a future speech. He also said that the Office of Technology Assessment, which provided Congress with non-partisan science advice between 1972 and 1995, would likely be brought back.

Posted by Mark Peplow
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“According to the global-warming people, I say what I say because I’m paid by the oil industry. Of course I’m not, but that’s part of their rhetoric.”
Freeman Dyson, in The New York Times, on the row he stirred up by casting doubt on global warming.

“These rumours contradict all scientific facts.”
Egypt’s health and interior ministries deny that a killer text message is causing deaths through the cell phone network (AFP).

“No plan that we had before has been cut.”
Energy company Iberdrola Renovables denies reports that it is planning to slash investment in UK wind farms (Reuters).

Posted by Daniel Cressey
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US President Barack Obama has been sounding off on climate change, ahead of the December meeting in Copenhagen where international leaders will attempt to thrash out a new agreement.

The Guardian reports that Obama may not be able to sign up to any agreement straight away. The sticking point, says the paper, is that Congressional approval could be hard to get, and signing up without it would be politically risky.

“The Copenhagen climate change talks in December will come at a difficult moment,” says former UK cabinet minister Stephen Byers, who co-chaired the International Climate Change Taskforce. “The timing couldn't really be worse for the Obama administration.”

It’s not all doom and gloom though.

Continue reading "Climate change round up: Copenhagen, cap and trade, and more" »

Posted by Daniel Cressey
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China is attempting to curb its destructive gerbil population by spreading contraceptive-laced bait across the northern Gurbantunggut Desert. State news agency Xinhua says the gerbils “pose a major threat to agriculture and horticulture” through their burrowing.

“Besides pregnancy prevention, the drug can induce abortions, and thus largely reduce their breeding rate,” says Du Yuefei, chief of the epidemic prevention section of the Changji City forestry department. “It’s a good way to tackle the desert rat plague.”

Although Xinhua says the drugs have little impact on other animals, the Guardian has spoken to some conservationists who question this.

“That the pellets have ‘little effect’ is highly debatable,” one anonymous source told the paper. “All drugs have an effect when put into a system, on other rodents, on birds of prey that eat the rodents and so forth.”

Other coverage
China fights gerbil plague with 'the pill' – AFP
Chinese use pills to curb gerbils – BBC
China uses abortion pill to cut gerbil population – AP

Posted by Daniel Cressey
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Europe’s proposed new rules on animal experiments have come under renewed fire today.

When they were first proposed last year many researchers complained that they could stifle vital work, especially on non-human primates. They also warned the proposed rules could drastically increase the cost of experiments, without increasing animal welfare.

Now the umbrella group European Medical Research Councils and the European Science Foundation have issued a report detailing the changes they believe are needed to the draft rules (pdf).

“We certainly welcome the opportunity to standardize animal care on a Europe-wide basis,” says Roger Lemon, a researcher University College London and chair of the ESF’s animal research expert group (The Scientist). “But where we have some difficulty is where some types of research would just be stopped all together.”

Continue reading "European animal research ‘threatened by new rules’ " »

Posted by Daniel Cressey
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This week, we become stellar detectives to solve a supernova whodunit, find out how volcanos spawn tornado-like dust devils and investigate a curious chemical imbalance in our oceans. All that plus our weekly News Chat.

Posted by Daniel Cressey
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Networking out of natural disasters
Open-source software could transform response to disease outbreaks and natural disasters.

Porton Down veterans not at greater health risk
Military personnel exposed to chemical warfare agents should be "reassured".

Graphene gets ready for the big time - Premium content
Physicists are talking about how to make practical use of a former laboratory curiosity.

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Last week conservationists expressed concerns that Madagascar’s unique flora and fauna could be devastated during the political instability the island is experiencing. Sadly it seems these predictions have come true.

The Marojejy national park has posted a statement on its website reporting that it is temporarily closed.

“The closure was deemed necessary by park management due to the lawlessness that has descended over the SAVA region during this time of political unrest in Madagascar, and the resultant looting and destruction which is currently occurring within the park,” says the statement. “In particular, gangs of armed men (led primarily by foreign profiteers in conjunction with the rich local mafia) are plundering the rainforests of Marojejy for the extremely valuable rosewood that grows there.”

As well as the rosewood trees, Marojejy’s unique Silky Sifaka lemur is also under threat.

“The park has never been closed since it was opened, as far as I know. For a national park to be closed because of illegal logging is unprecedented, and outrageous,” says Erik Patel, a PhD student at Cornell University who has worked in Madagascar on the Silky Sifaka.

The hardwood trees could be wiped out by the current activity, he told Nature News. “Logging will lead to their extinction, no question. It has massive consequences.”

One local source, who asked to remain anonymous due to fears over their personal safety, says, “It’s breaking my heart but I’m quite hopeless and condemned to stay as a useless witness in front of this slaughter. Years of effort destroyed in a couple of days, years of love for this region, reduced to pieces just for money.”

National Geographic also has a sizeable story on the problem in Marojejy. Conservationist Mireya Mayor told the magazine, “I’m gutted and at a loss to describe how bad this situation is. Thirty years of successful conservation initiatives is now at risk of being totally destroyed.”

Image: NASA

Posted by Daniel Cressey
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A British team will announce a multimillion-pound research project this week to develop blood from embryonic stem cells, the Independent reports.

The team is made up of a consortium involving NHS Blood and Transplant, a section of the National Health Service responsible for providing organ transplantation and blood for England and Wales, the Scottish National Blood Transfusion Service and the Wellcome Trust, a medical research charity.

The Wellcome Trust is believed to have promised £3m towards the cost of the project, with further funding coming from the other consortium partners, the Independent writes.

Continue reading "Britain joins race to make blood from stem cells" »

Posted by Natasha Gilbert
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Posted for Lucas Laursen

President of the Royal Academy of Engineering and former BP chief Lord Browne will call on the British government to intervene more aggressively in the energy market in a speech tonight at Cardiff University, reports the Guardian.

Browne told the Observer earlier this month that "Pinning all your hopes on the European Union ETS [emissions trading scheme] and carbon trading is wrong."

Browne was an early supporter of emissions trading and spearheaded an internal emissions trading program at BP in the 1990s. In the EU scheme, governments dole out a fixed quantity of emissions permits to energy companies, who can then trade the permits on the open market, permitting more efficient companies to sell their extra emissions capacity to less efficient ones.

But today, low energy prices and a surfeit of government-issued emission permits mean that it is easy for energy firms to avoid any serious constraints on their emissions.

Continue reading "Force banks to back green energy, says former BP chief" »

Posted by Daniel Cressey
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“I have serious concerns that your memorandum goes beyond legitimate privacy concerns and appears to run contrary to many statutes protecting executive branch communications with members of Congress.”
Senator Charles Grassley, scourge of drug company links to academia, thinks an FDA memorandum might discourage whistleblowing (Bloomberg).

“The Government needs to be saying ‘It is socially unacceptable to be against wind turbines in your area - like not wearing your seat belt or driving past a zebra crossing.’”
UK climate change minister Ed Miliband gets controversial on wind farms (Daily Telegraph).

“Making NASA’s scientific and astronomical data more accessible to the public is a high priority for NASA, especially given the new administration’s recent emphasis on open government and transparency.”
Ed Weiler, of NASA’s Science Mission Directorate in Washington, explains why the agency is putting even more of its images up for grabs online (Wired).

“Obviously, this [statute] was intended to deal with a rogue state, intended to deal with terrorists. It wasn’t intended to deal with a housewife.”
Lawyer Robert Goldman says his client shouldn’t have been charged under terrorism laws for trying to harm a love rival with chemicals from a lab (AP).

Posted by Daniel Cressey
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Posted for Declan Butler

GlaxoSmithKline (GSK), the world's second-largest pharmaceutical company by sales, has put a bit more flesh on proposals outlined last month by Andrew Witty, its chief executive to share some of its patents to boost research into neglected diseases, and to making its drugs available more cheaply in the very poorest countries.

The company's 2008 Corporate Responsibility Report, released on Tuesday, says it will put some 500 granted patents and 300 pending applications into the pool (press release, report).

The report also confirms the company will also introduce differential pricing: “Secondly, on 1 April 2009 we will reduce our prices for patented medicines in the 50 poorest countries in the world, the LDCs [least developed countries], so they are no higher than 25 per cent of the developed world price. Where possible we will reduce our prices further while ensuring we cover our manufacturing costs so this offer is sustainable.”

Continue reading "GSK’s pledge to the developing world, Part 2" »

Posted by Daniel Cressey
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Those people at Conservation International sure do love finding new species, chalking up over 700 in under 20 years. They’ve just done it again, this time in Papua New Guinea.

During a trip into the country’s highlands, researchers discovered a number of species new to science, including a gecko, two plants, three frogs and 50 (fifty!) spiders.

“If you’re finding things that are that big and that spectacular that are new, that’s really an indication that there’s a lot out there that we don’t know about,” says Steve Richards, the expedition’s leader (AP). “It never ceases to amaze me the spectacular things that are turning up from that island.”

Wayne Maddison, of the University of British Columbia, says the spiders are particularly important.

“They are strikingly distinctive evolutionary lineages that had been unknown before, with a group that is already very distinctive on the evolutionary tree of jumping spiders,” he says (press release). “Their key position on the evolutionary tree will help us understand how this unique group of jumping spiders has evolved.”

More
Previous CI discoveries, via Google news archive.

Image: © Steve Richards

Posted by Daniel Cressey
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Cold fusion was a heart-stopping idea. Take some off-the-shelf electrochemistry kit, add heavy water and presto - no more energy crisis.

It's twenty years since Stanley Pons and Martin Fleischmann made their now-infamous announcement that they could generate energy by initiating nuclear fusion with this set-up (Wired, The Guardian).

The claim was pretty much discredited within a couple of years - but pockets of research have continued to try to coax nuclear reactions out of their system, or something like it.

The latest news from this tiny field has just been presented at the American Chemical Society's (ACS) spring meeting in Salt Lake City. How fitting - the very place where Fleischmann and Pons unveiled their results to the world.

Continue reading "Cold fusion warmed over" »

Posted by Mark Peplow
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Classic behavioural studies flawed
Nobel prizewinner took short cuts to show that the way gulls feed is instinctive.

Q&A: Save or study?
Modelling can help conservationists decide when they have collected enough data.

NOAA chief ready to tackle climate
Jane Lubchenco takes the helm at oceanic and atmospheric agency.

Q&A: Jane Lubchenco
The new head of NOAA talks priorities.

Posted by Daniel Cressey
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The United States’ Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) told the White House on Friday that it considers greenhouse gases, including carbon dioxide, a danger to the public’s health and welfare, according the Washington Post.

The EPA’s finding could pave the way for federal regulation limiting greenhouse gas emissions under the nearly 40-year-old Clean Air Act.

The long-awaited finding, sent to the Office of Management and Budget, stems from a 2007 Supreme Court ruling that the agency must review whether greenhouse gas emissions pose a threat to public health or welfare.

Continue reading "Carbon emissions a danger to public health, EPA finds" »

Posted by Natasha Gilbert
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“I know it didn't turn out the way we wanted it to, but you guys did a great job.”
Astronaut Steven Swanson talks to colleagues on the International Space Station about their attempts to unstuck a jammed piece of equipment on the outside of the ISS. Eventually Swanson’s colleagues Richard Arnold and Joseph Acaba ended up just securing the stuck cargo platform (Reuters).

The Colbert Node
NASA is refusing to say whether it will go with the results of its online poll to pick a name for a new node on the International Space Station. The suggestion that accrued the most votes was ‘Colbert’, after the US comedian (Boston Globe).

“There will be thousands of cases in our archives that could benefit from this technique.”
Martin Bill, of the UK’s Forensic Science Service, says a new DNA technique could lead to developments in numerous ‘cold cases’ (Daily Telegraph).

Posted by Daniel Cressey
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Not to be out done by their neighbours at Harvard, MIT has moved to make all research papers from its faculty open access.

“The vote is a signal to the world that we speak in a unified voice; that what we value is the free flow of ideas,” says Bish Sinyal, chair of the MIT Faculty (press release).

Continue reading "MIT goes open access" »

Posted by Daniel Cressey
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Pharma company Merck said yesterday that it is the target of a federal grand jury investigation over drug Vioxx. According to Reuters, the probe “involves Merck's research, marketing and selling activities regarding Vioxx”.

In a letter filed with the Securities and Exchange Commission, Bruce Kuhlik, Merck’s executive vice president, writes:

The letter we received [from the US Attorney's Office for the District of Massachusetts] is in connection with an ongoing investigation into Merck's activities related to VIOXX. This investigation began in 2004, and includes subpoenas for information and documents from the company and for witnesses to appear before a grand jury. The inquiry is continuing, and the letter does not represent a conclusion or resolution in the matter.

Vioxx was pulled from the market in 2004 over side-effects fears and resulted in multiple lawsuits and billions in damages against Merck.

“The empaneling of grand jury was widely-expected, on the VIOXX matter -- but it is a criminal inquiry, nonetheless,” says the Shearlings got Plowed blog.

Posted by Daniel Cressey
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A controversial experiment which poured iron into the Southern Ocean has also poured cold water on the idea that such ‘ocean fertilization’ can mitigate against climate change.

The Lohafex project was investigating suggestions that carbon dioxide can be removed from the atmosphere by promoting algal blooms with iron. Despite protests from some groups, researchers aboard the Polarstern research vessel carried out their experiment this month.

However, the Alfred-Wegener institute, which was backing Lohafex, says “only a modest amount of carbon sank out of the surface layer by the end of the experiment. Hence, the transfer of CO2 from the atmosphere to the ocean to compensate the deficit caused by the LOHAFEX bloom was minor compared to earlier ocean iron fertilization experiments.”

Although the iron did initially stimulate plankton production, predation from small copepods prevented further growth. In addition, previous experiments have led to increases in diatom algae, which form silica shells that sink after the algal blooms, trapping the carbon.

The institute says previous, natural blooms had extracted all the silicic acid, preventing diatom growth. It adds:

Hence a major finding was that other algal groups, although stimulated by iron fertilization, are unable to make blooms equivalent to those of diatoms. Since the silicic acid content in the northern half of the Southern Ocean is low, iron fertilization in this vast region will not result in removal of significant amounts of CO2 from the atmosphere.

Kenneth Coale, director of Moss Landing Marine Laboratories in California, was more upbeat.

He told the BBC, “To date we’ve conducted experiments in what amounts to 0.04% of the ocean’s surface. All have indicated that iron is the key factor controlling phytoplankton growth, and most have indicated that there is carbon flux (towards the sea floor) - this is one that didn’t.”

Image top: Polarstern in the open sea. / Alfred-Wegener-Institut
Image lower: copepod / G. Mazzochi, SZN / Alfred Wegener Institute

Posted by Daniel Cressey
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Posted on behalf of Heidi Ledford

A neurotoxin made by marine diatoms may be lingering in ocean sediments well after the algal bloom has faded, a new study has found. The results suggest that the toxin, called domoic acid, may impact deep sea ecosystems in unexpected ways.

Domoic acid, produced by an unassuming pinnate diatom called Pseudo-nitzschia, can cause short-term memory loss and seizures in animals and the seafood-loving humans who eat them. (The sea lion shown at right is thankfully on the mend after being treated at the Marine Mammal Care Center at Fort McArthur in San Pedro, CA.) But domoic acid is perhaps best known for triggering a rash of bizarre bird behavior in Capitola, California in the early 1960’s – an event believed to be the inspiration for Alfred Hitchcock’s movie The Birds.

A study published yesterday by Nature Geoscience (subscription required) shows that toxin-laden diatom carcasses sink rapidly in the ocean and accumulate in sediment up to 800 meters below the surface. The results suggest that bottom feeders could also get a nasty dose of the poison, but monitoring programmes only test for domoic acid in surface water algal blooms, notes Reuters.

Image: Astrid Schnetzer

Posted by Heidi Ledford
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“If this was a year ago, the outcome would have been a totally different situation.”
Jake Chait, of the I.M. Chait Gallery in New York, explains that the credit crunch has even reached the fossil market, as a 9-foot-long dryosaurus skeleton fails to reach its reserve price (NY Daily News).

“I truly believe that this is a different time. The opportunities are enormous, despite all the economic and other challenges.”
Jane Lubchenco, the new administrator of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, talks to the NY Times Dot Earth blog.

2009 Mission Madness
NASA devises a silly game to waste time one. Go Skylab!

Posted by Daniel Cressey
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Details of Charles Darwin’s student days have been revealed by a selection of bills from his time at Cambridge. The University has just released six record books detailing much of Darwin’s time at Christ’s College.

“Before this we didn’t really know very much about Darwin’s daily life at Cambridge at all,” says John van Wyhe, who heads a project which puts all Darwin’s works online. “It had been assumed that there were no significant traces of his time here left to discover, which meant that we were ironically short of information about one of the most formative parts of his life.”

The books show that Darwin enjoyed, says the Cambridge press release, “all the trappings one would expect of a 19th century gentleman, paying service-people to carry out tasks such as stoking his fire and polishing his shoes”. In addition to his fees, Darwin paid a bed-maker, a chimney-sweep, someone to polish his shoes, and various other traders.

All in all, Darwin paid £636 over his three years at Cambridge, plus £14 for his BA and £12 for his MA. The Sun newspaper notes, “Naturalist Charles Darwin spent more money on designer shoes and plush drapes than he did on books while at university, documents reveal.”

Darwin's student bills at Christ's College, Cambridge are available at the The Complete Work of Charles Darwin Online website.

Posted by Daniel Cressey
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UK scientists are about to embark on a project to scale up the production of synthetic blood from stem cells.

A team led by the Scottish National Blood Transfusion Service will try to use stem cells from human embryos not needed in IVF treatment to produce type-O negative blood. This blood would then be free of any risk from viruses.

“In principle, we could provide an unlimited supply of blood in this way,” says Marc Turner, director of the Scottish National Blood Transfusion Service and a researcher at the University of Edinburgh (BBC).

“We should have proof of principle in the next few years, but a realistic treatment is probably five to 10 years away.”

The Independent notes:

Scientists in other countries, notably Sweden, France and Australia, are also known to be working on the development of synthetic blood from embryonic stem cells. And last year, a team from a US biotechnology company, Advanced Cell Technology, announced that it has been able to produce billions of functioning red blood cells from embryonic stem cells.

In a separate article the paper points out that ACT managed to make up to 100 billion red blood cells, but that a litre of donated blood contains around 5 trillion cells.

Site: Alamy

Posted by Daniel Cressey
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Scuttled ship endangers marine science
Weak pound forces UK to postpone building of research ship.

Pancake ice takes over the Arctic
Researchers work to put changing ice types into climate models.

Trapped under ice
Nature talks to the team behind a risky submarine mission to map the underside of an Antarctic glacier.

Posted by Daniel Cressey
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Medical research in the UK could face a bout of belt-tightening, after the country’s major research charities warned they have been hit hard by the financial crisis.

The Independent is reporting that the Wellcome Trust, Cancer Research UK, the British Heart Foundation and Leukaemia Research may cut their research spending after losing billions in the credit crunch.

For the first time in its history Cancer Research UK’s fundraising income has dropped, and is £17 million down in the last 12 months, says the paper. The British Heart Foundation is down £10 million and Leukaemia Research and the Wellcome Trust have both seen their investments fall as a result of stock market fluctuations.

“In common with most other UK charities, the BHF has been affected by the recent financial turmoil,” says the British Heart Foundation’s chief executive, Peter Hollins. “The year ahead will be characterised by a cautious approach to maintaining investment across our prevention, care and research activities.”

See also
Nature News: Recession Watch special

Posted by Daniel Cressey
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Alaska’s Mount Redoubt volcano began erupting yesterday, according to the Alaskan Volcano Observatory.

“As of 2:00AM March 23, 2009, AVO has recorded FOUR large explosions at Redoubt volcano,” says the Observatory.

Redoubt has been looking angry since February, but so far there are no reported casualties (AFP, AP). The picture below shows the Redoubt summit crater on 21 March, just hours before the eruptions began.

Image: Cyrus Read / Alaska Volcano Observatory / US Geological Survey

Posted by Daniel Cressey
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Steve Koonin, the former provost of Caltech and current chief scientist of BP, has been tapped by President Obama to serve as undersecretary of science at the Department of Energy. He would replace Ray Orbach in a position that oversees the department's science portfolio, including running the national laboratory system. The position requires Senate confirmation.

The appointment had been rumoured in Washington for some time and comes as little surprise; Koonin is a longtime colleague of Steve Chu, the new secretary of energy. Both Koonin and Chu played major roles in setting up a $500-million industry-university alliance between BP, the University of California at Berkeley, and the University of Illinois. That agreement, inked in 2007, brought some unease over the industry partnership with the traditionally left-leaning academic enclave of Berkeley (see Nature story here). So far, though, the Energy Biosciences Institute has shown little evidence of nefarious industry tampering in its work on next-generation biofuels.

The Obama announcement also included the line: "President Obama also announced that Steve Isakowitz, the Chief Financial Officer at the Department of Energy, will continue serving in his current role." No doubt this was to squash down persistent rumours that Isakowitz, a former top budget officer at NASA, might get tapped for the post of NASA administrator -- one Obama has yet to fill.

It's a plenty busy time to be at DOE in any job; Isakowitz is scrambling to help figure out how to spend the nearly $40 billion allocated in stimulus funding for the agency.

Posted by Alex Witze
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A "State of the Birds" report released by the US federal government yesterday estimates that a third of the United States’ roughly 800 bird species are in danger.

The report is, in a word, depressing. It is the summation of a slew of depressing bird censuses, which together encompass 40 years worth of data. (Here are a couple of our previous posts on bird losses in the US and elsewhere.) US Interior Secretary Ken Salazar said the report “should be a call to action” (New York Times).

Half of the shorebird species have declined over the last four decades, and birds that breed in grasslands have dropped 40%. Also in trouble: any native bird on the islands of Hawai’i (including the Hawaiian crow, shown at right), which are threatened not only by human encroachment but by an army of invasive species. Kenneth Rosenberg of the Cornell Lab of Ornithology called Hawai’i “a borderline ecological disaster” (Reuters).

The usual culprits are to blame: loss of habitat, pollution, etc. But one Associated Press article provides a bizarre spin on the report by pinning much of the blame on alternative energy efforts. True, the report does mention wind turbines, but to my quick read it looks like much more space is spent discussing the consequences of traditional energy pursuits, such as oil spills and mountaintop removal.

Image: US Fish and Wildlife Service

Posted by Heidi Ledford
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“This behaviour suggests it is aware of its susceptibility to the harsh African sun, and adapted a unique behaviour to improve its chances of survival.”
A pink albino elephant is already learning to stay out of the sun, says Mike Chase, of conservation charity Elephants Without Borders (BBC).

“This mouth is kind of nasty. I always use the analogy of a pencil sharpener.”
Jean-Bernard Caron, associate curator of invertebrate paleontology at the Royal Ontario Museum, discusses new research on an ancient sea beastie (Toronto Star).

“It was like a low-stakes X Prize for music…”
Wired presents the first annual Guthman Musical Instrument Competition in pictures.

“It carried out all tasks ... without any parts of it making any mistakes.”
Iran’s recently launched satellite has carried out its mission, says an expert known only as Ebrahimi. What that mission was is still a mystery (Boston Globe).

Posted by Daniel Cressey
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VIDEO: Carbon nanotubes make artificial muscle
Electricity flexes strong, bendy aerogel.

UK researchers lament grant ban
A string of unsuccessful proposals means being barred from making further applications.

Promiscuous antibody targets cancer
Single molecule can bind firmly to two different antigens.

Posted by Daniel Cressey
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For the first time in 25 years, a majority of Americans would prioritise the economy ahead of the environment, according to pollsters Gallup.

Just over 1,000 adults were asked:

With which one of these statements about the economy and the environment do you most agree:
- Protection of the environment should be give priority, even at the risk of curbing economic growth
- Economic growth should be given priority, even if the environment suffers to some extent?

Here are the results:

“The percentage of Americans choosing the environment slipped below 50% in 2003 and 2004, but was still higher than the percentage choosing the economy,” says Gallup. “Sentiments have moved up and down over the last several years, but this year, the percentage of Americans choosing the environment fell all the way to 42%, while the percentage choosing the economy jumped to 51%.”

Clearly the financial crisis is behind this shift. Of course many would say that the majority of people in all Western countries were clearly not prioritising the environment over the economy in most of their decisions prior to 2009.

Graph: Gallup

Posted by Daniel Cressey
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Madagascar is in crisis after the African island’s military deposed president Marc Ravalomanana and installed rival Andry Rajoelina in his place.

“A lot of people have been killed, far more than reported in the local and Western press, and the situation has gone from bad to worse,” Steven Goodman, a biologist at Chicago’s Field Museum who is currently in Madagascar, told the ScienceInsider blog.

Amazingly, he adds, “We are still doing field work, but this is rather complicated.”

Ecologists are worried that island’s unique wildlife may be under threat, as conservation is heavily linked to tourism.

“The 400 million dollar tourism industry has just been levelled, and that means trouble ahead for the forests of Madagascar,” one local conservationist told the MongaBay news service, which is keeping his identity secret. “This coup d’etat undermines everything we have worked for for 30 years.”

BBC reporter Richard Black writes:

There are two principal worries; firstly, that a power vacuum and civil unrest will create a situation in which local structures break down, allowing "harvesting" of species (plant or animal) that would be forbidden in more peaceful times - and secondly, that Mr Rajoelina (who has yet to unveil a policy platform on most issues) may turn away from the sustainable development path mapped out under his predecessor.
…
In two previous periods of unrest (1991 and 2001), [Frank Hawkins, Conservation International’s vice-president for Africa,] told me, turn-a-quick-buck "harvesting" is exactly what had happened - with rosewood and the big-headed turtle (now critically endangered) among the prime targets.

Image: NASA

Posted by Daniel Cressey
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Brazil’s Supreme Court has sided with indigenous tribes in a vicious dispute over the future of a huge swathe of Amazon rainforest.

The court voted not to alter the current boundaries of the 4 million acre Raposa Serra do Sol reserve and affirmed the tribes’ rights to the land, despite heavy pressure from farmers and local leaders. The decision could set a precedent for other such reserves and prevent the conversion of jungle to agricultural land.

“The basis we established in this case, the conditions and procedures, will serve as a guide for other disputes,” says court president Gilmar Mendes (Bloomberg). “We are putting an end to the issues surrounding similar cases.”

A number of farms currently exist inside the reserve in Roraima state, and attempts to evict them last year were met with serious violence.

“There is no peaceful solution,” says Nelson Itikawa, president of the Roraima Rice Growers Association (Agencia Brasil, via AP). “It’s possible there will be a conflict – there are people who will lose control.”

Marcio Meira, president of the National Indian Foundation, told AFP, “This decision is a great victory for Indians and enshrines the rights of indigenous peoples.”

Image: Raposa Serra do Sol / Agencia Brasil under Creative Commons

Posted by Daniel Cressey
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Posted on behalf of Roberta Kwok

Stimulus package dollars have barely begun to flow out of US science agencies, but agency representatives are already being pressed to pledge that they will closely monitor spending for waste and fraud.

At a hearing today, members of the US House Committee on Science and Technology asked "accountability officers" from four science-funding agencies how they would guard against mismanagement of Recovery Act money.

"None of our witnesses today have done wrong," said Rep. Brad Miller (Democrat, North Carolina), chairman of the Subcommittee on Investigations and Oversight. "But we want to hear from you how you're going to do right."

Continue reading "Making sure NSF isn't the next AIG" »

Posted by Alex Witze
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Barack Obama's top science appointments so far have been confirmed by the Senate. John Holdren is now the director for the Office of Science and Technology Policy, and Jane Lubchenco the head of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration.

Jay Rockfeller (Democrat, West Virginia), chair of the Senate committee on commerce, science and transportation, praised the confirmations. The Associated Press reports that Holdren celebrated at his office this evening.

Obama's nomination of Peggy Hamburg as FDA commissioner is pending confirmation. Appointments for NASA administrator and head of the National Institutes of Health have yet to be named.

Posted by Alex Witze
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“Sir Elton John will focus his address on the HIV/AIDS epidemic, how biotechnology has influenced prevention and treatment of the disease and an outlook of the challenges and solutions that lie ahead.”
The Bio International Convention explains why the Rocket Man has been invited to give its keynote speech.

“I am pleased with the result, and I hope this sets a precedent that will support anyone who shares my views on climate change and the environment.”
Tim Nicholson reacts to a judge's ruling that he can claim he was unfairly dismissed from his job due to his “philosophical belief in climate change” (Independent).

“In using robotic fish we are building on a design created by hundreds of millions of years’ worth of evolution which is incredibly energy efficient.”
Rory Doyle, a scientist at the BMT Group consultancy firm, explains why robot carp could be measuring pollution in a port in Spain (Daily Telegraph).

“It is our hope that it will come to the forefront of public attention along with Hawaii's other numerous endangered plants.”
Patrick Leonard, of the Fish and Wildlife Service, discusses the Phyllostegia hispida vine from the island of Molokai, which has just been listed as an endangered species in the US (AP).

Posted by Daniel Cressey
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Nature’s intrepid reporter Geoff Brumfiel (pictured right) has been hard at work in Pittsburgh at the American Physical Society’s March Meeting.

Here are some highlights.

Black holes in the lab
It’s not really the sort of thing that you’d expect to find at a meeting which is mainly about materials, but I heard an interesting talk about recreating black hole jets in the laboratory today. For those unfamiliar with what I‘m talking about, swirling material around the top of a black hole often gets ejected in a long narrow stream. The process is complex and guided largely by the behavior of the hot, ionized gas in the jet, known as plasma.

No limits imaging
Not many of the rules of physics are actually set in stone, but the diffraction limit is one of them. In imaging terms, the limit determines the smallest discernable feature you can make out through a microscope. It’s etched on this memorial to the 19th century German physicist Ernst Abbe, located in Jena (right). But as the Bible proves, rules set in stone are made for breaking…

Iron pnictides. WTF?
Pretty much anything with iron pnictides in the title is guaranteed to draw a crowd at this year’s meeting.

You can read all about his adventures over on Nature’s In the Field blog, where you can also find out what this diagram is all about:

Posted by Daniel Cressey
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A “perfect storm” of food, energy and water shortages could hit by 2030, the UK government’s chief scientific advisor is warning.

John Beddington told the Sustainable Development UK 09 conference in London, that the world’s growing population could push up demand for food and energy by 50% and water by 30 to 40% in 11 years (BBC, Daily Mail, Daily Telegraph).

“It’s a perfect storm. There’s not going to be a complete collapse, but things will start getting really worrying if we don't tackle these problems,” he says.

There is still hope though, says Beddington. “The reason for actually raising this issue now is that now is the time to think very seriously about how we address this combination of problems,” he told the BBC.

Image: I couldn’t find a photo of Beddington, so here’s Nostradamus, via Wikipedia

Posted by Daniel Cressey
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Pharma company AstraZeneca buried a clinical study that was unfavourable to one of its drugs, leaving an 8 year gap until the same results were revealed by another study, according to information released in US lawsuits.

Antipsychotic Seroquel was thought to be better than older drugs for years, while results from ‘Study 15’ were kept out of the public domain, the Washington Post reports. According to documents released as part of lawsuits against AstraZeneca, a company strategist praised efforts to put “positive spin” on “this cursed study”.

AstraZeneca notes that the US Food and Drug Administration had access to Study 15 when it approved Seroquel. A spokesman defended the Seroquel research to the Post, saying that the drug’s labelling noted the weight gain and diabetes.

Fierce Pharma says:

Stories about "buried" drug data have become shockingly common--or, we should say, so common that they're no longer shocking. … On the heels of study-burying allegations against many of AstraZeneca's rivals--Eli Lilly (Zyprexa), Pfizer (Neurontin), GlaxoSmithKline (Paxil), among others--the never-publicized, filed-away Study 15 seems like just one of a crowd.

That fact says more about jaded attitudes than it does about Study 15 itself…

See also
Previous Washington Post stories on Seroquel
A University of Minnesota psychiatrist’s role in the Seroquel story, in the Pioneer Press
The Great Beyond’s 2008 Interactive Pharma Scandal Story

Posted by Daniel Cressey
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The rush to manufacture drugs in living organisms continues. Hot on the heals of the drug-goat, a team of European researchers have created transgenic tobacco plants that produce a potential treatment for diseases such as diabetes.

Mario Pezzotti, of the University of Verona, and colleagues successfully engineered the plant to produce anti-inflammatory compound interleukin-10, they report in BMC Biotechnology. Now they are going to feed these tobacco leaves to mice with autoimmune diseases to see if they are an effective treatment.

“Transgenic plants are attractive systems for the production of therapeutic proteins because they offer the possibility of large scale production at low cost, and they have low maintenance requirements,” says Pezzotti (press release). “The fact that they can be eaten, which delivers the drug where it is needed, thus avoiding lengthy purification procedures, is another plus compared with traditional drug synthesis.”

The press release, with considerable understatement, notes that tobacco “isn’t famous for its health benefits”. However, Pezzotti says it has many advantages for genetic modifiers such as himself.

“Tobacco is a fantastic plant because it is easy to transform genetically and you can easily regenerate an entire plant from a single cell,” he told Reuters.

Surely though it’s time to start considering the end user of any of these products.

The drug-laced milk from GM goats didn’t make it past the regulators in the US, but would consumers rather drink milk or eat tobacco leaves? The scientist who can make a GM chocolate that contains drugs is going to make a killing…

Image: Getty

Posted by Daniel Cressey
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Posted for Quirin Schiermeier

Two papers in Nature today shed light on the possible future behaviour of the West Antarctic ice sheet (WAIS), complete loss of which would produce a worldwide rise in sea level of around 5 metres.

The two teams - one using a high-resolution ice sheet model, the other looking at glacial records contained in seafloor sediment – independently arrive at similar conclusions: The WAIS has intermittently melted during the past five million years or so, and its oscillations follow a 40,000 year cycle in the Earth’s axial tilt. Small variations in tilt – called the obliquity of the ecliptic – result in reduced or increased amounts of sunlight reaching the poles, thus pacing the succession of ice ages and warm periods.

During the warmest interglacial phases the WAIS has in the past episodically collapsed entirely, the studies suggest (Editor's Summary). Global temperatures around 3 degrees Celsius warmer than today seem to have sufficed to initiate the transition from grounded ice to open waters in the Ross Bay, reports the team led by Tim Naish of Victoria University in Wellington, New Zealand, who analysed a sediment core recovered from beneath the Ross ice shelf by the ANDRILL programme. Model simulations suggest the transition from full glacial to intermediate state (such as today’s) to nearly ice-free conditions can proceed rapidly. In the warmest ‘super-interglacials’, such as one around 1.07 million years ago, it took only around thousand years for the WAIS to collapse, report David Pollard and Robert DeConto of Pennsylvania State University in the second study.

Continue reading "Antarctica: Memento melting" on Nature's Climate Feedback blog»

Posted by Daniel Cressey
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This week the Nature Podcast is making tiny components for molecular machines, investigating heat flow in the Earth's crust, modelling the collapse of an Antarctic ice sheet, and looking into the current state of science communication.

Posted by Daniel Cressey
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New Zealand to consolidate agricultural research
Proposed merger aims to create world-class research institute.

Society sues journal over right to reply
Row between Max Planck Society and Wiley escalates.

Cognitive enhancement drug may also cause addiction
Modafinil's effect on the brain suggests it could be addictive for some.

Posted by Daniel Cressey
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The pope came under fierce attack this week after he suggested that condom use might hamper the fight against AIDS in Africa.

The pontiff, who is currently visiting Africa, reportedly told journalists that AIDS is “a tragedy that cannot be overcome by money alone, that cannot be overcome through the distribution of condoms, which can even increase the problem” (BBC).

That drew angry criticism from health experts. The French foreign ministry said his statements pose “a threat to public health policies and the duty to protect human life” (Bloomberg).

Continue reading "Pope under fire over condom comments" »

Posted by Daniel Cressey
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The Tevatron show at the 'ski meetings' in Europe continues. Last week, the collider's two main competing experiments, CDF and D0, united to identify a region of masses where the Higgs can't exist.
This week, the news is that D0 says that a strange excess of muons also doesn't exist -- which puts the experiment at loggerheads with CDF, which, in the fall, published its strange muon signal after it couldn't explain the signal away. Muons are a heavier cousin to the electron, and, if the signal is real, it could be a harbinger of new physics.
But the D0 result would put the kibosh on that. However, the D0 result is preliminary, says Quantum Diaries Survivor, who had the scoop. The experiments are very different and will take some time for D0 to exactly match what CDF filtered for, or for CDF to figure out why they've got an anomaly.

Posted by Eric Hand
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Just what, exactly, are those blobs on the lander legs of Phoenix, the erstwhile mission to Mars' northern plain? In our December feature coverage of the mission, we raised Nilton Renno's incredible claim: that the deliquescent salt perchlorate (one of the mission's most surprising finds), lowers the melting point of ice so much that droplets of briny water grew on the lander's legs. While there is plenty of evidence for water ice on Mars -- and evidence also that this water flowed in Mars' geologic past -- this would be the first evidence for liquid water in the present, at the surface. Phoenix took pictures that showed the blobs growing over time, and, even more provocatively, moving (but not yet devouring).
The hypothesis is percolating (perchlorating?) through the media again, now that Nilton, a University of Michigan professor, is preparing to talk on the subject next week at LPSC. As far as I can tell, little has changed since December: Nilton says that the conditions for briny water under the lander make thermodynamic sense, whereas other members of the Phoenix science team say no, the legs are too cold, and those blobs are just nuggets of frost.
It'll be a shame if this terrific scientific dispute can't be resolved. Let's hope something comes out of LPSC next week. Stay tuned for more from our "In the Field" blog.

Posted by Eric Hand
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“If there aren’t investment opportunities which compete with other projects we won't put money into it.”
Linda Cook, oil giant Shell’s executive director of gas and power, says the company is backing biofuels over wind, solar and hydro power, which are not cost-competitive with other options (Guardian).

“One hundred kW threshold has been viewed traditionally as a proof of principle for ‘weapons grade’ power levels for high-energy lasers.”
Dan Wildt, vice president of directed energy systems at Northrop Grumman, says electric lasers are now at ‘battlefield strength’ (Wired).

“There is nothing like a ‘shark horror’ story to quicken an old journo’s pulse rate.”
Australian journalist Joe Morris explains how he became ‘the leading light of the ‘Shark Scare’ story’ (Ranters blog).

Posted by Daniel Cressey
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Tiger poachers watch out – you can’t hide from algorithms. Software developed by Ullas Karanth of the Wildlife Conservation Society’s India programme and other conservationists can ID a tiger skin – whether it is in possession of a body or not – by comparison with a database of photos taken of wild tigers by camera traps.

The software builds up a 3-D image of the tiger from its stripes, which are unique to each tiger. This allows tigers that might have been snapped multiple times to be ID’d properly, helping conservationists to more accurately track tiger populations.

The software can also match the stripes from a skin with the photos from the database, making it easier to catch poachers.

Continue reading "Tiger stripes, tiger stripes burning bright" »

Posted by Katharine Sanderson
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Space shuttle Discovery, which launched last week, successfully docked with the International Space Station yesterday.

“Capture confirmed,” said Mike Fincke, station commander, after the successful docking.

“We have a beautiful view of the station,” said pilot Tony Antonelli as the shuttle approached the ISS (Houston Chronicle). Fincke was equally complimentary about the approaching shuttle: “We’ve never seen such a beautiful sight.”

Sadly, NASA has confirmed that the bat which tried to hitch a lift on the shuttle is thought to have perished. In a statement the agency says:

Based on images and video, a wildlife expert who provides support to the [Kennedy Space Center] said the small creature was a free tail bat that likely had a broken left wing and some problem with its right shoulder or wrist. The animal likely perished quickly during Discovery’s climb into orbit.

Image: NASA

Posted by Daniel Cressey
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A billion pound ‘boffin bailout’ is on the cards in the UK, with the government department in charge of research apparently seeking a cash injection to keep academics happy and boost the economy.

According to the BBC, the Department for Innovation, Universities and Skills is lobbying the UK Treasury to fund a wish list of proposals drawn up by funding bodies to the tune of £1 billion. These proposals might include research funding, new laboratories, and funding for young scientists, and would mirror to some extent the US bailout’s cash injection for science.

The BBC says no one in an official position would comment while negotiations with the Treasury were ongoing, so this one should be firmly stamped ‘speculation’.

However the BBC notes that, “Privately, many research leaders are determined to ensure highly trained scientists and engineers don't get lost during the downturn. They are telling ministers and officials at Dius that additional spending on research grants or post-doctoral fellowships could help ensure that the UK retains talent for when the economy picks up.”

News of the attempt to bring about a boffin bailout come just a week after the Guardian announced that a group of British research universities were trying to get ministers to create a “£1bn fund to finance the early stages of university spin-outs”.

Surely a bloggers bailout is only a matter of time now?

Image: Alamy

Posted by Daniel Cressey
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Posted on behalf of Roberta Kwok

If you buy it, you're responsible for the carbon emissions. That's the latest tack taken by China's top climate change negotiator, who said Monday that his country should not be held responsible for emissions produced while manufacturing goods for other nations.

Li Gao said that 15-20% of China's carbon emissions are produced making exported goods. "This share of emissions should be taken by the consumers but not the producers," he said at talks hosted by the Pew Center on Global Climate Change in Washington DC (BBC).

Representatives from the European Union and Japan said they did not agree with Gao's assessment. Countries should be responsible for emissions from their own territories, said Artur Runge-Metzger, head of the climate change strategy and international negotiations unit at the European Commission (Associated Press).

But a Wall Street Journal blog notes that an academic study published last year suggests Gao's strategy might be more accurate. If you tally countries' emissions based on consumption rather than production, the United States' emissions go up by about 7%, while China's go down by about 6%.

The talks are a prelude to a December conference in Copenhagen, where countries will begin negotiating a new international climate change treaty. The US and China both refused to sign the Kyoto Protocol, set to expire in 2012 (AP). China is currently the United States' top importer (Reuters).

Image: NREL

Posted by Alex Witze
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“I'm not going to answer that question. I am a Christian, and I don't think anybody asking a question about my religion is appropriate.”
Gary Goodyear, Canada’s federal Minister of State for Science and Technology, refuses to answer the question ‘do you believe in evolution’ (Globe and Mail).

“We will not meet the challenges of climate change without the far wider use of civil nuclear power.”
UK prime minister Gordon Brown addresses a conference in London (Reuters).

“This structure is a true conundrum, and certainly worthwhile investigating further, because it forms part of the historic and cultural seascape of the area.”
Ziggy Otto, of Pembrokeshire College, comments on a huge ancient fish trap discovered off the Welsh coast (BBC).

Posted by Daniel Cressey
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Posted for Philip Ball

Searching for the perfect putt to improve your golf handicap? It’s all just a matter of finding the right physics, according to Robert Grober of Yale University. In a preprint paper he says that the mechanics of a putting stroke for top golfers can be understood by assuming that the motion is that of a pendulum, driven by the force of the golfer’s body movements to oscillate at twice its natural frequency.

A putting stroke clearly looks like a simple pendulum swing. But it is a driven pendulum, propelled by muscle power rather than swinging passively under gravity. This force first creates a backswing, then a downswing to strike the ball. Grober has studied footage of some leading golfers, and finds that the movement has some constant characteristics: the putting head is moving at constant speed (not accelerating) when it hits the ball, the total duration of the stroke doesn’t really change much as the intended length of the putt increases, and the ratio of the duration of the backswing to that of the downswing is usually around 2.

All this, he says, can be understood if the club’s motion is that of a pendulum driven as indicated above. There’s no suggestion that golfers know any of this – they have apparently been led by experience and intuition to this type of movement.

But why does it make for a good putt? Grober thinks it is because the results are relatively insensitive to the driving force. That’s to say, because the motion is basically resonant, being governed by the mechanics of pendulum motion, variations in how the golfer controls the driving force throughout the putt don’t alter very much the velocity of the club head. What matters, at least in terms of the length of the putt, is how big the backswing is, not what comes after. This means that there’s less scope for error: even if you don’t apply quite the same force, the resulting stroke is much the same.

How do you develop a stroke like this? Grober explains: “one can get a feel for this tempo by continuously and repeatedly swinging the club back and forth at resonance, in exactly the same manner one would swing a pendulum. The duration of the actual stroke is exactly the amount of time it takes for this pendulum like motion to swing the putter half a cycle”. Now you know.

Image: by DeaPeaJay via Flickr under attribution-share alike 2.0 generic

Posted by Daniel Cressey
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After a slight delay, the European Space Agency’s GOCE probe has lifted off.

For more on the Gravity field and steady-state Ocean Circulation Explorer, see: Gravity mission to launch.

Posted by Daniel Cressey
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The most surprising science story of 2008 has returned to the news today, with a follow up to the study that appeared to show cows have a magnetic sense.

As we reported last year:

An analysis of more than 8,000 cows claims they have a statistically significant preference to align themselves in a north-south direction. The team behind this study has also found a similar preference in deer, and believes the animals must be sensing the Earth's magnetic field.

Of course the researchers realised a claim like this would likely meet with some scepticism. So they decided to look at cows that happened to live near power lines, and the magnetic fields that come with them. As Nature’s story from last year noted, at-the-time-unpublished work seemed to show that cows near power lines were not aligned north-south.

This work, utilising satellite and aerial photographs of cows - and field observations of deer - near power lines has now been published.

“Whatever the underlying mechanism, our results provide further evidence that the recently described spontaneous directional preference in grazing and resting cattle and deer represents a case of magnetic alignment,” write Hynek Burda, of the University of Duisburg-Essen, and colleagues in PNAS. “The fact that animals grazing under or near high-voltage power lines were not commonly aligned but exhibited distinct alignment patterns beneath or in the vicinity of power lines trending in various magnetic directions clearly rules out a role of the sun compass in alignment behaviour of ruminants.”

The article will be available here later this week.

Headline watch
How Udderly Odd - TinySci
Power lines spark interest over effect on animals – Yorkshire Post
High-voltage power lines short-circuit cows' satnav – Scotsman
No bull: High voltage power lines can affect which direction grazing cows choose to face - KFSM

Image: paper author J. Cerveny

Posted by Daniel Cressey
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Posted for Quirin Schiermeier

The deportation from Turkey of two environmental campaigners who had planned to participate in the World Water Forum this week in Istanbul has prompted sharp protest.

Turkish police yesterday afternoon arrested Payal Parekh and Ann-Kathrin Schneider with the California-based campaign group International Rivers after the two had unfurled a banner reading ‘No Risky Dams’ at the opening ceremony of the World Water Forum. Parekh and Schneider were detained all night, while lawyers negotiated with the Turkish authorities over their release. Early this morning police escorted them to the airport. Parekh and Schneider are now on their way back to Germany and the United States. They were banned from re-entering Turkey for two years.

“We strongly condemn the aggressive response by the Turkish police to yesterday’s peaceful protest,” Peter Bosshard, policy director with International Rivers wrote in a statement from Istanbul. “We ask the World Water Council to stand up for freedom of speech, and to make it clear to the Turkish government that the detention and deportation of peaceful protesters is unacceptable.”

It was not the only incident. Turkish police forces had yesterday also used water cannons against a crowd protesting outside the conference area against global water politics. The World Water Forum, a trade show and policy conference organized every three years by the World Water Council, this year boasts some 15,000 participants.

Posted by Daniel Cressey
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We have two ancient beasts for your delectation today, one large, one small.

Let’s start with the big one, and it really is a monster. Researchers from the University of Oslo’s Natural History Museum have uncovered the skull of a 147 million year-old marine reptile that measured 15 metres in length.

The pliosaur would have weighed in at 45 tonnes, say the researchers. That’s fifteen times the (fictional) weight of Jaws!

“There is nothing really comparable in the sea today,” says Jorn Hurum, one of the team behind the find (NY Times). “Thank God for that,” says I.

Continue reading "Little and large" »

Posted by Daniel Cressey
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Times are not good for the biotech industry, a whole host of people are warning this week.

According to the European industry trade group, one in five small bio-tech firms could go to the wall this year. Interviews with industry figures conducted for the European Biopharmaceutical Enterprises group suggest that over 50 % of small and medium sized firms are under threat.

The major problem is that many of these companies are still in the early loss making stages of their development and credit is in short supply, says Reuters.

EBE president Carlo Incerti says one solution could be a bailout from the European Investment Bank. “This is not just about saving jobs in the short term, it’s about protecting Europe’s capacity to drive medical innovation,” he says (press release).

Things are no better in the US...

Continue reading "Bye-bye-biotech industry?" »

Posted by Daniel Cressey
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Big interest in heavy drugs
The drug industry is seeking profits by modifying hydrogen in existing medications.

Incoming chief to tackle woes of US food and drug agency
Obama nominates Margaret 'Peggy' Hamburg as FDA chief.

US agencies brace for flood of grant applications
Online system has high risk of failure, officials say.

European clinical trial rules under fire
European medical research strangled by red tape, scientists warn.

Posted by Daniel Cressey
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Update: A Google rep reminded me that to get the nearly 'live' images, you'll have to view the Themis data through the new version of Google Earth. The link below is to the Themis 'Live from Mars' site, which doesn't work the same way.

At the end of last week, the Google Earth and Maps team announced a new feature in Google Earth: the ability to see "live" data from Themis, the infrared imager on the Mars Odyssey orbiter.
(Note the qualifying quotation marks around "live" though -- it's still a few days behind. When I looked this afternoon, it was streaming images from 1 February.)
It's a great idea, however, and it shows how the Internet has put the public side by side with scientists in the front row of the movie theater. This summer, the Phoenix mission should be commended for doing a similar thing, putting raw images up on the Web just as fast as they got to Earth.
Sadly, Phoenix transmits no more. And one might also wonder how long 'live from Mars' might live with Odyssey, which is getting a bit long in the tooth (it began orbiting in 2001). Odyssey last week underwent a slightly risky reboot to make sure that engineers could transfer some of its operations to backup systems if the need arises.

Posted by Eric Hand
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For “a nobody and a nothing”, neuroanatomy professor Jonathan Leo sure seems to have riled the editorial staff at JAMA.

The tempest began when Leo, a professor at Lincoln Memorial University in Harrogate, Tennessee, wrote a letter to the British Medical Journal (BMJ) about a paper published by JAMA last May. The JAMA paper's authors supported the use of an antidepressant to prevent depression in patients recovering from stroke. The antidepressant, a selective serotonin reuptake inhibitor called escitalopram (Lexapro), is produced by Forest Pharmaceuticals. But in his letter, Leo noted that lead author Robert Robinson of the University of Iowa had been a speaker for Forest Pharmaceuticals four years earlier – a conflict of interest that had not been disclosed in the original paper. Leo used this as an example of how “the scientific machinery is broken” by hidden conflicts of interest and the medical culture that has nurtured them.

Shortly thereafter, JAMA published a letter from Robinson acknowledging the conflict of interest and blaming the omission on the usual culprit: "errors of memory". (Kudos to the Knight Science Journalism Tracker for heaving a weary sigh at that one.) Meanwhile, according to the WSJ Health Blog, JAMA’s editors also took the time to make a few phone calls to Leo and his supervisors to question his decision to publish the letter in BMJ rather than allowing editors to first handle the matter confidentially at JAMA. Leo says the phone call to him was threatening (“You are banned from JAMA from life. You will be sorry,” he quoted JAMA executive deputy editor Phil Fontanarosa as saying); JAMA denies Leo's account of the call.

But JAMA’s editor-in-chief, Catherine DeAngelis let her anger show in an interview with the WSJ. “This guy is a nobody and a nothing,” she said. As for the content of her phone calls to Leo’s superiors: “it is none of your business.”

Posted by Heidi Ledford
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The launch of the European Space Agency’s GOCE probe has been aborted.

The countdown to the launch was stopped after a service tower failed to move clear of the rocket set to carry the probe into space from the Plesetsk Cosmodrome in Russia. GOCE had already experienced problems with navigation systems, which delayed the launch from last September.

According to media reports, there were only 7 seconds left on the clock when someone pressed what I imagine was a giant red button with the word ‘ABORT’ on it.

As reported in Nature last week, the Gravity field and steady-state Ocean Circulation Explorer will measure Earth’s gravity field, providing data for oceanographers and climate modellers:

Over its expected lifetime of 20 months, GOCE will map tiny variations in Earth's gravity field that stem from the position of mountains and ocean trenches, and from small density variations in the planet's interior. Three pairs of cube-shaped accelerometers, in free fall inside the satellite, will make the measurements at five times the precision of GRACE, the US–German Gravity Recovery and Climate Experiment that has been orbiting Earth since 2002.

At the moment ESA is not saying much.

Image: launch tower holding GOCE / ESA

Posted by Daniel Cressey
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Posted for Declan Butler

Roll over Sartre. French physicist and philosopher, Bernard d’Espagnat, today picked up the £1 million Templeton Prize awarded annually by the John Templeton Foundation to “honour a living person who has made an exceptional contribution to affirming life's spiritual dimension, whether through insight, discovery, or practical works".

The award notes that the 87 year old d’Espagnat – professor emeritus of theoretical physics at the University of Paris-Sud, and a former senior scientist at CERN – was a well known researcher in quantum physics from the mid-1960s through the early 1980's.

Continue reading "Schrödinger's God" »

Posted by Daniel Cressey
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New Yorkers beware! A new study published in Nature Geoscience says the north-eastern US coast will be in more trouble from global warming than previously believed.

Looking at the predictions from a whole set of different climate models, researchers Jianjun Yin, Michael Schlesinger and Ronald Stouffer found that changes in ocean circulation will result in higher sea levels in the region, over and above expected global sea level changes. Depending on whether greenhouse gas emissions are low or high, an additional rise of between 15 and 21 cm can be expected by 2100, they say.

“Some parts of lower Manhattan are only 1.5 meters above sea level,” says Yin, a researcher at Florida State University (National Geographic). “Twenty centimetres of extra rise would pose a threat to this region.”

Continue reading "Will warming wash-away Wall Street?" »

Posted by Daniel Cressey
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A BBC documentary is claiming that the famous Egyptian queen Cleopatra may have been at least part-African, rather than Greek.

The claim hinges on a skeleton that maybe Cleopatra’s sister Arsinoe, who some suspect was murdered on the orders of her sister. The remains were found at a tomb called ‘The Octagon’ in Ephesus, Turkey.

Continue reading "Cleopatra: maybe African, maybe not" »

Posted by Daniel Cressey
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Space shuttle Discovery took off from Florida yesterday at 7.43 pm, bound for the International Space Station.

“I’ve seen a lot of launches ... and this was the most visually beautiful launch I’ve ever seen. It was just spectacular,” says launch director Mike Leinbach (AP).

That enthusiasm seems to be shared by this man:

Sadly though there was one casualty from the launch. AP reports that a fruit bat had stopped for a rest on the shuttle’s external tank for several hours before launch and “likely perished” (see also space.com’s: Bat Attempts to Stowaway on Space Shuttle).

A rather hearless Leinbach gained cheap laugh at the bat’s expense: “We’re characterizing him as unexpected debris and he’s probably still unexpected debris somewhere.”

Photo credit: NASA/Fletch Hildreth

Posted by Daniel Cressey
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The Obama administration continues to have a hard time finding people pure enough for appointment to federal office.

New Mexico Governor Bill Richardson raised an early warning flag before the new president was even inaugurated, when he asked in early January that his name be withdrawn from consideration as Commerce Secretary--not because he, Richardson, did anything wrong (he said), but because the feds were investigating how one of his political donors got a lucrative state contract. Then came the flap over the relatively small-scale errors in Treasury Secretary Tim Geithner's tax returns--soon followed by the uproar over the considerably larger tax errors made by former Senator Tom Daschle, who in early February was forced to withdraw his nomination as Secretary of Health and Human Services.

And so it has gone, leading an embarrassed White House to tighten and re-tighten its nominee vetting procedures to the point of paralysis. (Geithner is still battling a global financial meltdown solo, without any of his presidentially appointed deputies in place at Treasury.)

Now comes the latest embarrassment: on 12 March Vivek Kundra took a leave of absence from the White House staff just a week after being appointed to the newly created post of US Chief Information Officer (Nature 458, 136; 12 March 2009). It seems that at the office of the District of Columbia's Chief Technology Officer--Kundra's previous job--the FBI had caught a mid-level manager with his hand in the till. The Washington Post has the story.

There was no suggestion by the FBI or anyone else that Kundra had had anything to do with the pilfering, or that he ever had knowledge of it. But the now gun-shy White House was taking no chances: according to an administration spokesman, Kundra is 'on leave until further details become known.'

It's easy to understand why the administration is being ultra-careful: the press, pundits and politicians of Washington love to play 'gotcha!' with stuff like this, happily letting 'unanswered questions' consume all the the capital's available attention. The game is much more fun that dealing with actual problems. It remains to be seen whether Kundra, like other talented individuals before him, will be forced to step aside rather than become 'a distraction' to the administration. And it likewise remains to be seen whether the US government--a government facing multiple world crises simultaneously--has any room for actual human beings who have lived their lives on the real, messy planet Earth.

Posted by Mitch Waldrop
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Posted on behalf of Roberta Kwok

A drug company executive has admitted to faking cancer to avoid a trial over a synthetic blood product.

Howard Richman, former vice-president at Biopure Corp. in Cambridge, Massachusetts, pretended to be his doctor on the phone to convince his lawyer he had colon cancer that was spreading. He also forged a doctor's note saying he was undergoing surgery and chemotherapy, leading a judge to cancel the trial (AP).

The US Securities and Exchange Commission had filed a lawsuit against Richman, the company, and three other Biopure executives alleging that the company had misled investors about the progress of a synthetic blood substitute called Hemopure. The Food and Drug Administration had rejected clinical trials, but the company left investors in the dark (Boston Globe).

Richman pleaded guilty to obstruction of justice in a US District Court in Boston this week. He could face up to 10 years in prison.

Biopure has had its share of challenges recently; last November, it sued an NIH scientist over a meta-analysis that linked a class of blood subsitutes, including Hemopure, to increased risk of heart attack and death (Nature).

Posted by Alex Witze
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"Bletchley Park has a real role to play in supporting the economy of Milton Keynes"
The World War II code-breaking centre is getting an extra £600,000 for vital repairs over three years. Local councillor Vanessa McPake feels the boost to local tourism is more important, however (BBC).

“We were never good at math in my family. I thought I was voting for p-i-e.”
Rep. John D Murtha (D-Pa) looks forward to the prospect of Pi Day, 14 March (Politico).

"We protest a launch and strongly demand it be canceled."
Japan's Prime Minister, Taro Aso, objects to North Korea's plan to launch a rocket over Japan sometime between 4 and 8 April.

Posted by Richard Van Noorden
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How big was the piece of space junk that forced the crew of the International Space Station to evacuate for a few minutes on Thursday?

The question is of slightly more than academic importance. Stratcom (US Strategic Command), which does collision avoidance analysis for the ISS and other high-value assets, publicly catalogues space objects larger than 10cm diameter (on the Space-Track system).

But it appears the debris-spotters, who warned Nasa of a potential collision, may have sharper eyes than one would suspect from their recordings. Reuters put the junk at 0.83 cm (1/3 inch) across (a Nasa spokeswoman confirms this with the Independent) - though AP reckons it was about the size of a grapefruit (5 inches).

The debris was a old motor component that had been orbiting Earth since 1993 - not connected to the collision of two satellites on 10 February.

Wired has more about how to track space junk online.

Image: Orbital Debris in low-Earth orbit/Nasa Orbital Debris Program Service

Posted by Richard Van Noorden
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A study by Swiss researchers published this week [Br. J. Sports Med doi:10.1136/bjsm.2008.056242 (2009)], is focusing media attention on the inflexibility of a test that screens for testosterone abuse, but fails to flag up some cheats. The problem was not unknown: drug testers are already taking steps to counter it. As a commentary and editorial [subscription required] in Nature pointed out last August, there may also be flaws with more stringent steroid analyses – the ones that are actually used in court to charge athletes with doping.

The screen in question measures the ratio of testosterone to its close relative, epitestosterone, in urine. Too much testosterone and your sample is flagged up for further, more sophisticated, isotope analyses. The problem is that due to genetic variation, some athletes can use testosterone without ever breaching a fixed alert threshold ratio set in 2004 by the World Anti-Doping Agency (WADA).

To drive this home, Christophe Saudan and his colleagues tested 171 football players from various nations, and found that Asians in their sample – most of whom had a crucial genetic deletion – naturally secreted lower levels of testosterone in their urine, so were more likely to slip under the radar screen than African, European or Hispanic individuals. A unique and non-specific threshold is ‘not fit for purpose,’ the researchers say.

Fortunately, drug testers are aware of this problem.

Continue reading "Drug testing: one size doesn't fit all" »

Posted by Richard Van Noorden
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A lighter Higgs makes particle hunt harder
Longer search promised after physicists exclude heavy masses for the 'God particle'.

Copenhagen summit urges immediate action on climate change
Scientists report intensifying impact of global warming.

Rising air pollution clouds climate debate
Darker skies have uncertain effect on global warming.

There's more to life than sequences
The shape of DNA can play a crucial role in genetics, says Philip Ball.

Posted by Richard Van Noorden
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Tthe California Institute for Regenerative Medicine has sharpened the agency’s focus on translating stem cell-based treatments into treatments, in the wake of President Barack Obama’s decision to loosen restrictions on federal funding for human embryonic stem cell research.

Continue reading "CIRM carves out translational role after Obama stem cell shift" »

Posted by Erika Check Hayden
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The three day international climate conference in Copenhagen, billed as a chance to appraise the latest assessments of climate change impacts ahead of the December meet in the same location, is just about wrapped up. Olive Heffernan, of Nature Reports Climate Change, and Oliver Morton are there and blogging on the Climate Feedback blog. Oliver also followed the conference in detail on Twitter.

Continue reading "Lessons from Copenhagen" »

Posted by Richard Van Noorden
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Posted on behalf of Meredith Wadman

After weeks of rumours, the White House has reportedly settled on a nominee to head the embattled US Food and Drug Administration.

The Wall Street Journal, The Washington Post and The New York Times, among others, are reporting today that she is Margaret (Peggy) Hamburg, 53, a physician and former health commissioner in New York City who used her bioterrorism expertise when she served as a key deputy in the US Department of Health and Human Services during the Clinton Administration. Earlier, in the late 1980s, she was an assistant director at the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases. Most recently, she has been serving as a senior scientist at a Washington-based foundation called the Nuclear Threat Initiative, where she is in charge of a global health and security initiative.

While Hamburg’s resume – she boosted childhood immunization rates and launched a tuberculosis control program that led to dramatic declines in new cases of the disease in New York – would seem to make her a more obvious pick to head the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, the wisdom inside Washington has it that her selection treads a careful political line aimed at alienating neither the drug industry nor consumer advocates, who charge that the agency has been lax in its drug safety policing and is too beholden to the industry it regulates. Other candidates like Steve Nissen of the Cleveland Clinic and Robert Califf, a Duke University cardiologist, could have galvanized serious opposition.

The reports also say that the Obama administration has settled on Joshua Sharfstein, the health commissioner in Baltimore, to be Hamburg’s chief deputy at FDA. Sharfstein, a 39-year-old physician who once worked for liberal Democrat Henry Waxman on Capitol Hill, put himself on the map in 2007 by successfully petitioning FDA to oppose the use of over-the-counter cold and cough medicines in children under two years old.

The FDA’s 11,000 employees are responsible for overseeing the safety of food, drugs and cosmetics that comprise roughly one-quarter of US consumer spending. Its newly-approved 2009 budget of $2.6 billion includes over $500 million in user fees paid by the drug industry.

Image credit: Nuclear Threat Initiative

Posted by Richard Van Noorden
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"Our business requires perfection and our vehicle was not perfect today."
NASA launch director Mike Leinbach reflects on the gas leak that prevented the space shuttle Discovery launching on Wednesday. It will now not take off until Sunday 15 March (Space.com).

"What I don't want NASA to do is just limp along."
Barack Obama says NASA is an agency afflicted by "a sense of drift" and that it needs "a new mission that is appropriate for the 21st century" (Orlando Sentinel).

"I cannot begin to comprehend why a person would take this course."
Steven Shafer, editor-in-chief of Anesthesia and Analgesia, a journal which is retracting [pdf] articles penned by a leading anesthesiology researcher, Scott Reuben. Reuben is accused of faking data in at least 21 published studies, published over 13 years. (Anesthesiology News; see also BMJ (subscription required); New York Times; Boston Globe; Wall Street Journal; Scientific American).

Posted by Richard Van Noorden
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Peking Man older than thought
Classic Homo erectus fossils in Zhoukoudian caves are more than 700,000 years old.

Lithium batteries charge ahead
Researchers demonstrate cells that can power up in seconds.

The lowdown on animal testing for cosmetics
European Union continues phasing out animal experiments.

Turkish scientists claim Darwin censorship
Science-funding agency accused of removing evolution article — and its editor — from mainstream magazine.

Cosmic strings could solve positron mystery
Collapsing defects in the Universe's structure may generate antimatter excess.

Posted by Richard Van Noorden
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It’s been a busy week for massive pharma deals. After a nine-month corporate struggle, Roche has finally clinched a complete merger with Genentech, offering $46.8 billion – or $95 a share – for the 44% of the biotechnology firm that it doesn’t already own.

The offer, described as a ‘friendly agreement’ [press release], comes days after Merck and Schering-Plough shook hands on a $41 million merger, and six weeks after Pfizer snapped up Wyeth for $68 billion.

Analysts think Roche has done well to get Genentech’s board onside for under $100 a share – some were predicting much higher sums. The board had earlier rejected sub-$90 a share offers. And Roche also managed to push through an agreement before clinical trial results due in April, which are expected to drive up Genentech’s value by expanding the use of its blockbuster anticancer drug Avastin.

Details of the combined company’s operations have also been released – but there is no clear picture yet on how many jobs might go.

Continue reading "Roche and Genentech seal the deal" »

Posted by Richard Van Noorden
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Europe needs better and more “brutal” scientific advice, the UK government's chief scientist, John Beddington, told BBC news.

Beddington says that Europe should follow the lead of Barack Obama, the US president, who has appointed a "dream team" of scientists to senior positions in his administration to advise him on policy.

"Compared with the new Washington line-up, European science advice looks very deficient," he says.

Continue reading "European science advice is “deficient” " »

Posted by Natasha Gilbert
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I got a chance to ask NASA science chief Ed Weiler today about two pressing issues. First, is the servicing mission to the Hubble Space Telescope, scheduled for 12 May, threatened at all by the messy collision of two satellites on 10 Feburary, as some had worried?

Weiler is confident that everything is on track. He points to the fact that the current Space Shuttle mission, delayed yet again today for other reasons, had been cleared for launch. The Hubble servicing will take place at a higher elevation -- closer to the space junk -- but not enough to cause problems, Weiler says. "I don't see any threat to the May 12 mission right now."

With regards to the Orbiting Carbon Observatory, which crashed into the ocean after an unsuccessful launch, Weiler says no decisions have yet been made. The "knee-jerk" reaction, he says, is to rebuild immediately, using spare parts and existing decade-old designs. But Weiler says there's value also in taking an approach at the other end of the spectrum: Manage the best one can with existing carbon measurements, and take the time to build a state-of-the-art carbon observatory. NASA could also opt for something in the middle.

But, I asked him, wouldn't the $400 million in the stimulus package, given to NASA specifically for Earth science, be spent perfectly on rebuilding the $278 million OCO? Weiler says only part of an OCO price tag could be satisfied with stimulus money, which has to be spent within 18 months. An OCO II would take longer to build, in other words. "And there are plenty of other things to spend that [stimulus] money on, especially in Earth science," he says. He says Earth science division director Michael Frielich is consulting with senior scientists in the community on the approach to take and will make a decision in the coming month.

Posted by Eric Hand
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After this week’s mega-merger of Merck and Schering-Plough the pharma stories are coming thick and fast.

A number of bloggers are suggesting that Johnson & Johnson might have something to say about the merger. Derek Lowe and Shearlings Got Plowed have noted that S-P and J&J have a deal over the drug Remicade. Lowe says:

J&J is no doubt weighing their options today, because Merck and Schering-Plough structured their deal, by all appearances, specifically to avoid triggering some provisions that would make these rights revert to J&J.
…
We're surely going to see some response from J&J, and very soon. They won't walk away from this one.

Continue reading "Merck and Schering-Plough: the fallout" »

Posted by Daniel Cressey
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Rockets are set to launch! NASA has successfully tested the igniter that will fire up the Ares I rocket’s first stage motor. Ares I is a crew launch vehicle that forms part of NASA’s Constellation programme. It will ferry astronauts up to the International Space Station (ISS), the moon… and beyond.

The test produced a 200-feet long flame, for the residents of Promontory, Utah (if there are any) to enjoy.

Ares rockets won’t be used for years – 2015 is the date NASA quotes for the ISS transportations to begin. The Ares launch vehicle will have atop it the Orion capsule for the astronauts to sit in.

Continue reading "Rocket round up" »

Posted by Katharine Sanderson
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The recent rash of songs about science continues, with this example reaching us via Deep Sea News. At this rate I’m going to have to expand my knowledge of Roman numerals.

The New York Times informs us that, “The rapper on the left is Derrick Davis, a junior at Stanford. The rapper on the right is Tom McFadden, an instructor in the human biology program there.”

This is not the only example from these rapping researchers. Check out the awesome song about cane toads, I Just Want a Function.

Equally good are I'm going going back back to plasma membrane, Wanna be a... Scholar?, and Hi, Meiosis.

Continue reading "Songs about science XVII: gene regulators mount up" »

Posted by Daniel Cressey
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Deep sea fish may be in worse trouble than we thought. A study published this week shows that the impact of fishing extends far deeper than previously shown.

Using a huge collection of data from scientific trawls dating back to 1977, David Bailey, of the University of Glasgow, and colleagues found fish abundance fell significantly at depths from 800 to 2,500 metres. The maximum depth for commercial fishing is around 1,600 metres.

Bailey originally reported his findings at the 2008 Ocean Sciences Meeting in Orlando, Florida (see: Fishing trawlers have double the reach). Now the research has been published in Proceedings of the Royal Society B.

“What we think is happening is fish are getting impacted if they live any part of their life within the fishing grounds,” Bailey told Nature News earlier this week. “As a result they’re not living to spread out into their normal range.”

Continue reading "Fisheries problems go deeper" »

Posted by Daniel Cressey
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“Over 2000 delegates from 80 nations have gathered this week in Copenhagen to update the global assessment of climate change, and I’m fortunate enough to be one of them,” says Olive Heffernan of Nature Reports Climate Change. She is blogging the conference over on the Climate Feedback blog along with Oliver Morton.

Continue reading "Copenhagen Climate Change Congress Coverage" »

Posted by Daniel Cressey
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New discoveries in genetics always seem to work their way into fertility clinics before they are used in any other area of medicine. An announcement from a team in the Netherlands today is a case in point.

The team has developed a test that can identify embryos with genetic abnormalities that predispose them to developing two incurable cancer syndromes called neurofibromatosis type 1 (NF1) and Von Hippel-Lindau disease (VHL). Families with these diseases can use the test during assisted reproduction in a procedure called preimplantation genetic diagnosis to discover which of their embryos are free of the genetic mutations that cause them. These embryos can then be implanted in the mother’s womb. Indeed, the team reports that one set of healthy twins was born to a couple who used the test to screen for VHL-causing mutations.

Continue reading "Healthy babies born after use of new gene screening technique" »

Posted by Erika Check Hayden
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Last November, the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals vacated a US government decision allowing Shell Oil Co. to explore for petroleum north of Alaska. On 6 March, the same court vacated its own decision, leaving everybody scratching their heads.

The original decision ordered the Minerals Management Service (MMS) to redo its analysis of environmental and cultural impacts of oil development. Unfortunately, the one-paragraph ruling issued this month didn't offer any other details, except to say that a new decision would be forthcoming at an unspecified date.

MMS opened up new territory in the Beaufort Sea to leasing several years ago, although environmental groups have been fighting the development each step of the way. Reuters reports that Shell Oil spent US$83.7 million on MMS lease sales in 2005 and 2008, along with US$2.1 billion on leases in the nearby Chukchi Sea.

What happens next is anybody's guest. Shell had initially planned to begin its exploration program in 2007, but the ongoing legal battle has pushed that off until at least 2010, depending on what eventually comes out of the Ninth Circuit.

Posted by Jeff Tollefson
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Celebrities in China are grumpy about the country’s new food safety law, which was approved by Parliament on 28 February.

One of the regulations says individuals who recommend food in advertisements are legally liable for damages if the product is later found to be unsafe. Celebrities are widely believed to be directly targeted by the provision, Xinhua reports.

Feng Xiaogang, the movie director famed for hit films such as “The Banquet” (2006), tells Xinhua he thinks the rule is “unfair”, and that many celebrities are concerned about it.

“I won’t advertise for any food product any more,” Ni Ping, a well-known television presenter, told press at a session of the Chinese People’s Political Consultative Conference, an advisory body with many celebrity members (SciDev.net). Ni has taken flak for advertising chestnut juice made by Sanlu, the now-bankrupt state-owned company at the heart of last year’s scandal involving melamine-tainted milk.

Continue reading "Chinese celebs unhappy with food safety law" »

Posted by Richard Van Noorden
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“One of the ways that animals learn what's good to eat in the world, is on the basis of what mom ate during pregnancy.”
Steven Youngentob, of the State University of New York in Syracuse, comments on his research showing that alcohol may taste sweeter to rats if their mother drank while pregnant (New Scientist).

“Hi my name is Christine Shrock, I'm 18 and my project is Effects of Lid Dynamics on the Binding of MDM2 to the Tumor Suppressor Protein p53 with Implications for Cancer Therapeutics.”
Scientific American catches up with the finalists of the Intel Science Talent Search, “the Super Bowl of science” or “the baby Nobels”.

“Jerry and Ben just haven't stopped flirting. The fact they have turned out to be gay has played havoc with our breeding plans.”
Grace Rawnsley, of the Wetlands Trust in the UK, explains a setback to a programme to breed two male and one female New Zealand Blue Ducks (Chester Chronicle).

Posted by Daniel Cressey
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The next shuttle mission is nearly ready to go. STS-119 will install one final set of solar power arrays on the International Space Station (mission outline pdf).

Shuttle Discovery is set to launch on Wednesday. This shot shows the crew members at the Shuttle Landing Facility at NASA’s Kennedy Space Center in Florida

Image: NASA/Kim Shiflett

Posted by Daniel Cressey
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A captive chimpanzee in Sweden has exhibited a remarkably human trait: detailed planning for a future act of violence.

Santino the chimp carefully collects concrete and stones in weapons caches to throw at visitors to his Furuvik zoo home. Mathias Osvath, of Lund University, says this is the first unambiguous demonstration of future planning by a non-human.

While other primates are known to fashion tools, Osvath says that previous examples could always be seen as responses to immediate needs, such as breaking a stick to fish in a termite nest due to hunger. In this case, he writes in Current Biology, “The chimpanzee has without exception been calm during gathering or manufacturing of the ammunition, in contrast to the typically aroused state during [throwing] displays. The gathering and manufacturing has only been observed during the hours before the zoo opened, excluding potential triggering from the presence of zoo visitors.”

Osvath told AP that, while he may be a very good forward planner, Santino’s execution is a little lacking. The animal is a poor shot who rarely manages to hit visitors. Still, he says, “It is very special that he first realizes that he can make these and then plans on how to use them.”

Frans de Waal, a primatologist at Emory University in Atlanta, told the Washington Post, “People always assume that animals live in the present. This seems to indicate that they don't live entirely in the present.”

De Waal, told ABC News that similar behaviour has been observed in other apes. “I have seen apes line up faeces as future ammunition,” he says.

Sadly for Santino, CanWest reports that his aggressive behaviour “earned him a date on the surgeon’s table for castration last fall” in the hope that lower testosterone levels might curb his enthusiasm for stone throwing.

Headline watch
Arrest That Chimp! – Science Now
'Hail' from the chimp: zoo ape stockpiles stones to throw at visitors – CBC
Stone the crows! Santino the rock-throwing ape proves chimps plan ahead – Daily Mail

Image: stock photo / Getty

Posted by Daniel Cressey
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Web usage data outline map of knowledge
Analysis offers fresh perspective on role of humanities and social sciences.

Atomic nucleus takes two shapes
The squashed heart of a sulphur isotope fluctuates between different states.

Phytoplankton survival clouded by dust particles
Aerosols can kill as well as nourish ocean organism.

Posted by Daniel Cressey
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At a meeting last weekend featuring Harvard University’s Origins of Life Initiative, synthetic biologist/systems biologist/sequencing guru/technobiology polymath George Church announced that his lab had taken an important step towards the creation of synthetic life by assembling a functional ribosome.

Ribosomes are molecular machines that read strands of RNA and translate the genetic code into proteins. They are exquisitely complex, and previous attempts to reconstitute a ribosome from its constituent parts – dozens of proteins along with several molecules of RNA – yielded poorly functional ribosomes, and even then succeeded only when researchers resorted to “strange conditions” that did not recapitulate the environment of a living cell, Church said.

In addition to applications in synthetic biology, creating a synthetic ribosome could improve industrial methods for making proteins without relying on cells. Having a tailor-made ribosome could also make it easier to chemically label proteins in situations where researchers don’t want to label the entire cell and all proteins in it.

And for Church, making a ribosome is a critical step in one of his pet projects: creating a “mirror image cell" by altering the stereochemistry of the molecules within.

Continue reading "Synthetic biologists prepare to leap through the looking glass" »

Posted by Heidi Ledford
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Holed up in a hotel near New York’s Times Square are hundreds of leading figures in the debate that won’t go away – climate change. Those talking at the Heartland Institute’s conference “Global warming: Was it ever really a crisis?” are there to discuss, as the past-tense of the title might hint at, the existence, or rather non-existence of global warming.

One of the headline-grabbing speakers is Czech premier Václav Klaus. He’s an ardent climate-change skeptic, but because of the rolling nature of European Union presidency, he is also premier of the current incumbent presidential country, raising his profile somewhat.

"It is evident that the climate change debate has not made any detectable progress," he said. "It reminds me of the frustration people like me felt in the communist era." So says the Guardian.

Continue reading "Global warming now past tense" »

Posted by Katharine Sanderson
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Genetic test predicts eye colour
Forensic tool could help catch criminals.

Obama overturns stem-cell ban
President's executive order will allow US human embryonic stem-cell research to thrive at last.

Red tape blights European Union research programme
Independent review calls for "radical overhaul" to cut complexity.

Posted by Daniel Cressey
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Pharma companies Merck and Schering-Plough are to merge, with the former paying $41.1 billion to the latter’s shareholders.

Rather boringly, the new company will avoid having to pay millions to marketing gurus by simply being named ‘Merck’.

“The combined company will benefit from a formidable research and development pipeline, a significantly broader portfolio of medicines and an expanded presence in key international markets, particularly in high-growth emerging markets,” says Merck Chairman, President and Chief Executive Officer Richard T. Clark.

Continue reading "Merck’s mega-merger" »

Posted by Daniel Cressey
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Holes in brain tissue caused by stroke may be fixable using a ‘scaffold’ for stem cells, say researchers from the UK.

Previous attempts to seed such holes in rat brains with stem cells found that the stem cells tended to migrate into surrounding healthy tissue, rather than plugging the gap. Now Mike Modo, of King’s College London, and colleagues have found that a scaffold of biodegradable polylactic-co-glycolic acid polymer laced with stem cells can plug holes in just seven days.

“We would expect to see a much better improvement in the outcome after a stroke if we can fully replace the lost brain tissue, and that is what we have been able to do with our technique,” says Modo (press release). “This works really well because the stem cell-loaded PLGA particles can be injected through a very fine needle and then adopt the precise shape of the cavity. In this process the cells fill the cavity and can make connections with other cells, which helps to establish the tissue.”

Their work is due to be published in Biomaterials. This image shows the brain before and after the stem cells were introduced:

Anthony Hollander, a stem cell expert at the University of Bristol, told the Daily Mail, “It is too early to say if it will be clinically effective in patients but the more we explore these possibilities the more likely it is that we will develop successful therapies.”

More
Stem cells could help treat strokes – PA
Stem-Cell Repair Kit for Stroke – Technology Review

Image: modified from figure in Bible E et al., The support of neural stem cells transplanted into stroke-induced brain cavities by PGLA particles, Biomaterials (2009), doi:10.1016/j.biomaterials.2009.02.012.

Posted by Daniel Cressey
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Back in 2007 – before The Great Beyond had even started its songs about science series – a strange charity compilation album was brought to our attention. For some slightly unfathomable reason a collection of songs about giant isopods was being put together.

As noted at the time:

You don’t get many people waxing lyrical about the giant isopod – a kind of deep-sea woodlouse larger than many dogs. As well as looking like they’ve stepped out of one of your darker nightmares, giant isopods also have the unappealing habit of feeding on the carcasses of dead things that sink down to the ocean floor.

Now the man behind the project has revealed the outcome...

Continue reading "Songs about science XVI: return of the giant isopod" »

Posted by Daniel Cressey
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NASA’s $600-million planet-hunting Kepler mission successfully launched last week.

“Kepler is a critical component in NASA’s broader efforts to ultimately find and study planets where Earth-like conditions may be present,” said Jon Morse, NASA’s astrophysics director (press release). “The planetary census Kepler takes will be very important for understanding the frequency of Earth-size planets in our galaxy and planning future missions that directly detect and characterize such worlds around nearby stars.”

You can read more about Kepler in the Nature News story Looking for worlds like this one.

Image: NASA

Posted by Daniel Cressey
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Posted on behalf of Erika Check Hayden

Stem cell researchers may have to wait no longer: President Barack Obama appears ready to lift the ban on U.S. federal funding for research on human embryonic stem cell lines created after August 9, 2001.

The ban was put in place by President George W. Bush, who was responding to concerns among abortion opponents that research on human embryonic stem cells is morally problematic because it involves destruction of embryos. Obama will reportedly sign an executive order overturning the ban on Monday, 9 March. The Washington Post also reported that Obama will likely “simply lift the restriction without caveats and let the [U.S. National Institutes of Health] work out the details.” The NIH is currently formulating ethical guidelines and policies that scientists for scientists who want to apply for federal grants to work with human embryonic stem cells.

Obama’s action comes after research advocates had expressed concern over what they considered Obama’s delay in meeting his campaign promise to overturn the ban. “Obviously, we have concerns and would like to see this done,” Tony Mazzaschi, interim chief scientific officer at the Association of American Medical Colleges in Washington DC told Nature last month.

There has also been extensive discussion about whether the ban should simply be overturned by executive order, or whether the job should be done through legislation that would prevent more flip-flops on stem cell policy under future presidents. Now it appears the ban will be overturned both through Obama’s expected executive order and through legislation, as lawmakers have already introduced bills to undo the ban. Similar bills have previously been passed by Congress, but were vetoed twice by Bush; they would likely be signed into law by Obama if Congress passed them again.

Now, scientists are excited at the chance to undo what they see as political interference that has slowed a promising area of research. Human embryonic stem cells can turn into any cell type in the body, making them potentially powerful tools for investigating disease, and possibly treating it. “I feel vindicated after eight years of struggle, and I know it's going to energize my research team,” George Daley of the Harvard Stem Cell Institute and Children's Hospital of Boston told the Associated Press.

Daley and other researchers have been excited by the development of human induced pluripotent stem cells (iPS cells), which have many of the properties of stem cells yet seem less ethically problematic because they are made from adult cells, such as skin cells. Yet they have also cautioned that the cells are not exactly the same as embryonic (ES) stem cells, so there is still a need to continue both lines of research.

“At this point we clearly still need ES cells,” Konrad Hochedlinger of Harvard Medical School in Boston, Massachusetts, told Nature last fall. “It is unclear to what extent ES cells and iPS cells are really equivalent to each other, and showing this will require much more work.”

More stories: New York Times, BBC, and many others. And stay tuned to nature.com/news for more in-depth coverage from Nature.

Posted by Alex Witze
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Satellite collisions and anti-satellite weapons may make for great headlines, but they're bad news for low earth orbit. When China tested an anti-satellite weapon on a defunct weather satellite in 2007, it created thousands of pieces of hazardous debris. A more recent collision between a defunct Russian communications satellite and an Iridium orbiter created still more dangerous junk.

Now the Russians are threatening to up the stakes, and possibly the amount of debris in orbit, by conducting another antisatellite test. That test would be in part a response to the China test and a 2008 test involving a ship-launched missile (pictured) by the US (which didn't create as much debris because the target was in a decaying orbit). It also has something to do with US plans to field an anti-ballistic missile system in Eastern Europe.

It may just be posturing, but if such a test did occur, it could be disastrous. Much of the debris from the 2007 test and this year's collision will remain in orbit for years, and adding more will only increase the chances that more satellites are lost.

Incidentally, at least one Russian ex-general believes the US was behind last month's collision. Ria Novosti is quoting Maj. Gen. (Ret.) Leonid Shershnev, a former head of Russia's military space intelligence, as suggesting that a nefarious third satellite may have pushed the satellites into each other.

Credit: US Navy

Posted by Geoff Brumfiel
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The viruses that normally give you a sniffle or a poorly tum might be responsible for causing diabetes. This may sound unusual – a virus being responsible for a non-infectious disease – but it has been debated for many years among diabetes experts.

The research, carried out at the Peninsula medical school in Plymouth, UK, involved looking for enteroviruses in the pancreases of young people who had died soon after contracting type 1 diabetes. The suspicion was that the viruses were attacking beta cells – insulin factories. And that suspicion has now been shown to be right – 60% of the pancreases had evidence of viral infection of beta cells. And it could be more common than 60%: "The protein isn't completely stable, so 60% is a conservative estimate," researcher Adrian Bone of the University of Brighton, UK told New Scientist.

Continue reading "The diabetes virus?" »

Posted by Katharine Sanderson
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Just hours after the US Supreme Court ruled that federal warning labels do not protect drug companies from being sued, Democrats in Congress moved to make the same rule apply to medical device manufacturers.

On Wednesday the Supreme Court ruled that federal regulations did not override – or ‘pre-empt’ – a plaintiff’s right to sue in state courts (see: FDA-approved warning labels won't protect companies). Yesterday House Representatives Frank Pallone and Henry Waxman introduced a bill to overturn a previous Supreme Court ruling that gave medical device manufacturers pre-emption immunity.

Continue reading "New pre-emption fight looms" »

Posted by Daniel Cressey
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“Why not turn their Real-Time PCR thermal cycler into an ass-kicking robot?”
Tyler Kay, of marketing company Bison, explains the logic behind a Roche advert that sees a lab-machine transform into a ninja robot (Wired).

“Some experts are concerned that unless there is an independent program, then Japan may be left behind in terms of space development.”
An unnamed official from Japan’s Strategic Headquarters for Space Policy explains why the country is considering putting robots on the Moon by 2020 and an astronaut on the Moon by 2030 (Reuters).

“No parking whitebeam.”
A new species of tree in Wales has been named after a sign once fixed to it (Western Mail).

“If anybody doubted the greening of Peter Mandelson and his willingness to take the green agenda on his shoulders we’ve seen it in practice on our television screens already this morning.”
UK prime minister Gordon Brown comments on a green custard attack on Business Secretary Mandelson. The attacker was supposedly protesting about plans to expand a major British airport (The Times).

Posted by Daniel Cressey
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The waters of the Papahānaumokuākea marine park near Hawaii have yielded seven new species of deep sea coral.

According to the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, six of these may be new genera, “a remarkable feat given the broad classification a genus represents” (press release). The corals, and a plethora of other marine treats, were discovered by researchers from the Hawaii Undersea Research Laboratory, who piloted the Pisces V mini-sub to depths of 1,000 metres in Papahānaumokuākea in November 2007.

“These discoveries are important, because deep-sea corals support diverse seafloor ecosystems and also because these corals may be among the first marine organisms to be affected by ocean acidification,” said Richard Spinrad, NOAA’s assistant administrator for Oceanic and Atmospheric Research. “Deep-sea bamboo corals also produce growth rings much as trees do, and can provide a much-needed view of how deep ocean conditions change through time.”

Image: five-foot tall yellow bamboo coral / Hawaii Deep-Sea Coral Expedition 2007/NOAA

Posted by Daniel Cressey
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Journals should be routinely checking papers they publish for signs of plagiarism, a team of American researchers is demanding.

In a commentary paper published in Science the team headed by Harold Garner, of the University of Texas Southwestern Medical Center, report their checking of similar citations in the Medline database. They found 212 pairs of articles with “signs of potential plagiarism” using a computer programme called eTBLAST.

“We have just started to scratch the surface, we anticipate finding hundreds to thousands more cases. It is definitely the tip of the iceberg,” says Garner (Globe and Mail).

Garner previously used the same programme on Medline to find duplicate citations and found thousands of cases of potential plagiarism. Writing in Nature in January 2008 Garner and fellow researcher Mounir Errami wrote:

We find it odd that automated text-matching systems are used regularly by high schools and universities, thereby enabling us to hold our children up to a higher standard than we do our scientists. In our view, it would be fairly simple to fold these tools into electronic-manuscript submission systems, making it a ubiquitous aspect of the publication process.

Now they are again pushing the issue in their new piece, and reporting the responses of editors and authors of both the original paper and the suspected plagiarism.

Continue reading "Putting plagiarists on the back foot" »

Posted by Daniel Cressey
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The resurrection of a disease-linked gene
An unusual tale of a gene lost, then found, during human evolution.

Evidence for ancient horse ranch uncovered
Traces of earliest known milking of horses in Kazakhstan.

Briefing: Climate change crisis for rainforests
Drought could turn carbon sinks into sources.

Test tube disease models one step closer
Skin cells from Parkinson's patients transformed into tailor-made neurons.

Posted by Daniel Cressey
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An asteroid made a 'close call' with the Earth on Monday, say the BBC and the Associated Press. But don't let the reports make you sweat too much -- the rock was still some 72,000 kilometers away at its closest point. That's about a fifth of the distance to the moon.

The asteroid, called 2009 DD45, was roughly 30 meters in diameter, which, the reports were sure to note, is about the size of the thing that blew up over Siberia in 1908 with the force of a thousand atomic bombs. But really, these 'near misses' happen fairly frequently -- in fact, according to Jet Propulsion Lab's catalog, an asteroid is supposed to zip past at a moon distance tomorrow. Watch out!

Posted by Eric Hand
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As described in today's Nature, a couple of guys over at the National Optical Astronomy Observatory in Tucson, Arizona have spotted a galaxy that appears to have two, supermassive black holes at its core. The two holes are pretty big: the smaller one is around 10 million solar masses and the big one weighs in at about a billion. The little one is orbiting at a third of a light year from its mate, and it gets around once every 100 years. In astronomical terms, that is incredibly fast.

This is something people have expected to see for a long time. Astronomers believe that today's galaxies formed from the mergers of earlier ones, and along the way, you would expect two black holes two be orbiting one another. But until now, nobody has actually spied a binary black hole system. It's a find big enough to attract quite a bit of coverage.

The way in which astronomers found this galaxy is just as remarkable. Instead of using some super-powerful telescope, they sifted through a giant database of the night sky, known as the Sloan Digital Sky Survey. After checking some 17,500 distant galaxies, known as quasars, they found one that appeared to fit the bill.

Most astronomers agree that this sort of digital astronomy is the way forward, and more surveys are now in the works. You can hear one of the authors, Todd Boroson, talking all about this week's black hole discovery on Nature's podcast.

Credit: NOAO

Posted by Geoff Brumfiel
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Saab, the manufacturer of solidly Swedish cars, is in trouble. General Motors, the giant US car company set its Swedish Saab brand adrift, in mid February, in a restructuring operation.

Saab then turned to the Swedish government for help. The government said no. Subsequently GM said it had set aside enough cash to pay Saab’s bills (Reuters)

Well now an alternative has been levelled at Saab: give up making fast, weird-shaped cars and instead make wind turbines. This is apparently what Swedish trade minister Maud Olofsson has said in the aftermath of the Saab abandonment by GM. Greentech Media has been doing its scan of the Swedish press, so you don’t have to. Saab might as well contribute to Sweden’s green power output, according to Staffan Laestadius quoted in a Swedish magazine:

"Producing wind power is more realistic for Saab than ever being a profitable car manufacturer again. It is also substantially more desirable for Sweden," he said.

Saab’s subsidiary Kockums Industrier sold off its wind power manufacturing operations in 2000. Maybe now is the time to get them back.

Photo courtesy of the U.S. Department of Energy

Posted by Katharine Sanderson
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The Universities of Pittsburgh and Carnegie Mellon could have to swallow losses of $100 million after falling victim to an alleged financial swindle.

They had investments of $65m and $49m respectively with money managers Paul Greenwood and Stephen Walsh. The pair are now under arrest on fraud charges, with the Securities and Exchange Commission alleging they misappropriated $554-million from investors (Chronicle of Higher Education, WPXI, SEC press release).

The Pittsburgh Post-Gazette says both institutions will be lucky to get their money back as the Commodity Futures Trading Commission says there is “strong probability that the defendants do not have sufficient assets to remotely cover the losses incurred by their misappropriation of investor funds”.

Both universities are now pursuing Greenwood and Walsh’s company Westridge in federal court in Pittsburgh (Pittsburgh Tribune-Review).

As the Chronicle of HE points out:

The recent scam is not the first suffered by higher education during this recession. An alleged Ponzi scheme by the investment adviser Bernard L. Madoff bilked many millions from Yeshiva University, New York University, and others. And observers say similar episodes are on the way, as the downturn exposes empty coffers of fraudulent investment managers.

Image: SEC complaint (click for PDF)

Posted by Daniel Cressey
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Warmer caves may save bats from deadly fungus
Shivering bats need help to fight off white-nose syndrome.

FDA-approved warning labels won't protect companies
US court says people harmed by drugs can still sue.

Peering at proteins inside cells
Nuclear magnetic resonance spies the atomic details of proteins in action.

Posted by Daniel Cressey
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The University of Louisiana has been accused of animal welfare statute violations at a major primate research laboratory.

Investigators from US animal welfare group the Humane Society have passed a complaint to the US Department of Agriculture detailing “a minimum of 338 possible violations” at the New Iberia Research Center (NIRC) in Lafayette, Louisiana. US Secretary of Agriculture Tom Vilack has pledged a thorough review of the allegations, which the university denies.

“Our investigation found an abject failure on NIRC’s part to attend to the psychological well-being of primates as dictated by law, a lax USDA attitude about enforcing that law, and a knowing and gross violation of the federal government's pledge to stop breeding more chimpanzees for research,” says Wayne Pacelle, society president and CEO (press release).

The Humane Society has also released a number of videos which it says show the mistreatment of animals at the research centre, these aired on ABC.

In response the university says the videos “distort acceptable standard procedures and incorrectly imply mistreatment” of primates. It also says the videos form part of the Human Society’s campaign to ban all use of chimps in research.

“Nothing in the videos alter the fact that the New Iberia Research Center is in compliance with all federal standards and guidelines regarding the care and use of animals, as determined by the U.S. Department of Agriculture, the Food and Drug Administration, and the Centers for Disease Control,” it adds (press release).

Responses below the fold.

Continue reading "Primate mistreatment allegations at Louisiana research lab" »

Posted by Daniel Cressey
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On this week's Nature Podcast - This week, we find out about a microbicide gel that works magic on the monkey form of HIV, track down two black holes for the price of one, and watch proteins 'at work' inside living cells. Plus, a sociologist of science calls a ceasefire.

Posted by Daniel Cressey
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Planetary scientists have pinpointed what they believe is the source of Saturn's "G-ring," which is among the furthest and most diffuse of Saturn's seven rings. According to the Cassini Probe, which is orbiting the second largest planet in town, the G-ring likely came from a half-kilometre wide, as yet unnamed "moonlet".

Researchers believe that the G-ring formed from meteorite impacts and other collisions with the moonlet. Those impacts, they postulate, kicked up the fine dust that makes up the ring. It's actually the third time a moonlet has been spotted embedded in a ring.

I don't know if it's Saturn, or rings, or moonlets or what, but this story has been getting nothing but ink since it came out yesterday.

Credit: NASA/JPL/Space Science Institute

Posted by Geoff Brumfiel
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Ancient meat-eating dinosaurs held their arms with palms facing inwards like their bird descendants, a rare set of 198-million-year-old fossilised handprints has revealed. An analysis of the prints, published this week in PLoS One, supports theories that even very early therapods [lit. 'beast feet'] such as tyrannosaurs and velociraptors had bird-like forelimbs, and walked only on two legs, well before they evolved feathery wings.

The handprints came from a dinosaur that sat down on the edge of a lake in St George, Utah, and extended its arms far enough to leave sediment marks. Six other resting dinosaur traces have been reported before, but they all lack clear hand prints.

Continue reading "Sitting dinosaur leaves karate chop handprints" »

Posted by Richard Van Noorden
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“Overall, the trend is towards net loss.”
The Royal Society for the Protection of Birds comments on a study analysing the impact of climate change on Europe’s birds (BBC).

“There were no surprises in Genentech’s presentation. They had the platform and I don’t think they impressed.”
Carri Duncan, an analyst at Sal. Oppenheim in Zurich, comments on the latest instalment of the ongoing Roche / Genentech saga (Bloomberg).

“I find this troubling as I have documented several instances where pharmaceutical companies have attempted to intimidate academic critics of drugs.”
US Senator Charles Grassley comments on allegations that a Pfizer employee took photos of students protesting at drug industry links to academia, in the latest round of his battle against big pharma (NY Times).

Posted by Daniel Cressey
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Americans are being exposed to vastly more radiation from medical tests than they were twenty years ago, according to the US National Council on Radiation Protection and Measurements.

The council says Americans living in 2006 were exposed to over seven times more radiation from such scans than those living in 1980, mainly due to computed tomography and nuclear medicine. The council’s executive vice president Kenneth Kase says the increase was “not a big surprise to anybody” and doctors are emphasising that such tests are vital in modern medicine (ABC News).

“The medical information derived from CT scans literally saves thousands of American lives on a daily basis,” says John Boone, a radiologist at the University of California, Davis Medical Center.

This is not to say that there is no fallout from this report.

Continue reading "Huge rise in US medical radiation doses" »

Posted by Daniel Cressey
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The ever-recurring UK debate over whether academics should boycott Israel has spilled out of universities into the museum sector. Events for this week’s Israel Day of Science at science museums in Manchester and London are attracting fierce criticism from some sectors.

Protest group the British Committee for the Universities of Palestine says the event’s showcasing of research from Israeli universities “cannot be allowed to happen”.

“These universities are without exception complicit in the mechanisms and policies of the Israeli occupation, and in developing the military technology used in the massacre in Gaza,” says the group’s website. “Protests are rolling in from scientists and non-scientists alike.”

Israel Day of Science aims “to promote the excellence of Israeli science”, with a series of talks and exhibitions.

The Science Museum in London told the BBC the event was private and the organisers had merely hired space at the museum. The museum also insists the event is scientific and “sponsored by an organisation from a country with which the UK has normal diplomatic relations”.

Continue reading "Protests greet ‘Israel Day of Science’ in UK" »

Posted by Daniel Cressey
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Genome scan may save Tasmanian devils from cancer
Scientists say identifying resistant animals could be key to combating a contagious tumour.

Budget numbers for US science looking up - Premium content
Big boosts for climate and basic research in President Barack Obama's proposed spending for next year.

Looking for worlds like this one
NASA's Kepler mission is the best shot yet at detecting an Earth-sized planet elsewhere in the Galaxy.

Posted by Daniel Cressey
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When Michael Mumma, of Goddard Space Flight Center in Maryland, finally published his methane-on-Mars results in Science, it certainly caused a stir. So far, the people tasked with picking a spot for the Mars Science Laboratory rover have resisted the allure of a landing site that sits within a broad methane hotspot, arguing that the hotspots are still too uncertain. Well, NASA is going to get to work on that uncertainty: it announced today that it is considering a "Mars Science Orbiter" (MSO) mission in 2016 that would specifically look to see when and where Mars is belching up the natural gas. (Methane can be produced via natural geologic processes but could also point towards hives of microbes living and burping underground.)

NASA Mars Program Chief Doug McCuistion described what the agency calls its "baseline" plan at the Mars Exploration Program Analysis Group meeting in Virginia on Tuesday, a chance for the science community to offer feedback on these long-term plans, which are often very tentative -- and very fluid. The plan would include an MSO in 2016 followed by a exobiology lander or rover mission launched during a particularly juicy launch window in 2018 (the best since the Spirit and Opportunity rovers, McCuistion says). That plan would satisfy two longstanding NASA program requirements: keeping continuous communications orbiters in place for lander missions (Odyssey and Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter will be getting old), and continuous practice with the tricky task of landing spacecraft on the surface (gotta keep those engineers employed). The plan would also follow a natural progression: MSO would map the methane; the lander or rover would go after it with a suite of astrobiological instruments.

Continue reading "NASA pursues Mars methane orbiter" »

Posted by Eric Hand
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Barack Obama has told the Department of the Interior to reconsider a regulation introduced a month before the Bush administration left office, which made it easier for federal agencies to make decisions concerning threatened or endangered species without consulting biologists at the Fish and Wildlife Service or the National Marine Fisheries Service. (See earlier Nature news story here.) "I think we know who would have been the winner in this fox guarding the hen house scenario advanced by the Bush administration, and it would not be the hens," Congressman Nick Rahall, chair of the House Natural Resources Committee, told the Washington Post.

The December 16, 2008, regulation is now officially under review, and in the meantime agency heads must continue their former usual consultations with the FWS and NMFS, the memo says. Environmentalists are predictably pleased, but Obama would need to formally issue a new rule -- or Congress would have to push through a resolution -- to make the change permanent.

Posted by Alex Witze
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The public has voted on where they want to aim the Hubble Space Telescope. Given a choice by the website for Hubble's Next Discovery -- You Decide, part of the International Year of Astronomy, nearly half of 140,000 voters picked an interacting pair of spiral galaxies, called Arp274. The close-knit galaxies look like they are shaking hands, according to some observers.

From Newswise science:

Hubble has shown that interacting galaxies are very photogenic because, under the relentless pull of gravity, they weave elegant twisted lanes of dust and stars, and brilliant blue clusters of newborn stars. The new picture of Arp 274 promises to reveal intriguing never-before-seen details in the galactic grand slam. The Hubble observations will be taken during the International Year of Astronomy's "100 Hours of Astronomy," taking place from April 2 - 5. The full-color galaxy image will be released publicly during that time.

Let's hope it isn't hit by satellite debris first.

Posted by Richard Van Noorden
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"You know all this [expletive deleted] that's going on around the world, weather-wise, well, we're seeing it in Arlington [location of the Rangers Ballpark]. The jet stream at The Ballpark ain't what it used to be. That's changing. I think it'll help our arms."
Rudolpho 'Rudy' Jaramillo, hitting coach for the Texas Rangers, hopes that global warming will help the team's pitching [hat tip: The Guardian, Star-Telegram.com]

“Maybe the best we can do is join in a bipartisan agreement to engage only in the harmless type of science-hating everyone can love: UFOs, psychics and underwater kingdoms that appear on Google maps”
Columnist Joel Stein, writing in the Los Angeles Times, finds liberals hate science just as much as the far right - and searches for common ground between them.

"You can't expect tigers to become vegetarians. They need meat and humans trespassing their territory are relatively easy targets."
Nurazam Nurdin of the Nature Conservation Agency asks sympathy for Sumatran tigers, who are attacking humans in desperation for food as their forest habitats are illegally eroded. The Sumatran tiger is in danger of becoming the first major mammal to become extinct in the 21st century, The Times reports.

Posted by Richard Van Noorden
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Posted on behalf of Roberta Kwok

Pop the champagne, everyone: Today is March 3, 2009 (or 3/3/09), and that means that some math-related partying is in order.

If you're tempted to suppress your inner geek, just remember that Square Root Day only happens nine times a century. The last one was Feb. 2, 2004, and the next one won't be until April 4, 2016.

"These days are like calendar comets," says Ron Gordon, a teacher in Redwood City, California [AP]. "You wait and wait and wait for them, then they brighten up your day - and poof - they're gone."

Gordon is giving away a $339 prize to whoever can host the biggest Square Root Day celebration.

Posted by Richard Van Noorden
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The oldest brain ever found was officially unveiled this week, in the journal PNAS.

Researchers at the European Synchrotron Radiation Facility were using X-rays to image the inside of an ancient fish skull fossil when they discovered what they call “a strikingly brain-shaped structure” (press release, research paper - link live soon). They suggest the 300 million year old brain of the iniopterygian fish was mineralised due to microbes.

[This story may seem very familiar to those who were paying close attention to the recent AAAS conference.]

“Soft tissue has fossilized in the past, but it is usually muscle and organs like kidneys because of phosphate bacteria from the gut that permeates into tissue and preserves its features,” says paper author John Maisey, of the American Museum of Natural History in New York City (LiveScience). “Fossilized brains are unusual, and this is by far the oldest known example.”

Continue reading "The world’s oldest brain" »

Posted by Daniel Cressey
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Pluto has a perspiration problem. Whenever it gets near the Sun, the recently demoted planet "sweats" out an atmosphere.

The sweat is caused by the sublimation of frozen nitrogen and methane on the dwarf planet's surface. That sublimation works a little like our perspiration: cooling the planet's surface while heating the upper atmosphere (see the press release for more). The upshot of all this is that Pluto's atmosphere is upside down; it's about 40 degrees warmer at the top than it is at the planet's surface (it's still pretty cold, at -180C).

Earlier observations indicated that this was probably the case, but what's really amazing is that the Very Large Telescope's CRyogenic InfraRed Echelle Spectrograph (CRIRES) is powerful enough to image Pluto's lower atmosphere from a Chilean mountaintop.

credit: ESO

Posted by Geoff Brumfiel
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The Washington Post is reporting that two of Barack Obama's nominations to fill top science posts have been put on hold by Robert Menendez, a Democratic senator from New Jersey.

Both John Holdren, nominated to lead the Office of Science and Technology Policy, and Jane Lubchenco, for the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, were endorsed last month by the Senate commerce, science and transportation committee after their relatively tranquil nomination hearing (see Nature coverage here). The full Senate must now vote on their nominations, but any senator can place a hold on an action for any reason. To break the stalemate, Menendez must either drop the hold or Senate leaders must force a vote to break the hold that would require 60 votes to pass.

According to the Post, "Menendez is using the holds as leverage to get Senate leaders' attention for a matter related to Cuba rather than questioning the nominees' credentials." Menendez, who is of Cuban descent, has criticized the Castro rule in Cuba.

Posted by Alex Witze
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The clever people at MIT have come up with rather excellent video of DNA transcription utilising one of the greatest inventions of the last 100 years: the humble Lego brick.

Another video along similar lines has been made for translation.

Of course, one Lego-based science video is never enough. Below the fold are some more internet Lego-science hits.

[Thanks to Mike for pointing us to this.]

Continue reading "Video: Lego DNA" »

Posted by Daniel Cressey
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“I’m ecstatic – I feel as if Austria has become the European Cup winner in soccer,” enthused Austria’s environment minister Nikolaus Berlakovich yesterday, after European Union environment ministers voted overwhelmingly in favour of allowing both Austria and Hungary to keep their national bans on cultivation of the genetically-modified maize Mon810. The Wiener Zeitung headlined: ‘Triumph for Austria’.

The European Commission, on the other hand, was humiliatingly relegated. It had proposed that the two countries lift their bans which contravenes an EU directive to which all 27 EU member states are signed up. The directive allows only scientific arguments to exclude GM crops from cultivation, and allows no opt-outs. The Commission had rejected the two countries’ portfolios of scientific concerns as insufficient.

Continue reading "European nations win right to ban GM crops" »

Posted by Alison Abbott
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Engineered viruses fight bacteria
Viruses that target bacteria could help give antibiotics a boost.

Falsified data gets India's largest generic drug-maker into trouble
US Federal Drug Administration withdraws approval for a score of drugs from Ranbaxy.

Posted by Richard Van Noorden
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Jim Hansen, the earth scientist known for his outspokenness about global warming, is marching today as part of a climate protest against burning coal. The focus of all the attention is the Capitol Power Plant, a coal-burning monstrosity just blocks from the US Capitol building that is one of the biggest sources of emissions in the District of Columbia. Hundreds of protestors have reportedly turned out, even in the snow that coats Washington several inches deep and snarled commutes this morning.

Over at Nature's Twitter feed, reporter Jeff Tollefson notes that Hansen says he is willing to get arrested. Check out the action live as Jeff reports it.

Image (sans Daryl Hannah): Jeff Tollefson

Posted by Alex Witze
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The Los Angeles Times reports worrying details on the tragic death of Sheri Sangji, a 23-year-old research assistant who suffered fatal third-degree burns after working with a pyrophoric liquid in a UCLA chemistry laboratory. The paper says that the Harran laboratory, where Sangji was working, had been safety checked a couple of months earlier and problems had been found.

Sangji died on 16 January, eighteen days after t-butyl lithium that she was syringeing from a bottle burst into flames, setting her clothes alight. The incident is under investigation by the California Division of Occupational Safety & Health (Cal/OSHA), and UCLA is conducting its own safety review.

According to the LA Times:

Two months earlier, UCLA safety inspectors found more than a dozen deficiencies in the same lab, Molecular Sciences Room 4221, according to internal investigative and inspection reports reviewed by The Times. Among the findings: Employees were not wearing requisite protective lab coats, and flammable liquids and volatile chemicals were stored improperly.

Chemical Safety Officer Michael Wheatley sent the inspection report to the researcher who oversees the lab, professor Patrick Harran, as well as to the head of the Chemistry and Biochemistry Department and a top UCLA safety official. The report directed that problems be fixed by Dec. 5. But the required corrective action was not taken, records show, and on Dec. 29 all that stood between Sangji's torso and the fire that engulfed her was a highly flammable, synthetic sweater that fueled the flames.

Posted by Richard Van Noorden
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Posted on behalf of Meredith Wadman

Governor Kathleen Sebelius of Kansas, a Democrat known for her bipartisanship and health care expertise, was nominated as secretary of the giant US Department of Health and Human Services by President Barack Obama on Monday. Sebelius, 60, if confirmed by the US Senate, will play a lead role as the president seeks a dramatic overhaul of the US health care system.

The nomination comes one month after then-nominee Thomas Daschle, formerly the top Democrat in the Senate, withdrew under fire for failing to pay $128,000 in back takes. Sebelius (whose name is pronounced seh BEEL yuhs, AP says, so not to be confused with the Finnish composer) will lack Daschle’s extensive network of Washington contacts and experience.

Obama also named the more experienced Nancy-Ann DeParle as his top White House advisor on health reform. She headed the US’s giant Medicare and Medicaid programmes [for the elderly, poor and disabled] during the Clinton administration.

Continue reading "Obama picks Sebelius and DeParle to head US healthcare" »

Posted by Richard Van Noorden
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China’s first lunar probe completed its mission on Sunday by smashing into the Moon and annihilating itself, says the China National Space Administration.

The Chang’e-1 probe – launched in 2007 – was the first part of China’s ambitious plans to put a rover on the Moon by 2013. Data from the impact will be used in the next stage of the plans: a soft landing by Chang’e-2, Wu Weiren, the probe’s chief designer told state media. Chang’e-3 will follow in 2013, says Xinhua:

The mission of Chang'e-3 is to make soft landing and probe the moon, said Ye [Peijian], a member of the 11th National Committee of the Chinese People's Political Consultative Conference (CPPCC), China's top political advisory body.

Before the mission, Chang'e-2 will be launched at the latest in 2011 to test key technologies of soft landing and lower technical risks, he said.

Over on the Bad Astronomy blog Phil Plait is bemoaning the fact that of three orbiters currently buzzing the Moon two are Japanese and one is Indian, with no American Moon-bug in sight. As he acknowledges, NASA does have the Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter in the works. Although the launch of this has now been delayed until 20 May, at the earliest.

“LRO had been scheduled to launch on April 24, but a domino effect of scheduling problems pushed the moon mapping effort deeper into spring,” says The Examiner. “The delay is the latest in a series of NASA hard-luck stories ranging from a grounded space shuttle to the loss of the Orbiting Carbon Observatory.”

This seems as good an opportunity as any to direct your attention once again to a personal favourite of the Great Beyond’s ‘Songs about the Moon’ piece: Everybody Gets To Go To The Moon.

Image: artist’s impression of LRO / NASA

Posted by Daniel Cressey
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Could NASA finally be getting a new commander at the helm? The Orlando Sentinel is saying that Steve Isakowitz, the Chief Financial Officer of the Department of Energy, is now the frontrunner, attributing the information to 'administration insiders.'
An aerospace engineering graduate of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Isakowitz has held posts at the CIA and at NASA, where he was a deputy associate administrator for space exploration.
With acting administrator Chris Scolese in charge ever since Mike Griffin left on 19 January, some are getting itchy for a sign from President Barack Obama that NASA hasn't fallen off his list of priorities. About a month ago, it looked like retired Air Force General Scott Gration, a military adviser and campaign-trail confidante of Obama's, was a lock. But that seemed to be held up, partly because of objections from key lawmakers. Other names that have been rumoured include two other retired generals: Air Force Gen. Lester Lyles, a member of the NASA Advisory Committee, and Marine Corps Gen. Charlie Bolden, a former astronaut.
The Sentinel says that Isakowitz is gaining key support from lawmakers such as Senator Barbara Mikulski of Maryland. But one might want to ask Energy Secretary Steven Chu if he's willing to let a key civil servant go just when he could use some help spending the DoE's $40 billion stimulus package.

Posted by Eric Hand
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Posted on behalf of Meredith Wadman

Not content to rest on his laurels after securing $10 billion in Congressional largesse for the National Institutes of Health (NIH), Senator Arlen Specter (pictured right; Republican, Pennsylvania), with Tom Harkin (Democrat, Iowa), another leading NIH booster on Capitol Hill, last week introduced legislation freeing up federal funding for human embryonic stem cell research.

The Stem Cell Research Enhancement Act explicitly permits federal funding for research on stem cell lines derived with parental permission from embryos left over at fertility clinics and otherwise slated for destruction. The identical bill – which then-senator Barack Obama cosponsored – was enacted twice by Congress during the Bush administration, and twice vetoed by then-president Bush. It was introduced in the House on 4 February by Rep. Diana DeGette (Democrat, Colorado.) You can read the text of the legislation here by entering bill number H.R. 873.

President Obama had promised to use an executive order to reverse Bush’s 2001 policy that limits federal funding to research on a score of stem cell lines derived before August of that year. But backers say legislation is important to give the strongest legal footing to a policy change that is likely to be challenged by opponents in court – and to avoid a “ping pong” effect that results when successive presidents reverse each other’s executive orders.

Image: Arlen Specter/S Walsh/AP

Posted by Richard Van Noorden
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Virus-free pluripotency for human cells
Stem-cell advance could bring tailored treatments closer.

Brown pledges to protect science during downturn
Focus of UK economy should shift from finance to science, says Prime Minister.

Origin of 'T. rex' protein questioned
Dinosaur samples may have contained traces of ostrich.

Posted by Daniel Cressey
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