If you can’t tell the difference between an embryo and a giant bacterium, then things have got to be pretty bad. But Frank Corsetti of the University of Southern California, Los Angeles, gave the audience a persuasive argument today that at least some spherical bodies found in the fossil record, thought to be eggs or embryos, are indeed probably giant sulphur bacteria instead. Certainly I can’t tell the difference from the pictures, and nor, apparently, can the experts.

These particular fossils are not from the Burgess Shale, nor even from the Cambrian, but from the Neoproterozoic Doushantuo Formation in China, which holds fossils from some 600 million years ago. Not only do some spherical blobs in this record look a lot like a modern sulphur bacterium called Thiomargarita, but this little bug is also known to spit out phosphate, which is required for the particular kind of fossilization found in this formation. Coincidence? Corsetti thinks not.

This kind of confusion about what the heck a fossil represents – plant or animal, whole animal or part of one, egg or bacterium – is rampant throughout paleontology. Peoples’ notions of what they expect to find can deeply influence their description of morphology and identification of fossils, notes famous Yale paleontologist Derek Briggs over lunch. I comment that what you need is a kind of blind experiment, whereby naïve graduate students who know nothing about the subject are asked to describe the morphology of some new fossil. “That is, actually, what happens,” is the witty rejoinder (not, it has to be said, with noble intentions, but by happy accident as a result of students not doing their homework). Seriously, Briggs notes, it would be interesting to see what would happen if scientists could approach fossils without any baggage. That’s a difficult experiment to conduct. Instead of facing such challenges, we go for dessert.

Posted on behalf of Nicola Jones

While most of the conference’s 150 participants are paleontologists, geologists or biologists, a handful are interested hobbyists, at least one of whom has an entire basement museum of fossils he has collected over the years. Keynyn Brysse’s talk was fantastic for the more general audience – including myself.

Brysse is not a paleontologist, but a historian of science (she did her BSc in paleontology, and was headed in that direction, but found she couldn’t abide the field work thanks to extreme and persistent sun stroke). She spelled out clearly the different ways in which scientists have been inclined to label the Burgess Shale creatures over the years. From about 1890 to the 1960s is what could be called ‘Phase I’, or, as Stephen J. Gould termed it in his seminal book Wonderful Life, the ‘Shoehorn Phase’. During this time, the creatures seen in the shale were lumped into whatever phylum they were most similar to. Though that may sound sensible, it put many creatures into categories where they clearly did not perfectly fit. In ‘Phase II’, from about 1970 to 1985, such oddball creatures were instead granted their entirely own phyla. Gould called this the ‘Weird Wonders’ phase, and it resulted in a proliferation of more than 20 new categories of life – something, perhaps, of an over-enthusiastic response. Today, Brysse points out, we are in Phase III, or what Gould disparagingly called the ‘Straightening Rod’ phase (as it doesn’t fit with his ideas). In this period, life forms do not necessarily have to fit neatly within a given phylum – they can instead be a ‘stem’ group, branching off from some more familiar ‘crown’ group. This falls into the now-popular form of biological classification called cladistics.

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Yesterday it was 30 degrees and sunny, leading to violent thunder storms, torrential rain, and today’s wet drizzle. This demonstration of the changeable weather in Canada’s Rockies gives me a new appreciation for the early explorers of these mountains. In some ways they had it easier than today’s field geologists and paleontologists, in that they had pack horses to carry their gear (several participants at today’s conference have lamented not having their own pack horses). But clearly it was not easy, negotiating up scree slopes of shale, through dense forest, in at times horrendous conditions.

When Charles Doolittle Walcott arrived on the scene in 1909 (the event which this conference is commemorating) he had his family with him – including his wife, in full skirt, and some of his children. How they managed I’ll never know.

Desmond Collins opened today’s talks with an historical account of Walcott’s adventures – a version of which will appear, with further details and a more modern take on the shale’s significance – in an essay in the 20 August edition of Nature (closer to the actual date of Walcott’s discovery of Burgess Shale fossils, which was 31 August 1909).

But though history looms large at this conference, which is held close to Walcott’s Burgess Shale discovery, the science being presented here is on a broader topic: the Cambrian explosion – the eruption of a vast number of new forms of life, including most animal groups alive today, starting some 530 million years ago.

Posted on behalf of Nicola Jones

100 years ago this month, the fantastically-named geologist Charles Doolittle Walcott wandered up into the Canadian Rockies and stumbled on one of the world’s most amazing fossil beds – the Burgess Shale. In those rocks, Walcott and those following him found a stunning collection of preserved soft-bodied animals from 505 million years ago, from worms to jellyfish to things unknown on modern Earth. For decades, it stood as essentially the only showcase of animals from the Cambrian – a time when life exploded into many different (and often odd) lifeforms.

I’m in Banff, Canada, this week for the commemorative conference of this event (from 4-7 August), blogging talks on everything from water column-chemistry to modern fossil finds. Simon Conway Morris will be there, as well as other big names in this field. I’m keen to see what they have to say. And, to top it all off, I’ll be heading out on a hike to the Burgess Shale itself (weather permitting), so will hopefully have some photos for you of that. If I’m lucky I’ll stumble on something even stranger than what Walcott found… but no hammers are allowed, and I won’t be bringing any fossils home with me.

Posted on behalf of Nicola Jones

Today a panel of speakers at the World Conference of Science Journalists (WCSJ) turned its attention to the embargo system. Are embargoes good for science journalists – and science – or not?

For the uninitiated, journals such as Nature and Science routinely give information to journalists about forthcoming academic publications before they are released to the wider world. The information is ‘under embargo’ until a set publication time – at which point newspapers, TV, newswires and the like are free to release their stories. Increasingly, academic institutions do the same sort of deals with the media, too.

The advantage for journalists is that it gives them more time to work on the story, talk to the researchers involved, and get the science right, argued panellist Geoff Watts, a BBC Radio 4 broadcaster.

It also reduces the chances that a poor science hack will miss a good story that their competitors cover, thus incurring the wrath of their news editor.

And it’s great for the journals too. By marshalling the coverage of their science papers, big journals can virtually guarantee that their brand is splashed all over the newspapers and the web at the same time every week. They’re happy; the journalists have an easier life, and arguably produce better stories; and the scientists involved can point to the coverage in their next grant application as evidence of the importance of and public interest in their work. Everyone’s a winner, right?

Wrong, says Vincent Kiernan, associate dean at Georgetown University, journalist, and journalism scholar.

Embargoes have become an addiction for journalists, he said, a set of “velvet handcuffs” that simply eats up time and resources that could be better spent digging up scoops. Not only does it turn journalists into propagandists for scientists and academic journals, it also reduces science to an artificial series of ‘eureka’ moments.

Indeed, there’s no evidence that stories written under embargo are any better than those which are not, he added. And in a time when media companies are struggling, the ones that will survive are those which provide unique content – not those who follow the pack and write the same stories about science that everyone else is writing.

He’s even written a book on the subject – Embargoed Science – and his advice to journalists is: “It’s time to walk away from the embargo. Just walk away.”

So what does Richard Horton, editor-in-chief of The Lancet – which operates a very strict embargo policy – think? “I’m Richard,” he shouts, “I’m 47 and I’ve been addicted to embargoes for 14 years.”

In a remarkable diatribe, delivered at top volume and with tongue only slightly in cheek, Horton explained that embargoes were all “about power and control – my power to control you, turning journalists into agents of propaganda.”

Eyes abalaze, he continued, almost mocking the open-mouthed hacks in the audience: “Look at this story, don’t you want it? Your rival wants it!” he cried. “But you’ve sold your soul to publicity masquerading as science.”

Ultimately, getting rid of the embargo system would improve the quality of science journalism, he concluded, because it would force editors to employ reporters who actually knew what they were talking about, rather than simply being able to read and regurgitate a weekly press release at leisure.

So, an audience member asked him, if you think embargoes are so damaging to decent journalism, why doesn’t The Lancet get rid of them: “Are you afraid of the journalists?”

“No, I’m afraid of Tony [Kirby, The Lancet’s chief Rottweiler – er, press officer – and a former colleague of mine],” Horton replied. Despite the fact that the embargo system repels Horton, the reality is that his colleagues tell him it’s good for business, he explained.

But Horton has a plan. To test the hypothesis that embargoed journal papers get more, and better-quality, coverage in the popular press, he suggested that all the papers published by The Lancet over, say, a month or two, could be divided into two randomized groups. One set would be press released under embargo; the other merely published by the journal at the usual time.

The audience giggled uncertainly. But talking to Horton after the event, I challenged him to follow through with the plan. After all, it could turn into a fascinating experiment. He promised to discuss it with Tony – so let’s see what happens.

Posted on behalf of Alison Wright, Chief Editor of Nature Physics.

I’m so excited I can hardly type. I’m just back from the ‘Big Bang Breakfast’, organized in Westminster by the UK science funding body STFC, to celebrate the start-up of the LHC.

Over tea and sausage sandwiches, physicists and media representatives watched this morning’s events unfurl, live from CERN. Just after 8:30am, the first flash of a monitor showed the beam had entered the 27-km ring, ready to be coaxed through each of the eight sectors of the machine in turn.

It was edge-of-the-seat stuff (certainly if you’re a particle physicist, and, I confess, I am). Twenty minutes later, the beam was half-way round and through one of the detectors, CMS. “They’ve got tracks!” The none-too-hushed whisper ripped round the hall like, well, a proton in an accelerator…

They made it look easy (although, believe me, it isn’t). Sector after sector, the beam sailed through. The breakfasting physicists couldn’t quite believe how well it was going — the previous CERN accelerator had laboured 12 hours to circulate its first beam. I needed more tea.

Now the beam was through another detector, LHCb, which was reporting signals too. The last sector, through the ATLAS detector, awaited. A text message from a friend in the ATLAS control room: “All power just went green”. This is it.

Lyn Evans, LHC project leader and our capable MC at CERN, directs everyone to watch for two flashes on the monitor — one for the beam going in, one for it completing the lap of the collider. And there they are, less than an hour from injection, two flashes of light marking the first circulation of beam and the beginning of an epic experiment. There’s applause, and I want to cry. More tea, I think.

Now we’re clustered round a laptop as the first signals come through from ATLAS. This project, this LHC and its detectors, has been 20 years in the making. There’s delight — and palpable relief — among the physicists: no one could have dreamed this start-up would happen so smoothly.

I raise my cup of tea to the LHC!

Posted on behalf of Roxanne Khamsi, News editor of Nature Medicine

Heavy rain and traffic could not keep thousands of people from attending the opening session of the AIDS 2008 meeting here in Mexico City last night. There, in the massive auditorium, we heard rallying cries against HIV/AIDS from global leaders, including Ban Ki-moon, UN secretary general; Margaret Chan, director general of the World Health Organization (WHO); and Felipe Calderon Hinojosa, president of Mexico. The speakers remained on message, echoing the theme of this year’s conference: a call for broader and more comprehensive treatments and prevention measures under the headline ‘Universal Action Now’.

The crowd was generally responsive to each of the talks; but they saved most of their enthusiasm for one of the lesser-known presenters.

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Antithrombin from goats helps to stop blood clotting.

A drug made in the milk of genetically engineered goats may soon be used in a hospital near you.

Read more here.

Antithrombin from goats helps to stop blood clotting.

A drug made in the milk of genetically engineered goats may soon be used in a hospital near you.

Read more here.

Belgium aims for total self-sustainability.

Belgium is going to build the first self-sustaining Antarctic research station.

The euro dollar6.4-million (US$8.2 million) Princess Elisabeth Antarctic research station, which will be constructed during the 2007/2008 Antarctic summer (the start of the International Polar Year), has been designed to be highly energy-efficient. It will be powered by solar and wind energy alone and will recycle all its waste.

Read more here.