Dark-energy camera snaps first pictures

Brian Owens reports in the News Blog, a dark-energy camera led by Fermilab, based near Batavia, Illinois, and the Dark Energy Survey collaboration has achieved first light, researchers announced this week:

The Dark Energy Camera, mounted on the Blanco telescope in Chile. {credit}Dark Energy Survey Collaboration.{/credit}

The 570-megapixel instrument, based in Chile, snapped its first images of galaxies and star clusters on 12 September. It is designed to hunt for signs of dark energy and will survey the skies in a bid to explain why our Universe is expanding at an ever-increasing rate (see ‘Cameras to focus on dark energy‘).

The images posted below are part of the camera’s initial testing, which will continue until December, when the Dark Energy Survey begins. This survey will measure distortions of light owing to gravitational lensing across large expanses of sky. From this, astronomers hope to map the distribution of dark matter throughout the Universe. It is thought that dark energy will leave imprints on this mesh of dark matter, meaning we can work out more about where and what it actually is.

Continue to the post to find out more.

Lindau Videos

At the 2012 Nobel Laureate Meeting in Lindau, physics was on the agenda and throughout the conference the Nature Video team were on hand to capture the valuable moments. They filmed 5 films which will be published between 19 September and 10 October and you can watch the first one below:

Film 1: A golden age? with Brian Schmidt and John Mather

The Hubble Space Telescope has shown us distant galaxies and planets orbiting other stars, deepening our knowledge of the Universe. Nobel prizewinner John Mather works on Hubble’s replacement, the James Webb Space Telescope. He believes we are in a golden age of astronomy. But the young researchers he meets are not convinced. There are too many unanswered questions, they say. For example: what’s causing the accelerated expansion of the Universe? Hear how Mather and fellow laureate Brian Schmidt, who first observed this expansion, handle their queries.

You can also check out last year’s videos here.

Ig Nobel awards

Diamonds made from ammunition, ponytail swishing, and how to stop a medical patient from exploding: these were all topics of genuine research that were celebrated yesterday evening at the Ig Nobel awards at Harvard University in Cambridge, Massachusetts, reports Brian Owens in the News Blog.

A parody of the Nobel prizes, the awards celebrate research into similar categories, including physics, chemistry, physiology/medicine, literature, and peace. They are given for research that “first makes you laugh, then makes you think”.

If you want to know how the natural curl in your hair affects the way your ponytail flicks, the winners of the 2012 Ig Nobel for physics have the answer. If the level of mental activity possessed by dead salmon is something that concerns you, you’re not alone – US researchers have looked into it, earning them a neuroscience prize (See: ‘Study warns of red herrings in brain scan data‘).

Find out more about the prize winners in Brian’s post. Or why not read Boston blogger, Tinker Ready’s interview with Marc Abrahams, who MCs the night:

One World Books photo

Q:  Has the term “What was I thinking?” ever entered your mind while you were standing  on the stage at the Ig Nobels?

No, because when the day arrives, we’ve been thinking long and hard (and who knows, maybe even well) about what might go wrong. The Ig Nobel ceremony is a complicated piece of engineering. We spend the year planning it, trying to foresee tiny and big fizzles (This is a la Murphy’s Law, the namers of which were awarded an Ig Nobel Prize in the year 2003, with Edward Murphy’s son coming to the ceremony to accept on his father’s behalf.) We can rehearse some of it (the new mini-opera about the universe, for example), and plan to deal with the most likely mishaps. But we don’t know what most of the parts are going to do – especially the ten new Ig Nobel winners arriving that day from various continents, and the bunch of Nobel laureates who will hand out the prizes. We have limited control over them. We also know there will be little surprises from the 1100 audience members, each of whom realizes full well that this is their supreme opportunity to show off, in public, their own personal 90/10% mix of genius/lunacy.

Highest recorded temperature record overturned

Michele Catanzaro explains in the News Blog, the world’s highest temperature ever recorded has fallen from 58 °C (136.4 °F) to 56.7 °C (134 °F), after a World Meteorological Organization (WMO) assessment, published on 13 September, showed that the previous record was a mistake:

As a consequence, the hottest spot ever measured has moved from Libya, where it has been believed for the past 90 years to be, to Death Valley in California.

The long-lasting mistake is due to an incorrect measurement performed on 13 September 1922 by an inexperienced member of the Italian military in El Azizia, approximately 40 kilometres south–southwest of Tripoli, according to the study. A WMO committee found that the military used a problematic instrument (a Bellani-Six thermometer) in non-standard conditions (on asphalt instead of on sand). As a result, the record does not match the temperatures observed at the same time in nearby locations, and successively at the same site.

You can find out more about this mistake in Michele’s post.

In Your Element round up

Here’s a round up of the In Your Element essays Nature Chemistry have published so far:

Each non-faded element tile links out to the essay about that element in the journal — you’ll need to be a subscriber to access most of them (some are free to nature.com registrants). We’ll update this post as and when we publish new essays.

One small step for women is one large step to save bones

Sclerostin is a protein that reduces bone density.

Reporting in the House of Wisdom blog, Mohammed Yahia reveals that one of the biggest challenges women face after menopause due to hormonal changes is osteoporosis – a medical condition where bones become too brittle, weak and fragile. A little physical activity weekly can, however, go a long way towards protecting women’s bones at older age:

Just two hours of exercise every week for pre-menopausal women can decrease the release of sclerostin, a protein that is known to inhibit  bone formation. It also increasing levels of another protein, insulin-like growth factor 1 (IGF-1), which enhances bone formation, suggests new research from the King Abdulaziz University, Saudi Arabia. The new study is published in October’s issue of the Journal of Clinical Endocrinology and Metabolism (JCEM)

“Physical activity is good for bone health and results in lowering sclerostin, a known inhibitor of bone formation and enhancing IGF-1 levels, a positive effector on bone health” Mohammed-Salleh M. Ardawi,  a professor at the Center of Excellence for Osteoporosis Research and at KAU and lead researcher for the study, said in a press release.

More information about this research can be found in Mohammed’s summary

The orca whale

SciLogs blogger Anne-Marie Hodge asks in her latest post: why do we even live past the point at which we can no longer reproduce?

There has been broad speculation as to the selective pressures that have produced that wedge of the life cycle, with the most popular being the “Grandmother Hypothesis.” This theory suggests that having a grandmother around to help her daughter raise the next generation will increase the reproductive success of said daughter, helping the grandmother to promote her genes indirectly (a form of inclusive fitness).  This hypothesis has been thrown about quite a bit, and is still being turned over and tested in a variety of settings.

Enter the orca whale (Orcinus orca).  Female orcas stop producing offspring in their 30s to 40s, but often attain lifespans of 90 years or more.  That is a very, very long time to be around consuming resources without producing calves.  As such, this seems to be a fascinating species in which to examine the benefits that adult animals might obtain from the presence of a post-reproductive parent.

Do orcas fit the Grandmother Hypothesis? Find out more in Anne-Marie’s post.

Bird of the week

Finally, this week’s bird, featured by Eric Sawyer over at Scitable, is the White-Breasted Nuthatch.