Welcome to Science Saturday, where the Overnight News Digest crew informs and entertains you with this week's news about science, space, and the environment.
Meteor Blade’s Green Diary Rescue celebrates Daily Kos eco diarists 6 days a week!
H/T to Patriot Daily News Clearinghouse for this phrasing.
This week's featured story comes from Discovery Networks.
Flashback: Images in the News, May 11-15
Discovery News
May 15, 2009 -- It was a busy week on Earth and beyond. As spacewalking astronauts equipped the aging Hubble Space Telescope with a new camera, scientists at home reported the earliest known human figurine, described the hundreds of relic black holes roaming the Milky Way, and sent us pictures of animals having fun for the sake of it.
Browse through a visual tour of those stories and more in this week's Flashback slide show.
More on these and other science, space, and environment stories after the jump.
Slideshows/Videos
Wired: Humans in Space: 10 Amazing Spacewalk Photos
By Alexis Madrigal
Shuttle astronauts began the first of five spacewalks slated for this fourth and final servicing mission on the Hubble Space Telescope at 8:52 a.m. Eastern time Thursday. They installed a new wide-field camera and swapped out a data router that began malfunctioning in September of last year. Two astronauts are shown above approaching Hubble on NASA TV.
But no matter what the astronauts are doing, any Shuttle crew’s extravehicular activities are awe-inspiring and mesmerizing. In this Wired Science mini-gallery, we trace the history of the spacewalk with photos from NASA.
Wired: On-the-Scene Twitpics of Shuttle Launch
By Alexis Madrigal
The Atlantis Space Shuttle successfully launched Monday at 2:01 Eastern time from Cape Canaveral, Florida headed for the Hubble Space Telescope.
...
While shuttle launches are well covered by major media organizations, there’s always been a dedicated group of amateurs who want to be as close as possible whenever man makes for the stars.
Now, through social media sites, we can ferret out their efforts — and keep a direct line open to NASA. Below, we’re posting photos and videos uploaded to Twitter, Flickr, Qik, and YouTube of the launch, along with commentary from those who are sitting in the shadow of the launch. What did the launch sound like?
Wired: Video of Tissues Forming in Zebrafish Embryo
By Lizzie Buchen
A new technique for watching the developing embryo has led to insights into how a homogeneous ball of cells transforms into an embryo with different types of tissues.
In the normal zebrafish embryo, certain signaling molecules make sure the ball of cells turns into more than just a bigger ball of cells: They tell different parts of the embryo to turn into different types of tissue, such as muscle, brain, skin and bones. The molecules, called cyclops and squint, because fish lacking these proteins develop with fused eyes (and a host of other severe abnormalities), act through a protein called Smad2 that transcribes genes specific to these different types of tissue.
Researchers Steven Harvey of the University of Cambridge and James Smith of the National Institute for Medical Research in London wanted to know how the same signals could make one embryonic cell develop into heart cells while turning another into the lining of the lungs.
Discovery Channel: Got Joy? Animals Do
Discovery Channel: Cool Jobs: Antarctic Penguin Researcher
Discovery News' Kasey-Dee Gardner finds out what it's like to study penguins in Antarctica and how to survive the cold.
Discovery Channel: Space: 3 Questions: Mars Tectonics
Who's got the biggest volcanoes - Mars or Earth? Find out that answer and more as James Williams poses 3 questions to a scientist who knows.
Discovery Channel: Earth: The First Lady Of Tropical Meteorology
When hurricanes churn across the Atlantic Ocean, much of what we know about them comes from the work of Joanne Simpson. James Williams sat down with her to learn more about her career.
Astronomy/Space
Discovery Channel: Milky Way May Be Teeming With Black Holes
Irene Klotz, Discovery News
May 11, 2009 -- Hundreds of relic black holes may be roaming the outskirts of the Milky Way galaxy trailing telltale streams of stars detectable from Earth, suggest astronomers in a new study.
The black holes are crash victims, ejected from their original host galaxies when worlds collided, a process that Ryan O'Leary and Abraham Loeb, with the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics, suspect was instrumental in building our own galaxy and probably many others.
"Our work was theoretical, but we have an idea of what these clusters would look like," Loeb told Discovery News.
CNET: Intricate space surgery revives Hubble camera
by William Harwood
In what amounted to electronic brain surgery, a space-suited astronaut cut through shielding on a broken camera deep inside the Hubble Space Telescope on Saturday, removed a cover plate that wasn't designed to be taken off in orbit, used a custom tool to pull out four blown circuit boards, and then installed a fresh set.
Running up to an hour ahead of schedule at one point, astronomer-astronaut John Grunsfeld, a self-described "Hubble hugger" making his third visit to the telescope, then spliced in an electrical cable and connected it to a new low-voltage power supply that replaced one destroyed in 2007 by a catastrophic short circuit.
The improbable repair of the Advanced Camera for Surveys went smoothly, with virtually no problems of any significance, and by 2:56 p.m., the final connections had been made, catching ground engineers by surprise.
Evolution/Paleontology
Sandusky Register: Rare giant sloth bones found in Norwalk museum attic
By CORY FROLIK | Wednesday, May 13, 2009 10:45 AM EDT
Important scientific discoveries aren't usually made in attics -- where boxes of Christmas lights and old high school yearbooks collect dust.
But about three years ago, amateur paleontologist Matt Burr found a box in the attic of the Firelands Historical Society Museum with the remains of a rare giant ground sloth.
The bones belong to the second-largest Ice Age sloth (Megalonyx jeffersonii) of its kind ever recorded, and cuts along the femur bone are the first evidence prehistoric Indians hunted the species, said Brian Redmond, Cleveland Museum of Natural History's curator of archaeology.
Hat/Tip to annetteboardman, who sent in the above article.
Biodiversity
Discovery Channel: Penguins' Secret Ocean Food Stash Found
Jennifer Viegas, Discovery News
May 13, 2009 -- Documentaries about penguins often show the flightless birds leaving their families and mysteriously drifting off to sea, but a new study continues the story for Subantarctic Macaroni penguins, which researchers recently spied on during a lengthy ocean adventure.
The study, published in the latest Royal Society Biology Letters, is the first to reveal the movements and feeding habits of large numbers of penguins using relatively non-invasive geolocation sensors. In the future, the technique may be applied to other penguin species, as it improves upon earlier attempts that mostly relied upon satellites.
Biotechnology/Health
Wired: Soybeans Grow Where Nuclear Waste Glows
By Aaron Rowe
Soy crops are so tough they can flourish in the contaminated soil around Chernobyl and produce healthy offspring.
If scientists can understand how plants survive in ultra-hostile environments, it will help them engineer super hearty plants to withstand drought conditions or grow on marginal cropland.
"The fact that plants were able to adapt to the area of the world’s largest nuclear accident, is very encouraging," says Martin Hajduch, a plant biotechnology expert at the Slovak Academy of Sciences and coauthor of the study in the Journal of Proteome Research. "So we were interested to know how plants can do such a job."
Discovery Channel: Space Tomato Packs Nutritional Super-Punch
Irene Klotz, Discovery News
May 15, 2009 -- What started as a science experiment to grow plants in space has blossomed into a drought-resistent, nutritionally rich tomato -- patent pending.
Mariya Khodakovskaya was a researcher at North Carolina State University when she created a genetically altered tomato seed designed to better withstand the rigors of space. The seeds were flown to the International Space Station in August 2007.
Though they successfully germinated, the plants didn't last long.
Science News: Misread epigenetic signals play role in leukemia
By Tina Hesman Saey
Scientists have shed light on how a genetic mutation linked to acute myeloid leukemia may trigger the disease. The problem arises when cells misinterpret chemical tags called epigenetic marks on certain key genes, a new study shows.
Similar problems probably lie at the heart of other cancers and diseases and may represent a new category of diseases, researchers report online May 10 in Nature.
Cancer may result from many different triggering events. In some patients with the blood cancer, the trigger seems to be a rearrangement of small pieces of chromosome, researchers discovered last year. The rearrangement fuses parts of two proteins — NUP98 and JARID1A — together. Now, Gang Wang and David Allis of Rockefeller University in New York City and their colleagues show how the pairing of the two proteins might lead to trouble for a cell.
Science News: For blood stem cells, the force is strong
By Tina Hesman Saey
Blood stem cells grow with the flow, two new studies show.
The studies, led by independent groups at Children’s Hospital Boston, report that an embryo’s heartbeat and blood circulation stimulate the growth of blood stem cells.
The discovery could be a boon to researchers seeking to make blood stem cells for people with blood cancers, immune system disorders and other diseases that require bone marrow transplants. In children and adults, blood stem cells reside in the bone marrow. Only about a third of patients who require bone marrow transplants have matching donors.
Science News: ‘Super Size’ diet increases insulin resistance
By Tina Hesman Saey Web
Too much fast food could put people on a fast track to diabetes, a new study suggests.
Just one month on a fast food diet was enough to alter the ability of fat cells to respond to insulin, researchers from Linköping University in Sweden reported online April 30 in Molecular Medicine. The inability to respond properly to insulin, called insulin resistance, is a hallmark of type 2 diabetes.
Cell biologist Peter Strålfors of Linköping University got the idea to put people on a fast food diet from the 2004 documentary Super Size Me, in which a man eats a steady diet of McDonald’s food and grows heavier and increasingly ill. Strålfors recruited 18 lean young people to go on a fast food binge. At the beginning of the experiment, the volunteers averaged a trim body mass index of 22.4. Body mass index, or BMI, is calculated from a person’s weight and height and indicates the degree of body fat, in most cases. A BMI between 18.5 and 24.9 is considered normal.
Science News: Undiagnosed diabetes is costly
By Janet Raloff
An estimated 6.3 million American adults have diabetes and don’t know it, according to a new study. But ignorance is not bliss — or cheap. These undiagnosed type-2 diabetics experience more medical problems than healthy adults their age. The new study takes a stab at calculating those: $18 billion a year.
"To the best of our knowledge, no study has investigated the health care use patterns and economic costs for patients with undiagnosed diabetes," the authors report in the latest issue of the bimonthly Population Health Management.
To calculate how many diabetics await diagnosis, researchers from two healthcare consulting firms tapped the National Health and Nutrition Examination Survey. This federal program periodically collects information on health and diet from statistically representative cross-sections of the U.S. population. Many participants in each survey are checked for blood-sugar concentrations to identify the share of people with undiagnosed diabetes or who are at high risk of developing the metabolic disorder.
Science News: Scorpion venom neutralized
A drug used in Mexico proves effective in Arizona test
By Nathan Seppa
The Arizona bark scorpion may be small, but its sting delivers a neurotoxin that can kill or render critically ill a young child. A study in the May 14 New England Journal of Medicine finds that an antivenom drug commonly used in Mexico for such stings neutralizes the toxin, eliminates symptoms and reduces the need for sedation in children who have been stung.
Climate/Environment
Discovery Channel: http://dsc.discovery.com/...
Emily Sohn, Discovery News
May 14, 2009 -- Global warming can change storm patterns. In turn, storms might help fuel global warming.
A new study suggests that tropical cyclones shoot water high into the atmosphere. The result may be a small but significant contribution to the greenhouse effect.
"The bottom line is that tropical cyclones can't be counted out" as players in global climate change, said lead author David Romps, of Harvard University. "It's not something to lose sleep over. But there's a possibility for some type of feedback."
Geology/Geophysics
Discovery Channel: Volcano 'Vacation' Produced First Glaciers
Michael Reilly, Discovery News
May 14, 2009 -- Earth's violent tremors and fiery volcanic eruptions are commonplace today, a natural outgrowth of plate tectonics. But it wasn't always so.
According to a new study, the planet's geologic engine mysteriously shut off 2.4 billion years ago. Volcanoes went on a 250-million year hiatus, and the atmosphere cooled until the world's first glaciers sprouted on the ancient continents.
"There was a widespread slowdown, maybe even a shutdown of plate tectonics," said Kent Condie of the New Mexico Institute of Mining and Technology in Socorro. "Earth may have reverted into a stagnant lid state of cooling."
Psychology/Behavior
Discovery Channel: Animals Just Want to Have Fun, Survey Finds
Jennifer Viegas, Discovery News
May 11, 2009 -- From tickling to playing catch, animals engage in certain behaviors just for fun, even enjoying sensations that are unknown to humans, concludes an extensive new survey on pleasure in the animal kingdom.
The findings, published in the latest Applied Animal Behavior Science, hold moral significance, argues author Jonathan Balcombe. He believes scientists, conservationists and other animal rights activists should not overlook animal joy.
Agencie France Presse via Discovery Channel: Monkeys Learn From Their Mistakes
May 15, 2009 -- Monkeys are able to learn from their mistakes and will take risks to potentially win better rewards when playing games, according to a new study.
"This is the first evidence that monkeys, like people, have 'would-have, could-have, should-have' thoughts," said Ben Hayden, a researcher at the Duke University Medical Center and lead author of the study published in the journal Science.
Science News: School-age lead exposures most harmful to IQ
High concentrations in children’s blood also linked to brain-tissue losses and future criminality
By Janet Raloff
Testing for lead only in infants and toddlers may be a mistake, a new study suggests. Pediatricians routinely test very young children because this is the age when blood concentrations of the neurotoxic heavy metal tend to be highest. But older children can face significant lead exposures, and lead’s ability to lower IQ, the new study shows, is much greater for exposures in early school-age children than in toddlers.
The study, which will appear in an upcoming Environmental Health Perspectives, also finds that the later childhood exposures correlate more strongly than earlier ones with an exaggerated risk of incurring future criminal arrests for violent behavior.
Archeology/Anthropology
Science Daily: Neandertals Sophisticated And Fearless Hunters, New Analysis Shows
ScienceDaily (May 14, 2009) — Neandertals, the 'stupid' cousins of modern humans were capable of capturing the most impressive animals. This indicates that Neandertals were anything but dim. Dutch researcher Gerrit Dusseldorp analysed their daily forays for food to gain insights into the complex behaviour of the Neandertal. His analysis revealed that the hunting was very knowledge intensive.
Ancient Figurine of Voluptuous Woman Is Found
By JOHN NOBLE WILFORD
Published: May 13, 2009
No one would mistake the Stone Age ivory carving for a Venus de Milo. The voluptuous woman depicted is, to say the least, earthier, with huge, projecting breasts and sexually explicit genitalia.
Nicholas J. Conard, an archaeologist at Tubingen University in Germany, who found the small carving in a cave last year, says it is at least 35,000 years old, "one of the oldest known examples of figurative art" in the world. It is about 5,000 years older than some other so-called Venus artifacts made by early populations of Homo sapiens in Europe.
In case the infamouse NYT subscription/registration firewall blocks you out, the the L.A. Times has its own article on this discovery.
L.A. Times: Venus figurine sheds light on origins of art by early humans
By Thomas H. Maugh II
May 14, 2009
A 40,000-year-old figurine of a voluptuous woman carved from mammoth ivory and excavated from a cave in southwestern Germany is the oldest known example of three-dimensional or figurative representation of humans and sheds new light on the origins of art, researchers reported Wednesday.
The intricately carved headless figure is at least 5,000 years older than previous examples and dates from shortly after the arrival of modern humans in Europe. It exhibits many of the characteristics of fertility, or Venus, figurines carved millenniums later.
UTV: Stonehenge breakthrough as visitor centre agreed
Location finalised but opinion still split over £25m scaled-down project at edge of World Heritage Site
The site of Stonehenge's visitor centre was finally announced today, scaled down from the original vision but, the government hopes, able to be built in time to lure Olympics visitors in 2012.
The centre, for one of the world's most famous prehistoric monuments, is to be built at Airman's Corner, a mile and a half to the west of the stones and just outside the World Heritage Site.
Philadelphia Inquirer via the Times-Dispatch: Scientists take another look at ancient medicines
TOM AVRIL THE PHILADELPHIA INQUIRER
Published: May 16, 2009
PHILADELPHIA -- Ancient Egypt was renowned for its prowess in the field of medicine, so much so that sick people went there from abroad in search of herbal remedies.
Archaeologists know that the herbs were administered in a potent blend with wine. But the identity of many of those medicinal additives is a mystery -- their names recorded in hieroglyphics that have resisted modern efforts at translation.
Now, two University of Pennsylvania scientists have begun to crack the puzzle with chemistry.
SwissInfo.ch: A "beautiful woman" in Berlin causes a stir
The bust of Queen Nefertiti of Egypt - one of the treasures of Berlin - is a fake, according to a Swiss art historian who has studied it for nearly 25 years.
Henri Stierlin of Geneva says that the bust is not 3,400 years old, as had been thought up to now, but is less than 100 years old.
Berlin's Egyptian Museum has firmly rejected Stierlin's findings, arguing that recent radiological tests prove it is more than 3,000 years old.
National Geographic: Ancient Elite Island With Pyramid Found in Mexico
Alexis Okeowo in México City
for National Geographic News
An island for ancient elites has been found in central Mexico, archaeologists say. Among the ruins are a treasury and a small pyramid that may have been used for rituals.
The island, called Apupato, belonged to the powerful Tarascan Empire, which dominated much of western Mexico from A.D. 1400 to 1520, before the European conquest of the region.
"Because Apupato was an island and relatively unsettled, it is a neat window into how the [Lake Pátzcuaro] basin looked like years ago," said Christopher Fisher, lead investigator and archaeologist at Colorado State University.
Australian Broadcasting Corporation: Anthrax, bubonic plague could be in remains experts say
Charles Miranda in London
A 300-year-old body has halted work on a new underground train crossing in London amid fears it could release anthrax.
Scientists were yesterday testing the human bones found by workers near the Farringdon Crossrail station in the north of the city on a site believed to have been an 18th Century workhouse.
There were also fears the remains could release the deadly bubonic plague.
The News and Observer via KYTV: Springfield man wants pirate's remains identified
WASHINGTON, N.C. -- A Raleigh author is attempting to reopen the 274-year-old estate of a man from Beaufort County who he thinks was once a member of Blackbeard's pirate crew -- and whose bones may be stored in a box in Raleigh.
Kevin P. Duffus, a writer and filmmaker, says he needs access to the estate of Edward Salter, a landowner and merchant who died in 1735, to help confirm that the state has Salter's remains. With the backing of some of Salter's descendants, Duffus is seeking to have DNA testing done on bones that the state Office of State Archaeology recovered from a gravesite in Bath 23 years ago.
If the bones are Salter's, not only could they be given a proper burial, Duffus says, but they could help prove that at least one of Blackbeard's pirates was not executed in Williamsburg, Va., as popular history says. Duffus contends that Salter was a barrel maker who was forced to join the pirate's crew after being hijacked aboard a ship.
KATC-TV: Treasures from plantation site date to 1700s
NEW ORLEANS -- A hole nearly 5 feet deep behind a restaurant in the Lower Garden District is the latest sign of owner David Baird's continuing efforts to learn the history of the building he bought in 2003.
In 2004, the architectural historian of the New Orleans Historic District Landmarks Commission concluded that the building "two Creole cottages under one massive hip roof" was probably built in 1810-13. That would make it the oldest known structure on the upriver side of Canal Street, Eleanor Burke wrote.
Baird said his own research indicates that it could date back to just before the Jesuit order was expelled from the colony of Louisiana in 1763-64, and all of their lands and possession sold at public auction.
Australian Broadcasting Corporation: Heritage council demands Vanuatu explain bulldozing
By Jeff Waters in Vanuatu
The United Nations says it will write to the government of Vanuatu demanding to know why land has been cleared in a world heritage site buffer zone.
The Roi Mata Domain became the only world heritage cultural site in the South Pacific last year.
But now UNESCO's World Heritage Council wants to know why nearby land has been bulldozed for a residential development.
Bloomberg: ‘Hill of the Jackal’ Ruin in S. Africa Threatened by Colliery
By Carli Lourens
May 14 (Bloomberg) -- South Africa’s environment ministry may try block a coal project proposed by a company partly owned by ArcelorMittal because it jeopardizes the United Nations- recognized World Heritage Status of a set of historical ruins.
The Mapungubwe ruins, remnants of what was once southern Africa’s biggest kingdom, are on a UN list of 878 sites, ranging from Australia’s Great Barrier Reef to Baroque cathedrals in Latin America, the ministry said. At least eight parties have lodged objections to Coal of Africa Ltd.’s 3 billion rand ($351 million) Vele project, which is sited nearby, it said.
Washington Post: In Britain, Guys With Metal Detectors Find Respect Along With History
By Mary Jordan
PENARTH, Wales -- Derek Eveleigh walked carefully, searching for buried treasure.
"It's such a thrill when I find something -- and I often do," Eveleigh said as he listened to the steady beeps of his metal detector. Not far away from this Welsh seaside town, he recently found 6,000 copper coins dating to the Roman Empire.
"It turned out they were 1,700 years old! Many emperors ago," said Eveleigh, 79, one of thousands of British "metal detectorists" who search for history as a hobby.
Hat/Tip to annetteboardman, who sent in the above articles.
Wired: Evidence of Modern Smarts in Stone Age Superglue
By Brandon Keim
Researchers who reverse-engineered an ancient superglue have found that Stone Age people were smarter than we thought.
Making the glue, originally used on 70,000-year-old composite tools, clearly required high-level cognitive powers. Anthropologists usually use symbolic art as the benchmark for modern cognition, but making the glue was an equally profound accomplishment.
"These artisans were exceedingly skilled; they understood the properties of their adhesive ingredients, and they were able to manipulate them knowingly," wrote University of Witwatersrand archaeologists in a paper published Monday in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.
Physics
Science Daily: Environmentally-friendly Cooling With Magnetic Refrigerators Coming Soon
ScienceDaily (May 15, 2009) — Scientists are a step closer to making environmentally-friendly 'magnetic' refrigerators and air conditioning systems a reality, thanks to new research published May 15 in Advanced Materials.
Magnetic refrigeration technology could provide a 'green' alternative to traditional energy-guzzling gas-compression fridges and air conditioners. They would require 20-30% less energy to run than the best systems currently available, and would not rely on ozone-depleting chemicals or greenhouse gases. Refrigeration and air conditioning units make a major contribution to the planet's energy consumption - in the USA in the summer months they account for approximately 50% of the country's energy use.
Science Daily: Europium Found To Be A Superconductor
ScienceDaily (May 15, 2009) — Of the 92 naturally occurring elements, add another to the list of those that are superconductors.
James S. Schilling, Ph.D., professor of physics in Arts & Sciences at Washington University in St. Louis, and Mathew Debessai — his doctoral student at the time — discovered that europium becomes superconducting at 1.8 K (-456 °F) and 80 GPa (790,000 atmospheres) of pressure, making it the 53rd known elemental superconductor and the 23rd at high pressure.
Chemistry
Science News: How RNA got started
By Solmaz Barazesh
Scientists may have figured out the chemistry that sparked the beginning of life on Earth.
The new findings map out a series of simple, efficient chemical reactions that could have formed molecules of RNA, a close cousin of DNA, from the basic materials available more than 3.85 billion years ago, researchers report online May 13 in Nature.
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The new research lends support to the idea that RNA-based life-forms were the first step toward the evolution of modern life. Called the RNA world hypothesis, the idea was first proposed some 40 years ago. But until now, scientists couldn’t figure out the chemical reactions that created the earliest RNA molecules.
Discovery Channel: Color-Shifting Cuttlefish Inspire TV Screens
Eric Bland, Discovery News
May 12, 2009 -- Cuttlefish are masters of disguise, able to change their skin color in less than a second to hide from predators or draw in prey for the kill. Now, scientists from MIT and elsewhere are developing cuttlefish-inspired electronic ink and screens that use less than one-hundredth the power of traditional television screens.
"Cuttlefish change their color by secreting different chemicals to change the spacing between membranes," said Edwin Thomas, a professor at MIT who recently co-authored a paper describing his team's new screen in the journal Advanced Materials.
"We have created an artificial electrical system to control the spacing between layers," he said, thereby changing the colors on the screen.
Science News: Cheaper fuel cell catalyst
By Laura Sanders
Unlike blinged-out rap stars dripping with platinum chains, fuel cell designers try to scrimp on the precious metal. Researchers have now come up with a new way to make do with less platinum and get even better performance from fuel cells. The finding, which appears online May 14 in Science, may provide a much-needed price chop for clean, efficient fuel cell technology.
Fuel cells generate energy through chemical reactions between hydrogen and oxygen, emitting only water as waste. But the high cost of the materials needed to make these reactions happen — in particular, platinum — has prevented fuel cell technology from becoming prevalent. "The major issue is that reserves and depositions on Earth are very small," says study coauthor Younan Xia, of Washington University in St. Louis.
Other metals such as lead and stainless steel have been tried as substitutes for the reaction-promoting material, called the catalyst, but they don’t perform as well. "So far, it’s no question. Platinum is the best in terms of performance," Xia says.
Discovery Channel: Food Wrapper Coating Found in Human Blood
Emily Sohn, Discovery News
May 15, 2009 -- To the growing list of chemicals showing up in human blood, a new study adds compounds that make food wrappers grease-proof.
Called diPAPs, these chemicals are fairly new and scientists don't yet know if they are harmful to human health. But diPAPs break down into another worrisome chemical, called PFOA, which may be carcinogenic.
"The take-home message is that some chemicals that make our lives easier, better and more satisfying end up in our bloodstream with unknown toxicological consequences," said Scott Mabury, a chemist at the University of Toronto. "We should be smart enough to design chemicals that do what we want them to do without causing a chemical pollution problem."
Science News: BPA: On the way out? Sort of
By Janet Raloff
I ran across a Chicago Trib story noting that the city council voted yesterday to make the Windy City America’s first community to ban sales of polycarbonate-plastic baby bottles and "sippy" cups. A lofty claim, but every town and hamlet in Minnesota is actually slated to beat Chicago by 30 days.
Indeed, five days before Chicago did, Minnesota declared it was outlawing baby beverage-ware containing bisphenol-A, the building block of polycarbonate plastic. (For once, the Midwest has beat California to the punch on toxic-substances legislation, although Californians are considering a similar phase out of BPA.)
Unbound molecules of BPA leach from polycarbonate foodware into what we eat and drink. There are plenty of data to document that, and over the years we’ve reported on a number of the studies. It’s the leaching that’s behind the new bans, because in the body BPA not only mimics estrogen but also has been linked with all sorts of adverse health effects.
Discovery Channel: Lithium in Water Shown to Curb Suicide
Eric Bland, Discovery News
May 15, 2009 -- Tap water spiked with naturally-occurring lithium has been shown to curb suicide, according to a new study from Japan and appearing in the British Journal of Psychiatry.
"[T]he nature of the soil in the dam and the river may be different and the difference may affect the lithium levels in water," explained Takeshi Terao, a coauthor of the paper and a professor at Oita University.
"I do not think [cities should start adding lithium to the water supply], because our study is a preliminary one and further studies are required to establish evidence."
Energy
Science Daily: Ultra-dense Deuterium May Be Nuclear Fuel Of The Future
ScienceDaily (May 12, 2009) — A material that is a hundred thousand times heavier than water and more dense than the core of the Sun is being produced at the University of Gothenburg. The scientists working with this material are aiming for an energy process that is both more sustainable and less damaging to the environment than the nuclear power used today.
Discovery Channel: NASA Grows Algae for Biofuel, Treats Waste
Irene Klotz, Discovery News
May 14, 2009 -- Take some NASA-developed plastic membranes, add algae and municipal waste water and float it out to sea. What have you got? An environmentally friendly alternative to U.S. dependence on foreign oil, says one NASA scientist.
Jonathan Trent, a researcher at NASA's Ames Research Center in Moffett Field, Calif., sees algae farmed at sea as a win-win-win scenario: The plants are oil-rich and easy to grow; sea-based nurseries leave land free for food production; and the process should take out more carbon from the atmosphere than what it puts in.
As an added bonus, the system purifies waste water now being pumped into the ocean.
Science, Space, Environment, and Energy Policy
Wired: Obama’s Stem Cell Guidelines Threaten Research
By Brandon Keim
Under the Obama administration’s proposed rules for funding embryonic stem cell research, hundreds of existing cell lines could be ineligible, even those that qualified under President Bush.
The guidelines were written by the National Institutes of Health and are currently in draft form and expected to be finalized in July. But in their current state, they restrict funding to stem cell lines produced according to new rules that are only now being established. Few existing cell lines will meet those requirements.
"The so-called Presidential lines aren’t suitable for actual medical application," said Patrick Taylor, deputy counsel at Children’s Hospital Boston, who criticized the NIH guidelines in a paper published Thursday in Cell Stem Cell. "But we’re talking about many, many more lines. The new lines were created with extensive ethical oversight. They’re at stake here."
Wired: The Lasting Fallout of a Nuclear Meltdown’s Data Gaps
By Alexis Madrigal
LIVERMORE, California — Thirty years ago, half the core of a reactor at the Three Mile Island nuclear complex melted down, but government officials and the utility running the place didn’t know that. And they wouldn’t know for six more years.
In fact, as the crisis extended from its start on March 28, 1979, the amount of information available about the nature of the accident remained slim. Key pieces of data were missing. Nobody knew exactly what was happening inside the containment vessel and, more importantly, what was coming out of it. The sensors designed to measure radioactive release were overwhelmed.
The limitations of data collection and computation made precise predictions and good decisions difficult to make. As intermittent emissions of radioactive gas tumbled into the sky, the uncertainty about how severe the accident had been rose with them.
Science Education
Science News: Intel ISEF winners announced
Projects on smarter roundworms, glowing bacteria as pollutant detectors and the shared history of bees and nematodes take three top spots
By Rachel Ehrenberg
RENO, Nev. — What happens in Reno doesn’t stay in Reno, and some high school students are very pleased about that. On May 15, three top finalists at the Intel International Science and Engineering Fair hit the jackpot, each winning a $50,000 scholarship from the Intel Foundation. Those prizes were part of nearly $4 million in scholarships, tuition grants and scientific trips and equipment awarded at the world's largest high-school science competition.
Science News: Students present projects at 2009 ISEF
Flatworms, inflatable suits and alternatives to windmills make appearances in Reno
By Rachel Ehrenberg
RENO, Nev. — The baking soda–volcano experiment is as ancient as a rotary phone for today’s teens.
Thousands of high school students spent May 13 manning their booths and explaining the research that won each a spot at the Intel International Science and Engineering Fair. Projects included devices to improve gas mileage in today’s cars and to protect against fraud in the credit cards of tomorrow. One student spent hours investigating the light reflected by the moon, another delved into the genetic signature of colorectal cancer.
Science News: On imagination, knowledge, art, science and...ET
By Rachel Ehrenberg
RENO, Nev. — In a ceremony that’s referred to as "the passing of the torch," hundreds of high school science students took part in a Q and A with a panel of Nobel laureates and distinguished scientists May 12. A more fitting title might be "the passing of the Bunsen burner or mass spectrometer."
Eight giants of science offered advice to the packed auditorium during this year’s Intel International Science and Engineering Fair, which has almost 1,600 participants.
Emceed by National Public Radio science correspondent Joe Palca, the Q-and-A session ranged from the nitty-gritty of renewable energy to the more philosophical, such as the role the arts in a scientist’s career.
Science is Cool
Wired: Angels & Demons’ Antimatter Bombs - for Real?
By David Hambling
Dan Brown’s bestseller Angels & Demons hits the big screen today. For anyone who managed to miss the mega-bestseller, the plot hinges on a plot to blow up the Vatican using an antimatter bomb — a tiny device with the power of a nuclear warhead. They may sound good in a thriller, but are antimatter bombs more than just fiction?
In principle, antimatter looks like the ultimate explosive. Matter and anti-matter annihilate each other on contact, releasing energy according to Einstein’s famous formula. This tells us that one pound of antimatter is equivalent to around 19 megatons of TNT. So, in theory, you could make a pocket-sized bomb that would devastate a city. There is the slight issue of containment – the antimatter has to be kept in a complete vacuum and prevented from touching the walls of the container. But once you’ve solved that one you can go out and wreak havoc... just as soon as you’ve got your antimatter.
Wired: Simulate Star Clusters with Second Life Mod
By Lisa Grossman
Ever wanted to control the stars with your outstretched arm? An open-source virtual reality platform just made it possible.
What in 1991 was a novel physics solution now comes packaged in a virtual world for you to intuitively explore. A new simulation in OpenSim, an open-source version of the popular virtual world Second Life, shows how a handful of objects floating in space react to each others’ gravity.
In physics, this is known as the N-body problem. It’s simple if you have only two objects: they orbit their common center of mass in a circle or an ellipse. But three or more objects send the system into chaos. Physicists and mathematicians banged their head against it for centuries, with a general solution emerging less than 20 years ago.
Wired: New Technique’s Gonna Find Out Who’s Spammy or Nice
By Lizzie Buchen
You are how you e-mail: A new technique can tell people apart using only the timestamps in their Sent folders.
In the interactive, real-time world of Twitter, blogs and World of Warcraft, timing is one of the most salient aspects of social behavior. Now, researchers at Northwestern University and Yahoo Research in New York show that they can distinguish and categorize people based solely on the timestamps of their e-mails, paving the way for smarter advertisements, spam filters and social networking sites.
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Of particular interest to Yahoo is a more effective way to catch spammers. Between 80 and 90 percent of all e-mail in the world is spam. Spam isn’t just obnoxious, it also uses up bandwidth, storage space and time. In 2009, spam may cost $42 billion in the United States and $130 billion worldwide — and that doesn’t include the money scammed from gullible internet users like Citigroup.
Wired: Bots vs. Smugglers: Drug Tunnel Smackdown
By Alexis Madrigal
Semi-autonomous robots that can navigate and map drug-smuggling tunnels could be the greatest weapon to emerge from the government’s attempt to stamp out the trade in illicit substances across its borders.
Using special intelligence software developed at Idaho National Laboratory that can be mounted on different machines, the iRobot and Foster Miller robots use lasers to situate themselves in the dark tunnels that have been bored beneath the line that divides Mexico from the United States.