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.
This week's featured story comes from Reuters.
U.S. resumes funding controversial stem cell research
By Maggie Fox, Health and Science Editor
WASHINGTON | Fri Sep 10, 2010 3:48pm EDT
The U.S. government said it was resuming work on controversial human embryonic stem cell research on Friday after an appeals court ruled in its favor.
In the latest legal back-and-forth on the issue, a U.S. appeals court on Thursday granted an Obama administration request to temporarily lift a judge's ban on federal funding of research involving human embryonic stem cells.
More legal action is pending but the National Institutes of Health said it would resume work that had been suspended.
"We are pleased with the court's interim ruling, which will allow promising stem cell research to continue while we present further arguments to the court in the weeks to come," the NIH said in a statement.
More science, space, and environment stories after the jump.
Recent Science Diaries and Stories
DarkSyde: This week in science
Watch this space for more.
Never mind, that's it for today.
Slideshows/Videos
Discovery News: Top 5 Space Spirals
by Ian O'Neill
The Hubble Space Telescope has imaged a ghostly pinwheel spiral surrounding a binary star system called LL Pegasi.
This bizarre cosmic phenomenon is caused by one of the stars dying, venting huge amounts of gas and dust into space. As the stars orbit one another every 800 years, the material expands into space like water being sprayed from a spinning garden sprinkler.
Although rare, this near-perfect space spiral isn't unprecedented. In fact, there have been several spirals seen in recent years that have excited, spooked, but above all awed onlookers.
Discovery News: Top 5 Time Travel Methods from the Movies
by Paul Rolfe
Oh, how we often long to travel back in time and change our pasts, to stop some horrible event, to rewrite history. Movies often indulge and inspire us with their time travel adventures, but how many of these have any basis in real science?
Let's, for this purpose, ignore how much the movies tug at the heartstrings, entertain us, or tickle our funny bone. We can never forget great ones like "Back to the Future," "Bill and Ted's Excellent Adventure," "Time Cop" and many others. But this is a focus on how the heck we are going to get these movies to come true.
Ron Mallett, professor of physics at the University of Connecticut and author of Time Traveler: A Scientist's Personal Mission to Make Time Travel a Reality, has spent his whole career studying the possibilities of time travel and he weighed in on what aspects of the movies are on the edge of possibility and which ones are not.
Derived from the expertise of Mallett, here are the top five time travel movies ranked on their basis in science and their true feasibility. Sorry "Hot Tub Time Machine", you didn't make the cut.
Discovery News: History: Mona Lisa's Childhood Home Found
The woman behind one of the world's most famous paintings was born in a humble house in Florence, according to new documents. Rossella Lorenzi gets the story.
National Geographic News: Fire-Tornado Pictures: Why They Form, How to Fight Them
—Ker Than
Firefighters watch a "fire tornado" wreathed with dust and smoke as it swirls on the south slope of Hawaii's Mauna Kea volcano Sunday. The fiery column was spawned during a 1,400-acre (566-hectare) brush fire triggered by regional drought.
Also known as fire whirls, fire devils, or even firenados, these whirlwinds of flame are not really rare, just rarely documented, said Jason Forthofer, a mechanical engineer at the U.S. Forest Services's Missoula Fire Sciences Laboratory in Montana.
Astronomy/Space
Discovery News: Is a Black Hole 'Middle Child' Feasting in a Distant Galaxy?
Analysis by Nicole Gugliucci
Black holes are everywhere. They can be left behind as the remnant of a massive star that exploded long ago, being just a few times the mass of our own Sun. Supermassive black holes, containing the mass of million or billions of Suns, sit at the centers of many galaxies. There has been controversy in the astronomical literature about the existence of intermediate mass back holes, and new evidence for one such "middle child" has been presented for an x-ray source in a distant galaxy.
The candidate's name is HLX-1, and is a bright source of x-rays near a galaxy 300 million light years away. At that distance, it is too bright to be a stellar-mass black hole.
Science News: Mars shows signs of recent activity
Carbon dioxide measurements suggest liquid water and volcanoes in past 100 million years
By Ron Cowen
New evidence suggests that Mars was much more active in the relatively recent past, with volcanoes erupting and water flowing on its surface within the past 100 million years.
The findings are based on the most precise measurements ever taken of carbon dioxide in the Martian atmosphere, recorded by NASA’s Mars Phoenix Lander during its five months of operation in 2008. Because carbon dioxide gas reacts strongly with both water and silicate rock, measuring the relative proportions of different isotopes of carbon and oxygen in the Martian atmosphere provides a record of the history of both materials on the planet. Paul Niles of NASA’s Johnson Space Center in Houston and his colleagues report the findings in the September 10 Science.
The carbon dioxide measurements "may be the most profound result to come out of the Phoenix mission," comments Bruce Jakosky of the University of Colorado in Boulder, who was not involved in the study.
Science News: Asteroids miss with astronomers
Close brushes actually fairly common
By Ron Cowen
The only thing that was particularly unusual about two asteroids that zipped past Earth September 8, astronomers say, was that anybody noticed them.
Such close approaches — one of the asteroids passed within 79,000 kilometers of Earth — actually happen several times a week, according to scientists’ calculations. Yet some media outlets described the close encounter as if it were a brush with Armageddon.
"Quite frankly, I don’t know why they’re making such a fuss about it," says astronomer Brian Marsden of the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics in Cambridge, Mass. "This is essentially nothing."
Discovery News: Shuttle Drops a Nut
Analysis by Ian O'Neill
As Space Shuttle Discovery prepares for its final launch before retirement, a slight technical hitch has delayed the attachment of the bulbous external fuel tank and twin solid rocket boosters.
WATCH VIDEO: Kasey-Dee Gardner finds out what it is like to be launch director at NASA. While hoisted into a vertical position in NASA's Kennedy Space Center's Vehicle Assembly Building to "mate" the orbiter with the orange external tank on Friday, a nut that was being attached to a tank separation bolt came loose and dropped into the aft compartment.
Reuters: China aims for next moon orbit shot this year
Reporting by Chris Buckley
BEIJING | Fri Sep 10, 2010 7:54am EDT
China will launch its second lunar exploration probe by the end of 2010, boosting the country's effort to rise as a space power eventually capable of landing on the moon, official media said Friday.
A senior engineer overseeing China's lunar exploration program, Wu Weiren, said work on the Chang'e-2 lunar orbiter was "proceeding smoothly," the People's Daily reported.
"It is now at the stage of pre-launch testing and preparations, and the plan is to carry out a trial flight mission by the end of the year," the paper cited Wu as saying.
Discovery News: Spacecraft to Fly Into the Sun
Flying into the sun's corona is suicidal to be sure, but scientists want to find out how the sun's atmosphere is heated.
By Irene Klotz
Why the sun's atmosphere is nearly 200 times hotter than its visible surface is a long-standing mystery. A new spacecraft, called Solar Probe Plus, aims to find some answers.
Flying directly into the sun's corona is a suicidal mission to be sure, but scientists and engineers at the Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Lab in Baltimore, which is developing Solar Probe Plus for NASA, plan to keep the spacecraft alive as long as possible.
It's not going to be easy. For starters, the probe will need to withstand temperatures up to about 2,600 degrees Fahrenheit. Plus, its heat shield can't ablate, or boil away like the shields on capsules returning through Earth's atmosphere are designed to do. That would pollute the particles and measurements Solar Probe Plus is being dispatched to gather.
Evolution/Paleontology
National Geographic: Hunchback Dinosaur Found: Carnivorous "Camel"
Mysterious hump, scrawny "feathers" stump scientists.
James Owen
for National Geographic News
Published September 8, 2010
The Cretaceous period's carnivorous answer to a camel has been unearthed in Europe after 130 million years, a new study says (prehistoric time line).
The new, hunchbacked species of dinosaur sprouted spiky, featherlike shafts on its arms; was probably a powerful runner; and likely ate small dinosaurs, crocodiles, and early mammals, researchers say.
Discovered via a finely preserved, nearly complete skeleton found in central Spain, the 20-foot-long (6-meter-long) Concavenator corcovatus—"the hunchback hunter from Cuenca"—had two raised backbones, each 1.3 feet (40 centimeters) taller than the dinosaurs' other vertebrae.
Science Daily: Woolly Mammoth, Woolly Rhinoceros and Reindeer Lived on Iberian Peninsula 150,000 Years Ago, Findings Show
ScienceDaily (Sep. 9, 2010) — A team made up of members of the University of Oviedo (UO) and the Complutense University of Madrid (UCM) have gathered together all findings of the woolly mammoth, the woolly rhinoceros and the reindeer in the Iberian Peninsula to show that, although in small numbers, these big mammals -- prehistoric indicators of cold climates -- already lived in this territory some 150,000 years ago.
The presence of the woolly mammoth (Mammuthus primigenius), the woolly rhinoceros (Coelodonta antiquitatis), the reindeer (Rangifer tarandus), and to a lesser extent the wolverine (Gulo gulo), the arctic fox (Alopex lagopus), the musk-ox (Ovibos moschatus) and the Saiga antelope (Saiga tatarica), has been linked to the paleoclimatic scale created on the basis of the isotopic composition of oxygen in the ice of Greenland.
"The findings of cold climate fauna in the Iberian Peninsula coincide with the periods of greatest global cooling recorded in the ice of Greenland," Diego Álvarez-Lao, main author of the work and researcher in the Palaeontology Department of the UO explains.
Biodiversity
Discovery News: Global Biodiversity Still in Peril, Despite Progress
Analysis by Zahra Hirji
This year marks the deadline for the United Nations' Millennium Development Goal concerning biodiversity, and a group of researchers weighed in on just how well we achieved our targets in a new study. While their review outlines the some progress, the planet's array of species is in a desperate state. New efforts to conserve not just land, but diversity among organisms, need to be undertaken with great urgency.
The biodiversity subsection of the Millennium Development Goal Seven aimed to "reduce biodiversity loss, achieving, by 2010, a significant reduction in the rate of loss." This is an awfully vague goal considering biodiversity is an umbrella term for "the variety of genes, species, and ecosystems that constitute life on Earth."
But it couldn't be more important. Biodiversity affects every aspect of our lives, from agriculture to carbon sequestration and storage, where studies have demonstrated that the economic value of benefits from healthy, diverse natural ecosystems may be 10 to 100 times the cost of maintaining them, according to a new paper published in Science.
Discovery News: Save Me, Seymour! Flytraps, Carnivorous Plants Dwindling Across U.S.
Analysis by Michael Reilly
There's something eerily animal-like about venus flytraps -- touch the trigger hairs and their maws snap shut around an insect, grinning greedily. It isn't hard to make the imaginative jump from the tiny fly-killers to the giant, man-eating monster Rick Moranis feeds in "Little Shop of Horrors."
Unfortunately, the musical version of the plant is much tougher than its real cousins. Flytraps (Dionaea muscipula) are only native to a small area that straddles the border between North and South Carolina, and they are falling victim to poachers, habitat destruction, and wildfire suppression. There may be fewer than 40,000 plants left in their native habitat.
Across the country, the story is much the same -- pitcher plants, sundews, butterworts and a host of other carnivorous plant species are succumbing as humans' impact on their boggy habitats increases.
Reuters: Protect corals with reef networks, U.N. study says
By Alister Doyle, Environment Correspondent
OSLO | Wed Sep 8, 2010 12:41pm EDT
The world should safeguard coral reefs with networks of small no-fishing zones to confront threats such as climate change, and shift from favoring single, big protected areas, a U.N. study showed.
"People have been creating marine protected areas for decades. Most of them are totally ineffective," Peter Sale, a leader of the study at the U.N. University's Institute for Water, Environment and Health, told Reuters.
"You need a network of protected areas that functions well," he said. "It's important to get away from single protected areas which has been the common approach."
The Daily Telegraph (UK): Bee decline already having dramatic effect on pollination of plants
By Richard Alleyne, Science Correspondent
Published: 5:30AM BST 06 Sep 2010
Researchers have found that pollination levels of some plants have dropped by up to 50 per cent in the last two decades.
The "pollination deficit" could see a dramatic reduction in the yield from crops.
The research, carried out in the Rocky Mountains, Colorado, is the first to show that the effect is real and serves as a "warning" to Britain which if anything has seen an even greater decline in bees and pollinators.
Science News: Not in this toad’s backyard
Native Indonesian amphibian takes on invading ants
By Susan Milius
After so many sad tales of invasive species overwhelming hapless natives, scientists have found a native toad in Indonesia that’s fighting back.
The common Sulawesi toad turns out to be a prodigious eater of ants, even aggressive invading ones, says Thomas C. Wanger of the University of Göttingen in Germany and the University of Adelaide in Australia. On the island of Sulawesi, the Ingerophrynus celebensis toads readily feast on yellow crazy ants, which are colonizing the island as well as other tropical locations.
Yellow crazy ants get their name from their color and their zigzag scurrying, and they have crowded out native ants and disrupted ecosystems elsewhere. The invaders meet any foe aggressively, releasing noxious chemicals during battle. The Sulawesi toads eat them nonetheless, Wanger says.
Discovery News: Top 10 Threatened Freshwater Turtles Named
Analysis by Jennifer Viegas
Habitat loss, hunting, and a lucrative pet trade are all contributing to the decimation of the world's freshwater turtle populations, according to Conservation International, which has just named 10 of the most threatened species.
The news comes during this World Water Week, an annual meeting that addresses the planet's most urgent water-related issues.
The loss of freshwater turtles might not seem pressing in light of other problems, but these reptiles are vital to ecosystems. Their downfall will impact people and wildlife, just as we are affecting their fate.
National Geographic News: "Lost" Fox Subspecies Found via Saliva Analysis
Christine Dell'Amore
for National Geographic News
Published September 8, 2010
Thought as regionally extinct, the Sierra Nevada red fox has been rediscovered in the mountains of central California, thanks to a remote camera, a bag of chicken, and saliva analysis.
The discovery gives conservationists hope that the fox—listed as threatened by California—may just outfox extinction overall, scientists say.
The Sierra Nevada red fox subspecies hadn't been seen in central California since the 1990s and was considered gone from the area. Only one other population of Sierra Nevada foxes are known, farther north in the Lassen Peak region (see map).
Biotechnology/Health
Reuters: Two gene mutations mark deadly ovarian cancer
WASHINGTON | Thu Sep 9, 2010 11:30am EDT
Researchers have identified two new genetic mutations that cause a significant number of the hardest-to-treat kinds of ovarian cancer, and say they point to a new "on-off" switch for tumors.
They hope their findings may eventually help doctors better tailor cancer treatments and also lead to the development of drugs to treat these forms of cancer.
The findings, published by two separate teams of researchers in the journal Science and the New England Journal of Medicine, also suggest a previously unknown mechanism for how cancer begins.
Reuters: B vitamins found to halve brain shrinkage in old
By Kate Kelland
LONDON | Wed Sep 8, 2010 5:01pm EDT
Daily tablets of large doses of B vitamins can halve the rate of brain shrinkage in elderly people with memory problems and may slow their progression toward dementia, data from a British trial showed on Wednesday,
Scientists from Oxford University said their two-year clinical trial was the largest to date into the effect of B vitamins on so-called "mild cognitive impairment" -- a major risk factor for Alzheimer's disease and other forms of dementia.
Experts commenting on the findings said they were important and called for larger, longer full-scale clinical trials to see if the safety and effectiveness of B vitamins in the prevention of neurodegenerative conditions could be confirmed.
"This is a very dramatic and striking result. It's much more than we could have predicted," said David Smith of Oxford's department of pharmacology, who co-led the trial.
Examiner.com: Poor diets growing up could lead to chronic ill health, breast cancer later, two studies show
By Vince Lamb, Detroit Science News Examiner
Two studies from local universities show that poor dietary choices during one's school years could result in severe health problems during adulthood.
A paper authored by a team of researchers from the University of Michigan, Michigan State University, and Food & Nutrition Database Research, Inc., of Okemos described how school children who consume foods purchased in vending machines, school store, and snack bars are more likely to develop poor diet quality early in life than those who eat meals provided as part of the United States Department of Agriculture (USDA) school lunch program or packed at home. As a result, these children are more likely to be overweight or obese. Their diets may also put them at risk for chronic health problems such as diabetes and coronary artery disease later in life.
Another paper penned by a pair of Michigan State University researchers came to an even more dire conclusion. Girls who eat a high-fat diet during puberty, even if they do not become overweight or obese, may be at a greater risk of developing breast cancer later in life. The implications could drive new cancer prevention efforts.
Together, the two studies demonstrate how poor food choices early in life could cause health problems later, as well as the importance of proper nutrition and establishing good dietary choices during childhood.
Details on both stories with a common theme at the link.
Science News: Study clarifies obesity-infertility link
Effect of insulin in pituitary surprises scientists
By Tina Hesman Saey
Being obese has long been linked to infertility in females, but researchers may have been wrong about how the link was forged, a new study suggests.
Doctors and scientists have thought that the fertility problems were caused by resistance to the hormone insulin. Chronically high levels of insulin often accompany obesity, eventually making muscles and other tissues impervious to the hormone’s signals.
A new study in mice shows that the pituitary gland, which helps regulate the release of fertility-associated hormones, remains sensitive to insulin. But in obese mice, insulin’s constant signaling to release the fertility hormones leads to an overabundance of those hormones, and consequently infertility, researchers report in the Sept. 8 Cell Metabolism.
Relaxnews via The Independent (UK): Revolutionary toothbrush may signal end of toothpaste
JR at Relaxnews
Monday, 6 September 2010
Japanese scientists are collaborating with an oral health company on a revolutionary toothbrush that uses electricity to make teeth pearly white and does away with the need for toothpaste.
First dreamed up 15 years ago by Dr. Kunio Komiyama, who is now a professor of dentistry at Canada's University of Saskatchewan, the Soladey-J3X has a solar panel at its base that requires minimal amounts of light to transmit electrons to the head of the toothbrush through a titanium dioxide semiconductor embedded in the body.
Once there, the electrons react with acid that occurs naturally in the mouth, creating a chemical reaction that breaks down plaque and kills bacteria, according to Dr. Komiyama and his colleague, Dr. Gerry Uswak, dean of the university's College of Dentistry.
Science News: A cellular secret to long life
Longevity may depend in part on neatly spooling DNA
By Tina Hesman Saey
Just as proper storage keeps a loaf fresh longer, adequate packaging may be a key to cellular longevity, reports a study of the organisms that make bread rise.
New research on aging in baker’s yeast suggests that proper packaging of DNA can halt aging and lead to longer life. The study, published September 10 in Molecular Cell, shows that a decline in levels of DNA-packaging proteins called histones is partially responsible for aging, and that making more of the proteins can extend the life-span of yeast.
Aging has many different causes, says Jessica Tyler, a molecular biologist at the University of Texas MD Anderson Cancer Center in Houston. Now, Tyler and her colleagues think they have uncovered yet another way cells age – by losing histones.
Science News: Cockroach brains, coming to a pharmacy near you
Insect tissue extracts show antibacterial activity
By Rachel Ehrenberg
The ground-up brains of cockroaches and desert locusts bear compounds that kill bacteria, new research shows. TermitemanCockroaches may be nasty bugs, but they could help fight even nastier ones. New research finds that the rudimentary brains of cockroaches and locusts teem with antimicrobial compounds that slay harmful E. coli and MRSA, the antibiotic-resistant staph bacterium. The work could lead to new compounds for fighting infectious diseases in humans.
Extracts of ground-up brain and other nerve tissue from the American cockroach, Periplaneta americana, and desert locust, Schistocerca gregaria, killed more than 90 percent of a type of E. coli that causes meningitis, and also killed methicillin-resistant staph, microbiologist Simon Lee reported September 7 at the Society for General Microbiology meeting at the University of Nottingham in England.
"Some of these insects live in the filthiest places ever known to man," says Naveed Khan, coauthor of the new study. "These insects crawl on dead tissue, in sewage, in drainage areas. We thought, 'How do they cope with all the bacteria and parasites?’"
Climate/Environment
Reuters: Diverse water sources seen key to food security
Reporting by Kate Kelland
LONDON | Tue Sep 7, 2010 8:28am EDT
Increasingly erratic rainfall patterns related to climate change pose a major threat to food security and economic growth, water experts said on Monday, arguing for greater investment in water storage.
In a report by the International Water Management Institute (IWMI), experts said Africa and Asia were likely to be hardest hit by unpredictable rainfall, and urged policymakers and farmers to try to find ways of diversifying sources of water.
The IWMI research estimates that up to 499 million people in Africa and India could benefit from improved agricultural water management.
Reuters: New detailed map shows carbon in Peru's Amazon
By Deborah Zabarenko, Environment Correspondent
WASHINGTON | Mon Sep 6, 2010 3:29pm EDT
A new, highly detailed map of part of Peru's Amazon shows how much climate-warming carbon is stored there, and where cutting down vegetation has sent this greenhouse gas into the atmosphere, scientists said on Monday.
The three-dimensional map could help clear the way for an international agreement to curb deforestation and forest degradation, which account for up to one-fifth of all greenhouse gases released by human activities, according to United Nations estimates.
Science News: Climate's link to plague
Cases in U.S. Southwest correlate with cyclic changes in Pacific ocean temperature
By Janet Raloff
Warmer, drier conditions in the Southwest may be bad for gardeners, real estate developers and fish, but this climatic trend promises to depress the risk of bubonic plague, an international team of scientists reports. Their new study correlates changes in long-term climatic patterns with incidence of the deadly bacterial pestilence, one spread by fleas living on and around mice and other rodents.
The El Niño Southern Oscillation and Pacific Decadal Oscillation are two major patterns of Pacific climate variability, which operate on very different scales. El Niño events, also known as ENSOs, tend to last for 6 to 18 months and most directly impact water temperatures in the eastern tropical Pacific. Pacific Decadal Oscillations, or PDOs, persist for 20 to 30 years at a time, bringing long-term swings in sea temperatures, mostly to the northeastern Pacific.
Both drive North American climate, setting in motion relatively long-lasting patterns of warmer, wetter weather.
Agence France Presse via Discovery News: Less Gassy Cows Could Combat Climate Change
Feed crops, farting, belching and manure contribute a fifth of the planet's greenhouse gas emissions
Climate change can be curbed by changing the diet of livestock, whose feed crops, farting, belching and manure contribute a fifth of the planet's greenhouse gas emissions, a new study said Friday.
The study by the International Livestock Research Institute (ILRI) said livestock risk growing as global demand for meat and milk surges and recommended simple steps to curb livestock-related greenhouse gas emissions.
It recommended using more nutritious pasture grasses, supplementing diets with crop residues, restoring degraded grazing lands and adopting more productive breeds, among other simple measures for tropical countries.
Geology
Science News: What lies beneath
Studies link deforestation to geology and agricultural demand
By Janet Raloff
The rocks and soil under a tropical forest have a surprising impact on the amount of climate-warming carbon that logging or clearing will release into the atmosphere — and even how likely the trees are to be cut at all, new research shows. Combined with another recent study highlighting the importance of rainforests as a source of new farmland, the study may help predict future forest losses.
Deforestation releases roughly a billion metric tons of carbon dioxide into the atmosphere each year, making it second only to fossil fuel burning in production of this greenhouse gas. In the current millennium, says Holly Gibbs of Stanford University’s Program on Food Security and Environment, global forest clearing has been totaling about 130,000 square kilometers a year. She says that translates into carbon dioxide emissions each year equivalent to the releases from 1.35 billion fossil-fueled cars.
"Rain forests were the primary source for new agricultural land" in the tropics during the 1980s and 1990s, accounting for more than 80 percent of new cropland and ranches, Gibbs and her colleagues report in a paper posted online August 31 in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. The tree cover lost over those two decades: more than 1 million square kilometers, or an area about the size of Alaska.
Discovery News: Satellites Spot Imminent Natural Disasters
A pair of robotic eyes in the sky could help forecasters predict volcanic eruptions, earthquakes and landslides.
By Irene Klotz
NASA is designing a pair of robotic probes to keep tabs on how the planet is changing and to help forecasters predict natural disasters, such as volcanic eruptions, earthquakes and landslides.
One spacecraft will use radar to look for telltale signs of imminent disaster as it precisely measures small deformations in Earth's surface over time. Scientists hope to be able to zero in on regions that may be in danger so residents can prepare.
...
The second DESDynI satellite will be equipped with an optical remote sensing tool called LIDAR -- Light Detection And Ranging -- that will pulse laser light on Earth and measure the time it takes for the reflected signals to return. The technique is good for measuring the density of a forest, for example, as the light bouncing off the tops of trees will have a different return signal than light reflecting off bare ground.
Psychology/Behavior
Reuters: http://www.reuters.com/...
WASHINGTON | Wed Sep 8, 2010 12:30pm EDT
Can money really make you happy? Not really, but up to about $75,000 a year can ease the pain of life's stresses, U.S. researchers reported on Tuesday.
A survey of 1,000 Americans shows they are overall fairly happy, and more money equals more satisfaction up to a point, Daniel Kahneman and Angus Deaton of the Center for Health and Wellbeing at Princeton University in New Jersey found.
"More money does not necessarily buy more happiness, but less money is associated with emotional pain," they wrote in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.
Science News: Defining normal in the brain
Scans set standard for how connectivity evolves during maturation
By Laura Sanders
Researchers have created a growth curve for the brain, similar to the height and weight charts pediatricians use to monitor their patients’ development. Scientists came up with the new developmental milestones by aggregating the results of brain scans that reveal active connections throughout the organ.
Published September 10 in Science, the study reveals how a typical brain’s connections evolve with age, information that could help doctors detect a variety of disorders — many of which are marked by disordered neural connections — earlier.
"It’s really remarkable how much information can be gleaned with just a five-minute resting-state scan," says neuroscientist Olaf Sporns of Indiana University in Bloomington. "The techniques they’ve developed here may be very powerful in making predictions for individual patients."
Discovery News: Mind-Reading Devices to Help the Speechless Speak
For some patients, the thoughts are there, but the words can't come. New mind-reading technology could help them speak.
By Alyssa Danigelis
The thoughts are there, but there is no way to express them. For "locked in" patients, many with Lou Gehrig's disease, the only way to communicate tends to be through blinking in code.
But now, words can be read directly from patients' minds by attaching microelectrode grids to the surface of the brain and learning which signals mean which words, a development that will ultimately help such patients talk again.
"They're perfectly aware. They just can't get signals out of their brain to control their facial expressions. "They're the patients we'd like to help first," said University of Utah's Bradley Greger, an assistant professor of bioengineering who, with neurosurgery professor Paul House, M.D., published the study in the October issue of the Journal of Neural Engineering.
Archeology/Anthropology
Discovery News: Materials Engineering, Long Ago
Hundreds of years before Goodyear figured it out, the Mayans turned latex into rubber.
By Gene Charleton
Goodyear’s process was important, but the Mayans in Central America were probably the first to understand how to change latex into more useful forms. And they did it hundreds of years before Goodyear. Mayans mixed latex with juice from the morning glory plant and got rubber that they used for all sorts of stuff. Rubber balls. Rubber bands. Rubber sandals. Rubber statues. Adhesives, glue.
The interesting part of this is that each of these things uses a different kind of rubber. Bouncy for balls. Tough for sandals. Sticky for adhesives. What they got depended on how much of morning glory juice they added to the raw liquid latex. But they did it and it worked.
Reuters: Skeleton of 18th century whale found in London
By Stefano Ambrogi
LONDON | Thu Sep 9, 2010 9:59am EDT
The skeleton of a huge whale, thought to have been butchered for its meat, bone and oils 300 years ago, has been discovered by archaeologists on the banks of London's River Thames.
The remains of the headless beast, the now rare North Atlantic Right whale, were found submerged in the thick foreshore mud at Greenwich, an historic maritime center in the east of the city.
"This is probably the largest single "object' ever to have been found on an archaeological dig in London," said Francis Grew, a senior curator at the Museum of London.
"Whales occasionally swim into the Thames, and there are historical accounts of the enormous public excitement they engendered."
Discovery News: WTC Ship Gives Up Lucky Coin
Analysis by James Williams
As Nichole Doub -- Head Conservator at the Maryland Archaeological Conservation Laboratory -- was helping extract the remains of an 18th century ship from the mud of the World Trade Center construction site, she was asked a familiar question:
While we’re out on the site, we have all these construction workers coming up and one of the most common questions asked any archaeologist on a site is: Have you found the gold yet? It’s kind of the question that everyone asks. And normally you go "No, no."
But in this case there’s a chance we could find gold. And that’s if we found one of the lucky coins.
Lucky coin? Ever since the 2nd century B.C. -- not long after Romans began minting coins -- shipbuilders have been slipping a coin into the structure of their ships. It’s a tradition that continues today.
annetteboardman is taking a well-deserved week off.
Physics
Science Daily: Quantum Dice: Simple Device Measures Quantum Noise of Vacuum Fluctuations and Generates True Random Numbers
ScienceDaily (Sep. 10, 2010) — Behind every coincidence lies a plan -- in the world of classical physics, at least. In principle, every event, including the fall of dice or the outcome of a game of roulette, can be explained in mathematical terms.
Researchers at the Max Planck Institute for the Physics of Light in Erlangen have constructed a device that works on the principle of true randomness. With the help of quantum physics, their machine generates random numbers that cannot be predicted in advance. The researchers exploit the fact that measurements based on quantum physics can only produce a special result with a certain degree of probability, that is, randomly. True random numbers are needed for the secure encryption of data and to enable the reliable simulation of economic processes and changes in the climate.
The research is published online in the journal Nature Photonics (August 29, 2010).
Chemistry
Science News: Light-harvesting complexes do it themselves
New technique could yield self-assembling solar cells
By Rachel Ehrenberg
A new technique may one day lead to solar cells that bring themselves together like a molecular flash mob and repair damage they sustain during the rough business of turning light into electricity.
The research lays the groundwork for cheap, self-repairing solar cells with an indefinite lifetime, a team reports September 5 in Nature Chemistry.
"It’s a manmade version of what nature does," says nanocomposite expert Jaime Grunlan of Texas A&M University in College Station. "This really looks like ground-breaking seminal work; I’ve never seen anything remotely like it."
Energy
Reuters: Special Report: Power struggles: charging tomorrow's cars
By Gerard Wynn and Kwok W. Wan
LONDON | Fri Sep 10, 2010 6:34pm EDT
Imagine driving across America using a fuel so new you have to carry your own supply wherever you go.
At the start of the 20th century, before the era of ubiquitous gas stations, drivers did just that as they tested the limits of cars like the Ford Model T, which ran on gasoline, kerosene or ethanol and could, if driven carefully, travel more than 150 miles on a full tank.
Now a new generation of drivers is set to embark on a similar kind of experiment. Until recently, most electric vehicles, or EVs as they are often known, have had a range of just a few dozen miles, limiting their usefulness and appeal. That's a big reason the long-talked-about era of electric vehicles has been, well, talked and talked about for so long with little real-world progress.
Over the next couple of years, though, tens of thousands of electric cars will hit the laneways of Europe, the streets of the United States and the gleaming highways of Asia. These new battery-powered vehicles have much longer ranges than their predecessors -- up to 250 miles in the case of the Tesla Roadster, but mostly about 100 miles -- and are likely to be the first to sell in large numbers.
Science, Space, Environment, and Energy Policy
Reuters: FDA cracks down on 5 makers of e-cigarettes
By Julie Steenhuysen
CHICAGO | Fri Sep 10, 2010 11:28am EDT
The U.S. Food and Drug Administration sent warnings to five makers of electronic cigarettes for marketing them illegally as stop-smoking aids and said on Thursday it intends to regulate the products as drugs.
The move is the latest attempt by the FDA to assert its jurisdiction over electronic or e-cigarettes, battery-powered devices that allow users to inhale a vaporized liquid nicotine solution instead of tobacco smoke.
Michael Levy of the FDA's Center for Drug Evaluation and Research told a news briefing the warnings were for violations of the Federal Food, Drug and Cosmetic Act, including making unsubstantiated claims and poor manufacturing practices.
Under the act, a company cannot claim that its drug can treat a disease, such as nicotine addiction, unless the drug's safety and effectiveness have been proven.
Yet all five companies claim that their products help users quit smoking.
Discovery News: Is Genetically Modified Salmon Safe?
These so-called "frankenfish" are raising questions about how they'll impact the environment and the future of food.
By Emily Sohn
If all goes as expected, genetically modified salmon will soon arrive on our dinner plates.
Armed with a gene from the ocean pout -- another kind of fish -- the new salmon, which originally hails from the Atlantic, grows twice as fast as its less endowed peers out at sea.
The Food and Drug Administration has concluded that the new salmon is safe to eat and safe for the environment, suggesting that approval is likely at a hearing planned for later this month. The decision would make the fish the first genetically modified animal allowed for human consumption.
Reuters: Great apes protected as EU restricts animal testing
By Pete Harrison
BRUSSELS | Thu Sep 9, 2010 9:41am EDT
Primates, including mankind's closest relatives -- chimpanzees, gorillas, bonobos and orangutans -- have gained new protection after the European Parliament backed a clampdown on animal testing.
"The use of non-human primates should be permitted only in those biomedical areas essential for the benefit of human beings, for which no other alternative replacement methods are yet available," a new EU law said.
The strongest protection was given to the "great apes," although sustained public pressure has already ensured none have been used in European Union research in eight years.
Science Education
Examiner.com: Two free events, "A Lady Alone" and Temple Grandin, at U of M this week
By Vince Lamb, Detroit Science News Examiner
Two events at the University of Michigan showcase women in medicine and science this week. Both are free and open to the public.
Tomorrow, September 7th, the university is hosting two performances of "A Lady Alone," a one-woman play that tells the story of Elizabeth Blackwell, the first woman to graduate from medical school. The play accompanies an exhibit, "Changing the Face of Medicine: Celebrating America's Women Physicians," that opened August 30th and will run until October 10th.
On Thursday, September 9th, Temple Grandin opens the Penny W. Stamps Lecture Series. Dr. Grandin is the subject of the 2010 Emmy Award winning film, "Temple Grandin."
Time and location information on both the play and Temple Grandin's talk, as well as information about the women in medicine display and some geeking out about the movie "Temple Grandin" at the Emmis, at the link.
Science Writing and Reporting
Discovery News: Stephen Hawking is Such a Troublemaker
Analysis by Ian O'Neill
The Universe: No God required.
If this opinion came from the Pope, then we'd have a major scoop on our hands. Alas, it didn't.
Stephen Hawking, British physicist (and, apparently, troublemaker) makes this statement in his new book, The Grand Design, that went on shelves on Thursday. Needless to say, it has taken the media by storm.
Science News: Crowdsourcing peer review
A claimed proof that P!=NP spurs a massive collaborative research effort
By Julie Rehmeyer
It is the greatest question in computer science. A negative answer would likely give a fundamentally deeper understanding of the nature of computation. And a positive answer would transform our world: Computers would acquire mind-boggling powers such as near-perfect translation, speech recognition and object identification; the hardest questions in mathematics would melt like butter under computation’s power; and current computer security methods would be as easy to crack as a TSA-approved suitcase lock.
So when Vinay Deolalikar, a computer scientist at Hewlett Packard labs in India, sent an email on August 7 to a few top researchers claiming that P doesn’t equal NP — thereby answering this question in the negative and staking a claim on the million-dollar Millennium Prize offered by the Clay Mathematics Institute — it sent shock waves through the community. Usually, computer scientists groan when they find such a claim in their Inbox, expecting the typical amateurish "proof" with the same hoary errors. But Deolalikar is a recognized and published scientist, and his paper had novel ideas from promising areas of research.
The paper spurred an intense, open, Internet-based effort to understand it and pursue its ideas, attracting such luminaries as Fields Medalists Terry Tao and Timothy Gowers. The examination uncovered deep flaws that are probably irremediable — but has also helped spur on a new model of research.
Science is Cool
Reuters: World's most expensive book to go under the hammer
Writing by Belinda Goldsmith
LONDON | Fri Sep 10, 2010 1:34am EDT
A rare book by America's most famous bird artist, John James Audubon, billed as the most expensive in the world, is going under the hammer in December alongside a first edition of Shakespeare's plays.
"Birds of America," which is estimated to sell for between 4 million and 6 million pounds ($6.2-$9.2 million), was said by auctioneer Sotheby's to have inspired generations of ornithologists.
When a copy of the book with hand-colored, life-size prints of birds was last sold in 2000, by rival firm Christie's, it set a world record price for a printed book, fetching $8.8 million.
CTV: Hologram of girl warns B.C. drivers to be alert
By: Christine Tam , ctvbc.ca
Date: Tuesday Sep. 7, 2010 12:18 PM PT
A 3-D image of a young girl chasing a ball into the street is the newest effort to prevent pedestrian accidents in West Vancouver.
The $15,000 illusion, paid for by Preventable.ca, will be installed for a week beginning Sept. 7 on 22nd Street near Ecole Pauline Johnson.
Indistinguishable from afar, the 3-D image of the girl will gradually appear as drivers approach her. She will be most realistic from 30 metres away and then disappear as the driver gets closer.
The goal of the installation isn't to scare drivers into screeching to a stop or swerving their cars. Rather, she is supposed to cause drivers to jolt out of their regular routine and pay attention.
The Daily Telegraph via News.com.au: Fat men enjoy longer lasting sex scientific research show
FAT men last longer in bed, while lean gym jocks are prone to premature ejaculation, a new study has found.
The scientific research, from Erciyes University in Turkey, found that men with excess body fat develop more female sex hormones that influence their sexual performance.
Men with high fat levels were found to have higher levels of the female sex hormone oestradiol, which disrupts the chemical balance in their body, making them last longer during sex.
The survey’s results found fat men could last an average of 7.3 minutes during love making, while others only lasted 1.8 minutes.
Yeah, if they don't run out of breath first.