Welcome to Science Saturday, where the Overnight News Digest crew, consisting of founder Magnifico, regular editors ScottyUrb, Bentliberal, wader, Oke, rfall, and JML9999, alumni editors palantir and jlms qkw, guest editors maggiejean and annetteboardman, and current editor-in-chief Neon Vincent, along with anyone else who reads and comments, informs and entertains you with this week's news about science, space, and the environment.
This week's featured story comes from Wired.
Human Nature and the Neurobiology of Conflict
By Brandon Keim
January 26, 2012
Areas of inquiry once reserved for historians and social scientists are now studied by neuroscientists, and among the most fascinating is cultural conflict.
Science alone won't provide the answers, but it can offer new insights into how social behavior reflects -- and perhaps even shapes -- basic human biology.
An upcoming issue of the Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society B features a collection of new studies on the biology of conflict. On the following pages, Wired looks at the findings.
Lots of politics, economics, and culture are explored by neuroscientists in this article, including differences between liberals and conservatives.
More stories after the jump.
Recent Science Diaries and Stories
Why I endorsed Newt Gingrich (not snark)
by FerrisValyn
Climate Denial is against the Law
by Ashaman
Slideshows/Videos
WIS-TV (Channel 10): Archaeologists discover buried chicken at historic home
By Taylor Kearns -
Posted: Jan 24, 2012 4:41 PM CST Updated: Jan 24, 2012 8:13 PM CST
COLUMBIA, SC (WIS) - Historic Columbia's Jakob Crockett knows as an archaeologist, he'll never know for sure what he'll uncover.
At the Mann-Simons House, it was definitely something a little different.
"One of the most surprising finds was a chicken," said Crockett. "This was a fully-articulated chicken that was intentionally buried."
Crockett didn't expect to find a pet chicken beneath what was a turn-of-the-century fast food stop.
CNN: Shipwreck hunters stumble across mysterious find
By Brooke Bowman, CNN
updated 3:44 AM EST, Sat January 28, 2012
(CNN) -- Deep down on the bottom of the Baltic Sea, Swedish treasure hunters think they have made the find of a lifetime.
The problem is, they're not exactly sure what it is they've uncovered.
Out searching for shipwrecks at a secret location between Sweden and Finland, the deep-sea salvage company Ocean Explorer captured an incredible image more than 80 meters below the water's surface.
At first glance, team leader and commercial diver Peter Lindberg joked that his crew had just discovered an unidentified flying object, or UFO.
"I have been doing this for nearly 20 years so I have a seen a few objects on the bottom, but nothing like this," said Lindberg.
The Globe and Mail (Canada): THE SPLURGE: Entrepreneur creates own versions of Stonehenge
This continues our series called The Splurge, where we take a look at how entrepreneurs have spent their money on indulgences -- purchases that may be interesting, fun, satisfying or enjoyable, but not necessary!
Anita Elash
Special to Globe and Mail
Published Friday, Jan. 27, 2012 6:00AM EST
Last updated Friday, Jan. 27, 2012 9:05AM EST
For much of his adult life, franchise industry veteran Edward Loyst has spent his free time carving and building with stones.
His hobby has cost him upwards of $65,000 since he discovered an abandoned rock quarry tucked away in a farmer’s field near his northern Ontario cottage.
The find inspired Mr. Loyst to design and build three groups of megalithic structures with his own hands – projects that involved years of careful planning and which Mr. Loyst hopes will intrigue visitors for centuries to come.
Hat/Tip to annetteboardman for these stories.
Wired: Solar-Storm-Fueled Auroras Make for Awesome Backyard Photography
By Adam Mann
January 27, 2012
The sun is waking up. After several quiet years, it bombarded the Earth with two consecutive solar storms this week, which generated many nights of spectacular auroras seen from backyards around the Northern Hemisphere.
Wired: Watch a Baby Condor Hatch and Grow on Live Webcam
By Daniela Hernandez
January 25, 2012
What could be better than watching baby bald eagles hatch, grow and learn to fly on last year’s live streaming eagle cam? Now we have condor cam.
You can watch a pair of California condors, among the most endangered birds in the world, as they raise a new baby in view of a webcam set up by scientists at the San Diego Zoo’s Safari Park.
“This is a truly unique opportunity to look at a species that almost went extinct,” the Safari Park’s bird curator Michael Mace said. “There are field biologists who have never seen this.”
Wired: Strange Forgotten Space Station Concepts That Never Flew
By Adam Mann
January 24, 2012
Astronauts living and working in space rely on the International Space Station as their port of call. The iconic ISS is a modern engineering triumph, zipping around the Earth every 90 minutes at a height of 200 miles above the surface.
Its construction required careful coordination between nearly a dozen countries working through five space agencies. Perhaps because of this, the ISS has a highly industrial look, with function certainly triumphing over form.
Yet the history of space station design is littered with concepts -- some elegant, some strange, and some remarkably cute -- that were passed over for one reason or another. Here, we look at some space station ideas that didn’t quite make it off the drawing board.
Wired: How to Picture a Black Hole
By Adam Mann
January 23, 2012
Here on Earth, advanced computer simulations have given astronomers a wealth of information, leading theoretical physicist Kip Thorne of Caltech to suggest that black-hole research is entering a new golden age.
“There is now a program of observations that I expect will bring us some big surprises and hopefully validate the predictions from these simulations,” he said.
Yet it’s still strange to imagine what the area around a black hole looks like. After all, a black hole is an object from which nothing, including light, can escape. In this gallery, we look at some of the predictions that researchers have made about viewing a black hole.
Wired: Glow, Little Spewing Shrimp, Glow
By Brian Switek
January 23, 2012
I have spent the better part of two days trying to learn about glowing shrimp puke. ScienceOnline made me do it.
A few days ago, during a quick tour organized by the annual science communication conference, North Carolina Museum of Natural Sciences exhibit director Roy Campbell pointed out a tiny invertebrate in the gloomy recesses of the institution’s deep sea exhibit. He said this crustacean was one of the jewels of the tour – a representation of a shrimp named Acanthephyra purpurea that spews a bioluminescent cloud from its mouth when attacked. The burst of bright barf is enough to put would-be predators off their tea.
We didn’t have time to dally around the submarine diorama. The tour proceeded through the rest of the museum at a breakneck pace, but I kept wondering about the shrimp. How does defensive retching actually work?
Astronomy/Space
Sci-News.com: Kepler Discovered 26 New Extrasolar Planets
By John Shanks
January 27, 2012
NASA’s Kepler mission has discovered 11 new planetary systems hosting 26 extrasolar planets.
According to NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory, these planets range in size from 1.5 times the radius of Earth to giants larger than Jupiter. All of them are closer to their host star than Venus is to our Sun.
Fifteen planets are between Earth and Neptune in size. Further observations should help determine which are rocky like Earth and which have thick gaseous atmospheres like Neptune.
“Prior to the Kepler mission, we knew of perhaps 500 exoplanets across the whole sky,” said Dr. Doug Hudgins, a scientist at NASA Headquarters in Washington. “Now, in just two years staring at a patch of sky not much bigger than your fist, Kepler has discovered more than 60 planets and more than 2,300 planet candidates. This tells us that our galaxy is positively loaded with planets of all sizes and orbits.”
Sci-News.com: Beauty of Dunes on Titan
By John Shanks
January 25, 2012
Radar data from the Cassini spacecraft have revealed regional variations amongst sand dunes on Titan, the largest moon of Saturn.
Dune fields are common on Titan and cover about 13 % of this giant moon, stretching over 10 million km2. They are gigantic by Earthly standards, measuring hundreds of kilometers long, 1–2 km wide and around 100 m high.
According to the European Space Agency, with data from the Cassini spacecraft, an international team of researchers found that the size of Titan’s dunes is controlled by at least two factors: altitude and latitude. Their findings appear in the January issue of the journal Icarus.
Evolution/Paleontology
Wired: Real-Life DinoCrocs Crushed the Competition
By Brian Switek
January 25, 2012
Some clades get all the love. Dinosaurs are at the top of the list. For the past century and a half they have been the icons of lost worlds and extinctions, and the even greater variety of life that lived alongside them is often treated as a motley aggregation of “also-rans.” Crocs, in particular, have reason to be jealous. When a dinosaur impersonates a croc, it’s news, but when crocs steal a few pages from the dinosaur’s evolutionary playbook, no one seems to notice.
In 1998 news sources heralded the discovery of Suchomimus – the dinosaurian “crocodile mimic.” One of the bizarre spinosaurs, this fish-eating predator had a long, low skull full of conical teeth vastly different from the deep, knife-toothed skulls of other large predators like Tyrannosaurus, Allosaurus, and Ceratosaurus. So unusual was this dinosaur that it seems to have been the inspiration for two bare-bones b-movies – DinoCroc, and, of course, DinoCroc versus SuperGator. What few people know, however, is that one group of crocs also imitated fearsome dinosaurian predators.
Wired: New Jersey’s Turnpike Croc
By Brian Switek
January 26, 2012
Two years ago, when I was still stuck in the middle of the garden state, New Jersey State Museum assistant curator of natural history Jason Schein took me on a brief tour of his institution’s collections. There were crocodyliforms everywhere. Shelf after shelf contained the teeth, armor, and bones of a variety of prehistoric crocs that had been pulled from the roughly 65.5 million year old marl found in the southern part of the state. Among the prettiest specimens Schein pointed out to me was a virtually complete lower jaw. The fossil had been attributed to a genus called Diplocynodon, and an array of short, conical teeth were embedded in the slender jaw. What I didn’t know at the time was that I was looking at a previously-unknown species of croc unique to New Jersey.
Fossil crocodile expert Christopher Brochu described the new species with colleagues David Parris, Barbara Smith Grandstaff, Robert Denton, and William Gallagher in the latest issue of the Journal of Vertebrate Paleontology. They have called it Borealosuchus threeensis.
Scientific American: Tame Theory: Did Bonobos Domesticate Themselves?
A new hypothesis holds that the natural selection produced the chimpanzee's nicer cousin in much the same way that humans bred dogs from wolves
By Ed Yong
January 25, 2012
Time and again humans have domesticated wild animals, producing tame individuals with softer appearances and more docile temperaments, such as dogs and guinea pigs. But a new study suggests that one of our primate cousins—the African ape known as the bonobo—did something similar without human involvement. It domesticated itself.
Anthropologist Brian Hare of Duke University's Institute for Brain Sciences noticed that the bonobo looks like a domestic version of its closest living relative, the chimpanzee. The bonobo is less aggressive than the chimp, with a smaller skull and shorter canine teeth. And it spends more time playing and having sex. These traits are very similar to those that separate domestic animals from their wild ancestors. They are all part of a constellation of characteristics known as the domestication syndrome.
Biodiversity
Wired: Why Popcorn Smells Like a Bearcat’s Butt
By Brian Switek
January 27, 2012
Binturongs smell like popcorn. Or popcorn smells like binturongs. I guess it depends on your perspective. Either way, when I stopped by the enclosure of the large, blue-grey bearcat at the San Diego Zoo last month, the warm, buttery scent was unmistakable. What I heard celebrity zookeeper Jack Hanna say on television for so many years was true — the big viverrid smelled like a movie theater lobby.
Binturongs, a cousin of civets and found in the rainforests of Asia from Nepal to Java, aren’t the only mammals with perplexingly familiar scents. Before I started wondering about butter-scented binturongs, my attention was drawn to the pee of maned wolves. The urine of these stilt-legged canids is redolent of marijuana. The reason why has to do with organic compounds called pyrazines which are often used for communication in both plants and animals — in milkweed and maned wolves alike, pyrazines create long-lasting, smelly “Get lost!” signals. After I caught a whiff of the captive binturongs, I wondered if something similar might be behind their unique odor.
Wired: Curious Snow Leopard Cub Steals Camera Trap
By Katie Scott, Wired UK
January 23, 2012
A camera trap set on the Afghan Border has captured images of a leap of elusive snow leopards, but also the moment when one of the cubs made off with one of the cameras.
The cameras were set up in the Zorkul nature reserve close to the Afghan border in Tajikistan at the beginning of August, and left there until October. Dr Alex Diment is the Capacity and Development Manager for the Eurasia Programme for the charity Fauna & Flora International (FFI). He told Wired.co.uk that the FFI and Panthera team set up the camera traps to cover an area of around 15 sq km, which stretched across eight separate valleys.
The 11 cameras photographed five separate snow leopards living in one of these valleys, and this included a family with two cubs — one of which took a shining to the cameras and carried one off.
Biotechnology/Health
Scientific American: Diabetes Mystery: Why Are Type 1 Cases Surging?
Researchers are baffled by the worldwide increase in type 1 diabetes, the less common form of the disease
By Maryn McKenna
January 24, 2012
When public health officials fret about the soaring incidence of diabetes in the U.S. and worldwide, they are generally referring to type 2 diabetes. About 90 percent of the nearly 350 million people around the world who have diabetes suffer from the type 2 form of the illness, which mostly starts causing problems in the 40s and 50s and is tied to the stress that extra pounds place on the body’s ability to regulate blood glucose. About 25 million people in the U.S. have type 2 diabetes, and another million have type 1 diabetes, which typically strikes in childhood and can be controlled only with daily doses of insulin.
For reasons that are completely mysterious, however, the incidence of type 1 diabetes has been increasing throughout the globe at rates that range from 3 to 5 percent a year. Although the second trend is less well publicized, it is still deeply troubling, because this form of the illness has the potential to disable or kill people so much earlier in their lives.
No one knows exactly why type 1 diabetes is rising. Solving that mystery—and, if possible, reducing or reversing the trend—has become an urgent problem for public health researchers everywhere. So far they feel they have only one solid clue.
Climate/Environment
Environmental Health News via Scientific American: Children May Be Exposed to Higher Chemical Concentrations Than Their Mothers
Children under five living near a chemical plant in West Virginia were found to have higher concentrations of an industrial chemical than their mothers
By Marla Cone and Environmental Health News
January 26, 2012
Children living near DuPont’s plant in West Virginia are exposed to much higher concentrations of an industrial chemical than their mothers, according to a newly published study.
Children under 5, who are exposed from drinking water as well as their mothers’ breast milk, had 44 percent more of the chemical in their blood than their moms. The study was undertaken by a court-approved panel of three scientists who have spent seven years trying to determine whether the DuPont chemical is making people sick in the Mid-Ohio Valley.
The chemical is perfluorooctanoate, or PFOA, also known as C8, and it is used in the manufacture of Teflon nonstick cookware, waterproof clothing, food packaging and other products.
Mother Jones: Long Overdue Plant Hardiness Map is a Hothouse
By Julia Whitty
January 26, 2012
The US Department of Agriculture (USDA) released a long overdue new version of their Plant Hardiness Zone Map yesterday—the first update since 1990.
How out of date was the 1990 map? It was based on data from 1974 to 1986. That's 26 years ago.
The new map is interactive, which is cool, and based on a much finer data scale than the old one, which is great. And guess what. It shows that things are getting warmer.
Geology
Scientific American: Primitive Attraction: Magnetized Moon Rock Points to Lunar Core's Active Past
A lunar sample collected by Apollo astronauts suggests that other-Earthly geophysics drove the moon's churning interior
By John Matson
January 26, 2012
The moon of today is a static orb with little to no internal activity; for all intents and purposes it appears to be a dead, dusty pebble of a world. But billions of years ago the moon may have been a place of far more dynamism—literally.
A new study of a lunar rock scooped up by Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin during their Apollo 11 mission indicates that the ancient moon long sustained a dynamo—a convecting fluid core, much like Earth's, that produces a global magnetic field. The age of the rock implies that the lunar dynamo was still going some 3.7 billion years ago, about 800 million years after the moon's formation.
That is longer than would be expected if the lunar dynamo were powered primarily by the natural churning of a cooling molten interior, as is the case on Earth. The moon's small core should have cooled off rather quickly and put an end to any dynamo-generated magnetic field within a few hundred million years. So researchers may have to explore alternate explanations for how a dynamo could be sustained—explanations that depart from thinking of the lunar interior in terms of Earthly geophysics.
Psychology/Behavior
ScienceNOW (Science Magazine) via Wired: Spiders Hunt With 3-D Vision
By Elsa Youngsteadt, ScienceNOW
January 26, 2012
With their keen vision and deadly-accurate pounce, jumping spiders are the cats of the invertebrate world. For decades, scientists have puzzled over how the spiders’ miniature nervous systems manage such sophisticated perception and hunting behavior. A new study of Adanson’s jumping spider (Hasarius adansoni) fills in one key ingredient: an unusual form of depth perception.
Like all jumping spiders, the Adanson’s spider has eight eyes. The two big ones, front and center on the spider’s “face,” have the sharpest vision. They include a lens that projects an image onto the retina—the light-sensitive tissue at the back of the eye. That much is common in animal vision, but the jumping spider’s retina takes things a step further: It consists of not one but four distinct layers of light-sensitive cells. Biologists weren’t sure what all those layers were for, and research in the 1980s made them even more enigmatic. Studies showed that whenever an object is focused on the base layer, it is out of focus on the next layer up—which would seem to make the spider’s vision blurrier rather than sharper.
That led to a “long-standing mystery,” says Duane Harland, a biologist who studies spider vision at AgResearch in Lincoln, New Zealand, and who was not involved in the new study. “What’s the point of having a retina that’s out of focus?” The answer, it turns out, is that having two versions of the same scene—one crisp and one fuzzy—helps spiders gauge the distance to objects like fruit flies and other prey.
Wired: Profit vs. Principle: The Neurobiology of Integrity
By Brandon Keim
January 24, 2012
Let your better self rest assured: Dearly held values truly are sacred, and not merely cost-benefit analyses masquerading as nobel intent, concludes a new study on the neurobiology of moral decision-making. Such values are conceived differently, and occur in very different parts of the brain, than utilitarian decisions.
“Why do people do what they do?” said neuroscientist Greg Berns of Emory University. “Asked if they’d kill an innocent human being, most people would say no, but there can be two very different ways of coming to that answer. You could say it would hurt their family, that it would be bad because of the consequences. Or you could take the Ten Commandments view: You just don’t do it. It’s not even a question of going beyond.”
Archeology/Anthropology
BBC: Study into Jersey Neanderthal mammoth hunters
50,000 years ago it was possible to walk between Jersey and what is now St Malo in France
Archaeologists are investigating the truth behind the story that Ice Age Neanderthals in Jersey would push mammoths off cliffs in St Brelade for food.
About 30 years ago, evidence suggested early residents of what is today the island of Jersey chased the giant mammals off the cliffs at La Cotte above Ouaisne.
Dr Geoff Smith, an analyst for Jersey Archive, said: "It was in the 70s and 80s that the hypothesis was put forward that Neanderthals were grouping together to drive herds of woolly mammoth and woolly rhinos off the cliffs and butchering them."
He is now using new technology to look at whether that theory is correct or not.
Sci-News.com: 7,500-Year-Old Fishing Seines and Traps Discovered in Russia
By James Freeman
January 25, 2012
An international team of archaeologists led by the Spanish National Research Council (CSIC) has found a series of more than 7,500-year-old fish seines and traps at an archaeological site near Moscow.
According to the CSIC, the newly discovered seines and traps display a great technical complexity and are among the oldest fishing equipment ever found in Europe.
“Until now, it was thought that the Mesolithic groups had seasonal as opposed to permanent settlements. According to the results obtained during the excavations, in both Mesolithic and Neolithic periods, the human group that lived in the Dubna river basin, near Moscow, carried out productive activities during the entire year,” said Dr. Ignacio Clemente, a researcher at the CSIC.
National Geographic News: Stonehenge Precursor Found? Island Complex Predates Famous Site
Home to northern Europe's oldest painted walls, Scottish site was likely colorful too.
James Owen
for National Geographic News
Published January 27, 2012
On an island off Britain's northern tip, new discoveries suggest a huge Stone Age ritual complex is older than Stonehenge.
But age is only the half of it. Researchers say the site may have in fact been the original model for Stonehenge and other later, better-known British complexes to the south.
First discovered in 2002, the waterside site—called the Ness of Brodgar ("Brodgar promontory")—lies on Mainland, the largest of Scotland's Orkney Islands (map).
Nature (UK): Underwater archaeology: Hunt for the ancient mariner
Armed with high-tech methods, researchers are scouring the Aegean Sea for the world's oldest shipwrecks.
Brendan Foley peels his wetsuit to the waist and perches on the side of an inflatable boat as it skims across the sea just north of the island of Crete. At his feet are the dripping remains of a vase that moments earlier had been resting on the sea floor, its home for more than a millennium. “It's our best day so far,” he says of his dive that morning. “We've discovered two ancient shipwrecks.”
Columbus Dispatch: Archaeology | Technology offers peek into past
When friends ask me what’s new at work, I occasionally (often enough to become tiresome) respond with, 'Nothing. Everything I work with is old.'
But that’s not entirely true. In archaeology, as in any field of science, there is always something new — whether it’s a new discovery or the development of new technologies that enable us to learn new things about old discoveries.
...
In the October issue of the journal American Antiquity, two Ohio archaeologists — Jarrod Burks, with Ohio Valley Archaeology Inc., and Robert Cook, from Ohio State University — presented the results of their rediscovery of some of Ohio's lost earthworks using revolutionary remote-sensing technology.
N.Y. Times via Pittsburgh Post-Gazette: After Being Stricken by Drought, Istanbul Yields Ancient Treasure
By JENNIFER PINKOWSKI, The New York Times
Wednesday, January 25, 2012
ISTANBUL -- For 1,600 years, this city -- Turkey's largest -- has been built and destroyed, erected and erased, as layer upon layer of life has thrived on its seven hills.
Today, Istanbul is a city of 13 million, spread far beyond those hills. And on a long-farmed peninsula jutting into Lake Kucukcekmece, 13 miles west of the city center, archaeologists have made an extraordinary find.
The find is Bathonea, a substantial harbor town dating from the second century B.C. Discovered in 2007 after a drought lowered the lake's water table, it has been yielding a trove of relics from the fourth to the sixth centuries A.D., a period that parallels Istanbul's founding and its rise as Constantinople, a seat of power for three successive empires -- the Eastern Roman, Byzantine and Ottoman.
Eastern Daily Press (UK): Pottery sheds light on Dereham’s medieval history
By SHAN ELLIS
Thursday, January 26, 2012
9:53 AM
A small piece of pottery discovered during an archaeological dig has provided a glimpse into Dereham’s medieval past.
The excavation, or trial by trenching, of the former library site in Church Street is being headed by Chris Birks Archaeological Services, based in Frettenham, near Norwich.
It was originally ordered by Breckland Council and Norfolk County Council’s Historic Environment Service, based at the Gressenhall Farm and Workhouse Museum, near Dereham.
An application has been approved by the council to build flats on the previously unexplored site and it is part of the planning process to carry out an archaeological survey.
Hat/Tip to annetteboardman, who sent in the above articles.
Physics
Ars Technica via Wired: Galaxy Formation on a Benchtop
By Matthew Francis, Ars Technica
January 27, 2012
For a variety of obvious reasons, it’s impossible to reproduce the exact environment in which galaxies form. The lack of direct experimental tests for the models astrophysicists use creates a disconnect between what astronomers observe and theoretical work. However, that barrier is being broken down by a combination of high-powered lasers and a new understanding of how lab-scale experiments can be related to vastly larger systems such as galaxies.
Researchers at the Laboratoire pour l’Utilisation de Lasers Intenses (LULI), along with colleagues at various universities, have successfully simulated the magnetic fields that form in early galaxies. Naively, there seems to be no correspondence between the experiment and the real astrophysical system. The lab set-up is very small, works on a very short time frame, and uses carbon rods and lasers; the real environment for galaxy formation is clouds of gas and dark matter, and the time-scale is hundreds of millions of years. Nevertheless, a magnetic field strength (along with other effects) has been observed in the lab that corresponds to that experienced by early protogalaxies.
Ars Technica via Wired: Physicists Discover Quantum Speed Limit
By Matthew Francis, Ars Technica
January 25, 2012
The speed of light is the cosmic speed limit, according to physicists’ best understanding: No information can be carried at a greater rate, no matter what method is used. But an analogous speed limit seems to exist within materials, where the interactions between particles are typically very short-range and motion is far slower than light-speed. A new set of experiments and simulations by Marc Cheneau and colleagues have identified this maximum velocity, which has implications for quantum entanglement and quantum computations.
Wired: Invisibility’s Next Frontier: Scientists Cloak 3-D Objects
By Katie Drummond
January 25, 2012
After five years of steady progress, scientists are now edging closer and closer to mastering real-world invisibility.
Sure, researchers have already made marked strides toward making objects unseeable. But much of the work was more like mimicry: Meta-materials that bent light around an object to conceal it, but only worked in two dimensions. Or a device that played tricks on the eye, by harnessing the mirage effect to make objects behind it “disappear.”
Now, a team of researchers have taken an incredible leap forward. They’ve successfully made a 3-D object disappear.
Chemistry
Science News: Measuring what makes a medicine
Researchers' method to rank molecules may aid in search for new drugs.
By Rachel Ehrenberg
Web edition : Thursday, January 26th, 2012
A new method for rating the attractiveness of a compound could help chemists discern potential new drugs from duds. Researchers have come up with a way to quantify a compound’s drug potential that moves beyond simply “hot or not,” instead providing a measure that allows compounds to be ranked as well.
The approach “takes things a step further, looking at multiple factors instead of yes/no,” says chemical informaticist David Wild, of the Indiana University Bloomington, who was not involved with the research.
The new technique uses eight molecular properties — such as the number of rotatable bonds a molecule has — that influence things like a compound’s toxic effects or its likelihood of being absorbed in the body. With some clever math, those probabilities are turned into a number between zero and one. When researchers tested their method against existing techniques for screening compounds, it outperformed the standard approaches at distinguishing known drugs from other molecules, the team reports in the February issue of Nature Chemistry.
Energy
Ars Technica via Wired: Researchers Argue Peak Oil Is Here, Bringing Permanent Volatility
By John Timmer, Ars Technica
January 26, 2012
The global production of oil has remained relatively flat since 2005 and peaked in 2008, declining ever since even as demand has continued to increase. The result has been wild fluctuations in the price of oil as small changes in demand set off large shocks in the system.
In Wednesday’s issue of Nature, James Murray of University of Washington and David King of Oxford University argue this sort of volatility is what we can expect going forward, and we’re likely to face it with other fossil fuels as well.
The notion of peak oil is fairly simple: Oil is a finite resource and at some point we simply won’t be able to extract as much as we once did. There is no getting around that limit for any finite resource. The issue that has made peak oil contentious, however, is the debate over when we might actually hit it. Murray and King are not the first to conclude that we’ve already passed the peak. Even as prices have climbed by about 15 percent per year since 2005, production has remained largely flat.
...
“We are not running out of oil,” the authors argue, “but we are running out of oil that can be produced easily and cheaply.”
Wired: Feds Say Volt Is Safe, Close Battery Inquiry
By Chuck Squatriglia
January 20, 2012
Federal regulators have closed their investigation into the Chevrolet Volt, saying they are satisfied with the steps General Motors has taken to protect the car’s lithium-ion battery and minimize the risk of a fire in the days and weeks after a severe crash.
The National Highway Traffic Safety Administration posted an explanation and summary of its inquiry on Friday and announced the conclusion of the investigation it launched Nov. 25.
“The agency’s investigation has concluded that no discernible defect trend exists and that the vehicle modifications recently developed by General Motors reduce the potential for battery intrusion resulting from side impacts,” the feds said in a statement.
The statement adds, “Based on the available data, NHTSA does not believe that Chevy Volts or other electric vehicles pose a greater risk of fire than gasoline-powered vehicles.”
Science, Space, Environment, and Energy Policy
The Rolla Daily News: Volunteers needed to document Trail of Tears
Rolla, Mo. — The Mark Twain National Forest is looking for volunteers to continue to document the historic Trail of Tears in Mark Twain National Forest’s Poplar Bluff Ranger District. The work will be done March 26-31.
Applications are due by Feb. 13.
The week-long project is the second phase of a Passport in Time project. Passport in Time is a USDA Forest Service volunteer archaeology and historic preservation program.
Please visit: www.passportintime.com/ click on “Current Projects” and then click on “Mark Twain NF” MO-4059 project to apply.
Battle Creek Enquirer via Washington Examiner: Museum gives back artifacts to Native Americans
By: ANDY FITZPATRICK | 01/28/12 10:05 AM
Battle Creek Enquirer
ADVANCE FOR SUNDAY, JAN. 29 AND THEREAFTER - In a Jan. 17, 2012 photo, Beth Yahne, collections manager at Kingman Museum in Battle Creek, Mich., talks about Native American artifacts that the museum has. The federal Native American Graves Protection and Repatriation Act became law in 1990. Since then, the museum has been working to return the remains and artifacts back to the tribes from which they originated.
In the basement and back rooms of Kingman Museum, the remains of people from long ago wait to return home.
That's the goal of the federal Native American Graves Protection and Repatriation Act, which became law in 1990. Since then, the museum has been working to return the remains of Native American people and artifacts back to the tribes from which they originated.
It can be a daunting task, correctly identifying and returning such materials for any institution; notices of the remains have to be sent to the relevant tribes and the National Park Service's NAGPRA Program, which then publishes notices for Native American tribes to review to see if there are remains to be repatriated to them.
Hat/Tip to annetteboardman for these stories.
Wired: Airlines Developing Different Strategies For Acquiring Carbon Credits
By Jason Paur
January 27, 2012
Airlines flying in Europe are finding different ways for handling the new emission trading scheme that took effect at the beginning of the year. While many airlines in North American and Asia continue to question the validity of the requirements to purchase carbon credits, several European carriers are developing plans for buying and trading carbon credits.
Germany’s Lufthansa told Reuters it has been continuously buying up credits on the open market. Currently carbon credits in Europe are at bargain prices. The price is about half of what it was in 2010 at roughly 7 Euros per ton of carbon. The requirement to buy carbon credits is effectively a tax to provide an economic incentive to minimize emissions of C02 by the airlines.
As of January 1, airlines flying to and from EU airports must have enough carbon credits to cover the emissions from their flights. The airlines join power and industrial plants in the EU that have been submitting carbon credits since 2005. Under the plan the airlines are given a number of free carbon credits to cover some of their operations, they must acquire the remaining credits either through trade or purchase.
Science Education
Norwalk Patch: Student in Norwalk CC Program Makes Shocking Find
By Madeline Barillo
A high school student who digs in Norwalk Community College’s archaeology program has found an ancient spearhead more than 4,000 years old at an NCC-sponsored archaeology dig.
Chelsea Dean, 18, a senior at Fairfield Ludlowe High School, took NCC’s Introduction to Archaeology (ANT 121) course during the fall 2011 semester to explore her career interests.
“I have an interest in archaeology and thought I might want to major it in college, but it’s a very limited field in terms of colleges offering it as a major, so I decided to get a taste of it before I applied to colleges,” said Dean, a Fairfield resident.
Hat/Tip to annetteboardman for this story.
Wired: Digital Textbooks Go Straight From Scientists to Students
By Dave Mosher
January 26, 2012
A year ago, electronic textbook publishers turned down David Johnston’s big idea: the first interactive marine science textbook.
Johnston, who runs a marine biology lab at Duke University, wanted the digital tome to show undergraduate students what his scientific field has to offer. But e-book publishers said the subject matter was too niche and the requested features too expensive to make financial sense.
“When we approached them, they essentially told us we were too small,” Johnston said. Frustrated by the experience, Johnston set out to create open source software to publish the book himself.
Wired: iPad Textbooks: Reality Less Revolutionary Than Hardware
By Brandon Keim
January 26, 2012
Much as tablet computers went mainstream in the iPad’s wake, Apple’s latest educational project heralds an age of tablet-based schoolbooks.
That, at least, is the hope and hype surrounding iBooks textbooks, launched Jan. 19 at a promotional gala held in the Guggenheim Museum and advertised in terms as glowing as an iPad’s screen.
In coming years, schools worldwide will grapple with whether to adopt tablet-based materials, on the iPad or on other platforms. They’ll consider many factors — including cost, intellectual property issues and logistics — that may ultimately prove as important as the textbooks’ contents. But as learning is the ultimate purpose, the question remains: Will kids really learn more and better on tablets than existing media?
That’s far from clear now, and the reality may prove less revolutionary than the hardware.
Science Writing and Reporting
Waconia Patriot: 'Every Hill Has A Story'
By Melissa Marohl, Staff Writer
Published: Wednesday, January 25, 2012 9:57 AM CST
Over the last 20 years, Lynn Marie has been walking Carver County and the surrounding areas, searching for ancient artifacts that detail the lives of the people that used to populate Minnesota. Lynn Marie, who currently lives in Waconia but has lived in Carver County her whole life, recently wrote a book, "Every Hill Has A Story," that chronicles her search for ancient artifacts in Carver County.
Lynn Marie said her passion for exploring the past began one day when her two young sons and family dog went exploring. The single mother and her four young children had recently moved to a farm and the previous owners had told the family where to find arrowheads on the property.
Hat/Tip to annetteboardman for this story.
Science is Cool
Red Orbit: Ancient Tanzania Had Early Social Network
January 26, 2012
Who’d have thought Facebook was popular in an ancient Tanzania culture? Well it wasn’t, but the people of the Hadza group exhibited many of the “friending” habits familiar to today’s Facebook users, suggesting that social networking patterns were set early in the history of our species.
While ancient humans didn’t have the luxury of updating their social status, social networks were indeed an essential part of their livelihood, say authors of a new study, published in the journal Nature.
Findings of the study showed basic social network structures may have been present early on in human history, suggesting that our ancestors may have formed ties with both kin and non-kin based on shared attributes, including the tendency to cooperate. Researchers in the study believe social networking likely contributed to the evolution of cooperation.
Hat/Tip to annetteboardman for this story.
Wired: Science Project + Daughter + Dad = iTunes Hit?
By Russ Neumeier
January 26, 2012
I’m going to guess that most GeekDads love science (and they love even more that their kids love science) So, when a child comes home with a science project and you happen to have a bent for the musical side of things, what do you do? If you’re like Chris and Maggie Arias, you write a song about it and publish on iTunes and Amazon.
Maggie, a 6th grader, had a science project — the topic was one that she was able to choose — about Aurora Borealis. The original assignment was to create a paper, poster, or PowerPoint presentation containing at least five paragraphs of information. She asked her teacher if she could instead write a song and her teacher agreed.
When she got home, she asked her dad, a Chemical Engineer-turned-musician, for help.