The Great Beyond

“Zhang Yujun was executed for the crime of endangering public safety by dangerous means, and Geng Jinping was put to death after being convicted of producing and selling toxic food, the Shijiazhuang Municipal Intermediate People's Court said in a statement.”
Chinese state news reports that two people have been executed following the tainted milk scandal.

“When you have both exposures, there is a synergistic effect.”
Tanya Froehlich, of the Cincinnati Children’s Hospital Medical Center, comments on her research showing that lead exposure and a mother’s smoking during pregnancy increase the risk of children having ADHD (Detroit Free Press).

“Our data suggest that people's beliefs affect how light or dark they perceive someone to be.”
Eugene Caruso, of the University of Chicago’s Booth School of Business, seems to have found that politically liberal people see President Obama’s skin tone as lighter than politically conservative people (NPR).

Posted by Daniel Cressey
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At an event at Cambridge University last night, Paul Drayson, the science minister; Adam Afriyie, the shadow science minister (pictured right); and Evan Harris, science spokesman for the Liberal Democrats shared a platform for the first time to debate university and science policy. This could have been potentially interesting and to start with the atmosphere of the crowd, made up mainly of public and private researchers, was excitable and hopefully expectant. But in the end, everyone left a bit disappointed.

Both Drayson for Labour and Adam Afriyie for the Conservative Party, made a commitment that science would be in their respective party’s election manifestos. But it was only Harris who could elaborate in any detail what his party’s policies on science would look like in the future.

Predictably, Drayson attempted to dazzle the crowd with Labour’s past achievements on science, including a doubling of the budget to over £3 billion a year. “We should be judged on our track record,” he urged. “We get science.” It’s true; scientists have never had it as good as they have over the past 12 or so years. But times and the financial circumstances have changed and little will be gained from living in the past. The question is: what does the road ahead look like under Labour?

Continue reading "What’s in store for UK science?" »

Posted by Natasha Gilbert
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Today saw the start of a new major new experiment in Japan that will beam neutrinos from one side of the country to the other. Neutrinos are neutral, elementary particles denoted by the Greek letter ν (hence the clever title), and they come in three types. The Tokai-to-Kamioka (T2K) experiment hopes to better understand how they oscillate, that is switch from one kind to another. They do that by firing neutrinos created by the 30GeV main ring of the proton synchrotron at JPARC in Tokai to a massive detector filled with 50,000 tons of ultra-pure water in the Kamioka mine in Gifu (neutrinos don't interact very often with the rest of the world, so it takes a detector that size to see anything).

Neutrino oscillations are an important detail in the Standard Model of particle physics, and T2K hopes to better pin down the exact nature of the oscillations.

Physicists in the United Kingdom played a big role in the T2K project. They designed the target that creates neutrinos out of protons at JPARC and wrote the data acquisition software for some of the detectors. All told, the Science and Technologies Facilities Council (STFC) estimates it spent around £14.3 million on the project.

Unfortunately, many physicists are worried about the UK's continued participation in the T2K project. The STFC is currently suffering from a £40 million funding shortfall, and is reviewing major projects like T2K to decide which to keep and which to cut.

I wrote a story for this week's issue of Nature that discusses the STFC's situation in depth (although we didn't go into T2K specifically). It will be out tomorrow, so stay tuned!

Credit: Kamioka Observatory, ICRR, Univ. of Tokyo

Posted by Geoff Brumfiel
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Today is the 150th anniversary of the first publication of On the Origin of Species.

Why not celebrate by checking out Nature’s Darwin special? This week is our third Darwin celebrating issue, focusing on biodiversity.

If you want more, here’s more…

The BBC notes that a first edition of On the Origin is being auctioned off today after its discovery in a toilet. It was expected to reach around £60,000 but actually sold for £103,250 according to Christie’s.

The Times notes that a search of Britain is being organised for a missing Darwin notebook. “Temptingly pocket-sized, it was probably stolen in the late 1970s from the study table where he worked at Down House, near Biggin Hill in Kent, where he wrote Origin and all his later major works,” adds the Guardian.

In the Independent, Steve Connor writes about ‘Darwin’s true heir’: “His name is Edward O. Wilson”. Meanwhile, NPR declares that On the Origin, “may be more controversial today than when it first appeared”.

Greg Ladin has a thoughtful blog about the book, and says, “The Origin of Species was itself a bit like a Noachian flood in that as we look back we often imagine a pre-Origin dark ages of theological misunderstandings washed away by the flood of The Origin which gets it all right. And this is true to some extent from a purely scientific point of view, but in the broader context of the history of good ideas and the still broader context of the history of all ideas (good or bad) it simply isn't close.”

And finally, this seems like a good occasion to resurrect our word cloud picture of On the Origin, reproduced right for your pleasure.

Posted by Daniel Cressey
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The Large Hadron Collider has finally collided something!

Actually, given the woes that have beset the particle physics experiment, the LHC has probably been responsible for several previous collisions: between physicists’ heads and various walls at the CERN complex. But now it has begun the proper smashing – that of particles against other particles – by cross the beams of protons that have been circulating around the giant ring since last week.

In a statement, CERN said:

Beams were first tuned to produce collisions in the ATLAS detector, which recorded its first candidate for collisions at 14:22 [yesterday] afternoon.

This image shows the first possible collision seen at the ATLAS experiment:

See also: LHC sees particles circulate once more

Image: CERN

Posted by Daniel Cressey
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New species are discovered all the time, but it’s not quite so frequent for them to fall out of the mouths of snakes.

Andrew Marshall, of the University of York, was surveying monkeys in the Magombera Forest in Tanzania when he surprised a twig snake having dinner (or perhaps breakfast). The poor snake dropped the chameleon it was attempting to ingest and our story begins.

“It saw me and fled, and as it did so spat out a chameleon,” says Marshall (Daily Telegraph). “I took photos and showed them to a local herpetologist, who instantly recognised that it was a new species.”

That first example didn’t survive its encounter with the snake but another was later found and they have both now been named as Kinyongia magomberae – the Magombera chameleon – and reported in the African Journal of Herpetology (press release).

Unfortunately, as always seems to be the case with new species these days, the habitat of this critter is already under threat.

Marshall told the Guardian, “The thing is, if you work in an area of conservation importance and you can give a species the name of that area it can really highlight that area. By giving it the name Magombera it raises the importance of the forest.”

Personally though, I would have preferred him to name it something more related to its discovery, Kinyongia serpens-cibus perhaps? (Apologies in advance to Latin-scholars for that one.)

Image: Andrew Marshall / African Journal of Herpetology

Posted by Daniel Cressey
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The UK’s controversial DNA database should be reformed with a new legal basis and independent supervision, says government’s independent genetics advisory body.

Although it now contains the details of five million people, many of whom have never been convicted of any crime, the database has never been formally debated by Parliament, says the Human Genetics Commission.

The commission says there are also “real concerns” about discrimination against certain ethnic groups. Its report ‘Nothing to hide, nothing to fear?’ notes that over 8% of the UK population is currently profiled on the database. But it contains the profiles of over three quarters of black men between the ages 18 and 35. Some may have been arrested purely to obtain their DNA.

The report comes after the European Court of Human Rights demanded that the government stop keeping the DNA of innocent people (the government responded by proposing to hold such DNA for ‘only’ six years).

“DNA evidence plays a significant role in bringing criminals before the courts and securing convictions. But it is not clear how far holding DNA profiles on a central database improves police investigations,” says Jonathan Montgomery, chair of the commission (press release).

“We have to strike a proper balance between identifying offenders and protecting privacy, including that of innocent people, we should not compromise that privacy without good reason.”

Montgomery’s report says the database should be established in law through new legislation in Parliament, with unambiguous definitions of how its records can be used. It also calls for new guidance on when DNA samples should be taken, and notes that one police officer said that police were now arresting people to obtain DNA when previously they may have pursued another course of action.

However, the report sidesteps the issue of retaining the DNA of “unconvicted individuals” saying that the government should support a national debate to address which of these individuals should have their profiles retained and which should not.

Image: Getty

Posted by Daniel Cressey
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Icelandic genomics firm goes bankrupt
deCODE's demise leaves fate of its valuable genetic database unclear.

Bubble-fusion scientist debarred from federal funding
Office of Naval Research passes verdict on controversial researcher Rusi Taleyarkhan.

Diagnosing the future of genomics
Eric Green discusses his priorities as newly appointed director of the US National Human Genome Research Institute.

Posted by Daniel Cressey
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President Barack Obama today announced the establishment of National Lab Day as part of his administration's new campaign for science and technology education.

The grassroots effort includes community volunteers, organizations of teachers, scientists and engineers and partnerships with private businesses. It plans to give 10 million children, grades six through 12, an opportunity to "launch rockets, construct miniature windmills and get their hands dirty", Obama said during the announcement.

NLD is no "bring your daughter to work" day — the kids will be in it for the long haul, relatively speaking. The first annual NLD will run the first week of May 2010, and will be the culmination of a series of laboratory activities, with "laboratory" meaning everything from a facility with bubbling chemicals, to a classroom, to a laptop linked to the LHC. Teachers propose projects on the NLD website, and scientists, sponsors and other volunteers can then search through the proposals and decide which they'd like to help out with.

In line with Obama's claim that "we're going to show young people how cool science can be," one of the proposed projects would teach kids how to program apps for iPhones or Androids. Another proposal wants to bring hands-on plate tectonic studies to Ohio, and one in California hopes to study endangered species, including running PCRs on DNA from California condors.

Obama's "Educate to Innovate" campaign also includes a number of larger business partnerships; the private sector has alread committed more than $260 million, he said. For example, the MacArthur Foundation is partnering with Sony and other technology companies to fund science-related video games, and Sesame Street will begin a two-year focus on math and science.

Image: NIH.gov

Posted by Lizzie Buchen
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Russian spacecraft designer and cosmonaut Konstantin Feoktistov died at the age of 83 on Saturday.

Feoktistov was one of three men to take part in the first group space flight in 1964 and was the first civilian in space. His presence was disapproved of by the government Politburo as he was not a Communist Party member.

“I had many enemies who did not want me to make that flight,” he said in 1998 (Boston Globe, via LA Times obituary). “Once we took off, I remember thinking ‘That’s it. No one can get me off this spaceship now!’ For me, it was a thrill to ride that beast.”

Feoktistov helped design not only the Voskhod craft that carried him into space but also the iconic Sputnik.

“The memory of Konstantin Petrovich Feoktistov will forever remain in our hearts,” said the Russian space agency in a statement.

Image: 1964 Soviet Union 4 kopeks stamp featuring Feoktistov / via wikipedia.

Posted by Daniel Cressey
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NASA’s Cassini probe has again flown by Saturn’s moon Enceladus. And just like last time, it’s sent back some pretty pictures of the plume of water jetting from moon’s south pole.

“These first raw images are spectacular, and paint an even more fascinating picture of Enceladus,” says Bob Pappalardo, the Cassini project scientist at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory (press release).

NASA scientists are now stitching together a mosaic image of the ‘tiger stripe’ fissures around the south pole where jets of water originate.

More pictures from the flyby:

Enceladus approximately 133,963 kilometers away	Enceladus approximately 16,583 kilometers away	Mimas approximately 587,461 kilometers away

Image credit: NASA/JPL/Space Science Institute

Posted by Daniel Cressey
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While American football commentators jokingly talked about contacting rocket scientists to assess the statistical wisdom of a disastrous play call by the New England Patriots last week, the National Football League is actually considering upping its use of brain scientists to combat head injuries. The NFL will reportedly have teams work with independent neurologists on concussion issues according to the Associated Press.

Although concussions are an annual hot topic during the football season, they’ve taken new urgency with recent research and a congressional investigation into the lasting effects of repeated head on collisions including dementia and Alzheimer’s disease. One player contended that team doctors are worrying more about the win than the player's safety and quality of life post-retirement. Still, an AP poll of 160 players recently revealed that many players purposely underreport the effects and severity of head collisions so that they can continue playing.

Last week the Wall Street Journal, proposed a simple solution, remove the helmets and players would be more careful about protecting their noggins. Just look at rugby where there are a few “freak accidents” but less tendency to “lead with your hat.”

The NFL responded that that’s not really something they’d consider. Americans don’t want to watch rugby, apparently.

Image: Tackle by Wigstruck via Flickr under creative commons.

Posted by Brendan Maher
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Galileo’s thumb, middle finger and a tooth have turned up at an auction and are due to be put on display at Florence's History of Science Museum, to be reunited with a finger of his already in the museum’s collection.

The rather gruesome tale begins in 1737 some 95 years after Galileo’s death, when “enthusiastic admirers” removed body parts when his corpse was being moved to Santa Croce Basilica in Florence.

According to CNN, “Two of the fingers and the tooth ended up in a sealed glass jar that disappeared sometime after 1905.” That glass jar ended up being auctioned and landed in the hands of museum director Paolo Galluzzi.

The story goes on to explain that the jar had been labelled, but that label was lost by the time of the auction (which begs the question – why was there any interest in a jar containing an unknown persons fingers and tooth?).

Galluzzi says he has no doubt that these are the genuine articles (BBC), and the museum will be putting the finger, thumb and tooth on display along with the finger they already have, next year.

Apparently the missing fingers were those Galileo would have used to write with, and the gesture of removing them was reminiscent of the way saints’ bodies would be mutilated after death by admirers. This could be a nod to the fact that scientists of the day held Galileo in the highest esteem, but as a scientist, not a Christian.

Image: Galileo, from Astronomy Picture of the Day

Posted by Katharine Sanderson
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The ice sheet covering east Antarctica may have been melting since 2006, according to new research, contradicting previous suggestions that it has remained stable or even grown in mass.

Using measurements for 2002 to 2009 from a twin pair of satellites, researchers at the University of Texas at Austin in Austin, Texas, say east Antarctica is losing mass at about 58 gigatonnes a year. Most of the loss appears to be from coastal regions and to stem from increased ice loss post 2006.

Previous studies have generally used satellites to measure elevation or movement of ice. The new study - published in Nature Geoscience - instead looks at the Earth’s gravity field and uses that to work out how much ice is there. It also suggests that 132 Gt of the total annual ice loss of 190 Gt per year is coming from the west.

Although there are uncertainties in the data, the new estimates of ice loss are on average consistent with previous calculations, “but, in contrast to previous estimates, they indicate that as a whole, Antarctica may soon be contributing significantly more to global sea-level rise”, the researchers write in their paper.

The finding is significant because the east of the continent has traditionally been seen as the more stable half. It is also the bigger half so if it is melting it could contribute more to sea level rise.

“We felt surprised to see this change in east Antarctica,” says study author Jianli Chen (BBC, Guardian). “If the current trend continues or gets worse, Antarctica could become the largest contributor to sea level rises in the world. It could start to lose more ice than Greenland within a few years.”

Jonathan Bamber, of the University of Bristol, told Bloomberg he was also surprised, as those previous studies have suggested the East Antarctic Ice Sheet really wasn’t changing that much.

“This result really confirms that there are very substantial inconsistencies between different estimates,” he says. “The margins of error are so large that it can be difficult to draw strong conclusions.”

Image: Antarctic continent surrounded by sea ice / NASA/Goddard Space Flight Center / Scientific Visualization Studio, Canadian Space Agency, RADARSAT International Inc.

Posted by Daniel Cressey
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The jumbo dumbo (Photo courtesy of Mike Vecchione)

New species of 'dumbo' (Photo courtesy of David Shale)

In total, five deep-sea projects will have undertaken 210 expeditions when the census has been completed.

“There is both a great lack of information about the ‘abyss’ and substantial misinformation,” says Robert Carney, of Louisiana State University. “Many species live there. However, the abyss has long been viewed as a desert. Worse, it was viewed as a wasteland where few to no environmental impacts could be of any concern.”

Now that they have stared into the abyss, says Carney, the census scientists are concerned. Here are some of the critters they are concerned about.

Collected between 1,000 to 3,000 meters deep, was a very large example of a finned octopod, normally called a dumbo due to its endearing habit of swimming by flapping a pair of large fins that look like ears.

This jumbo example was nearly two metres long and 6 kg heavy, the largest ever collected. In total nine species were found on the mid-Atlantic ridge, including one new to science.

Later a huge catch of corals, sea cucumbers and sea urchins was pulled up from the ridge. Researchers described it as “indescribable”. “It’s hard to believe that such exuberance of life exists a kilometre deep into the ocean,” says the census.

The team also pulled up a Neocyema, the strange orange thing pictured below, only the fifth example of this fish ever caught.

Perhaps the strangest find though was a Lamellibranchia tubeworm. When a robot arm lifted the worm clear of the sea floor, crude oil started leaking from the hole it had left behind. Apparently the worm had been feasting on the oil.

More photos below the fold...

Continue reading "Weird beasts from the abyss" »

Posted by Daniel Cressey
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A proposed resolution to restrict human embryonic stem cell research at the University of Nebraska has failed. The University's Board of Regents today split their votes 4-4, defeating a measure that would have limited research to embryonic stem cell lines approved under former President George W. Bush. The resolution needed a majority of five votes to pass.

"That probably settles the question for the time being," Thomas Rosenquist, vice chancellor for research at the University of Nebraska Medical School in Omaha, told Nature. "It's permission to go ahead and take part in 21st-century research with embryonic stem cells."

Nebraska law prohibits the destruction of embryos for research. But the state does allow scientists to follow federal standards in embryonic stem cell research. Earlier this year, President Barack Obama removed government funding restrictions on new stem-cell lines derived from embryos left over from fertility treatment, and an advisory panel is currently mulling over which of hundreds of potential new cell lines to approve.

The governing board's decision "is a big relief", says Angie Rizzino, a stem cell biologist at the University of Nebraska Medical School. "But I fear that they'll be back in a year or two trying to put a block on embryonic stem cell research again."

Posted by Elie Dolgin
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It's Friday evening, time once again for the "refresh game", where I sit on the CERN website waiting to find out what terrorism/food/drink crisis will befall the Large Hadron Collider next (TGB's Daniel Cressey is putting his money on a badger from the future quantum mechanically tunneling his way into the beamline).

At the moment, though, it's all looking pretty good! Commissioning of the machine should be completed any minute now, and the physicists and engineers in charge of the LHC could begin injecting beams of protons into the machine tonight. Optimistically, we could be about a week or two away from collisions.

Well, unless the United Nations intervenes. A cleverly-named group of LHC critics called conCERNed (get it? Because the LHC is at the European Organization for Nuclear Research, which is shortened to CERN in French? And CERN is right there in the word? Oh never mind), have filed a complaint with the UN's Human Rights Committee warning that the LHC might destroy the world. If true that would, it seem, infringe on a human right or two.

conCERNed would like to see the formation of an agency similar to the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) to regulate particle accelerators. But I wouldn't necessarily expect this to stop collisions in the coming weeks. Given what I've seen of IAEA diplomacy, even if the UN decides to form such an agency, it will take most of the LHC's first physics run just to draw up an agenda for its inaugural meeting.

Stay tuned for more updates next week!

CERN

Posted by Geoff Brumfiel
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“Our engineers are exploring how we might contribute to this effort by developing a global forest platform that would enable anyone in the world, including tropical nations, to monitor deforestation and draw attention to it.”
Philipp Schindler, of Google UK, says his company may build a programme to allow internet users to identify illegal logging via satellite photos (Times).

“From the beginning, this case was marked by a fundamentally unfair and unconstitutional trial plan that allowed the jury to rely on findings by a prior jury.”
Murray Garnick, associate general counsel for Altria, says the company will appeal a $300 million damages award against its Philip Morris company to a former smoker in Florida who suffers from emphysema (Bloomberg).

“No new safety issue has been identified from reports issued to date.”
Marie-Paule Kieny, of the World Health Organisation, says H1N1 vaccination is not to blame for 41 deaths (Reuters).

“Dismantling this institution, which is a huge economic driver for the state, is a stupendously stupid thing to do, but that’s the path the Legislature has embarked on.”
Richard Mathies, dean of the College of Chemistry at Berkeley, takes issue with cuts to California’s education budget (LA Times).

Posted by Daniel Cressey
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More safety data is needed before an experimental flu vaccine made inside insect cells should be approved, a US federal advisory committee said yesterday.

A US Food and Drug Administration (FDA) panel voted 6-to-5 that Protein Sciences, a vaccine company based in Meriden, Connecticut, hadn’t proven that its FluBlok vaccine was safe enough to enter mass production. Nine of the 11 panellists, however, said the shot was effective in adults aged 18 to 49, although the vaccine did not appear to work as well in older patients.

The vaccine is made by inserting flu genes into an insect virus and growing it in caterpillar ovary cells. This process only takes two months, compared to the five or six needed to grow virus in chicken eggs, and so it has been touted as a way to speed up manufacturing when new vaccines against potentially pandemic flu strains are urgently needed — like now. Fewer than 50 million doses of H1N1 vaccine are currently available in the US.

Continue reading "Bug-based flu vaccine rebuffed" »

Posted by Elie Dolgin
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The disappearance of the huge herbivores that once roamed North America triggered a massive change in the environment with new trees and more fires.

Reporting in Science, researchers say lake sediments show that the decline of mammoths, mastodons, ground sloths and giant beavers allowed broadleaved trees to flourish as the beasties weren’t around to eat them. The rise of these trees then meant that more fuel for fires accumulated.

“Our work thus shows close connections among the late-glacial histories of fire, vegetation, and mammalian herbivores and suggests that the loss of a broad guild of consumers contributed to substantial restructuring of plant communities and an enhanced fire regime,” write Jacquelyn Gill, of the University of Wisconsin, Madison, and her colleagues.

To make these links Gill’s team looked at sediment from Appleman Lake in Indiana and other sediments from New York sites. They traced fungus spores that live on dung as a proxy for megafauna. As the number of spores in the sediments decreases about 13.8 thousand years ago, new types of pollen appear, showing the increasing dominance of the broadleaf trees. At the same time a big increase in charcoal is seen, showing the increasing number of fires.

The big question though is what does this tell us about why the mammoth died out…

Continue reading "Dung dating illuminates mammoth mystery" »

Posted by Daniel Cressey
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Posted for Meredith Wadman

The National Institutes of Health (NIH) is once again under fire for lax oversight of conflicts of interest among the extramural researchers it supports.

A November 18 report by the Inspector General of the Department of Health and Human Services, the NIH’s parent agency, recommends that the agency significantly tighten its policing of conflicts. NIH is the world’s largest biomedical research funder, and it channels 80% of its $31 billion budget to extramural grants.

The inspector general reached his conclusions by examining the financial conflict documentation from 41 extramural institutions for the government’s 2006 fiscal year. Current regulations require grantee institutions to “reduce, manage or eliminate” conflicts reported by their researchers that could reasonably be affected by their NIH-funded work.

The inspector general found that, among the documentation for 184 conflicts involving 165 researchers, only six researchers’ conflicts were eliminated by their universities. The lion’s share, totalling 136, were “managed”. Grantee institutions “rarely” reduce or eliminate conflicts, the report concluded.

Among the report’s recommendations: that universities collect financial interest data in specific dollar amounts and not in ranges such as “$10,000-$50,000”. It also recommends that NIH require researchers to report to their institutions all their financial interests and not just those that they judge could reasonably be affected by their NIH-supported research.

“Full and complete disclosure ensures that the determination of whether a significant financial interest relates to the research rests with the grantee institution and not with the researcher,” the report argues.

Specific dollar amounts would certainly shed more light on the equity holdings of researchers. These were found by the inspector general to be the most common financial interest, with 111 of the researchers reporting equity holdings, and at least six of these holding more than $100,000 [Corrected: 23/11].

NIH is in the process of rewriting its conflict of interest reporting requirements; it is expected to issue new regulations by year’s end (see: Researcher payment reporting under scrutiny).

The report follows a similar briefing from the inspector general in January 2008 (see: NIH in the dark over conflicts of interest). Investigations by Senator Charles Grassley have pointed out several cases of underreporting of six-figure amounts by NIH-funded researchers (see: Money in biomedicine: The senator's sleuth).

Sally Rockey, acting deputy director of the office of extramural research at NIH, said in a statement that, "NIH has demonstrated its commitment to oversight activities and continues to make them an agency priority." She added that the inspector's recommendations "will be considered by the NIH along with public comments ... as it formulates a new regulation that will facilitate effective compliance."

Posted by Daniel Cressey
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Posted for David Cyranoski

The Chinese government has sent inspection teams to check on H1N1 reporting after a famed Chinese doctor accused local governments of covering up swine flu cases.

Zhong Nanshan of Guangzhou Institute of Respiratory Diseases in southern China, called into question the official number of deaths from H1N1, telling the Southern Metropolis Daily newspaper that the quoted figure of 53 was too low. “I just don’t believe that there have been 53 H1N1 deaths nationwide,” he said.

Yesterday Ministry of Health spokesman Deng Haihua, said any officials who do not carry out their H1N1 reporting duties or who delay reporting will be “held accountable”. He also said that teams had been sent to inspect pandemic control. In total nine groups have been sent to Hebei, Shanxi, Inner Mongolia, Liaoning, Jilin, Heilongjiang, Zhejiang, Hunan, Gansu, Qinghai, Ningxia, and Xinjiang (official statement).

While many have pointed out that limitations on testing capacity have led to an underreporting, Zhong suggested that some hospitals were intentionally not testing those who died from pneumonia for H1N1.

His words carry weight because he shot to fame during the Sudden Acute Respiratory Syndrome (SARS) outbreak in 2003 for quickly recognizing and reacting to the threat posed by the new virus while government officials around the country tried to cover it up.

All Nature’s pandemic flu coverage is collected on our news special page

Posted by Daniel Cressey
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Gene silencing predicted to improve drug manufacturing
Biotech firm hopes to use RNA interference to boost drug yields.

Europe puts brakes on fusion project
Firing up ITER in 2018 is not feasible, warn council delegates.

Maize genome mapped
Sequence should help corn breeders meet global demands for food and fuel.

Posted by Daniel Cressey
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“I’m here in solidarity with people across the state of California that are being subjugated to these outrageous fee increases. It’s completely unjust to put the burden on students.”
Kyle Tramberly, a junior at UC San Diego, is one of those protesting over fee increases in the UC system. Earlier today some students stormed UCLA’s Campbell Hall and blockaded themselves inside (LA Times).

“We knew about SuperCroc, the titan of all crocs, but we didn't have quite an idea of what existed in the shadows of the Cretaceous. We have crocs here [in what was once Gondwana] that ate plants and galloped and ate dinosaurs and were flat as a board.”
Paul Sereno, of the University of Chicago and National Geographic, has unearthed some terrifying prehistoric crocodiles.

“We have no time to waste here. The ecological services must be restored.”
Christian Lambrechts, a United Nations environment programme expert seconded to the Kenyan government, comments on the eviction of thousands of people who were squatting in the country’s Mau forest (Guardian).

Posted by Daniel Cressey
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For the past 22 hours, 35 radio telescopes from around the world have been holding hands and working toward a common goal: creating the most powerful grid that's ever spanned the skies (NRAO press release).

2 hours from now, the telescopes will again go their separate ways, having measured the positions of 243 quasars — distant, blazing-bright galaxies with supermassive black holes at their cores. Quasars are ideal reference points in the sky because they're both visible and stable (due to their distance) to Earthlings. Because large groups of telescopes — whichever subset is facing the quasars of interest — are measuring the positions in unison, they are able to cover most of the sky and avoid problems of combining data from different observing sessions.

The telescope teams are measuring 1 to 3 quasars at a time for anywhere from 30 to 500 seconds each. As they crunch along, their activities and measurements are visible in real time at the Bordeaux Observatory's website.

The 24-hour, 7-continent effort demolishes the previous world record for telescope collaborations, which included 23 scopes. If all continues to go according to plan, the result will be a new, stronger reference grid for the sky, allowing more precise measurements of everything from gravity to movements of the tectonic plates.

Image: jpl.NASA.gov

Posted by Lizzie Buchen
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An endangered fish is actually two even more endangered fish, according to new research.

Although it is already listed as ‘critically endangered’ the poor old European common skate may be in an even worse state than we thought. A new paper published in Aquatic Conservation says what we thought was the skate Dipturus batis is actually two different animals.

“Morphology, genetics, and life history reveal that two distinct species have been erroneously confused since the 1920s under the single scientific name D. batis,” write Samuel Iglésias, of the French National Museum of Natural History, and colleagues.

Iglésias says the ‘common skate’ species should be split into the blue skate (provisionally D. cf. flossada) and the flapper skate (D. cf. intermedia). This is not just of academic importance.

“Revisions of incorrect synonymizations - called species resurrections - are common works for systematists, but in the present case the resurrection of D. cf. intermedia is of great conservation significance,” the authors note.

The problem is that the not-quite-so-bad state of blue skate populations has been masking the really, really bad state of the flapper. And the old ‘common skate’ is already noted as the first fish brought to the brink of extinction by commercial fishing and this confusion of blue and flapper has hamstrung those trying to conserve the species – both of which deserve independent ‘critically endangered status’ says the paper.

“The risk of extinction of these depleted species is higher than previously assessed and appears unavoidable without immediate and incisive conservation action,” Iglésias concludes.

Posted by Daniel Cressey
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Human embryonic stem cells could be one step closer to the clinic. Santa Monica, California-based Advanced Cell Technology (ACT) announced today that it has applied to US regulators to launch a new clinical trial aimed at reversing vision loss with retinal cells recreated from embryonic stem (ES) cells.

The company plans to test the stem cell-derived retinal cells in 12 patients suffering from Stargardt's disease, a form of inherited juvenile macular degeneration that affects around one in 10,000 children.

ACT researchers previously showed that ES cells could give rise to retinal pigment epithelium cells, the photoreceptors that go awry in the disease. They then demonstrated that the cells could restore vision in a rat model of retinal disease. And in September, the researchers reported that the cells were long-lasting and safe in a mouse model of Stargardt's.

"Our research clearly shows that stem cell-derived retinal cells can rescue visual function in animals that otherwise would have gone blind," said Robert Lanza, ACT's chief scientific officer, in a statement. "We are hopeful that the cells will be similarly efficacious in patients."

ACT's investigational new drug (IND) application is only the second filing with the US Food and Drug Administration for a therapy involving human ES cells. The first company out of the gate, Menlo Park, California-based Geron Corp., had its stem-cell derived therapy to treat spinal cord injury patients approved last January. But the FDA put a hold on the trial before a single patient had been injected with the cells, citing safety concerns. Geron now says it plans to restart the trial in the second half of next year.

For more on why stem cell-derived transplants could work to delay or prevent blindness, see the June 2009 news feature from the sadly now-defunct Nature Reports Stem Cells.

Image: The left eye of a Stargardt's patient from Özdek et al., Eye 19, 1222–1225 (2005).

Posted by Elie Dolgin
Categories: Biology & Biotechnology, Health and medicine | Permalink | Comments (1) | TrackBacks (0)

People in Papua New Guinea who took part in cannibalistic rituals appear to have rapidly evolved resistance to the deadly prion disease kuru.

Researchers who performed genetic analysis on 3,000 people from the Eastern Highland populations of the island found a novel gene variant that they say is an acquired resistance factor which was selected for during PNG’s kuru epidemic in the first half of the last century.

In total 709 villagers in these populations ate the brains of their dead in rituals but only 152 died of the CJD-like disease kuru, the team report in the New England Journal of Medicine.

“It’s absolutely fascinating to see Darwinian principles at work here. This community of people has developed their own biologically unique response to a truly terrible epidemic, ” says study author John Collinge of the Medical Research Council Prion Unit at University College London (press release).

“The fact that this genetic evolution has happened in a matter of decades is remarkable.”

Collinge suggests that the discovery may shed light on possible cures or treatments for prion diseases in general.

Eating brains in ‘mortuary feasts’ was banned in PNG in the 1950s and kuru has since disappeared.

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

Gene-makers form security coalition
Latest salvo in the gene-synthesis 'standards war' sees firms set up a competing code.

Curbing population growth crucial to reducing carbon emissions
Access to contraception could tackle global warming, says United Nations.

Antarctic temperature spike surprises climate researchers
Polar region was unexpectedly warm between ice ages.

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

Can ordinary citizens help policymakers solve the most pressing problems of our time? That's what elections are supposed to be for - but when they fail, it might be worth trying something like ExpertLabs, a new effort launched today to tap into collective public expertise to better inform policymaking.

ExpertLabs is a new initiative of the American Association for the Advancement of Science and headed up by blogger Anil Dash. Other high-level names have joined up: $500,000 in seed funding comes from the John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation, and the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy (OSTP) has signed up to the concept.

It's surely a worthwhile experiment, but the question is what will actually result from it. Other efforts to increase webbiness and transparency in the Obama administration have suffered glitches, from a White House press site that took a while to get its press releases up on time to an OSTP blog that promised dialogue but ended up with the usual handful of rambling public comments rather than any sort of interactive and stimulating conversation.

Stay tuned to see if ExpertLabs delivers on its arm-waving promises of today.

Posted by Alex Witze
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This week in our biodiversity special, we hear why today's paleontologists need to get predictive and not just descriptive, learn how to factor environmental goods into the economy and celebrate 150 years of Darwin's On the Origin of Species by learning about the cultural context of his theories in Britain and across the world.

Posted by Daniel Cressey
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The Ancient Egyptians were more modern than one might think. Not only did they have heart disease, they’re now being given CT scans.

So says a paper in the Journal of the American Medical Association by cardiologist Gregory Thomas at the University of California, Irvine, and colleagues. Thomas and chums took whole-body CT scans of 22 mummies housed in the Egyptian National Museum of Antiquities in Cairo, Egypt.

And despite its link with our recent lazy, fatty, smoky lifestyle, atherosclerosis – where the artery walls thicken from a build up of cholesterol – was prevalent among the mummies.

Why would cardiologists look at this in the first place, and what does the study tell us? Well, according to the LA Times, Thomas became interested after he read about Pharoah Merenptah.

When he died at age 60 in 1203 BC, Merenptah was plagued by atherosclerosis, arthritis and dental decay, the story says. Thomas reckoned that traces of atherosclerosis might still be there, and set off to Egypt armed with a scanner.

The tell-tale signs were calcium deposits in the hearts and arteries of the mummies, which were spotted by the scanners. Of the 22 mummies, the team were able to find the hearts of 16, and of those 9 had signs of the heart disease.

The disease seemed to be age related – affecting those over 45 of both sexes.

So what does this mean for modern humans? Thomas thinks it shows that heart diseases is just part of what it is to be human, and the British Tabloid the Daily Mail take this as a reason to let fast food off the hook.

But it makes sense – the Egyptians, at least those of sufficient status to be deemed mummyfiable, ate a diet rich in fatty meats, and salt was often used to preserve food because fridges were some 3,500 years away from being invented.

Image by Michiel2005 via flickr under Creative Commons

Posted by Katharine Sanderson
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“This is a beautiful study. Some people have been saying this for a long time, but no one has shown this in such a systematic way.”
Stephan Schuster, of Pennsylvania State University in State College, comments on a paper showing penguins are evolving faster than previously thought (Wired).

“I had to send it to about four old flames. They all responded with sarcasm: Yeah yeah, thank you very much.”
Physicist Leon Lederman discusses sending a form letter to well-wishers congratulating him on his 1988 Nobel Prize (Symmetry Breaking).

“We thank the CDC for restoring their dignity and reproductive justice.”
Silvia Henriquez of the National Latina Institute for Reproductive Health, congratulates the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention for rescinding the demand that female immigrants are vaccinated against HPV to get a green card (AP).

“Mayor feels couch move as 6.5 magnitude earthquake hits B.C.’s north coast”
The Canadian Press reports the impact of a recent quake.

Posted by Daniel Cressey
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The world’s carbon dioxide ‘sinks’ are not able to keep up with the amount of the greenhouse gas being produced, according to a paper published in Nature Geoscience.

Reviewing the recent literature Corinne Le Quéré, of the University of East Anglia, and colleagues report that between 1959 and 2008 43% of each year’s carbon dioxide emissions have remained in the atmosphere with the rest being absorbed by land and ocean sinks. However in the last 50 years they suggest that the fraction remaining in the atmosphere has increased from about 40% to 45%.

They also found that a 29% rise in carbon emissions between 2000 and 2008 can be attributed to a large extent to burning coal and the growth of the so-called ‘emerging economies’.

“The Earth’s carbon sinks are complex and there are some gaps in our understanding, particularly in our ability to link human-induced CO2 emissions to atmospheric CO2 concentrations on a year-to-year basis,” says Le Quéré (press release). “But, if we can reduce the uncertainty about the carbon sinks, our data could be used to verify the effectiveness of climate mitigations policies.”

Uncertainties in this area are huge. Another recent paper in Geophysical Research Letters suggested there has been no decline in the fraction absorbed by sinks.

The author of that paper, Wolfgang Knorr of the University of Bristol, says, “We are just at the very edge of being able to detect a trend in the airborne fraction. Our apparently conflicting results demonstrate what doing real science is like and just how difficult it is to accurately quantify such data.” (Press release.)

One thing the authors can apparently agree on: if global warming is going to be stopped emissions are going to have to be reduced drastically.

Posted by Daniel Cressey
Categories: Earth, environment & ecology | Permalink | Comments (3) | TrackBacks (0)

Boosters of US research are trumpeting what they call the job-saving investments in science brought about by the US economic stimulus package, passed by Congress in February to the tune of $787 billion.

In Washington on Tuesday, the usual political luminaries in the Democratic party -- including House speaker Nancy Pelosi -- trotted out statistics on the more than $21 billion in science and technology funding in the stimulus package. Rush Holt, a physicist and Congressman from New Jersey, noted that universities and research laboratories in his state received more than $60 million. The group rolled out a website, called ScienceWorksForUS, that is meant to "tell the stories of the research and the researchers contributing to America's recovery".

But it's a one-sided message to say the least. Over at Science's policy blog, Jeff Mervis points out that no Republicans were invited to the Capitol Hill rally. And there's growing criticism of the numbers that Democratic leaders in both Congress and the Obama administration have been using to justify their claims of job creation through stimulus money (Washington Post).

For a breakdown of where in science all that money is going, see our graphic from last month.

Posted by Alex Witze
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Readers of the UK’s second-best selling daily newspaper may already know this, but scientists have answered “the question that has troubled many a young woman as she dresses for a night out: How much should she dare to bare?”

The Daily Mail has noticed a paper in the journal Behaviour that the rest of the British journalism community missed. In this paper Colin Hendrie, of the University of Leeds, and his colleagues report their undercover observations of a Leeds nightclub.

Hendrie, who has previously suggested that kissing was developed ‘to spread germs’, told the Mail the answer to the question is 40%: “Any more than 40 per cent and the signal changes from ‘allure’ to one indicating general availability and future infidelity.”

While many British readers may be puzzled by apparent generalization from one Leeds nightclub to the human population as a whole, the abstract for Hendrie’s paper is so amazing we provide extracts here for your reading pleasure:

Young, sexually mature humans Homo sapiens sapiens of both sexes commonly congregate into particular but arbitrary physical locations and dance. These may be areas of traditional use, such as nightclubs, discotheques or dance-halls or areas that are temporarily commissioned for the same purpose such as at house parties or rock festivals etc.
…
Data revealed that more than 80% of people entering the nightclub did so without a partner and so were potentially sexually available. There was also an approx. 50% increase in the number of couples leaving the nightclub as compared to those entering it seen on each occasion this was measured, indicating that these congregations are for sexual purposes.
…
Various female display tactics were measured and these showed that whilst only 20% of females wore tight fitting clothing that revealed more than 40% of their flesh/50% of their breast area and danced in a sexually suggestive manner, these attracted close to half (49%) of all male approaches seen. These data reveal the effectiveness of clothing and dance displays in attracting male attention and strongly indicate that nightclubs are human display grounds, organised around females competing for the attention of males. Females with the most successful displays gain the advantage of being able to choose from amongst a range of males showing interest in them.

UK readers should feel free to leave the usual “why is my tax money funding this research” in the comments section…

Image: a Leeds club / photo by Al Green via Flickr under creative commons.

Posted by Daniel Cressey
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In 1835, Darwin and his shipmates collected specimens of the Floreana mockingbird in the Galapagos Islands. Now those same specimens may help conservationists re-establish the species to the island that gives them their name.

Although they died out on the isle of Floreana some 50 years after the famous naturalist’s visit, two populations of Mimus trifasciatus still exist on nearby rocks.

In the Royal Society Journal Biology Letters, Paquita Hoeck and colleagues report that genetic analysis shows that one of these populations is highly inbred but comparison with the specimens collected by Darwin reveals that both have unique alleles found in the original Floreana population. For this reason birds from both populations should be used in the forthcoming attempt to reintroduce the animals to the main island, they say.

“Though Darwin knew nothing of DNA, the specimens he and [Beagle captain Robert] FitzRoy collected have, after 170 years of safe-keeping in collections, yielded genetic clues to suggest a path for conservation of this critically endangered and historically important species,” says paper author Karen James, a researcher at the Natural History Museum where the specimens are kept (press release).

Two others authors on the paper may be familiar to Nature News readers: Peter and Rosemary Grant.

See also: Nature's Darwin 200 special.

Image: Natural History Museum

Posted by Daniel Cressey
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Over 60 of the world’s leading agricultural scientists have issued a statement warning that December’s negotiations on climate change in Copenhagen must not ignore agriculture and the need for crop adaptation to ensure the world’s future food supplies.

The statement says, “The negative impact of climate change on agriculture, and thus on the production of food, could well place at risk all other efforts to mitigate and adapt to new climate conditions.”

The scientists say that farmers will encounter problems they have never before encountered, including higher than average temperatures, and shorter growing seasons. There is no single characteristic that will ensure crops will retain, or increase their productivity in new climates. Efforts to adapt will be required crop by crop. But crop diversity, which holds the key to future adaptation, is being lost.

“We urge countries at the Copenhagen conference to give due attention to crop diversity conservation and use as an essential element of the commitments they will make for climate change adaptation,” the statement says.

Continue reading "Climate change agreement must not ignore agriculture " »

Posted by Natasha Gilbert
Categories: Earth, environment & ecology, Policy, Road to Copenhagen | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

Biologists rally to sequence 'neglected' microbes
For scientists, the thousandth microbial genome is just the start.

Climate model sets tough targets
International group outlines steps needed to reach 'safe' levels of carbon dioxide.

Japanese science faces deep cuts - Premium content
The government's election promises vowed more support for science, but so far budgets look set to shrink.

Posted by Daniel Cressey
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The main taxpayer-backed agency that funds health-related research needs to pay more heed to ethical lapses and financial conflicts of interest, says a group of more than 100 scientists, physicians, medical ethicists, journal editors and others.

In a letter today to Francis Collins, director of the National Institutes of Health, a group called PharmedOut urged the agency to fund more research on topics such as ghostwriting and industry funding for academics.

Continue reading "NIH urged to emphasize ethics" »

Posted by Elie Dolgin
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Francis Collins' successor to lead the U.S. National Human Genome Research Institute will be Eric Green, NHGRI's current scientific director and head of intramural research, the NIH said today.

Green, a native of St. Louis, Missouri, has both an MD and a PhD from Washington University in St. Louis, and worked on the Human Genome Project as a co-investigator at Washington University's Human Genome Sequencing Center before arriving at NIH in 1994. He now leads NIH's internal genome sequencing center and has led and been involved with many other projects at NHGRI, such as the Undiagnosed Diseases Program, the NIH said.

Continue reading "Green named to head genome institute" »

Posted by Erika Check Hayden
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According to new research, the failure of the HIV vaccine used in the disappointing STEP trial may be due to the patients’ immune responses to the vaccine’s viral vector. (AP, MedPage Today)

But the findings, published yesterday in PNAS, are in direct conflict with two earlier independent studies that found the vector had little, if anything, to do with the vaccine’s poor efficacy.

STEP project leaders ended the trial prematurely in 2007 because it seemed like people who got the vaccine were more susceptible to being infected with HIV. Because the vaccine used a vector engineered from adenovirus serotype 5 (Ad5), which is similar to a virus that causes the common cold, the leading hypothesis was that the vaccine caused a heightened immune response in people who had previously been exposed to the cold virus. This would make those people more vulnerable to infection because HIV attacks active immune cells, particularly if those immune cells migrate to mucosal tissues like the gut.

Continue reading "HIV vaccine failure still an enigma" »

Posted by Lizzie Buchen
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Posted on behalf of Meredith Wadman
After a prolonged and painful illness, DeCODE Genetics, the pathbreaking Icelandic genetics and personal genomics firm, at last succumbed yesterday (16 November), filing in US Bankruptcy Court in Delaware for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection. The Reykjavik-based company, founded in 1996 by neuroscientist Kári Stefánsson, announced its demise in a press release today, saying that the decision followed months of exploring restructuring possibilities.

The press release says that the Chapter 11 proceeding, “to facilitate the sale of substantially all of its assets”, includes an agreement for DeCode to sell its Iceland-based subsidiary, Islensk Erfdagreining, and its drug discovery and development programs, to Florida-based Saga Investments LLC whose investors include Polaris Venture Partners and Arch Venture Partners.

The agreement is subject to court approval.

In case any investors missed the point, the press release noted that “in the event of a liquidation, any recovery for stockholders of deCODE would be highly unlikely”.

For a graphic record of the patient’s ebbing pulse on the NASDAQ over the last decade, click here.

Posted by Daniel Cressey
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In December this year, parties to the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) will descend on Copenhagen to wrangle over the details of a new global climate deal — a potential successor to the Kyoto Protocol. See Nature’s Road to Copenhagen special for more coverage.

Confusing reports abound today about Obama’s stance on the upcoming Copenhagen climate talks.

Wall Street Journal says that Copenhagen is going to be a flop, which follows reports that Obama said at a meeting in Singapore over the weekend that a legally binding deal at Copenhagen was unlikely.

Since then Obama has met with the Chinese president Hu Jintao, and again climate was high on the mind of the world’s reporters. The AP’s shorter-than-short story, and Reuters both report what has now spread far and wide: Obama and Hu have agreed to take “significant” action to mitigate carbon emissions.

The reports do seem contradictory, but it probably depends on your views on Copenhagen in the first place. For someone who will only be happy with a legally binding agreement out of Copenhagen, the news seems bleak. But for others the fact that China and the US have come to some sort of agreement could signal a pang of optimism.

CNN for one is filled with that optimism, running their story that says “China and the United States, the largest producers of greenhouse gases, will team up to fight climate change and create clean energy, their leaders said Tuesday.” And the Deutsche Welle says that Obama and Hu want to “reinvigorate” climate talks.

Look elsewhere and the focus on the lack of a binding agreement at Copenhagen won’t go away: FT, WSJ blog.

It seems too important an issue to leave hanging, but it looks like we’re just going to have to wait and see.

Posted by Katharine Sanderson
Categories: Earth, environment & ecology, Road to Copenhagen | Permalink | Comments (1) | TrackBacks (0)

An intrepid bid by a group of Romanians to get to the moon via balloon has ended in failure, at least for now.

The non-profit Aeronautics and Cosmonautics Romanian Association (ARCA) really does want to reach the lunar surface using a balloon. As ever, I'm obliged to point out that this is no joke, nor is it an act of pure insanity—balloons can be used to hoist a rocket above much of the atmosphere and thus save fuel. The US experimented with this strategy in the 1950s but eventually abandoned it in favour of more traditional concrete and steel launch pads.

ARCA is taking the rocket-balloon concept (known officially as a "rockoon") a step further by using the system to hoist a series of rocket motors tied together by cable. This "nunchuck staging" saves them the trouble of dealing with complicated staging rings and fairings, but it hasn't been tried before, so far as I can tell.

Unfortunately, the rocket never got a chance to prove itself. The Romanians got as far as loading a prototype of their moon-balloon rocket onto the Constanta, a Romanian naval frigate, which took the entire crew out to the launch site in the Black Sea. Yesterday, they attempted to fill the balloon with hot air, but shortly after they started, they ran into a snag. The "inflation arms" used to fill the balloon became entangled in the balloon itself. One-by-one the arms had to be cut, and by late afternoon the entire operation was abandoned (the balloon uses heat from the sun to gain altitude, so a night launch isn't an option).

So dreams of flying the old red-gold-and-blue on the moon are delayed for now. But I'm willing to guess that ARCA will try again. Until then, we can all enjoy an inspirational video showing how their system is supposed to work:

And more photos of the launch attempt are here.

ARCA

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

The rector of Imperial College London, one of the UK’s leading research universities, has resigned. Roy Anderson will end his time in charge of Imperial on the last day of the year and returns to his role as chair of infectious disease epidemiology at Imperial’s Faculty of Medicine.

“I have decided to step down as rector as I want to return to my primary concern, which is my deep and abiding research interest into global health,” says Anderson. “All my working life I have been, and I remain today, a research scientist and a teacher with a very strong interest in the global problem of infectious diseases and their control.”

Keith O’Nions, who is currently Director of Imperial’s Institute for Security Science and Technology, will become acting rector in January and continue until a permanent replacement for Anderson can be found.

Both the Times and the Financial Times highlight the relatively short tenure of Anderson, who spent only 18 months in charge of Imperial. The papers also highlight the fact that Imperial has lost money coming from the government’s Research Assessment Exercise – a key source of funding for English universities.

The FT says:

Defenders of Sir Roy can argue that the failure to persuade government to let the top research universities maintain their previous funding dominance lay with several vice-chancellors, not merely Sir Roy.

Moreover, some insiders have praised his attempts continue the internationalisation of Imperial. … But Sir Roy’s short tenure makes it difficult exclusively to credit him – or pin the blame on him – for this and other long-term trends at the university.

Posted by Daniel Cressey
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Darwin's finches tracked to reveal evolution in action
A new species of finch may have arisen in the Galapagos.

Fresh hope for German stem-cell patent case
Referral to European Court may help to harmonize laws on intellectual property.

How the sponge stays slim
One species' rapid cell shedding explains its huge carbon-catching capacity.

Posted by Daniel Cressey
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Here’s some more fuel for the fiery healthcare debate in the United States: if you don’t have health insurance you’re more likely to die after traumatic injury.

Heather Rosen, of Harvard Medical School, and her colleagues analysed the data in the US National Trauma Data Bank from 2002 to 2006. A crude analysis found the uninsured had a 39% higher risk of dying in hospital following traumatic injury, such as a car accident, versus the insured.

When corrected for sex, race, age, injury severity and injury mechanism the uninsured had an 80% higher chance of dying. Looking just at young patients, who would likely have fewer other health issues, found the uninsured were at 89% increased risk, they write in Downwardly Mobile – the accidental cost of being uninsured, a paper in Archives of Surgery.

“This concerning finding warrants more rigorous investigation to determine why such variation in mortality would exist in a system where equivalent care is not only expected but mandated by law,” write the authors. “Although the lack of insurance may not be the only explanation for the disparity in trauma mortality, the accidental costs of being uninsured in the United States today may be too high to continue to overlook.”

It’s not entirely clear why the uninsured should be so disadvantaged. It may be they experience delays in treatment, they may receive different treatment, or they may be less able to communicate with doctors due to poor ‘health literacy’, say Rosen et al.

The authors also note that the database they use may not be representative of the US as a whole.

Despite these problems, in an invited critique of the article, Brent Eastman, of Scripps Memorial Hospital La Jolla in San Diego, says it is “disturbing to see from this study that, even with guaranteed access, the uninsured have a higher adjusted mortality rate after trauma”.

He adds, “Inclusive trauma systems in the United States are designed to ensure that all trauma patients have expeditious transfer to the level of care commensurate with their injuries regardless of insurance status. Such systems should also guarantee the same level and quality of care to all patients.”

Posted by Daniel Cressey
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Atlantis has launched from Kennedy Space Center and is en route to the International Space Station (ISS). The flawless launch was marked by the usual ear-splitting explosions and awesome fire that propelled the shuttle into the Florida clear skies.

The six astronauts on board will deliver 27,000 pounds of gyroscopes, ammonia tanks and other equipment and bring home flight engineer Nicole Scott, who has been at the ISS since August. (AFP)

The 11-day mission, which will include three space walks to work on the ISS exterior, will be the sixth-to-last shuttle launch before NASA's space shuttle fleet retires in September 2010.

To publicize the launch as broadly as possible, NASA invited over 100 Tweeters to watch the launch while Twittering under #nasatweetup.

Image: NASA.gov

Posted by Lizzie Buchen
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Two blockbuster cholesterol drugs are not as effective at unclogging arteries as a cheap vitamin for patients already taking cholesterol-lowering statins, according to a new study published today in the New England Journal of Medicine and reported at the American Heart Association meeting in Orlando, Florida.

The new study, with only 208 patients, found that a controlled-release version of the B vitamin niacin, made by Abbott Laboratories (which funded the study), reduced artery plaque significantly better after 14 months than ezetimibe, the active ingredient in Zetia and a combination cholesterol drug Vytorin, both highly profitable pharmaceuticals made by Merck & Co. The trial originally enrolled 363 people but was called off several months early, in July, when investigators concluded there was a clear difference between the two drugs, although they didn't release any results at the time.

Continue reading "Cholesterol drugs' effectiveness called into question — again" »

Posted by Elie Dolgin
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The Jaguar supercomputer at Oak Ridge National Laboratory in Tennessee has dethroned Los Alamos' Roadrunner to become the most powerful computer in the world, according to new rankings by the TOP500 project.

Jaguar, which runs simulations on climate change, supernovae and new energy technologies, clocked in at 1.75 petaflops — 1,750 trillion calculations per second — after receiving a major upgrade from quad-core to six-core processors. The performance smoked Roadrunner’s 1.04 petaflops — down from the system's 1.105 petaflops in June after being reconfigured. Roadrunner, which runs simulations of nuclear weapons and is used for classified research, became the first computer to break the petaflops barrier in June 2008. (TOP500)

Roadrunner still has some bragging rights over Jaguar: it’s the fourth most energy-efficient supercomputer in the world. Jaguar is far behind at number 41.

Continue reading "Jaguar devours Roadrunner" »

Posted by Lizzie Buchen
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Chemists are mourning the loss of a bright young star of the field, Keith Fagnou, an organic chemist at the University of Ottawa, Canada. Fagnou died three days after being admitted to hospital with the H1N1 flu virus. He was 38 years old.

An announcement from the department of chemistry at the university reads “Professor Fagnou was an outstanding scientist, teacher, and mentor. He will be missed by all his colleagues and students as a leader, a teacher, a passionate scientist, and a good friend.”

Fagnou was researching the organic chemistry of carbon-hydrogen bonds in cyclic molecules called arenes, with the aim of making these catalytic reactions more efficient. Fagnou’s research was part of the green chemistry movement, which is trying to make chemical processes more sustainable. In 2003, Fagnou won the Polanyi prize, given by the province of Ontario in honour of Nobel laureate John Polanyi, who won the prize for chemistry in 1986.

The Ottawa Citizen uses Fagnou’s death to discuss how this strain of flu might hit young, seemingly healthy people more than seasonal flu – which tends to cause worst suffering in the elderly and very young.

Over at popular chemistry blog In the pipeline the question over the availability and production of vaccines in Canada is raised in the comments thread, although it is very unlikely that someone of Fagnou’s age and physical health would feel the need to be vaccinated. Extra poignancy is added when you take a look at the University of Ottawa’s swine flu advice page, which reads:

Due to the limited supply of the H1N1 flu vaccine, the University of Ottawa may be required to hold its campus vaccination clinic at a later date. The University is waiting on confirmation from Public Health Ottawa and will keep the community informed of all developments.

The latest CDC estimates, released late last week, suggest that the number of deaths from swine flu is greater than expected (Washington Post).

Fagnou is survived by his wife, who is a doctor, and their three young children. His PhD supervisor Mark Lautens from the university of Toronto told the Globe and Mail how Fagnou’s death is not only a tragic loss to his family and friends, but also to Canadian chemistry: “I think it's safe to say he was the most high-profile rising young star in chemistry in Canada.”

Posted by Katharine Sanderson
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Anonymous sex worker Belle de Jour, who became one of the first celebrity bloggers in the UK, has revealed herself as a research scientist. Brooke Magnanti, who works on cancer epidemiology, told the Sunday Times she began charging £300 an hour through an escort agency after becoming strapped for cash while finishing her PhD.

“I couldn’t find a professional job in my chosen field because I didn’t have my PhD yet. I didn’t have a lot of spare time on my hands because I was still making corrections and preparing for the viva; and I got through my savings a lot faster than I thought I would,” she told the paper. (A number of those commenting on the revelation have used it to highlight the poorly paid status of PhD students.)

The paper says she has informed her colleagues at the Bristol Initiative for Research of Child Health, part of the University of Bristol, who have been “amazingly kind and supportive”.

She also told the Times, “I wanted to be a physicist, but that just didn’t work out.” Of the future she says, “I’d like to go back to studying cancer epidemiology and etiology: the causes of cancer and the diagnosis rates. They’re my thing.” (Full interview.)

The Belle de Jour blog enjoyed huge success and was produced as a book and later televised. However, it did prove controversial, with some critics accusing it of glamorising prostitution and even claiming it must have been written by a man.

On the original blog the following message is posted “Belle and the person who wrote her had been apart too long. I had to bring them back together. So a perfect storm of feelings and circumstances drew me out of hiding.” (Some reports say Magnanti revealed herself as ‘Belle’ because a former boyfriend was about to expose her.)

Reaction below the fold.

Continue reading "Famous sex worker outed as cancer researcher" »

Posted by Daniel Cressey
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A UN summit on food security opens today in Rome, Italy, where world leaders are gathering to discuss how to feed the world’s billion hungry people.

Ban Ki-moon, UN secretary general, called for nations to agree a single global vision to address the problem, which he said must recognise the links between food and climate security.

"There can be no food security without climate security," he said.

“By 2050 our planet may be the home of 9.1 billion people... by 2050 we know we will need to grow 70 percent more food, yet weather is becoming more extreme and more unpredictable," he added.

Anti-poverty campaigners lamented the absence of leaders from the world’s riches countries at the summit.

“Sixty leaders are coming from around the world to this important UN summit, but where are the leaders from all the G8 countries?" asked ActionAid. "This doesn’t signal they are serious about finding global solutions to hunger," said Francisco Sarmento, ActionAid’s food rights coordinator.

At a pre-summit meeting yesterday, scientists from a leading Brazilian university agreed to work with the UN’s Food and Agricultural Organisation to help build agricultural development programmes in Latin American and African countries. Under a Memorandum of Understanding, Brazil’s Universidade Federal de Viçosa (UFV), which specialises in food and agricultural studies and research, will also open its doors to students from developing countries.

Posted by Natasha Gilbert
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Shuttle Atlantis is scheduled to launch at 2:28pm Eastern US time today.

Image: NASA/Bill Ingalls

Posted by Daniel Cressey
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Tension mounts on Mars. As we reported last week Spirit’s driving team at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, California, are about to begin escape manoeuvres.

A press briefing at NASA yesterday has brought forth a flurry of articles about the rover’s heroics. And the guy that sets the drive commands has a twitter feed that tells us that the rover is going to be driven out the way it went in.

Wired has obviously been following @marsroverdriver’s tweets and had a story earlier this week saying that Spirit’s wheels had moved by a tiny amount.

So, now we wait and see. It could be months, and even then the rover might not be free. The mood is different depending on where you read it: in the New York Times there is hope, the LA Times feel more “do or die” about it, whereas Science is a bit more gloomy, and predicts the end fairly soon.

Whatever happens, NASA can congratulate themselves on a mission that has captured peoples’ imagination, and ensured a place in history for the anthropomorphised rovers.

Image: NASA

Posted by Katharine Sanderson
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Posted for Quirin Schiermeier

Rising temperatures cause melting and retreat of large ice sheets, sea ice, and mountain glaciers – that’s pretty much common knowledge by now, as are implications on sea level, ecosystems, water supply and natural hazard risk. But a couple of news stories this week may cause confusion.

That the Greenland ice sheet is losing ice, and that mass loss has further accelerated in recent years, comes as no particular surprise. Using ground observations and satellite gravity measurements, a team led by Michiel van den Broeke from Utrecht University in the Netherlands, estimates that some 1,500 gigatonnes – roughly 1,500 cubic kilometers – have been lost from 2000-2008, equivalent to about 0.46 millimeters of global sea level rise.

Melting rates have accelerated since 2006, with mass loss reaching 273 gigatons of mass per year, equivalent to 0.75 millimeters of sea level rise. Without the moderating effects of increased snowfall, post 1996 mass losses would have been 100% higher, the team writes in a paper in this week’s issue of Science [subscription].

But the cryosphere – those parts of the globe that are permanently or seasonally covered by ice – does have surprises in store. Or so it seems.

Continue reading "Greenland ice and Himalayan glaciers: What’s going on?" »

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

App-tastic! An on-line inventory of products that use nanotechnology has now been translated to the iPhone. Ever wondered what nanotechnology is being used for right now? The answer's generally quite mundane - as evidenced by the number of nano-enabled badminton racquets , socks and suncream products in the inventory. “The really cool part – if you come across something that isn’t in the inventory that you think should be, you can simply take a photo and email it to us directly from the app,” explains Andrew Maynard, who works at the Project for Emerging Nanotechnologies.

Perhaps the next step might to link the inventory with one of the many apps that read barcodes … so you could scan a product and get instant feedback on its nano-ness.

The app doesn’t appear to be on the Android system, as yet.

Posted by Richard Van Noorden
Categories: Neat technologies | Permalink | Comments (1) | TrackBacks (0)

The LEP had its own food problems

It's Friday afternoon, and as ever, I'm hitting 'refresh' on the CERN website to see what terror/food related incident might happen next. While I'm waiting, last week's baguette story prompted my colleague, Declan Butler, to tell me another tale: The time two beer bottles were found inside of one of CERN's machines. The story is so incredible, and so reminiscent of the recent baguette debacle, that I think it deserves retelling.

The year was 1996 and the Large Hadron Collider (LHC) didn't even exist yet. At the time, CERN physicists were working on another machine called the Large Electron-Positron Collider (LEP). The LEP occupied the same 27 km ring that now houses the LHC, but instead of accelerating protons, it accelerated electrons and their antiparticles, positrons.

Physicists were just completing an upgrade to the LEP that would allow it to better measure the W+ and W- bosons, which help to moderate the weak nuclear force. In June, they were just about to begin their run with the upgraded machine when they ran into an unexpected snag. Technicians were injecting beams, but it wasn't getting around the whole circuit. After careful investigation, they found the cause—a pair of Heineken bottles wedged into the beam pipe.

The LEP was much less powerful and far simpler than the LHC. Instead of using huge superconducting magnets to guide its beams around the ring, the LEP used regular old steel magnets. That meant that the central beam pipes, which circulated the electrons and positrons was much more easily accessible, and repairs could be made fairly quickly.

Nevertheless, the incident was considered serious enough that the police were called in to investigate the sabotage. I called CERN spokesman James Gillies for an update on the case. "We never found out who it was," he says. To this day, he says "we don't know whether it was malicious or not".

We're making Declan's original story available for a week. Have a look!

Image: CERN

Posted by Geoff Brumfiel
Categories: Physics & Mathematics | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

There’s huge excitement in the world’s media about a plan to ‘grow replacement breasts’ for victims of breast cancer.

Over a fortnight ago Australia’s government announced a $2.95 million (AU) grant for the development of an alternative to silicon in breast reconstruction.

“The technique involves the insertion of a customised biodegradable chamber which is contoured to match the woman’s natural breast shape within which the permanent fat found in breasts can be grown,” announced Innovation Minister Gavin Jennings in a press release.

That release seems to have sunk into the morass of the news-swamp with little or no notice until this week.

Australia’s Herald Sun kicked things off, reporting: “Melbourne scientists are poised to begin revolutionary surgery to help cancer victims regrow their breasts.”

Continue reading "Growing new breasts" »

Posted by Daniel Cressey
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This picture of Earth looking like nothing so much as a soap bubble was snapped by the European Space Agency’s Rosetta probe yesterday.

Rosetta is swinging by Earth before heading off to chase comets.

In fact the picture is a composite, made by combining three shots (one orange filtered, one green, one blue) from the Optical, Spectroscopic, and Infrared Remote Imaging System.

Image: ESA ©2009 MPS for OSIRIS Team / MPS/UPD/LAM/IAA/RSSD/INTA/UPM/DASP/IDA

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

Biologists turn against worm
Researchers seek out alternative model organisms to C. elegans.

Environmental impact of cocaine strategy assessed
Studies measure effects of glyphosate-based herbicide on wildlife and human health.

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

Analysis of a dozen published clinical trials suggests that the drug company Pfizer selectively reported results to expand the market for their epilepsy drug Neurontin.

Researchers compared internal company documents with published reports, and found some glaring inconsistencies. In 8 of the 12 studies, the main criteria used to judge effectiveness, known as the primary outcome, was changed by Pfizer, they reported today in the New England Journal of Medicine. Sometimes negative results turned into positive results. Other times, primary study goals were reported as secondary study goals.

"The trouble is, as a scientist, the publication has always been held up to me as the truth," said study author Kay Dickersin, an epidemiologist at the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health in Baltimore, Maryland. "It’s the scientific record. What this study indicated is we can’t believe that record." (Bloomberg)

Dickersin obtained the company documents while serving as an expert witness for the prosecution in litigation against Pfizer. In 2004, the drug company paid $430 million to settle a lawsuit for promoting Neurontin for off-label uses not approved by the US Food and Drug Administration. (Reuters)

Pfizer disputed the report's conclusions. "We believe the review suffers from significant bias, insufficient data, poor methodology, and cannot pass the threshold of credible scientific research," Pfizer said in a statement. (Washington Post)

Posted by Elie Dolgin
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The American Physical Society (APS) has overwhelmingly rejected a petition by a group of physicists asking the organization to reverse its position on climate change.

The petition was signed by 160 physicists including Nobel laureate Ivar Giaever. If you don't feel like reading the thing, it essentially says that there has been a lot of natural variation in climate change over the past centuries, and that natural variation can explain the recent rise in global temperatures. The statement also points out what it calls the "beneficial effects of increased levels of carbon dioxide for both plants and animals."

The group has been bullish on the hopes of changing the APS's minds. They even wrote us a letter in July, noting that they had prompted an APS review of its climate change position. "We hope it will lead to meaningful change," they said in the letter.

But no such luck. The society review, lead by nuclear physicist Daniel Kleppner from MIT, recommended that no changes be made, and on 10 November, the council accepted their recommendation.

As interesting as the petition is, there's an equally fascinating analysis of the signers that's doing the rounds. John Mashey, a computer scientist and APS member, has done a thorough analysis of who was involved. It's not the easiest to read, but it starts getting interesting around section 4 or 5. Mashey breaks down the signers by age, political contributions and geographic area. He also does some network analysis to show who was involved with the petition at different stages.

He finds that the signers tend to be predominately older and big contributors to the Republican and Libertarian parties. More interestingly the supporters seem to be centered around the Northeast, particularly Princeton University's department. Again, not surprising considering that one of the main organizersis Will Happer, a well-respected Princeton physicist and long-time climate change sceptic who, in 1993, was pushed out of his position at the Department of Energy after rowing with then vice president Al Gore over the significance of the ozone hole (see our rival for a little background).

The petition wasn't a total flop, the APS says its Panel on Public Affairs should "examine the statement for possible improvements in clarity and tone." Happer called the decision a "big victory" for the petitioners.

Posted by Geoff Brumfiel
Categories: Earth, environment & ecology, Physics & Mathematics, Policy | Permalink | Comments (6) | TrackBacks (0)

An eight-month undercover investigation by a leading US animal rights group has documented alleged mistreatment of animals inside two University of Utah facilities.

Officials from the Virginia-based People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals (PETA), which opposes all research with animals as well as their use in food and clothing, said they will file formal complaints to the US National Institutes of Health (NIH) and the U.S. Department of Agriculture after the group's undercover agent, who worked as an animal support technician at the Salt Lake City University from 12 February to 29 October, gathered videos and photos that PETA says violate the federal Animal Welfare Act.

University officials defended the lab's practices, arguing that the PETA investigator does not understand routine procedures in animal research. "None of the things she alleges are substantive," said Tom Parks, the University of Utah's vice president for research. "It's a remarkably banal list of ordinary events in an animal-care facility." (Salt Lake Tribune)

The alleged cruelties that the PETA investigator observed, according to a PETA press release, include purposely paralyzing mice, drilling holes in monkey skulls, injecting chemicals into kitten brains, and giving rats epileptic seizures.

You can watch some of the undercover footage below the jump:

Continue reading "PETA detective uncovers alleged animal cruelty " »

Posted by Elie Dolgin
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A paper in the journal Human Reproduction adds weight to a long-held (by some) suspicion that the plasticising chemical bisphenol A (BPA) does bad things to the body’s hormone balance.

In this study, male workers in Chinese factories handling BPA were compared to a control group of Chinese factory workers who weren’t exposed to BPA over five years.

The results showed that the workers in the factories handling BPA had four times the risk of erectile dysfunction, and seven times more risk of ejaculation difficulty (press release).

This stark conclusion is the first direct evidence that exposure to BPA in the workplace could have bad health effects, the authors led by De-Kun Li, a reproductive and perinatal epidemiologist at Kaiser Permanente’s Division of Research in Oakland, California.

For years BPA has been associated with a range of health problems, from cancer to diabetes and heart disease.

The suspicion was that BPA was an endocrine disruptor – a substance that mucks up the way hormones in the body, including sexual reproduction hormones – are made and regulated. This study, the authors say, provides the evidence that the US regulators have been after for years. They add that the levels in this study were very high – nothing like the levels people are normally exposed to in everyday life.

The chemical is already regulated. In Canada, for example, BPA is banned in baby bottle manufacture, and in France earlier this year members of the senate sought a ban on BPA. Of course, there is also perhaps a need for caution – don’t be terrified, not all plastics used in baby products or drinks bottles contain BPA, and no links between low exposure levels and adverse health effects have been found. In the US at least, it seems that it is easy to check whether BPA is present: there should be a number 7 printed on any bottle that contains the stuff.

Presumably the publication of this paper will now add much more weight to the arguments of campaigners calling for an outright ban on the chemical. The story has certainly got a lot of media coverage, from Packaging News to CNN.

Bad timing award goes to the Globe and Mail, which ran a column on Monday (the day before the study came out) saying that so far all BPA fears have been hyped by activists.

Image: Getty

Posted by Katharine Sanderson
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The brown pelican has been officially declared recovered by the US government, and the species will no longer be listed under the Endangered Species Act.

Pelecanus occidentalis was devastated by DDT use in the 1940s and 50s. Yesterday though the US Fish and Wildlife Service removed the animal’s endangered status, announcing there are now over 650,000 brown pelicans in the US, the Caribbean and Latin America.

“At a time when so many species of wildlife are threatened, we once in a while have an opportunity to celebrate an amazing success story,” says Secretary of the Interior Ken Salazar (press release). “Today is such a day. The brown pelican is back!”

The FWS notes that pelicans have survived not only DDT – as famously described by Rachel Carson in Silent Spring – but also a 19th century craze for using their feathers in women’s hats and slaughter by fishermen who accused them of taking their fish.

The Service also reminds us of Dixon Lanier Merritt’s poem:

A wonderful bird is the pelican,
His bill will hold more than his belly can,
He can take in his beak
Enough food for a week,
But I’m damned if I see how the hell he can.

Image: FWS

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

Evolution of a single gene linked to language
Mutations in the FOXP2 gene could help explain why humans can speak but chimps can't.

Lithium loss may be the planet-hunter's gain
Depletion of the element in stars might be linked to the existence of extrasolar planets.

Wellcome Trust makes it personal in funding revamp
People not projects are the focus of longer-term grants.

Posted by Daniel Cressey
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The American Medical Association has adopted a new policy that calls for the US government to review its ban on medical marijuana, the physician's group announced Tuesday.

The most well-established clinical application for marijuana istreatment of nausea, vomiting and unintended weight loss, particularly when these conditions accompany chemotherapy. Other studies have shown that marijuana may be effective in treating migraines, MS, PMS, ADHD and dozens of other conditions.

Medical marijuana is already legal in 13 states — with a 14th possibly on the horizon — but is illegal at the federal level. The US government currently classifies marijuana, along with heroin, PCP and many others as a Schedule 1 Drug — its strictest category, professedly reserved for drugs with a high tendency for abuse and no accepted medical use.

Now, the AMA thinks the latter incrimination deserves a new look. Although they noted that the new policy "should not be viewed as an endorsement of state-based medical cannabis programs, the legalization of marijuana, or that scientific evidence on the therapeutic use of cannabis meets the current standards for a prescription drug product", the AMA is promoting clinical research, cannabis-based medicine development and alternative delivery methods, such as vaporizers.

The move comes just weeks after the Obama administration announced it would not arrest medical marijuana users and providers who follow state laws.

Image: medical marijuana dispensary in California by Neeta Lind, via Flickr

Posted by Daniel Cressey
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This week we learn how a key language gene behaves differently in humans and chimps, how lithium levels in stars could reveal whether they have orbiting planets, and hear from reporter Jeff Tollefson in anticipation of the UN climate change conference in Copenhagen. Plus, a round-up of what's hot elsewhere in Nature.

Posted by Daniel Cressey
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Over at the New York Times is an interesting story about solar panels and the European Parliament. I kid you not.

The story tells us about some proposals, proposed by the Swedish EU presidency government in the summer, that would see solar panel manufacturers subject to European hazardous waste legislation, that previously they were exempt from.

The problem is cadmium, a toxic metal that is used to make some photovoltaic cells.

The NYT story also mentions a mysterious European Parliament committee that is “expected in coming days to propose a way of keeping pressure on solar companies to come up with alternatives to cadmium telluride.”

This is interesting news indeed, and Greentech Media has picked up on it, although details are still sparse about the committee and its proposals. But the message seems to be that First Solar, seen as a success in the solar arena, will be in serious trouble if cadmium is banned in Europe.

I remember a while ago talking to quantum dot manufacturers Nanoco, spun out of Manchester University, who are trying to turn away from cadmium – but there the question is one of knowing the markets: in Japan, where quantum dots are likely to be used for TV screens and other display applications, cadmium is a big no-no. Mining in Japan led to long term cadmium release into water causing itai-itai disease, symptoms of which include brittle bones.

So, while a cadmium ban may be bad for solar panel makers in Europe, this might signal a need for electronics manufacturers world wide to try and turn away from making products that contain these toxic elements in the first place.

Image: Getty

Posted by Katharine Sanderson
Categories: Earth, environment & ecology, Neat technologies, Policy | Permalink | Comments (1) | TrackBacks (0)

“The University Library of the University of California, Santa Cruz, seeks an enterprising, creative, and service-oriented archivist … for the Grateful Dead Archive. This is a potential career status position.”
UCSC cements its left-field reputation in a new job advert.

“At first sight, it seems improbable. Munidopsis andamanica is a species only found in the deep sea and yet it eats ‘terrestrial food’.”
Caroline Hoyoux, of the University of Liège, Belgium, has discovered a deep-sea crab that lives on trees (BBC).

“They’re just like any other small cute bird, and then they throw their wings over their back and make this sound that is totally out of this world.”
Kimberly Bostwick, of Cornell, has worked out that the club-winged manakin ‘sings’ by vibrating its feathers (Times).

“The questions of life’s origins and of whether life exists elsewhere in the universe are very suitable and deserve serious consideration.”
Jose Gabriel Funes, astronomer, priest and director of the Vatican Observatory, discusses a conference at the Vatican on astrobiology (AP).

“This new dinosaur is helping us complete and revise our picture of how the truly giant dinosaurs first got going.”
Adam Yates, of Johannesburg’s Wits University, discusses newly discovered, seven-metre-long Aardonyx Celestae (Reuters).

Posted by Daniel Cressey
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So the saga of the jealous astronaut has reached its end. For now.

Those who haven’t been following the tale of space travel, broken hearts and pepper spray a quick recap: Ex-astronaut Lisa Nowak was arrested in February 2007 at Orlando International Airport where she had apparently driven from Florida (some reports insinuating she wore nappies to allow her to drive without stopping, a charge which she denied) to accost the woman she perceived to be her love rival, Colleen Shipman, who had just landed there. Shipman was having a relationship with Nowak’s ex, another astronaut Bill Oefelein. Nowak was reported as attacking Shipman with pepper spray, whilst in disguise (Central Florida News).

Nowak was arrested on charges of attempted kidnapping and battery, and the ensuing trial has just concluded.

Nowak has escaped imprisonment – she has already served two days. Instead, after pleading guilty to two lesser charges of burglary of a car and misdemeanor battery (Guardian, Chicago Tribune, NPR) Nowak was sentenced to one year probation and ordered to write a “sincere” letter of apology. Boy, would I like to see that letter.

The case raised questions about the mental strain astronauts are put under, and the screening processes that NASA employs when picking the people to encase in a tiny metal capsule and send off into space for weeks at a time (see “Can psychologists help NASA" (subscription required) and “Nowak trial postponed”).

But what we all want to know now is: who has the film rights to the saga, and which Hollywood A-listers will play each part? Suggestion on a postcard please…

Posted by Katharine Sanderson
Categories: Space and astronomy | Permalink | Comments (3) | TrackBacks (0)

The fossils of whales and plesiosaurs may contain evidence allowing modern scientists to understand the evolution of one of the strangest creatures in the sea.

Osedax worms live by burrowing into the bones of mammals that sink down to the bottom of the sea. Once ensconced on a nice decomposing whale or seal the worms mature into sexual females and acquire a harem of microscope males that live in the gelatinous tubes that surround them.

In a new paper in BMC Biology Robert Vrijenhoek, of the Monterey Bay Aquarium Research Institute in the United States, and his colleagues say there are at least 17 different species of Osedax, not just the five previously described.

While the team's genetic and morphological analysis has teased out more about the evolutionary relationships between these worms, a big question remains: when did Osedax appear on the global bone-devouring scene?

One possibility is that they split from their worm ancestors about 45 million years ago when ancient whales appeared. Another theory posits they appeared at least 20 million years before the appearance of large marine mammals.

Osedax are soft bodied, so they do not generally leave decent fossils. However if they were around back in the day they may well have bored distinctive holes into the bones of ancient creatures in much the same way as modern Osedax put holes in modern carcasses.

“Consequently, we have distributed whalebones containing Osedax to several paleontologists who are also examining the taphonomy of fossilized bones from plesiosaurs and cetaceans,” write Vrijenhoek and co. “It is to be hoped that these efforts will help us to narrow the age of this remarkable genus of bone-eating worms.”

Vrijenhoek tells Nature that one palaeontologist is already CT scanning some cow bones with Osedax holes in the hope of developing tools to detect traces in fossil whalebones. Other researchers – including those working on Cretaceous plesiosaurs – are also being enlisted in the great historical worm hunt.

Image: Greg Rouse

Posted by Daniel Cressey
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The DNA of those arrested (in England and Wales) but not convicted of any crime, will remain on a police database for up to six years, the UK government will announce today.

The policy is a partial climb-down from an earlier Home Office proposal that information on innocent people might in some cases be retained for up to 12 years. But it still clashes with a European Court of Human Rights ruling last year, that holding onto the DNA data of innocent people is in breach of human rights.

The Times says the latest Home Office figures show there are 5,910,172 DNA profiles on the database, which is the largest of its kind in the world.

Continue reading "UK to store innocents’ details on DNA database for six years" »

Posted by Richard Van Noorden
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Three more government science advisors in the UK have quit in protest at the treatment of David Nutt.

Nutt was sacked by Home Secretary Alan Johnson after huge media interest in his comments on the relative harms of legal and illegal drugs, made in scientific journals and lectures. Shortly after the sacking two members of the 31-member Advisory Council on the Misuse of Drugs (ACMD), which Nutt chaired until his sacking, quit.

Yesterday’s resignations came directly after a meeting between Johnson and the remaining members of the council. The Home Office initially seemed to claim the meeting had been a success, saying it was “very constructive” and that Johnson had “emphasised the value he placed on ACMD’s advice, the important contribution the ACMD had made to government drug’s [sic] policy in the past and how he expected it to continue do so [sic] in the future”.

However, it quickly emerged that three council members were joining the exodus. If the resignations weren’t enough of a problem for the Home Secretary – who has already taken some heavy criticism from inside his own party and from outside – the handling of them has also been far from smooth.

One of those who quit, former president of the Royal Society of Chemistry Simon Campbell, appeared on BBC radio this morning to berate Johnson

“Yesterday Alan Johnson talked about building a level of trust between the Council and the Home Office, and my resignation was apparently announced by the Home Office while I was on a train home from London. I sent a formal letter to the Home Secretary late last night but I’m dismayed that my resignation was on BBC News as soon I got home,” he said on the Today Programme.

“I’m very concerned about what the Home Secretary believes is a level of trust.”

The other two resignations were from Ian Ragan and John Marsden.

Posted by Daniel Cressey
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Global warming won't affect all deltas
Rising sea levels could submerge Mississippi Delta but leave other systems intact.

China moves to help high-tech firms
But initiatives meet with mixed response.

Britain sets up defence advisory group
Government seeks academic input on security issues.

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

Plant biologists today announced the winning genetic sequences that will be used as a unique species identifier to 'barcode' ever land plant on the planet.

"Everyone has been waiting for this decision for ages," says David Schindel, executive secretary of the Consortium for the Barcode of Life (CBOL). "Now, the horses can finally leave the gate, and the analysis can proceed."

Earlier this year, CBOL's plant working group published a report comparing seven different DNA regions for their ability to reliably discriminate between plant species. The 52-member panel, led by Peter Hollingsworth of the Royal Botanic Garden in Edinburgh, UK, concluded that a combination of two gene regions, known as rbcL and matK, was probably the best species identifier.

These sequences could accurately pinpoint the correct species 72% of the time, and match the remaining plants to the right species group with 100% success. But some members of the working group maintained that there were better options. Some argued for a three-gene barcode, while others wanted to combine the core two-gene barcode with a short-list of 'insurance' regions. (See 'DNA barcodes for plants a step closer')

Broad consensus has won out. At the Third International Barcode of Life Conference in Mexico City today, Hollingsworth declared that the rbcL–matK doubleshot will go ahead as the barcode of choice for land plants, although the plant working group plans to reassess the decision in 18 months.

"This will not be a 'hallelujah' moment in the sense that we'll have 99% ability to detect plants," says Schindel. "But I'm absolutely convinced that this is the best decision we can make at this moment."

Yesterday in Mexico City, the steering committee of the International Barcode of Life Project — "the supercollider of biodiversity", as Schindel called it — also met formally for the first time, ahead of the group's scheduled launch in July 2010. This US$150 million 25-nation initiative aims to barcode 5 million specimens representing 500,000 species over the next 5 years. "This is the largest biodiversity genomics project ever undertaken," says Paul Hebert of the University of Guelph in Ontario, Canada, who first formally proposed the idea of DNA barcoding in 2003.

Image: Wikimedia Commons

Posted by Elie Dolgin
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Following up on some initial results released last month, the International Energy Agency released 700 pages of statistical goodness on global energy markets and greenhouse gas emissions on Tuesday.

Perhaps the most significant numbers in the World Energy Outlook, at least in terms of the current policy and the international climate negotiations, pertain to China. Indeed, the IEA suggests that if China actually follows through on all of the goals and targets it has announced (for renewables, nuclear power, energy efficiency and the like), it alone could account for 25 percent of the reductions that the world needs to make by 2020 in order to remain on track for limiting global warming to 2 degrees Celsius. Put another way, China would be doing more to address global than either the United States or Europe.

These are remarkable statistics, and they should get some attention when climate negotiators meet in Copenhagen next month. China represents the fastest growing source of emissions, and everybody wants to see them put some kind of numbers on the table, along with existing commitments. Those who look at the issue tend to come up with big numbers (see here and here). That said, the IEA's analysis would be the most significant to date, and will likely serve as a baseline for assessments of what China is doing from here on out. Who knows, perhaps China will be inspired to come up with its own numbers.

Continue reading "IEA: something for everybody in the 2009 outlook" »

Posted by Jeff Tollefson
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Pfizer has announced plans to close six of its 20 research sites around the world.

Under the perhaps slightly disingenuous headline “Pfizer Announces Global Research Network”, the pharma company has come clean on what its recent merger with Wyeth will mean for its scientists.

In a statement, Pfizer said it would “significantly reduce R&D activities” at a number of sites, reducing its overall square footage of R&D by 35% and reducing 20 sites down to five main sites and nine specialized units (AP has the most user friendly breakdown of who is for the chop).

Pfizer has also admitted that there will be job losses, although it has not said how many researchers will be let go. The company has previously said it would reduce its total workforce by around 15% (approximately 20,000 people) after the merger.

Posted by Daniel Cressey
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Conservationists are again pushing for Australia’s iconic koalas to be listed as endangered by the country’s government, as new and controversial estimates of their numbers prompt renewed fears over the cuddly critters’ future.

Concerned that the government will not list the koala, the Australian Koala Foundation has launched a media blitz, warming of a drastic decline in the animal’s numbers.

“There could be as few as 43,000 and no more than 80,000 koalas left on the mainland of Australia. We know this because we have the science, and the koala habitat is just not there,” says the foundation CEO, Deborah Tabart (press release pdf). “Previous estimates were around 100,000, but the data is now more accurate.”

Tabart says her researchers have been measuring the loveable things at 1,800 field sites in Australia to come up with their numbers.

The Threatened Species Scientific Committee meets today to begin deliberations on whether or not Phascolarctos cinereus is officially endangered, a process which continues into next year. Bob Beeton, committee chairman, told the Sydney Morning Herald, “the onus is on the science” but not everyone agrees on the numbers.

David Phalen, director of the Wildlife Health and Conservation Centre at Sydney University, told the paper, “We do know that koalas are threatened by habitat loss in Queensland and northern NSW but numbers elsewhere are increasing or stable. There’s a real degree of uncertainty around the numbers.”

Internationally there are also some differing opinions over the koala. While populations on the mainland may be in decline, elsewhere the animals seem to be doing fine.

The United States has classified koalas as ‘threatened’ under its endangered species act but the international ‘Red List’ classifies it as ‘least concern’, noting:

Listed as Least Concern in view of its wide distribution, presumed large population, and because it is unlikely to be declining at nearly the rate required to qualify for listing in a threatened category.

Image: Quartl via Wikipedia under creative commons

Posted by Daniel Cressey
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A graduate student at Boston University did catch Neisseria meningitidis from an experiment, health officials in the city have confirmed. According to the Boston Globe, genetic analysis matched bacteria from a blood sample provided by the sick student to samples from the lab where he was working.

The globe says the student was working in a relatively low level bio-safety level-2 lab, not a sci-fi, high-tech level-4. Back in 2004 three scientists at the university were infected from their lab, leading the city to clamp down on its regulation and leaving BU with an $8,100 fine.

“It’s well known that people who work in research labs are exposed to the risk of infection,” Thomas Moore, associate provost of BU’s South End medical campus said last month when the infection occurred. “It doesn’t always mean they’re sloppy.’’

Posted by Daniel Cressey
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Report row ousts top Indian scientist
Ruckus over call for reform at national science agency raises questions about attracting expatriate talent.

Whale-song recording goes deep
Underwater glider eavesdrops on cetacean communication.

African academies show how science can save lives
First joint report highlights importance of African scientists' advice to policy-makers.

Posted by Daniel Cressey
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Here’s a picture of terrain between the Kasei Valles and Sacra Fossae fault region on Mars, covering an area of about 225 x 95 kilometres or half the size of the Netherlands.

The image was taken by the European Space Agency’s Mars Express mission, currently in orbit around Mars. The area it has snapped lies north of the equator.

We see a large crater, some 35 kilometres across, and tracks left behind by flowing water at some time in the past. The source of the water, according to ESA is a region called Echus Chasma, which lies roughly 850 km to the southwest of the crater (north is to the right).

Posted by Katharine Sanderson
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The Russian Academy of Sciences has announced the death of Vitaly Ginzburg. Ginzburg won the 2003 Nobel Prize for physics and was also known as one of the fathers of the Soviet hydrogen bomb, for which he was awarded the Order of Lenin.

“We thought at the time that we were working to prevent a monopoly on the atomic bomb – Hitler’s monopoly if he got the bomb before Stalin,” Ginzburg said in an interview published last week by Physics World. “The thought of what would happen if Stalin had a monopoly on atomic weapons somehow never entered my head. Scary thought.”

He also told Physics World that “I think that my biggest achievement in physics is connected with the theory of superconductivity.”

His Nobel Prize, shared with Alexei Abrikosov and Anthony Leggett, was for this work.

“He was an outstanding physicist...one of the last physicists with an encyclopaedic knowledge,” said Gennady Mesyats, director of the Lebedev Physical Institute of the Russian Academy of Sciences (RIA Novosti).

In his 2003 autobiography for the Nobel Prize, Ginzburg wrote:

…I am still inclined to believe in the radiant future of mankind. Today on the road to it there are many obstacles, first of all, the Islamic (terrorist) threat, poverty and the lack of education of great masses of population, AIDS and other diseases. But let us remember the situation, for example, in 1943, sixty years ago. Europe was under Hitler's heel, the USSR, though heroically resisting, was living under the Stalinist yoke. America was not so strong, and the world war was raging.

Was it easier and better than now? The forces of democracy have coped with it, saved the civilized society and nowadays both the Nazism and the communism have almost sunk into oblivion. That is why we can hope for the ultimate triumph of the democratic system and the secular humanism all over the world. The necessary conditions for that are the presence of historical memory and the development of science.

Posted by Daniel Cressey
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The Labour government hit the airwaves today to push its plans for new energy production, and in particular nuclear power. Ed Miliband, the Secretary of Energy and Climate Change, was on just about every show imaginable this morning with a single message: It's time to fast-track new nuclear plants in England.

This afternoon, the government announced that 10 of 11 perspective sites would be eligible for new construction. By my count, all but two of the sites (Braystones and Kirkstanton) already host nuclear power plants. At present around nuclear contributes about 15% of the UK's total electricity needs. The government hopes that the new reactors can contribute a quarter of the UK's power by 2025.

The Times mentions another part of the government's plan: a deep geological repository for high level nuclear waste. According to the story, the repository could cost £18 billion, but there aren't a lot of details beyond that. Even the 306-page draft nuclear national policy statement doesn't say much, aside from the fact that such a facility should be built.

Responding to a question in the House of Commons, Miliband admitted that "deep geological storage is a long way off." Still, he said, several communities in West Cumbria have come forward. I wonder who that would be.

Criticism of the nuclear scheme was loud and (in characteristic British political fashion) insubstantial. Greg Clark the conservative shadow energy secretary decried the plan as not coming soon enough, while the Liberal Democrats said more money should be spent on renewables. Maybe it's my American ignorance, but I failed to see any serious opposition to the proposed new policy.

It wasn't all nuclear news, the government also released policy plans for renewables, coal and natural gas, all of which you can read here.

Posted by Geoff Brumfiel
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“Saudi Arabia does not ban anyone because hajj is a religious event.”
Saudi Arabia’s Health Minister Abdullah al-Rabeeah says no one will be banned from entering the country on the hajj pilgrimage due to swine flu (AP).

“I don’t think the court wants to send as draconian a message as the government is asking for. This man’s been destroyed.”
Dorrance Dickens, attorney for former NASA Chief of Staff Courtney Stadd, comments on Stadd’s sentence of three years probation and six months of home confinement after he helped a client gain millions of space agency funding (Space News).

“The status quo with respect to eastern Atlantic and Mediterranean bluefin is neither sustainable nor acceptable. Conservation of this species depends on science-based management and effective compliance with the rules on both sides of the ocean.”
Jane Lubchenco, administrator of the US National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, urges the meeting of the International Commission for the Conservation of Atlantic Tunas to enforce an end to overfishing of bluefin tuna.

Posted by Daniel Cressey
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Update:

In December this year, parties to the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) will descend on Copenhagen to wrangle over the details of a new global climate deal — a potential successor to the Kyoto Protocol. See Nature’s Road to Copenhagen special for more coverage.

International delegates to the Montreal Protocol wrapped up their meeting in Port Ghalib, Egypt, over the weekend without taking formal action to curb hydrofluorocarbons, modern refrigerants that are also poised to become a major contributor to global warming.

Some 41 countries joined in a declaration in support of regulating HFCs as greenhouse gases under the Montreal Protocol (not under the Kyoto Protocol, as indicated in an initial post; that is of course where they currently reside). This according to the Institute for Governance and Sustainable Development and the Environmental Investigation Agency. This is in addition to support in North America and Europe as well as Micronesia and Mauritius, which have led the proposal.

Ozone-friendly HFCs represent the culmination of the Montreal Protocol's original mission; regulating them as greenhouse gases would require an amendment expanding the protocol's regulatory umbrella. In Egypt, Montreal delegates called on a technical committee to analyze alternatives to the chemicals in advance of a potential decision next year. For background, see our previous coverage here and here.

Posted by Jeff Tollefson
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Posted for David Cyranoski

Launched in 2003, Japan's Hayabusa was supposed to travel 2 billion kilometres and bring back samples from an asteroid. It would be a world's first asteroid sample return mission, but in November 2005, following encouraging news that Hayabusa had landed on the asteroid (named Itokawa), JAXA officials expressed serious doubt over whether it was actually able to get any rocks (see: A shot in the dark?).

A loss of communication in December 2005 led to a three year delay of Hayabusa's return, now scheduled for June 2010. But today (18:00 Japan time/9 am UK) JAXA announced that on November 4 its main engine had shut down (after a defect in the neutralizer led to a voltage burst).

It was one of four engines, and all have had problems. Two have been out of service for two years or more. JAXA is now confirming whether the third, which has been shut off after having similar problems with its neutralizer, might be able to save the mission.

Image: artist’s impression of Hayabusa near Itokawa / via Wikipedia

Posted by Daniel Cressey
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It would be unfair to accuse Congress of laziness -- there have been these things called the healthcare and climate/energy bills -- but it's been over a month into the 2010 fiscal year, and Congress still hasn't appropriated money for most science agencies. Thursday night, the Senate passed its version of the Commerce, Justice, Science, or CJS bill -- which contains funding for agencies like NSF and NASA. It now will sent to conference to iron out differences with the previously passed House version, a process that could easily take a month or more.

But if the Senate bill reflects the latest wisdom of the doyens of the Hill (if wisdom is what it is), then science is sitting pretty well. NASA would receive the full $18.7 billion that the Obama administration asked for. Interestingly, language accompanying the bill expresses concern that the International Lunar Network -- a planned system of lunar seismic detectors -- was tied to the human space programme rather than being a justifiable science mission in its own right. The Senate gave it $21 million for continued development.

The NSF would get $6.9 billion, just $130 million below the administration's request. However, the report language expresses concern about workplace environment -- no doubt tied to the porn scandal early this year. But it also questions the NSF's practice of rotating scientists in to the agency on short term appointments. The Senate bill acknowledges that this practice keeps NSF program managers fresh, but says it "creates gaps in management oversight". I wonder how scientists will feel if funding decisions were managed by career civil servants stuck in Washington rather than by their own.

Posted by Eric Hand
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Lord Drayson, the UK science minister, has thrown his weight behind a set of demands from the government’s independent advisors which were drawn up in the wake of the controversial sacking of drugs advisor David Nutt.

In an interview with Nature, Drayson also admitted there were concerns among government advisors that pre-date ‘Nutt-gate’. He said at recent meetings “a number of leading scientific advisors across different fields ... expressed to me some underlying concerns”.

“Not a huge concern, bubbling, but it was not just about advice relating to drugs classification,” says Drayson. “What’s happened over the last few days is that sort of bubbling concern has turned into very serious concern because of the events that have taken place.”

Drayson also confirmed the veracity of an email leaked to the Sun newspaper, in which he apparently said he was “pretty appalled” and that the Home Secretary’s decision to sack Nutt was “a big mistake” (see: Cracks show in government over Nutt-gate).

“I can confirm that was an email that I wrote and it reflects how I felt at that point,” he told Nature today. “I learnt about it through a Google Alert, which is not a great way to learn about it.”

An inquiry into the leak – which Drayson says “absolutely was not leaked from my end” – is now underway.

However, Drayson insists that good can still come of the whole affair. He says he backs a set of Principles for the Treatment of Independent Scientific Advice, drawn up by other advisors and leading scientists (see: Home Secretary under fire over ‘Nutt-gate’).

“What I want to do is to be in a position to be able to come out and reassure the scientific community which I know has been very seriously concerned about all this, that the government takes the independence of scientific advice very seriously indeed,” he says.

“I think the principles which were set out yesterday, did provide a very good framework, a starting point, to allow us to confirm these things. I think they reflect a number of things which were in the code of conduct. What I want to do now is … come up with a way of implementing these principles.”

Posted by Daniel Cressey
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Earlier this week, an electrical short again sidelined the Large Hadron Collider, the world's most powerful particle accelerator on the French-Swiss border. As the Register first reported, the cause of the short appears to have been a baguette caught inside a piece of electrical equipment that supports the machine.

CERN sources have confirmed the incident and blamed it on an errant bird. Under condition of anonymity, a CERN insider answered the Great Beyond's questions about the incident. Seriously, we did not make this up.

Any indication it might have been left on accident by a worker?
A short-circuit was thought to be caused by baguette carrying bird (not unknown for animals to cause this sort of problem). Workers were definitely not implicated.

Can we say anything about the contents of the baguette? Did it contain any tasty filling? If so what type?
Looks to have been a plain baguette - no filling observed. It was very soggy when found.

Is there any indication whether this is a French or a Swiss baguette?
It was a French site – But a frontier crossing bird is not ruled out.

Has anyone considered the possibility that the baguette came from the future to sabotage the LHC? Is there any indication that this is a futuristic baguette?
The possibility has been examined by theoretical physicists - considered unlikely as they feel baguettes will not play a part in future cultures.

Why is a bird considered the most likely theory?
Not unknown for birds to cause this sort of problem in outdoor electrical installations. The bird survived but lost breakfast.

Is this for real?
It is for real.

Will it have any impact on the CERN schedule?
There will be no impact on CERN schedule - full recovery has already taken place. It's similar to a power cut – procedures are in place to deal with this sort of thing.

CERN/Wikipedia/G. Brumfiel

Posted by Geoff Brumfiel
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Japanese electronics giant Panasonic is about to get even bigger, by offering to buy the majority of another Japanese electronics company, Sanyo for $4.5 billion. So what? I hear you cry.

This take over will mean that Panasonic is more than plasma-screen TVs, the company will have swiftly catapulted itself into the greentech big leagues. According to Greentech Media the deal, if it is successful (and according to the Guardian it will be) then Panasonic’s green tech portfolio becomes much more impressive.

The company will now have Sanyo’s solar panel capability and both companies’ combined lithium-ion battery arsenal will make the joint venture responsible for 30% of that market, says the Wall Street Journal. And we all know how hot lithium ion batteries are right now. The two companies, also according to that WSJ blog, will together account for most of the current battery market for hybrid cars, including the Toyota Prius and the Tesla cars.

To check out the rest of Panasonic’s green portfolio I recommend a closer look at that Greentech Media piece. It outlines the green credentials of Panasonic’s light bulbs, efficient TVs and even recycling schemes.

Image: Getty

Posted by Katharine Sanderson
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Hot on the heels of the pig genome comes news of another animal sequenced down on the farm. Writing in this week’s Science, researchers report the genome of Twilight, an adult female Equus caballus.

While this worthy feat of science has attracted much media interest, none of the coverage seems to mention that the horse genome was actually sequenced back in 2007 and widely reported at the time, although it was only published this week.

It is a useful genome to have though.

“Horses and humans suffer from similar illnesses, so identifying the genetic culprits in horses promises to deepen our knowledge of disease in both organisms,” says Kerstin Lindblad-Toh, of the Broad Institute of MIT and Harvard and Uppsala University in Sweden (press release). “The horse genome sequence is a key enabling resource toward this goal.”

The equine sequence is roughly 2.7 billion letters long and is not dissimilar to our own. “Indeed, 17 horse chromosomes (53%) comprise material from a single human chromosome (in the dog, it is 29%),” the authors write.

The horse genome joins not only the pig, but also the chicken and the cow, with the sheep on the way. All together now: “Old Macdonald had a genome…”

Image: Twilight / courtesy of Doug Antczak, Baker Institute for Animal Health, College of Veterinary Medicine, Cornell University

Posted by Daniel Cressey
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The US Congress is finally taking on the controversial idea of geoengineering — large-scale, deliberate manipulation of the climate system to counteract climate change.

The concept has slowly been creeping into public awareness, including a casual — and much overblown — mention by Obama's science advisor John Holdren in his first interview with the Associated Press.

Yesterday the House committee on science and technology heard testimony from five scientists, including big-name geoengineering proponents people who have called for government support of geoengineering research, including Lee Lane, codirector of the American Enterprise Institute's geoengineering project, Ken Caldeira of Stanford University and John Shepherd of the University of Southampton. Shepherd recently chaired a Royal Society working group, which also included Caldeira and which released a report on geoengineering in September.

In his opening statement, committee chair Bart Gordon emphasized that there are many uncertainties about geoengineering, including the potential for catastrophic side-effects. But, he said, “the climate is changing”, so “we should accept the possibility that certain climate engineering proposals may merit consideration”.

Gordon announced that this hearing would be the first of three or four hearings to explore geoengineering over the next eight months, and that the committee planned to work with the UK House of Commons Science and Technology Committee. The chairman of the Commons committee will testify before the House committee this spring, Gordon said.

Continue reading "Geoengineering in the House" »

Posted by Lizzie Buchen
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Brain disease treated by gene therapy
A treatment based on HIV finds first success in humans.

Mars rover plans its escape
Crunch time approaches for a decision on how to free Spirit from a sand trap.

Oldest American artefact unearthed
Oregon caves yield evidence of continent's first inhabitants.

Lisbon Treaty could give research a boost
European Union set to take a bigger role in climate and space policy.

Posted by Daniel Cressey
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The pressure on the UK Home Secretary over his sacking of an independent science advisor dramatically increased today, with both politicians and other advisors wading into ‘Nutt-gate’.

David Nutt was the chairman of the Advisory Council on the Misuse of Drugs until last week, when he was fired by Alan Johnson. Two members of the ACMD have already resigned in protest and today a who’s who of other advisors and leading scientists have signed up for a new set of Principles for the Treatment of Independent Scientific Advice.

Johnson has also been asked to explain himself to the influential cross party Parliamentary science committee. Phil Willis, the committee chair has written to Johnson, Nutt and the government’s chief science advisor John Beddington to ask for their accounts of the recent events.

Colin Blakemore, who is both a current advisor and former chief executive of the Medical Research Council, was one of those behind the new principles document.

“The priority now must be to rebuild the confidence of the scientific community in the way the Government, and indeed the Opposition parties, treat scientific advice and those who provide it,” he says. “If the Government can sign up to this statement, which essentially summarises commitments that have been made in the past, I hope that we can press the ‘reset’ button on the relationship.”

Continue reading "Home Secretary under fire over ‘Nutt-gate’" »

Posted by Daniel Cressey
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The line in the basement hallway of the US Department of Energy stretched interminably. "What's this line for?" asked one DOE employee. "Is everyone going to the gym or something?"

Nope. The bomb-sniffing dogs and Secret Service made it clear that the line was to see First Lady of the United States Michelle Obama, a figure so popular that the DOE had to give its employees tickets through a lottery.

Making her 13th visit to a federal agency, Obama joined Energy Secretary Steven Chu on Thursday in a tightly packed, 200-person basement DOE auditorium for a mock quiz of 10 middle schoolers who would compete next year in the National Science Bowl, an outreach effort run by DOE. Chu said that Obama was helping him with one of his highest priorities: "elevating the social status of nerds everywhere."

After a quick pep talk to the career civil service employees, Obama got ready to start peppering the kids with questions. "We're all set. I'm Alex Trebek," said Obama. "Secretary Chu is like my Vanna White."

And the two leaders jumped into a 14 minute round of hard-fought science trivia. "Cellular respiration in human cells is carried out mostly by what organelle?" asked Obama. Beeeeep! Catherine Xue, from Takoma Park, Maryland, buzzed in. "Mitochondria?" she asked timidly. "Correct," said Chu. Xue exchanged a fist bump with her team captain, Avikar Periwal.

Chu seemed to take pleasure when the budding scientists nailed a question, but winced when one team incorrectly guessed that nuclear power comprises only 5% of the US energy budget. The other team quickly got the answer right: 20%. "Correct," said Chu with a wry smile. If he gets his way, that answer could change -- Chu is hoping that DOE funding will help launch a new generation of nuclear reactors.

Image: Ken Shipp / DOE Photo

Posted by Eric Hand
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The cost of sequencing a human genome has dropped to just below $5,000. Well, sort of. The Mountain View, Calif.-based company Complete Genomics published a paper today describing its efforts to sequence three genomes at a materials cost of $4,400. Included in the trio is the genome of George Church, personal genomics evangelist and an adviser to the company, who has already posted the analysis of his data here.

Continue reading "Complete Genomics publishes a genome" »

Posted by Erika Check Hayden
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A paper has been published today in Nature Nanotechnology with a fairly provocative title: Nanoparticles can cause DNA damage across a cellular barrier.

But before we start shouting “grey goo” from the rooftops and blaming nanotechnology for ruining our lives, the paper requires some more considered thought. We already suspect that certain nanoparticles cause damage, but the need for more research is abundantly clear.

What the team, led by Charles Case from the Bristol Implant Research Centre, UK, and his colleagues have shown is that in their lab situation – more of which later – certain nanoparticles can reach through a cellular barrier and cause damage to the DNA in fibroblasts, which are cells important in wound healing.

The fact that nanoparticles can cross a cellular barrier (think blood-brain barrier, or the placenta) could cause alarm, but in this case shouldn’t.

The report is likely to be more interesting for those wanting to study the cellular processes that are happening. The set up in the lab was far removed from a real-life situation. Case’s team used a type of cell that can be used to build a structure that mimics a cellular barrier, they then built up three layers of these cells to make sure there were no gaps, and put the fibroblasts behind it. They then exposed the system to a very high dose of cobalt/chromium nanoparticles – because these are created in small amounts when artificial joints wear during use.

The results showed that the nanoparticles stayed in amongst the barrier cells without killing them. They nanoparticles didn’t reach the fibroblasts. So how was the DNA in the fibroblasts damaged? This is the part that is likely to whet the appetites of other scientists in the field. It looks like the nanoparticles set off a series of signals within the cells of the barrier, that ultimately led to the release of DNA-damaging ATP through two specific channels at the edge of the barrier.

This signalling process meant that the fibroblasts’ DNA was more damaged when the barrier was present than when the fibroblasts were directly exposed to the nanoparticles.

So what does this mean? I can’t put it any better than Andrew Maynard, nanotech regulation expert from the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars in Washington, DC, who told me, “it's an important study as it raises possible new ways in which harm could occur following exposure. But while it raises new questions, it is far from conclusive on whether this is a relevant or significant way in which specific types of nanoparticles can cause harm. More research is needed.”

Posted by Katharine Sanderson
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UPDATE: For the rest of the event no further prizes were claimed. LaserMotive have been handed their $900,000 cheque by NASA. Congratulations!

After years of disappointment (for me, anyway) the Space Elevator Games has got a winner! Yes, NASA will have to open its purse and pay up.

To recap: the Space Elevator Games is a competition supported by the Spaceward Foundation with cash prizes donated by NASA. It’s all about making a space elevator to go into space. Easy so far. Since 2005 there has been an (almost) annual competition for teams demonstrating some of the integral parts of a space elevator. These include: a tether strong, thin and light enough to reach many hundreds of kilomteres into space and not snap; a climber to clamber up the tether; a way of powering the climber from the ground.

No team had managed to win any of the prize money in the first three competitions. Then last year difficulties finding a venue meant that the games were postponed until various times throughout this year. Between 4 and 6 November (i.e. right now) at NASA’s Dryden Flight Research Center the climber/power beaming event is happening.

And guess what, someone managed to win a prize! Yes, on the first day of the competition LaserMotive, a team from Seattle, managed to beam a laser at the underside of a platform which powered it so that it could scoot up a 900m long piece of cable in the allotted time required to be eligible for a prize - 4 minutes, 2 seconds. This qualifies the team for the portion of the prize put aside for being able to travel faster than 2 metres per second, which could be up to $900,000 according to reports.

The other two teams in round one, the University of Saskatchewan Space Design Team, and the Kansas City Space Pirates, didn’t make it.

The news of the successful attempt has spread far, with stories. Amongst others, at the Guardian, the Telegraph, Discover and the AP.

There are two more rounds as the competition continues today and tomorrow, we’ll keep you posted. But if you feel so inclined, you can keep up yourself on Twitter, or at the Spaceward Foundation's live coverage.

Posted by Katharine Sanderson
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Nature reporter Jeff Tollefson is at the United Nations climate summit from 2-6 November 2009 in Barcelona, Spain. It is the last negotiating period before the seminal climate summit in Copenhagen in December. You can read his full reports over at our In the Field blog.

Big heads of state

I arrived at the conference this morning only to encounter global leaders with unusually large heads pulling funny money out of one box labelled "aid" and putting it into another labelled "climate change." It was a short stunt by Oxfam - and just one of many put on by various activist groups each day - intended to raise awareness of the danger that rich countries will simply reduce development aid as they increase funding for adaptation and mitigation. Developing countries have made this a central part of their platform going into Copenhagen - any climate financing must be in addition to existing development aid. ...more...

Safeguarding primary forests under REDD

And now back to the case of the missing 10-word phrase, which says that any payments for reduced deforestation should include "safeguards against the conversion of natural forests to forest plantations." Just for amusement, here's the gist in UN climate speak: It was in "Non-paper No. 11" but was left out of "Non-paper No.18" when negotiators gathered for a final session before departing Bangkok last month. ...more...

Nature Geo stirs things up with deforestation analysis

This afternoon has been all about deforestation. Environmentalists are busy tracking the debate about an 10-word phrase - mysteriously deleted at the last talks in Bangkok - that is designed to prevent natural forests from being converted into plantations. But I'll deal with that issue in my next post and move on to a Nature Geoscience commentary that has caused quite a buzz here in Barcelona by downgrading the relative contribution of carbon emissions from deforestation. ...more...

Afternoon updates from the Africans, EU

Following up on yesterday's agreement, the leader of the African Group said during an afternoon press conference he is "guardedly optimistic" about the talks going forward. But Sudan's Lumumba Di-Aping refused to give any ground on developing countries' demands that rich countries curb emissions by 40 percent by 2020. ...more...

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

Ever since the end of the Cold War, the division of the Pentagon responsible for launching a massive nuclear (counter)attack has been at loose ends. All those early-warning radars and space surveillance networks don't seem quite so important without the threat of Soviet warheads coming over the horizon line.

But it looks like US Strategic Command (formerly Strategic Air Command) may have a new mission—space traffic controller. Ever since the collision of a US Iridium satellite with a defunct Russian military communications satellite back in February, StratCom has stepped up its efforts to monitor the increasingly crowded space known as low-earth orbit.

On Tuesday, General Kevin Chilton, the head of StratCom, announced that the organization is tracking some 800 manoeuvrable satellites on a daily basis for possible collisions. StratCom hopes to add another 500 objects by the end of the year.

That's pretty impressive, but it’s a long way from comprehensive: the Air Force estimates that there are around 20,000 satellites, spent rocket stages and other objects whizzing around earth. That's up from 14,000 just a few years ago.

Iridium

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

The Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter has snapped the Phoenix lander encased in carbon dioxide frost on the surface of the Red Planet.

“The amount of carbon dioxide frost is increasing as late winter transitions to early spring, so the layer of frost is getting thicker in each image, slowly encasing the lander,” says NASA. “The maximum thickness was expected to be on the order of tens of centimetres, which would have reached its peak in September 2009.”

Whether Phoenix will live up to its name remains to be seen. It stopped communicating with Earth last November and NASA will start listening in 2010 to see if it is able to re-establish contact after the frost melts.

Image: NASA/JPL/University of Arizona

Posted by Daniel Cressey
Categories: Space and astronomy | Permalink | Comments (2) | TrackBacks (0)

The US House of Representatives yesterday passed legislation condemning the destruction of Madagascar’s forests.

Resolution 839 was passed by 409 votes to five. The resolution calls for Madagascar to restore a constitutional government after the political strife earlier this year; to cease illegal extraction of wood, mining and smuggling of wild animals; and for importing countries to intensify inspection and monitoring to identify illegally sourced wood from the country.

“The House is sending a firm signal that the devastating and illegal destruction of Madagascar’s natural resources will not be tolerated,” says Democrat Earl Blumenauer who introduced the legislation.

“Illegal logging not only does irreparable harm to the environment, but it destroys livelihoods. While Madagascar’s de facto government continues to use its endangered resources to boost its regime, Congress today joined the administration in calling for an immediate end to these practices.”

Earlier this year Nature’s Anjali Nayar visited a pioneering project in Madagascar that is attempting to protect one of the country's few remaining forests.

Félix Ratelolahy, an ecologist with the Wildlife Conservation Society, explained how subsistence farmers have slashed and burned away the margins of the forest to grow rice while gangs have pillaged rosewood, ebony and quartz.

“It looks as though bombs have fallen on the place,” he said.

For more, you can watch a Nature Video piece on her trip and read her feature, How to save a forest.

Image: Anjali Nayar

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

Q+A: Greek research supremo promises drastic reform
Achilleas Mitsos aims to sharpen up Greek science.

Gene-makers put forward security standards
But few companies are willing to sign up yet.

Supernova mystery solved?
Sooty neutron star could lie at the heart of Cassiopeia A.

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

The science advisor fired by the UK government last week has penned an editorial explaining his actions.

David Nutt, until Friday the chairman of the Advisory Council on the Misuse of Drugs (ACMD), was fired after widespread media attention focused on his comments on the relative risks of legal and illegal substances (see links below).

In a guest editorial in this week’s New Scientist, Nutt says that the UK government is both ignoring its own advisors and “falling out of step” with an international trend towards more liberal drug policies. He writes:

The message for the British government is a simple one: don’t exclude rational argument in order to exploit a visceral public response. Politicians have to win the hearts and minds of their electorate. If your policy is informed by an underlying moral imperative, be open about what that is, and don’t try to disguise it with a veneer of pseudo-science. We ignore scientific evidence at our peril.

Nature has also produced an editorial on Nutt-gate this week. It reads, in part:

Scientific advisers who publicly attack decisions they consider to be less than ideal, and in so doing provide ammunition for political opponents of those decisions, are entering dangerous territory.

Nonetheless, in this case, the position of the Labour government and of the leading opposition party, the Conservatives, which vigorously supported Nutt’s sacking, has no merit at all. It deals a significant blow both to the chances of an informed and reasoned debate over illegal drugs, and to the parties’ own scientific credibility.

Previous Nutt News
Cracks show in government over Nutt-gate – 03 November 2009
Sacked science adviser speaks out - 2 November 2009
Government sacks independent drugs advisor - 30 October 2009
UK government vs its own drugs advisor, Part II - 29 October 2009
Ecstasy advice is a bitter pill - 12 February 2009
Love drug gets politicians fighting - 09 February 2009

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

This week we learn the secrets of a star first spotted in 1680, hear how unrelated animals lend a helping hand, and discover how ecologists are bringing past ecosystems back to life in Pleistocene Parks. Plus, a round-up of what's hot elsewhere in Nature.

Posted by Daniel Cressey
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Secretary of State Hillary Clinton has announced three eminent scientists as the nation's first Science Envoys to the Muslim world. The move is the first concrete indication that the administration is following through on its promise to help ramp up science and technology in Muslim-majority countries (Press Release).

Barack Obama first announced the plan during his June speech at Cairo University, where he pledged to “open centers of scientific excellence in Africa, the Middle East and Southeast Asia, and appoint new Science Envoys to collaborate on programs that develop new sources of energy, create green jobs, digitize records, clean water, and grow new crops launch a new fund to support technological development in Muslim-majority countries” (New York Times). Two months later at the inaugural meeting of the President’s Council of Advisors on Science and Technology, science czar John Holdren mentioned that the administration had organized a task force to lead the initiative.

The three envoys, announced yesterday at Clinton's speech in Marrakesh, Morocco:
• Bruce Alberts, a biochemist at University of California, San Francisco who served two terms as president of the National Academy of Sciences and is editor-in-chief of Science
• Dr. Elias Zerhouni, who was director of the National Institutes of Health from 2002 to 2008 and serves on the board of trustees for King Abdullah University of Science and Technology in Saudi Arabia
• Ahmed Zewail, an Egypt-born Nobel laureate at Cal Tech who also serves on PCAST

From the Nature archives:
Nature special on Islam and Science
Arab science: Blooms in the desert

Posted by Lizzie Buchen
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Any day now, the non-profit Aeronautics and Cosmonautics Romanian Association (ARCA) will launch a high-altitude balloon with a rocket tied to the bottom from a ship in the Black Sea.

Actually its three rockets tied in what one reader creatively describes as "nunchuck staging". When the balloon reaches altitude, the first of the string of rockets will fire, carrying a small probe on a short suborbital trip. If all goes well, this proof-of-concept mission will pave the way for a launch balloon-based moon launch.

It's an unusual, some might argue slightly crazy, approach to rocketeering. But Bogdan Sburlea, ARCA's Project Manager, thinks it will work. He graciously agreed to answer some questions about this unorthodox proof-of-concept rocket, known as Helen.

How are you planning on attaching the Helen’s stages together? Will you use cable? Rope?

We will use cables of different diameters, the cable from the balloon to the first stage being the thickest.

How will you separate each stage when it has finished firing?

Actually, the separation will not take place after the previous stage finished firing. We will have about two seconds of simultaneous firing for stage one and two and later on for stage two and three. There are two reasons. The first is to avoid chaotic tensions in the cables. Firing the next stage before the previous stage shuts down means that there will be no moment in time when the tension in the cable becomes zero. The second reason is to avoid a collision between the stages.

Yes, the previous stage will become unstable during these few moments and will alter its trajectory. It will be enough to avoid a collision with the next stage. For separation, we use a pneumatic system for stages two and 3.

Are you worried that pendulum motion (swinging from side-to-side) might cause the rocket to become unstable?

This is not a concern for us, we modelled it and it works. If we are talking about the risks, that's a different story. There are associated risks with many critical activities, but we hope that we covered everything.

How high do you hope the rocket will carry the test vehicle? Will it go into orbit?

No, it will not. This is just a test. We need to check the launch from the water, the usage of world's largest solar balloon, not to mention the stabilization method and the strange position of the stages. We've got enough things to test; reaching orbit is not an objective for this launch.

How much have you spent developing the Helen? Who is paying?

We decided not to disclose the budget for the moment. There are many sources for the current budget, sponsorships and donations.

Do you have popular support in Romania?

Yes, we do. Many people are interested in what we do.

What will you do if the launch fails?

We will continue. Did SpaceX quit after the first failure? Or after the second failure?

Do you really think it will work?

Yes, we do. We have a huge advantage by being a small, private company: we can afford to test this.

When do you hope to get to the moon?

Before Google Lunar X Prize ends. We will do our best.

If you haven't seen it already (and chances are if you're a regular reader, you have), here's a video showing the Helen's flight plan:

Continue reading "EXCLUSIVE: Romania's lunar ballooners speak!" »

Posted by Geoff Brumfiel
Categories: Neat technologies, Space and astronomy | Permalink | Comments (4) | TrackBacks (0)

A man who claims he was sacked because of his views on climate change has been told he can take his former employers to an industrial tribunal.

A judge ruled that Tim Nicholson could pursue his claim against Granger under the Employment Equality (Religion and Belief) Regulations 2003, which apply to “any religion, religious belief, or philosophical belief” (BBC).

Nicholson, formerly head of sustainability, was made redundant by Granger in 2008.

The company had challenged a March ruling allowing a claim under the 2003 regulations, on the basis that views on climate change were not religious or philosophical. John Bowers, representing Grainger, has claimed that climate change opinions should not be protected because it is “a scientific view rather than a philosophical one” and “philosophy deals with matters that are not capable of scientific proof” (Daily Telegraph). Granger also says letting Nicholson go was a normal redundancy.

However, a judge has ruled the claim can go ahead.

Continue reading "Global warming views ‘are philosophical belief’ for UK law" »

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

A new analysis of a dinosaur skull recovered from an English reservoir in 1910 has concluded it is the oldest-known relative of Tyrannosaurus Rex.

Initially named Megalosaurus bradleyi, the skull was later relabelled as Proceratosaurus.

“Although this specimen is still one of the most complete and best preserved theropod skulls from, and one of very few theropod skulls from the Middle Jurassic globally, it has received surprisingly little attention in recent literature,” write Oliver Rauthhut, Angela Milner and Scott Moore-Fay in the Zoological Journal of the Linnean Society.

To deal with this lack of attention, the researchers cleaned away rock from the fossil and subjected it to CT scans. Their conclusion: the 3-metre long beast was probably a 165-million-year old ancestor of the most iconic of dinosaurs.

“It was quite a surprise when our analysis showed we had the oldest known relative of T. rex,” says Milner, of London’s Natural History Museum (press release).

Image: NHM

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

In December this year, parties to the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) will descend on Copenhagen to wrangle over the details of a new global climate deal — a potential successor to the Kyoto Protocol. See Nature’s Road to Copenhagen special for more coverage.

“Icebergs are melting in the Arctic. In Africa, people become refugees because their environment has been destroyed. We need an agreement on one objective: Global warming must not exceed 2 degrees Celsius.”
German Chancellor Angela Merkel urges Congress to act on climate change during a visit to Washington (CNN).

“All of us agreed that it is imperative for us to redouble our efforts in the weeks between now and the Copenhagen meeting to assure that we create a framework for progress in dealing with potential ecological disaster.”
US President Barack Obama comments after meeting Merkel (AFP).

“None whatsoever.”
James Inhofe, Republican Senator and global warming skeptic, comments on what impact Merkel’s speech might have on the US debate (AFP).

“With the strong leadership of the United States we can indeed make an agreement.”
Jose Manuel Barroso, European Commission President, says a meeting with US President Barack Obama has filled him with confidence (BBC).

Posted by Daniel Cressey
Categories: Earth, environment & ecology, Quotes of the day, Road to Copenhagen | Permalink | Comments (1) | TrackBacks (0)

Nature reporter Jeff Tollefson is at the climate negotiations in Barcelona. This is his first blog post from the pre-Copenhagen meeting, cross posted from In the Field.

I arrived at the United Nations climate conference today - late, on the second day, after a red-eye flight over the Atlantic and an all-too-brief nap at the hotel – and encountered drama much sooner than expected. I registered, oriented myself at the conference centre, gathered the requisite daily briefing documents and then found a bathroom to deploy a newly purchased toothbrush.

It was there, after bumping into a colleague, that I learned the African Group had announced at the opening session on Monday that it would boycott the Kyoto Protocol talks until developed countries get serious about their climate commitments.

Continue reading "Barcelona climate: A rough start, tinged with hope" »

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

Dark-matter test faces obstacles
Access to crystals may hamper bid to repeat experiment.

Initiative targets malaria eradication
Focus shifts to blocking parasite transmission.

US habitat rule threatens species
Conservationists call for change to Bush-era definition of 'endangered'.

Science favoured by German coalition
Budgets set to double as new government backs previous spending commitments.

Aftermath of a tsunami
A natural-hazards expert talks about surveying the destruction in Samoa.

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

The UK government has today published its much publicised framework (see right) on the future of the nation’s universities. It is yet another clearly defined policy for UK universities, and not contradictory at all…

The government wants to prioritise degree courses in science and engineering subjects because of the high level skills they provide students entering the workforce. To do so, it will ramp up competition between universities for public funds for teaching, with the “winners” being those universities that can best provide students with skills that enhance the UK’s competitive advantage. “To allow funds to be diverted to courses that meet strategic skills needs they will be diverted away from institutions whose courses fail to meet high standards of quality or outcome,” it says. The Higher Education Funding Council for England will launch a consultation on how this should be done. Ok so far, although, it’s not yet clear how much money will be diverted and from where.

Continue reading "Mixed messages " »

Posted by Natasha Gilbert
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Many thanks to genome scientists for giving us tastier sausages, for according to the Telegraph’s food and drink section, the best thing about the recently unveiled pig genome is that it will lead us to better bangers.

The announcement was made from the Wellcome Trust Sanger Institute in Hinxton, UK, but the pig, a red-haired Duroc pig came from a farm at the University of Illinois, US.

"The pig is the ideal animal to look at lifestyle and health issues in the United States," the AP reports Larry Schook as saying. Schook, from the University of Illinois in Champaign, led the DNA sequencing project.

The 98% complete genome sequence will be valuable to agriculturalists looking to improve pig breeding practices, look at their immunity to certain diseases, and also help preserve species fo rare, endangered pigs. And it might also help create a swine flu vaccine – but only for pigs (Daily Mail).

The pig genome is particularly useful because our porcine friends are like us in many ways that may not be obvious to the naked eye; they have similar psychology, behaviour and nutritional needs to us says WA today. Except I bet pigs don’t eat sausages.

Image: Scott Bauer - USDA, ARS, IS Photo Unit

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

“This is something we work with in South Africa: pathetic broadband. We bring the data ourselves in a standard minibus or car.”
David Buckley, astronomy operations manager at the Southern African Large Telescope, explains that his facility lacks a decent connection to the internet, meaning data has to be taken by car to the South African Astronomical Observatory for processing (Guardian).

“Jane has what we call a boxer’s nose. Her snout bends slightly to the left. It was probably broken and healed back crooked.”
Joe Peterson, of Northern Illinois University, says a Tyrannosaurus rex discovered in Montana in 2001 probably fought with others of her kind while she was still young (press release).

“The government has declared the situation an epidemic, but there is absolutely no need to panic.”
Prime Minister Yulia Tymoshenko comments as Ukraine closes all its schools as a swine flu prevention measure (Associated Press).

“A small fishing vessel capsized off a lighthouse here on Friday morning, apparently under the weight of giant jellyfish tangled in its net.”
The Mainichi Daily News reports that jellyfish have sunk a 10-ton trawler.

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

The fallout from the UK Home Secretary’s sacking of an independent drugs advisor continues.

Yesterday Alan Johnson appeared in parliament to defend his sacking of David Nutt, who chaired the Advisory Council on the Misuse of Drugs. Johnson stressed that he does not see this as an issue about the government’s approach to scientific advice, but about the particulars of Nutt’s case.

“I asked Professor Nutt to resign as my principal drugs adviser, not because of the work of the council but because of his failure to recognise that, as chair of ACMD, his role is to advise rather than to criticise Government policy on drugs,” he told Parliament. “…There is no doubt in my mind that the advice of independent scientific advisers is essential to substantial aspects of the government’s work.”

Johnson also admitted he did not consult the government’s chief scientific adviser John Beddington before sacking Nutt. Beddington told the BBC he agreed with Nutt that cannabis was less harmful than cigarettes and alcohol but wouldn’t say whether he agreed with the sacking.

Johnson may have a bigger problem though. According to the Sun, Science Minister Lord Drayson told the Prime Minister’s office the sacking was “a big mistake” and that he was “pretty appalled”.

Prime Minister Gordon Brown has thrown his weight behind Johnson though, telling the Evening Standard “We’ll get tougher on drugs.”

Bizarrely, Brown went on to say, “On climate change, or health, for example, we take the best scientific advice possible. But in an area like drugs we have to look at it in the round.”

If you can work out what that means please let us know.

Previous Nutt News
Sacked science adviser speaks out - 2 November 2009
Government sacks independent drugs advisor - 30 October 2009
UK government vs its own drugs advisor, Part II - 29 October 2009
Ecstasy advice is a bitter pill - 12 February 2009
Love drug gets politicians fighting - 09 February 2009

Image: University of Bristol

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

Nature, the international weekly journal of science, is seeking an intern reporter to work full-time in either its Washington, DC, or London offices. (Location will be determined by the nationality and work permit status of the successful candidate.) This six-month, paid position will begin in early January 2010.

Applicants should be self-starting and have a keen news sense. The intern will write news and other journalistic items for Nature’s website and print magazine. Please e-mail a cover letter, resume and three published articles to Alexandra Witze, Nature’s chief of correspondents for America (a.witze@us.nature.com), by November 15. Put “internship application” in the subject line.

Posted by Mark Peplow
Categories: On Nature News | Permalink | TrackBacks (0)

NASA’s Cassini mission has sent back this rather cool picture of Enceladus, taken as the space probe plunged through the plume of water erupting from the moon’s south pole yesterday.

“The spacecraft is going to approach within about 100 kilometres (62 miles) of the surface,” said mission scientist Bonnie Buratti before the fly-through. “We’ve been closer before (25 kilometres or 15 miles), but we’ve never plunged quite so deeply into the heart of the plume.”

[hat tip elakdawalla]

Image Credit: NASA/JPL/Space Science Institute

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

Another year, another dire assessment of the world’s endangered species.

This year’s update of the the IUCN’s ‘Red List’ of threatened species says 17,291 species out of the 47,677 assessed are officially threatened. That’s about 36%.

Admittedly, that’s a slight improvement on last year, when only 38% of species assessed were classified as threatened. However that’s because 16,928 species out of 44,828 were threatened, so there are actually an extra 363 species in trouble*.

“The scientific evidence of a serious extinction crisis is mounting,” says Jane Smart, director of IUCN’s Biodiversity Conservation Group (press release).

New entries in this year’s list include the Panay Monitor Lizard (Varanus mabitang) which comes in as ‘endangered’ and the Eastern Voalavo (Voalavo antsahabensis), also in the endangered category.

And spare a thought for the Kihansi Spray Toad (Nectophrynoides asperginis) now ‘Extinct in the Wild’.

The full, depressing statistics:

Global figures for 2009 IUCN Red List of Threatened Species:
Total species assessed = 47,677
Total Extinct or Extinct in the Wild = 875 (2%) [Extinct = 809; Extinct in the Wild = 66].
Total threatened = 17,291 (36%) [Critically Endangered = 3,325; Endangered = 4,891; Vulnerable = 9,075].
Total Near Threatened = 3,650 (8%).
Total Lower Risk/conservation dependent = 281 (<1%) [this is an old category that is gradually being phased out of the Red List]
Total Data Deficient = 6,557 (14%)
Total Least Concern = 19,023 (40%)
Global figures for 2008 IUCN Red List of Threatened Species:
Total assessed = 44,838
Total Extinct or Extinct in the Wild = 869 (2%) [Extinct = 804 ; Extinct in the Wild = 65]
Total threatened = 16,928 (38%) [Critically Endangered = 3,246; Endangered = 4,770; Vulnerable = 8,912]
Total Near Threatened = 3,513 (8%)
Total Lower Risk/conservation dependent = 283 (<1%) [this is an old category that is gradually being phased out of the Red List]
Total Data Deficient = 5,570 (12%)
Total Least Concern = 17,675 (39%)

*And if you want to play the percentages, in 2000 69% of assessed species were endangered (11,406 out of 16,507).

Posted by Daniel Cressey
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Drug company Novartis is to pump $1 billion into China over the next five years. Included in this plan is a move to turn the company’s existing research institute in Shanghai into the largest of its kind in the country

The expansion of the CNIBR in Shanghai will involve relocating the facility to a new campus, where researchers will focus on diseases that are highly prevalent in China, says Novartis. The number of researchers employed should increase from 160 to 1,000, making it the largest Novartis R&D centre after its headquarters in Basel, Switzerland and its Cambridge, USA facility.

“We are confident that our expanded investment in R&D will result in innovative therapies for patients in China and other countries nurtured by the growing scientific excellence in China,” says Daniel Vasella, chairman and CEO of Novartis (press release).

The investment is just the latest indication that pharma companies view China as vital to their future profitability, along with other rapidly developing nations such as India.

“I think it will be a signal of China’s rising importance in the pharmaceutical industry,” says Vasella (WSJ). “You have to ask yourself where do you need to be down the road, and clearly it is here.”

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

Brazil mulls major climate action
If adopted, the move would put the country ahead of other developing nations on emissions curbs.

The melting snows of Kilimanjaro
Glaciers crowning Africa's tallest mountain could disappear within decades.

Native American culture sowed seeds of its own collapse
Floods brought the Nazca to their knees — but they crippled themselves by over-farming first.

California stem-cell grants awarded
First major round of research targeted at therapies takes off.

Satellite launches to track the world's water
Soil moisture and ocean salinity set to be monitored from space.

Lions' taste for human flesh dissected
Two maneaters devoured dozens in the late nineteenth century but one ate the lion's share.

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

Astrophysicists have discovered that star-forming regions in nearby galaxies shine brightly with gamma-rays -- yet more evidence that supernovae are a driving engine behind cosmic rays, the particles that continuously bombard the Earth. The results were announced today by the Fermi gamma ray space telescope team, which is holding a symposium this week in Washington DC to celebrate its one-year results.

The Fermi team looked at a nearby satellite galaxy, the Large Magellanic Cloud, and found gamma-rays -- the most energetic part of the electromagnetic spectrum -- emanating from a known starburst region. This suggests that the life-and-death fury in these regions -- strong winds from massive, short-lived and hot stars, and shock waves from supernovae explosions -- is responsible for accelerating cosmic rays, which in turn create a gamma-ray signal. Cosmic rays are protons or other ionized particles, and they create light in the form of similarly high-energy gamma rays when they collide with other material.

Team member Jürgen Knödlseder, of the Center for the Study of Space Radiation in Toulouse, France, said he was surprised to see how well confined the gamma-rays were to the starburst region. In the Milky Way, cosmic rays have been whipped into a diffuse halo by galactic magnetic fields. Knödlseder says that perhaps the chaotic region creates an intense and tangled magnetic field that keeps the cosmic rays in place.

Scientists from the Veritas observatory -- a ground-based gamma-ray observatory -- chipped in with results from a two year survey. These showed that gamma-rays of even higher energy than those detected by Fermi are streaming in from two nearby galaxies with known star-forming regions. This suggests that not only are star-forming regions responsible for generating the gamma-rays (via cosmic rays), but that the regions can make very high energy particles indeed.
Image: NASA/DOE/Fermi LAT Collaboration

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

Progress is being made in the Northrop Grumman lunar lander challenge, part of the X-prize to And you can see it!

Over the weekend attempts were made to collect some of the loot in the prize purse, and Team Masten Space Systems, from Mojave, California, succeeded. This bags the company $1 million for their successful take off, flying around and landing again on a simulated lunar surface.

Here a short film of the second attempt.

Another valiant attempt was made by Unreasonable Rocket, a father-and-son team consisting of Paul and Paul Breed (according to NASA Watch). Their vehicle made a great attempt at the slightly less hard level 1 test (no fake lunar rocks and obstacles in the way, just a flat landing pad) but ran out of fuel at the last minute, causing it to land with a thump and break a leg.

Check it out below the fold.

Continue reading "Lunar lunacy - X-prize lifts off!" »

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

“I hate whale meat.”
Japan’s Prime Minister Yukio Hatoyama says he doesn’t like the meat which proves so controversial for his country (Sankei Shimbun, via AFP).

“The CSIRO is currently maintaining they have the right to ban the written version of this paper from publication by myself as a representative of the organisation and by myself as a private citizen.”
Clive Spash, of Australia’s CSIRO science agency, says his employer is trying to gag him (The Australian).

“The fact that there are so many still outstanding life-threatening problems at this plant indicates that they still have a systemic safety problem.”
Jordan Barab, acting assistant secretary of labour for the Occupational Safety and Health Administration, explains why BP has been hit with a huge fine after allegedly failing to deal with faults unearthed after an explosion at its Texas City refinery four years ago (WSJ).

Posted by Daniel Cressey
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Over the weekend, Romanians loaded the much-vaunted (on this blog anyway) moon-balloon aboard the naval frigate NSSL 281 Constanta. Here are some photos of the loading (more here).

From these pictures, it's clear to me that the non-profit Aeronautics and Cosmonautics Romanian Association (ARCA) is serious like a heart attack about this moon-balloon plan. If all goes well, a critical test flight validating the moon-balloon concept will fly later this week over the Black Sea. I've put some questions to their spokesperson about the balloon strategy, and I'll post them as soon as I get them!

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

Posted for Jane Qiu

Qian Xuesen, widely known as the father of China’s missile and space missile programme, died on 31 October at the age of 98.

A prominent rocket scientist who helped establish the Jet Propulsion Laboratory at the California Institute of Technology, Qian decided to return to China after being accused of being a communist and spy, but was detained for five years before being deported in 1955.

One year after his return, Qian established China's first ballistic missile programme, which led to the successful launch of the Dongfeng missile in 1964 and nuclear-weapon testing the following year. Qian's research has also led to the development of the Long March Rocket, which successfully launched Shenzhou V, China's manned spacecraft, in October 2003.

The Chinese Academy of Sciences has also reported the death of biophysicist Bei Shizhang, who died the age 107 on October 29. “As the founder, the first chief director and later honorary director of the Institute of Biophysics, CAS, he was considered ‘Father of Chinese Biophysics’,” the academy said in a statement.

Posted by Daniel Cressey
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Climate negotiators are in Barcelona, Spain, this week for the last bout of negotiating prior to the two-week Copenhagen meeting. In December this year, parties to the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) will descend on Copenhagen to wrangle over the details of a new global climate deal — a potential successor to the Kyoto Protocol. See Nature’s Road to Copenhagen special for more coverage.

“The clock has almost ticked down to zero and, as always, time will fly. These last five days are critical on the road to success to Copenhagen. They need to be used wisely.”
Yvo de Boer, executive secretary of the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change, tells the meeting to make progress (AFP).

“A good deal for the climate is still possible. All that is missing is political will, not least from the US, which under President Obama has fallen far behind the rest of the world, and is threatening to undermine a planet-saving agreement in Copenhagen.”
Damon Moglen, of Greenpeace US, comments after his organisation stormed the town’s Sagrada Familia to unveil banners (AFP).

“I feel it [is] very hard to imagine how the US president can receive the Nobel peace prize on December 10 in Oslo only a few hundred kilometres [from Copenhagen] if he has sent an American delegation to Copenhagen with no offer.”
Connie Hedegaard, Denmark’s environment minister, takes aim at America (Guardian).

“Climate change is a ticking time bomb. Global leaders need to act now to stop the needless deaths of millions of children.”
David Mepham, Save the Children’s policy director, says climate change could kill 250,000 children in 2010 and over 400,000 by 2030 (Daily Telegraph).

Posted by Daniel Cressey
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Here's the latest in a rash of scientific legal trouble: A University of Florida researcher and his wife have been arrested on charges of defrauding NASA, the Air Force and the US Navy out of millions.

Samim Anghaie, a professor and head of the University of Florida's Innovation Nuclear Space Power and Propulsion Institute, was indicted on 50 counts of wire fraud and 17 counts of money laundering, along with two charges of conspiracy. His wife, Sousan, was also charged with making false statements.

In February the Federal Bureau of Investigations (FBI) raided Anghaie's offices at the University of Florida. They were reportedly looking for evidence that Anghaie had funneled money out of 13 grants totaling US$3.4 million.

According to this article in the Orlando Sentinel, the Anghanies now stand accused of creating fake employment records and depositing paychecks in their own back accounts and the accounts of their sons.

Meanwhile, the couple allegedly ripped off the work of graduate students and postdocs and passed it off as the research of their company, New Era Technology. They also are accused of using data from other laboratories, including one in Russia.

In other scientific lockdown news, lunar researcher Stewart Nozette is being held without bond on espionage charges. Nozette, a long-time NASA and Department of Energy consultant, was arrested in October after he allegedly gave secrets to an FBI agent posing as an Israeli spy.

This hasn't been Nozette's only trouble with the law. The Washington Post reports that he pleaded guilty in January to defrauding NASA and the Department of Defense out of $265,205 between 2000 and 2006. He reportedly used the money to pay off old debts and to cover costs for his swimming pool.

Nozette has pleaded not guilty to the latest charge of attempted espionage. According to the AP the Justice Department could seek the death penalty in the case.

Posted by Geoff Brumfiel
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President Obama has lifted a ban on HIV positive individuals entering the United States.

“If we want to be a global leader in combating HIV-AIDS, we need to act like it,” said Obama on Friday. “That’s why on Monday my administration will publish a final rule that eliminates the travel ban.”

That rule was published today in the Federal Register. It states:

While HIV infection is a serious health condition, it is not a communicable disease that is a significant public health risk for introduction, transmission, and spread to the U.S. population through casual contact. As a result of this final rule, aliens will no longer be inadmissible into the United States based solely on the ground they are infected with HIV, and they will not be required to undergo HIV testing as part of the required medical examination for US immigration.

United Nations Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon urged other nations which impose travel restrictions on those with HIV to follow America’s lead. According to the UN over 50 countries impose travel restrictions of some kind on HIV positive individuals.

“Placing travel restrictions on people living with HIV has no public health justification. It is also a violation of human rights,” says Michel Sidibé, executive director of UNAIDS. “We hope that other countries that still have travel restrictions will remove them at the earliest.”

The US rule change comes into force 4 January, 2010.

“Today a discriminatory travel and immigration ban has gone the way of the dinosaur and we’re glad it’s finally extinct. It sure took too long to get here,” said Senator John Kerry on Friday.

Image: Obama on Friday / White House

Posted by Daniel Cressey
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New targets for old drugs
A computer program predicts thousands of previously unknown drug-target associations.

Air tides cause landslides
Pressure fluctuations can set slopes in motion.

Posted by Daniel Cressey
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