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 CNN.
Severe floods hit Midwest; areas downriver get ready
By Moni Basu
Parts of the Midwest battled severe flooding Friday as torrential rains caused rivers to overflow their banks and submerged entire towns.
The National Weather Service issued flood warnings for parts of Minnesota, Wisconsin and Iowa and warned that waters gushing down bloated rivers and creeks could cause major rivers, including the Mississippi, to surge over the weekend.
The governors of Minnesota and Wisconsin declared states of emergency in flood-affected counties as local emergency officials ordered the evacuation of residents in several towns.
No deaths or injuries have been reported.
More science, space, and environment stories after the jump.
Recent Science Diaries and Stories
DarkSyde: This week in science
Keith Pickering: New, highly efficient methods turn heat into electricity
Rei: Beyond Male and Female: The Biology of Who We Are
sparkysmom: O'Donnell has entered Palin-ville
Slideshows/Videos
MSNBC: Month in space: September 2010
See a laser-equipped telescope in action, colorful clouds of starbirth and other outer-space highlights from September 2010.
Space.com: Saturn's Aurora - The Movie
Observations by NASA's Cassini spacecraft show a stunning aurora light show on Saturn.
MSNBC's Cosmic Log: See the moon's marvels in 3-D
NASA’s moon orbiter is sending back shots of lunar curiosities that look even curiouser when you see them through 3-D glasses.
Nokia on YouTube: Dot. The world's smallest stop-motion animation character shot on a Nokia N8
Professor Fletcher's invention of the CellScope, which is a Nokia device with a microscope attachment, was the inspiration for a teeny-tiny film created by Sumo Science at Aardman. It stars a 9mm girl called Dot as she struggles through a microscopic world. All the minuscule detail was shot using CellScope technology and a Nokia N8, with its 12 megapixel camera and Carl Zeiss optics.
Alan Boyle notes that the cell phone camera isn't the only thing remarkable in Animation in a micro-Wonderland. Dot herself was created with a 3-D printer.
Astronomy/Space
Space.com via MSNBC: NASA sends Discovery to pad for last time
Space shuttle gears up for its final mission as NASA moves closer to retiring the orbiter fleet for good
By Robert Z. Pearlman
CAPE CANAVERAL, Fla. — The space shuttle Discovery made its last scheduled journey to the launch pad Monday, six weeks before the spacecraft is due to lift off on its final mission to space.
Discovery traveled for about six and a half hours atop a massive, Apollo-era crawler-transporter, lumbering from its voluminous assembly building to the seaside Launch Pad 39A here at NASA's Kennedy Space Center. Hundreds of shuttle workers and their families turned out to cheer the shuttle on during its last launch pad trek.
"This is most likely Discovery's last rollout to the launch pad, so a very momentous occasion for us, but also a very emotional one for a lot of folks," the shuttle's vehicle manager, Stephanie Stilson, told Space.com. "There's a lot of excitement, but also a little bit of sadness over the fact that this will probably be the last one."
Reuters via MSNBC: Russian-U.S. space crew lands in Kazakhstan
Three crewmates' stay aboard the station was marred by mishaps
updated 9/25/2010 7:11:13 AM ET
KOROLYOV, Russia — A Soyuz capsule carrying two Russian cosmonauts and a U.S. astronaut from the International Space Station landed safely in Kazakhstan on Saturday.
"The TMA module has landed," an announcer at Mission Control outside Moscow said to applause from officials and relatives, relieved after an initial attempt to return from the orbital outpost was foiled by an equipment problem on Friday.
Space officials said the capsule landed upright, on time and on target near Arkalyk on the central Kazakh steppe. Swooping down beneath parachutes, it kicked up a cloud of dust as it hit after firing rockets to cushion the landing.
Evolution/Paleontology
Agence France Presse via Physorg.com: Longest dinosaur thigh bone in Europe found in Spain
Palaeontologists in Spain have found the fossiled thigh bone of a dinosaur that is almost two metres in length, the longest such femur ever discovered in Europe, they said Friday.
The Dinopolis Foundation, a dinosaur research institute, said the 1.92-metre (6.3-feet) bone was found earlier this year at a site at Riodeva near Teruel in eastern Spain along with a 1.25-metre (4.1-feet) tibia and 15 vertebrae.
BBC: Workers unearth huge fossil cache in California
Workers building a substation in California have discovered 1,500 bone fragments from about 1.4 million years ago.
The fossil haul includes remains from an ancestor of the sabre-toothed tiger, large ground sloths, deer, horses, camels and numerous small rodents.
Plant matter found at the site in the arid San Timoteo Canyon, 85 miles (137km) south-east of Los Angeles, showed it was once much greener.
Hat/Tip to annetteboardman and jml9999 for these stories.
New Scientist: Time to rebrand the stegosaur?
COULD stegosaurus go the way of its beleaguered cousin, brontosaurus? Early last century, the big friendly giant of the Jurassic was stripped of its iconic name due to the obscure protocols of nomenclature. Now stegosaurs are in for a grilling.
Peter Galton, a curatorial affiliate at Yale University's Peabody Museum, says the first stegosaur to be named, known as the "type" specimen, is too incomplete to compare with other fossils (Swiss Journal of Geosciences, DOI: 10.1007/s00015-010-0022-4). According to the rules of the International Commission on Zoological Nomenclature (ICZN), that invalidates the genus name.
As the current sole commenter wrote: "First they took our Brontosaurus, then they took Pluto. The removal of Stegosaurus would be the final straw!"
So, if Stegosaurus is invalidated, what would be the junior synonym that would take over? According to Wikipedia, it would be either Diracodon or Hypsirophus.
On the other hand, Triceratops gets the benefit of the doubt.
Quay County Sun (New Mexico): Curator says Triceratops here to stay
After John B. Scanella and John R. Horner of Montana State University published a report in the Journal of Vertebrate Paleontology in July stating Triceratops and fellow horned dinosaur Torosaurus were in fact the same animal, news outlets including The National Post and CBS News reported that Triceratops may never have existed, saying the animal was simply a younger version of the large-headed Torosaurus.
Not the case, says professor and Mesalands Dinosaur Museum curator Axel Hungerbeuhler. In fact, the report makes the opposite claim that Torosaurus is an older form of Triceratops.
"We don't need to change our label because Triceratops stays Triceratops. It's Torosaurus that will change, if it's accepted, to Triceratops," Hungerbueler said. "It's a very old Triceratops. Triceratops stays Triceratops, so that name doesn't change at all."
Biodiversity
The Daily Telegraph (UK): Sharks photographed eating a whale
Incredible pictures have caught the moment that several Great White Sharks ate a dead whale.
The Great White was seen feeding on a dead Bryde's Whale on September 11, 2010 in Seal Island, Cape, South Africa.
Almost 30 sharks took the opportunity to have lunch when they spotted the whale, giving animal lovers and wildlife experts an extraordinary insight into their feeding behaviours.
Scientists from Save Our Seas Shark Centre and Shark Spotting Programme towed a 36 foot Brydes whale carcass into a well known hunting area for the much-feared predators at Seal Island, South Africa, to document the outcome.
National Geographic News: Hybrid Panthers Helping Rare Cat Rebound in Florida
Breeding with Texas cougars created "Schwarzenegger"-tough offspring.
Christine Dell'Amore
National Geographic News
Published September 24, 2010
Breeding rare Florida panthers with Texas cougars created tough hybrids that one scientist calls the Arnold Schwarzeneggers of cougars.
And, like action heroes, these vigorous offspring may well rescue the Florida subspecies from extinction, according to Stephen O'Brien, an animal geneticist who co-authored new research on the North American big cat.
Biotechnology/Health
Space.com via MSNBC: Synthetic life could make trips to Mars more comfortable
Organisms could be engineered to create the supplies astronauts would need to survive on other worlds
By Clara Moskowitz
When packing for a manned mission to Mars or the moon, the best thing to bring may not be food or fuel, but specially designed organisms that can create those things for you.
Scientists are researching the possibility of engineering synthetic organisms that would use the resources available in the solar system to create the supplies astronauts would need to survive on another planet.
"Personally I'm interested in space settlement," said John Cumbers, a graduate student at NASA's Ames Research Center in Moffett Field, Calif., who is researching synthetic microbes. "I think we have two choices: We can either go into space and be living inside a tin can, or we can be going into space and recreating in space some of the beauty of nature we have here on Earth."
Cumbers said he wasn't advocating terraforming, or completely restructuring the surface of a planet to mimic Earth, but rather using bioengineered organisms in a planned and contained way to make life easier in an alien environment.
MSNBC: Mother of two was ‘cut in two’ to remove her cancer
In risky procedure, doctors cut pelvis in half, then reassembled her
When a hand-size tumor was found on her pelvic bone, mother of two Janis Ollson was faced with an agonizing decision — say goodbye to her toddler and newborn, or face a surgery so radical that doctors had only tried it on cadavers.
But her mothering instincts far outweighed her fear of having the lower half of her body essentially removed and then put back together — and today, Ollson is testament to the marvels of modern surgery performed at the Mayo Clinic in Rochester, Minn.
"If it wasn’t for the Mayo Clinic, I wouldn’t be here today — and my baby wouldn’t know me and my 4-year-old would have forgotten me by now," Ollson told NBC News.
Climate/Environment
Agence France Presse via physorg.com: Experts search Egypt's pharaonic past for climate change fix
September 21, 2010
by Christophe de Roquefeuil
As world experts grapple with ways to contain global warming, researchers gathered in Egypt are seeking answers from the country's pharaonic past to help tackle environmental problems of the present.
Blessed with incomparable archaeological wealth, Egypt is the most populous Arab nation and the number of inhabitants is expected to more than double by 2050 to 160 million, according to estimates.
The effects of climate change have long been neglected in this large North African country which largely depends on the fertile Nile Delta to feed its growing population amid concerns about land erosion.
Hat/Tip to annetteboardman for this story.
Mother Jones: What's Killing the Babies of Kettleman City?
Maybe it's the toxic waste dump. Maybe the pesticides, or the diesel fumes, or the arsenic. How a small-town mystery could change the way we look at pollution.
By Jacques Leslie
There are between 30 and 64 births each year in Kettleman City. In 15 of the 22 years since California's public health department began tracking birth defects, all babies in the town were healthy, and in five other years, only one birth defect occurred. But in the last two years and 10 months, residents say, at least 11 babies have been born with serious birth defects. Three eventually died; another was stillborn. Most have cleft lips or palates, and some have other, graver maladies. "When my child was born," Magdalena says, "I thought she was the only one with a deformity. But when it began happening to other babies, I realized there was something abnormal in my community."
Geology
Western Michigan University: Leading geologists to convene in Kalamazoo
KALAMAZOO--The possibility that Michigan may have large, untapped reservoirs of natural gas will be among several timely subjects discussed when the Eastern Section of the American Association of Petroleum Geologists convenes its annual meeting in Kalamazoo's Radisson Plaza Hotel Saturday through Wednesday, Sept. 25-29. The ES-AAPG's 2010 meeting is expected to draw some 400 geologists from 22 states and three Canadian provinces.
...
This year's theme, "Perseverance--the Pipeline to Prosperity," reflects the challenges petroleum geologists face exploring for, developing, and responsibly utilizing energy resources in the mature basins of the eastern United States and eastern Canada. It will come to the fore in numerous technical programs, workshops and poster presentations, some of which may cover topics that are of particular interest to members of the media.
One of those topics is subsurface shale formations that have the potential to produce large volumes of gas, a hot topic in Michigan these days following a major strike in the northern Lower Peninsula that led to unprecedented participation in the state's 2010 auction of oil and gas leases on state-owed lands. Exploration and production of new gas fields has the potential to create Michigan jobs, add millions to the Natural Resources Trust Fund and create revenues for private property owners.
Hat/tip to lowgenius for this story.
Psychology/Behavior
Michigan State University: Building language skills more critical for boys than girls, study finds
EAST LANSING, Mich. — Developing language skills appears to be more important for boys than girls in helping them to develop self-control and, ultimately, succeed in school, according to a study led by a Michigan State University researcher.
Thus, more emphasis should be placed on encouraging boy toddlers to "use their words" – instead of unruly behavior – to solve problems, said Claire Vallotton, MSU assistant professor of child development.
"It shouldn’t be chalked off as boys being boys," Vallotton said. "They need extra attention from child-care providers and teachers to help them build language skills and to use those skills to regulate their emotions and behavior."
Hat/Tip to annetteboardman for this story.
Scientific American: Is your child a "prehomosexual"? Forecasting adult sexual orientation
By Jesse Bering
There are signs, some would say omens, glimmering in certain children’s demeanors that, probably ever since there were children, have caused parents’ brows to crinkle with worry, precipitated forced conversations with nosy mothers-in-law, strained marriages and ushered untold numbers into the deep covenant of sexual denial. We all know the stereotypes: an unusually light, delicate, effeminate air in a little boy’s step, often coupled with solitary bookishness, or a limp wrist, an interest in dolls, makeup, princesses, dresses and a staunch distaste for rough play with other boys; in little girls, there is the outwardly boyish stance, perhaps a penchant for tools, a lumbering gait, a square-jawed readiness for physical tussles with boys, an aversion to all the perfumed, delicate, laced trappings of femininity.
So let’s get down to brass tacks. It’s what these behaviors signal to parents about their child’s incipient sexuality that makes them so undesirable—these behavioral patterns are feared, loathed and often spoken of directly as harbingers of adult homosexuality.
However, it is only relatively recently that developmental scientists have conducted controlled studies with one clear aim in mind, which is to go beyond mere stereotypes and accurately identity the most reliable signs of later homosexuality. In looking carefully at the childhoods of now-gay adults, researchers are finding an intriguing set of early behavioral indicators that homosexuals seem to have in common. And, curiously enough, the age-old homophobic fears of parents seem to have some genuine predictive currency.
Archeology/Anthropology
National Geographic News: Volcanoes Killed Off Neanderthals, Study Suggests
Ker Than for National Geographic News
Published September 22, 2010
Catastrophic volcanic eruptions in Europe may have culled Neanderthals to the point where they couldn't bounce back, according to a controversial new theory.
Modern humans, though, squeaked by, thanks to fallback populations in Africa and Asia, researchers say.
About 40,000 years ago in what we now call Italy and the Caucasus Mountains, which straddle Europe and Asia, several volcanoes erupted in quick succession, according to a new study to be published in the October issue of the journal Current Anthropology.
It's likely the eruptions reduced or wiped out local bands of Neanderthals and indirectly affected farther-flung populations, the team concluded after analyzing pollen and ash from the affected area.
Southern Methodist University via physorg.com: Taking a new look at old digs: Trampling animals may alter Stone Age sites
Archaeologists who interpret Stone Age culture from discoveries of ancient tools and artifacts may need to reanalyze some of their conclusions.
That's the finding suggested by a new study that for the first time looked at the impact of water buffalo and goats trampling artifacts into mud.
In seeking to understand how much artifacts can be disturbed, the new study documented how animal trampling in a water-saturated area can result in an alarming amount of disturbance, says archaeologist Metin I. Eren, a graduate student at Southern Methodist University, Dallas, and one of eight researchers on the study.
Irish Times: Fish trap may be Mesolithic find
LORNA SIGGINS, Western Correspondent
A COMPLEX series of weirs and dams to trap rare fish on Connemara’s Errislannan peninsula may date back to the Mesolithic period, according to the archaeologist who made the discovery.
Significantly, one local resident is still making and using traps for the weir and dam system, modelled on pre-Christian design, archaeologist Michael Gibbons said. John Folan said he was unaware of the historical importance of the equipment, the coastal system, or the fish species, until contacted by Mr Gibbons. The National Museum of Ireland has now commissioned him to construct one of his traps for its folklife collection.
Mr Gibbons was walking on the north side of Errislannan, outside Clifden, when he came across the stone ponds, channels and dams linking Mannin Bay to several inner lagoons. He learned that the system was designed to enclose and trap a fish called "marin" or "mearachán", which is similar to a smelt, and may be related to shad, which frequent the river Barrow.
Azzaman (Iraq): French scientists discover new Sumerian temple in southern Iraq
By Khayoun Saleh
Azzaman, September 24, 2010
The Antiquities Department says French archaeologists have recently unearthed a new Sumerian temple in the southern Province of Dhiqar.
The department’s information officer, Abdulzahra al-Talaqani, said a team of French excavators did a short season of digging at al-Rafaai, the district where the Sumerian temple was found.
The French were expected to resume digging to provide a good picture of the new discovery, he said.
Details are sketchy but Talaqani said the department would provide by December "the engineering details that will elucidate (the temple’s) archaeological significance and its contents."
University of Haifa (Israel) via physorg.com: Apollo discovery tells a new story
A rare bronze signet ring with the impression of the face of the Greek sun god, Apollo, has been discovered at Tel Dor, in northern Israel, by University of Haifa diggers.
"A piece of high-quality art such as this, doubtlessly created by a top-of-the-line artist, indicates that local elites developing a taste for fine art and the ability to afford it were also living in provincial towns, and not only in the capital cities of the Hellenistic kingdoms," explains Dr. Ayelet Gilboa, Head of the Department of Archaeology at the University of Haifa, who headed the excavations at Dor along with Dr. Ilan Sharon of the Hebrew University of Jerusalem.
The National (United Arab Emirates): Ancient Arabian treasure trove unearthed in Germany
David Crossland, Foreign Correspondent
BERLIN // Archaeologists in northern Germany have unearthed a treasure of Arabian silver dirhams dating back to the first half of the seventh century in a spectacular find that proves brisk trade between the Middle East and northern Europe already existed more than 1,200 years ago.
A total of 82 coins were found in a field near the town of Anklam, a few kilometres from the Baltic Sea coast, in excavations completed on September 2. They come from regions that are now Iraq, Iran, Afghanistan and northern Africa. The oldest coins, about an inch in diameter, were minted around 610 AD and bear the portrait of Khosrau II, the 22nd Sassanid King of Persia who ruled from 590 to 628 AD.
Other coins in the trove were minted around 820 AD and have inscriptions in Arabic. "They are little works of art with delicately engraved writing on them," Fred Ruchhöft, an archaeologist and historian at the nearby University of Greifswald who has analysed the find, said in an interview. "It’s good silver. It just needs a clean and then it’s like new."
Discovery News: Genocide Wiped Out Native American Population
Physical traces of ethnic cleansing that took place in the early 800s suggest the massacre was an inside job.
By Jennifer Viegas
Crushed leg bones, battered skulls and other mutilated human remains are likely all that's left of a Native American population destroyed by genocide that took place circa 800 A.D., suggests a new study.
The paper, accepted for publication in the Journal of Anthropological Archaeology, describes the single largest deposit to date of mutilated and processed human remains in the American Southwest.
The entire assemblage comprises 14,882 human skeletal fragments, as well as the mutilated remains of dogs and other animals killed at the massacre site -- Sacred Ridge, southwest of Durango, Colo.
Belfast Telegraph (Northern Ireland, United Kingdom): Marauding Vikings' ale packs a real punch
A team of archaeologists has recreated the heather ale drunk by marauding Vikings to boost their ferocity in battle.
Galway archaeologists Billy Quinn and Nigel Malcolm and businessman Declan Moore have been involved in their "great experiment" for the past three years, sampling Bronze Age brews and unearthing Ireland's ancient recipes and beer-making traditions.
The intrepid trio have just brewed their first heather ale using a recipe believed to date back to the 8th century AD.
'Bheoir Lochlannachis' is made from heather and barley; and instead of hops, which only became common in brewing in the 9th century, the herb bog myrtle is used to add flavour and preserve the potion.
University of Georgia via physorg.com: Researchers apply artificial intelligence to the study of Gothic cathedrals
September 21, 2010 by Philip Lee Williams
(PhysOrg.com) -- Simply standing before a Gothic cathedral -- say Notre-Dame in Paris -- can be an overwhelming experience. Understanding how all its parts artfully and structurally work together is something else entirely.
Now, a research group from the University of Georgia is using the field of artificial intelligence to understand architectural history, and the result could one day offer students, researchers and lovers of these magnificent structures an entirely new way to know them.
The group at UGA is led by Stefaan Van Liefferinge, an assistant professor of medieval art and architecture in the Lamar Dodd School of Art, and includes two professors in the university’s Institute for Artificial Intelligence, Don Potter and Michael Covington. With the help of a new start-up grant from the National Endowment for the Humanities, they hope to bring science and the history of architecture closer than ever before.
Jacksonville Daily News (North Carolina): Researchers resume hunt for artifacts at QAR shipwreck site
JANNETTE PIPPIN
BEAUFORT — As underwater archaeologists dive to recover 300-year-old artifacts from the shipwreck presumed to Blackbeard’s flagship, the effort to keep the public a part of the project are all 21st century.
A six-week dive expedition at the Queen Anne’s Revenge shipwreck site began this week, and anyone interested in following its progress can do so via the Facebook page Blackbeard’s-Queen Anne’s Revenge. Full information on the project is also available at the website qaronline.com.
After a day of field preparations, a Wednesday afternoon Facebook post announced the biggest news of the expedition: "Returning to USCG Fort Macon. Still need to get a mooring in but unit grids are set. The first excavation since fall 2008 will start first thing (Thursday) morning."
Medford Mail-Tribune (Oregon): Archaeologists dig the Britt Gardens
Artifact hunters study site of Peter Britt's former home as part of Jacksonville's 150th birthday celebration
By Paul Fattig
Mail Tribune
JACKSONVILLE — To most folks, the small piece of corroded metal found buried in the earth doesn't look like much. But to Chelsea Rose, it may be an important key that could open a door to the past.
"We think it may be a frame from a daguerreotype camera," said the staff archaeologist at Southern Oregon University's Laboratory of Anthropology. "Once we clean it up, we'll look for any designs on it. This could be the back part of a frame. We're very excited about this."
Rose is leading a group of SOU archaeology students and Southern Oregon Historical Society volunteers in a dig on the site of the historic Peter Britt homestead, circa early 1850s. The week-long event, which coincides with the city's 150th birthday celebration, began Monday and has already yielded square nails, old glass, bricks, bones and other objects.
University of California, Berkeley: Masculinity at the intersection of College Avenue and Never Land
Anthropologist Laurie Wilkie finds parallels between an early 20th-century fraternity and Peter Pan
By Wendy Edelstein, NewsCenter | 21 September 2010
BERKELEY — When Berkeley anthropologist Laurie Wilkie began studying excavated debris from a campus fraternity, a 1996 Los Angeles Times story summed up her findings by advising readers to "Think Animal House circa 1920."
The paper could hardly have been more wrong. In Wilkie’s new book, The Lost Boys of Zeta Psi (University of California Press), the professor of anthropology tells a story about a group of civilized young men around the turn of the 20th century who used expensive china imprinted with their fraternity's crest, occasionally cross-dressed, drank beer from steins and pilsner glasses, and, ultimately, went on to prestigious, high-powered careers.
Hat/Tip to annetteboardman, who sent in the above articles.
Physics
The Daily Telegraph (UK): Large Hadron Collider signal 'may show big bang conditions'
A never-before-seen signal in a collision at the Large Hadron Collider has raised hopes that the giant particle accelerator is on the verge of serious breakthroughs.
By Tom Chivers
A series of high-energy proton-proton collisions observed at the Compact Muon Solenoid (CMS) detector led to 100 or more charged particles being produced. These so-called "high multiplicity" collisions were unusual in that the resulting particles are "correlated" - associated with each other at the moment of their creation. One interpretation of the results is that the protons are being forced together at such high energies that the quarks that form them are released, becoming a free-flowing fluid of quarks and gluons like that which existed immediately after the big bang.
Similar results were seen when colliding copper ions at the Relativistic Heavy Ion Collider (RHIC) in the USA. However, the much higher beam power of the LHC means that similar energy collisions can be achieved even with a single proton, just 1/63rd of the weight of a copper ion. Scientists at RHIC have interpreted their results to mean that they have reproduced the super-hot, super-dense conditions of the universe's first moments. If they are right, and if the LHC's results are comparable, then the LHC is on course for real achievements.
The Daily Telegraph (UK): Einstein's theory of relativity works on a human scale: the higher you are, the faster you age
Living the high life really does age you, scientists have proved.
By Richard Alleyne
Researchers have demonstrated one of Einstein's theories of relativity - that the further away from the Earth you are, the faster time passes works even on a human scale.
That means – even though the differences are tiny – you really will age faster if you live on the top floor of a skyscraper than in a bungalow.
The discovery, made by scientists in the US, confirms a theory first proposed by Einstein – that clocks run faster the further away from the ground they are.
Although the concept has been accepted for many years, now the difference can be measured for the first time with astonishing accuracy.
Chemistry
National Science Foundation via Science Daily: Newly Created Material Resembles Cilia
University of Southern Mississippi scientists recently imitated Mother Nature by developing, for the first time, a new, skinny-molecule-based material that resembles cilia, the tiny, hair-like structures through which organisms derive smell, vision, hearing and fluid flow.
While the new material isn't exactly like cilia, it responds to thermal, chemical, and electromagnetic stimulation, allowing researchers to control it and opening unlimited possibilities for future use.
This finding is published in the September 23 edition of the journal Advanced Functional Materials. The National Science Foundation's Division of Materials Research supports Southern Miss's Materials Research Science and Engineering Center for Response-Driven Polymeric Materials, where the research took place.
Energy
Reuters: U.S. seen losing renewable energy race to Asia
Reporting by Timothy Gardner
WASHINGTON | Thu Sep 23, 2010 10:08am EDT
Several Asian countries in addition to China could soon challenge the United States in the race to build a renewable energy industry if Washington doesn't provide more incentives for its domestic business, venture capitalists and others told a Congressional hearing on Wednesday.
The United States, once the world's leader in energy innovation, is now also "challenged and threatened" by India, South Korea, Malaysia and the Philippines, because it is not providing enough incentives to fund development of alternative energy and to increase demand, Ravi Viswanathan, a partner at New Enterprise Associates told a hearing chaired by U.S. Representative Ed Markey.
"These nations have outpaced the U.S. in recruiting, incenting and developing domestic manufacturing of solar, wind, and battery technology," he said.
Science, Space, Environment, and Energy Policy
MSNBC's Cosmic Log: Spaceflight showdown delayed
By Alan Boyle
NASA's future is still in limbo on Capitol Hill. This week, House Democrats floated what they called a compromise version of a bill laying out how the space agency should spend its money over the next three years, but the budget isn't likely to be sorted out until after the November elections.
The House leadership's latest proposal may represent a compromise between Republican and Democratic members, but it was not drawn up with the cooperation of the Senate — which has already passed its own version of the NASA authorization bill. The folks in favor of space commercialization are strongly urging the full House to go with the Senate's version instead.
For a while, it looked as if the House might put its version to a vote today (Friday). But as noted by Jeff Foust on the Space Politics blog, Majority Leader Steny Hoyer, D- Md., announced late Thursday that there'd be no more votes on the House floor until next Wednesday. The focus will be on putting together a continuing resolution to keep programs funded at their current level when the new fiscal year begins on Oct. 1 — and if that plays out the way it's expected to, that would extend NASA's time in limbo through the pre-election recess.
Kansas City Star: Palau, Honduras say world should ban shark fishing
By RENEE SCHOOF
McClatchy Newspapers
The presidents of two countries that have banned shark fishing - Honduras and the Pacific island nation of Palau - called on the world to stop killing sharks for their fins - the key ingredient in Chinese shark fin soup.
Sharks are top ocean predators and necessary for the health and balance of the web of marine life. Because they grow slowly and produce few young, their numbers are slow to recover.
Scientists have identified 1,045 shark and ray species, and 30 percent of them are listed as threatened or near threatened with extinction, the Pew Environment Group reported. And because sharks travel far and are difficult to count, scientists don't have enough information to assess the population status of 47 percent of the species.
Science Education/Science Writing and Reporting
MSNBC's Cosmic Log: How is science seen? Answers vary
By Alan Boyle
A survey of 21,000 people around the world, presented today by the journal Nature and Scientific American, suggests that Americans overwhelmingly trust what scientists have to say about the origins of the universe. The results also suggest that survey respondents from Japan and China are significantly less trusting of scientists, and far more doubtful about the idea that evolution explains the forms and variety of life.
So does that mean America is more in step with science than Japan and China are? Mmm, not really. The reason for that has largely to do with scientific vs. unscientific sampling.
This particular survey is based on responses to an online questionnaire by the readers of Scientific American and its translated editions in 18 countries. That's a tip-off that the sampling is not truly representative of the countries' populations, but merely of folks who are predisposed enough toward science to buy the magazine and answer the questions.
Science is Cool
CNN: Fake earthquake disaster drill tests Facebook, Twitter
By Doug Gross
If your Facebook page or Twitter feed lights up with news of a tsunami off the California coast, don't get too worried.
At noon ET Friday, a drill was launched by natural disaster experts at San Diego State University to test how social media would be used to respond to a crisis.
Exercise 24 (X24) is being run by the university's Immersive Visualization Center.
Participants from 15 countries, including the United States, organizations such as the United Nations and Red Cross, and other business, nonprofits and individuals will be involved.
Reuters: Stem cells, obesity finding lead Nobel predictions
By Maggie Fox, Health and Science Editor
WASHINGTON | Tue Sep 21, 2010 4:00pm EDT
Researchers who discovered stem cells and the appetite hormone leptin, who proposed that dark energy is helping the universe expand and who developed "gene chips" are named in the 2010 Thomson Reuters predictions to win Nobel Prizes for medicine, physics and chemistry.
Thomson Reuters expert David Pendlebury's forecast is made using the company's "Web of Knowledge" data on how often a researcher's published papers are used and cited -- used as a basis for further research -- by other scientists. Every year at least one of the picks from one of his annual lists has won a Nobel prize.
"Some people perform outstandingly differently from so-called ordinary researchers," Pendlebury, of Thomson Reuters Healthcare & Science division, said in a telephone interview. Thomson Reuters is the parent company of Reuters.
"People who win the Nobel prize publish about five times as much as the average scientist and are cited 20 times as often as the average scientist."