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 BBC.
'Malaria and weak bones' may have killed Tutankhamun
The Egyptian "boy king" Tutankhamun may well have died of malaria after the disease ravaged a body crippled by a rare bone disorder, experts say.
The findings could lay to rest conspiracy theories of murder.
The scientists in Egypt spent the last two years scrutinising the mummified remains of the 19-year old pharaoh to extract his blood and DNA.
This revealed traces of the malaria parasite in his blood, the Journal of the American Medical Association says.
Hat/Tip to annetteboardman for this story.
More on this and other science, space, and environment stories after the jump.
Recent Science Diaries and Stories
DarkSyde: This Week in Science
A Siegel: Treehugger Science
FerrisValyn: Space Shuttle Replacements Pt 2: Birds in Space
rserven: Bootleg Greenroots: Otters, sea lions and the big guys
Slideshows/Videos
Discovery News: Flashback: Images From the Week's News
From a massive, crystal cave in Mexico to the family tree of the world's most famous pharaoh, Discovery News takes a look back at this week's best.
Discovery News: WISE Sees Sky in New Light : Big Pics
By Irene Klotz
Peering out across the sky, a new NASA telescope known as WISE (the Wide-field Infrared Survey) is methodically mapping everything radiating in infrared light. Prime catches during its first month of surveys include shots of a newly discovered comet, our neighbor galaxy Andromeda and a relatively nearby cluster of galaxies known as Fornax. NASA released the first batch images Wednesday.
Discovery News: Soufriere Hills Shows Its Fire: BIG PICS
In January, things picked up again, and scientists and photographers flocked to the island as glowing rockfalls and ash streamed down from the restless mountain.
...
On February 11, the summit lava dome partially collapsed, sending an epic ash plume 50,000 feet into the sky. Flows of searing ash and lava also rocketed down the volcanoes flanks and out to sea, as you can see below in a satellite image of the blast. Some folks living on the island took this video of the place looking pretty apocalyptic while a radio announcer talks uncertainly about the billowing darkness before them:
Discovery News: Marine Census Reveals Oceans' Treasures, Threats
The Census of Marine Life, a global, decade-long effort to survey the oceans and their inhabitants, will conclude this October.
But scientists presenting yesterday at a meeting of the American Association for the Advancement of Science in San Diego offered a sneak peak of what has come of the Census so far.
kiarasayre in ontd_science on LiveJournal: Ladies and gentlefolk, I present to you a picspam of universal proportions.
Astronomy/Space
Science Daily: Jurassic Space: Ancient Galaxies Come Together After Billions of Years
ScienceDaily (Feb. 20, 2010) — Imagine finding a living dinosaur in your backyard. Astronomers have found the astronomical equivalent of prehistoric life in our intergalactic backyard: a group of small, ancient galaxies that has waited 10 billion years to come together. These "late bloomers" are on their way to building a large elliptical galaxy.
Such encounters between dwarf galaxies are normally seen billions of light-years away and therefore occurred billions of years ago. But these galaxies, members of Hickson Compact Group 31, are relatively nearby, only 166 million light-years away.
New images of this foursome by NASA's Hubble Space Telescope offer a window into the universe's formative years when the buildup of large galaxies from smaller building blocks was common.
Science News: Study raises questions about supernova origins
By Ron Cowen
New X-ray findings appear to have blown a hole in the leading model for the origin of stellar explosions called type 1a supernovas. Astronomers routinely use these bright supernovas to measure dark energy, a baffling entity thought to rev up the rate of expansion of the universe.
Although the new study, published in the Feb. 18 Nature, is unlikely to change the interpretation of previous dark energy studies, a new understanding of how type 1a supernovas form (SN: 8/15/09, p. 22) may be critical for future, more precise dark energy measurements, says study coauthor Marat Gilfanov of the Max Planck Institute for Astrophysics in Garching, Germany. Because 1a supernovas are all similarly luminous and can be seen from afar, the explosions serve as ideal cosmic mileposts for measuring the universe’s expansion and deducing the presence of dark energy, which accelerates that expansion.
In the prevailing model for the origin of type 1a supernovas, a white dwarf — the dense remains of an elderly, sunlike star — siphons or accretes matter from an ordinary companion star until the dwarf reaches a critical mass and explodes. In an alternative model, a white dwarf merges with a closely orbiting companion to reach that critical mass.
Science News: Black hole as a peephole
By Lisa Grossman
The smearing of starlight near the Milky Way’s central black hole could provide a new window into extra dimensions.
Black holes have been praised as potential extradimensional peepholes before. Gravity is surprisingly weak at macroscopic scales, especially compared to the other fundamental forces, and some physicists think gravity could be leaking from the three-dimensional world humans inhabit into extra, unobserved dimensions. Observations of black holes could help (SN: 9/26/09, p. 22): Shrinking black holes could be evaporating into other dimensions, and any tiny black holes that might be produced in the Large Hadron Collider would be the result of extra-strong gravity at micrometer length scales, meaning gravity’s relative weakness can be blamed on extra dimensions.
Those tests rely on black holes ranging in mass from many times the mass of the sun to many times smaller than an atomic nucleus. But a new technique proposed February 14 at the American Physical Society meeting in Washington would make use of the most massive object in the Milky Way galaxy: the supermassive black hole at the galactic center.
Reuters: Shuttle leaves station as NASA plans last flights
Irene Klotz
CAPE CANAVERAL, Florida (Reuters) - The space shuttle Endeavour sailed away from the International Space Station on Friday after delivering a final connecting hub and an observation deck, completing U.S. assembly of the orbital complex.
Four more shuttle missions remain to stock the station and deliver science experiments before NASA retires its three-ship fleet later this year. The station, a $100 billion project of 16 nations, has been under construction 220 miles above Earth since 1998.
With pilot Terry Virts at the controls, Endeavour departed the station at 7:54 p.m. EST (0054 GMT on Saturday), 10 days after arriving with the Tranquility connecting hub and the dome-shaped cupola, which is outfitted with seven windows to provide a nearly 360-degree view outside the station.
Evolution/Paleontology
Wired: New Giant Prehistoric Fish Species Found Gathering Dust in Museums
by Brandon Keim
A fresh look at forgotten fossils has revealed two new species of giant, filter-feeding fish that swam Earth’s oceans for 100 million years, occupying the ecological niche now filled by whales and whale sharks.
Until now, that ancient niche was thought to be empty, and such fish to be a short-lived evolutionary bust.
"We knew these animals existed, but thought they were only around for 20 million years," said Matt Friedman, a University of Oxford paleobiologist. "People assumed they weren’t important, that they were an evolutionary failure that was around for a brief time and winked out. Now we realize that they had a long and illustrious evolutionary history."
Hat/Tip to palantir for this story.
Michigan State University: MSU awarded $25 million for NSF center to study evolution in action
EAST LANSING, Mich. — Michigan State University announced today that it was awarded a $25 million grant from the National Science Foundation to establish a center, bringing together scientists from across the nation to study evolution in action in both natural and virtual settings.
MSU has been awarded one of five highly coveted NSF Science and Technology Centers, officially titled "BEACON, an NSF Science and Technology Center for the Study of Evolution in Action." It will serve as a resource for academics and industry, performing basic research while helping create new technologies to solve real-world problems, ranging from the development of safer, more efficient cars to systems that detect computer intrusions.
BEACON is short for the "Bio/computational Evolution in Action CONsortium."
Science News: Sail-backed dinos had semiaquatic lifestyle
By Sid Perkins
Paleontologists may have solved the mystery of how spinosaurs and tyrannosaurs — two dinosaur groups that included many large, fierce predators — could have lived in the same regions at the same time. A new study suggests that, like many pairs of surly neighbors, they simply avoided each other.
Spinosaurs, the sail-backed dinosaurs made famous by a star turn in the movie Jurassic Park III, belonged to a group of meat-eating dinosaurs called theropods. But unlike tyrannosaurs and most other theropods, spinosaurs had conical, unserrated teeth similar to those found in crocodiles, says Romain Amiot, a paleontologist at University of Lyon 1 in Villeurbanne, France, and coauthor of the new study. And although spinosaurs had long, crocodile-like snouts and fossilized stomach contents suggest their prey included fish, the creatures didn’t have any skeletal features that hint at a semiaquatic lifestyle, such as feet specialized for swimming.
In Jurassic Park III, the Spinosaurus was portrayed as being semiaquatic. It also took the place of the Tyrannosaurus rex from the book. As a consequence, the movie was more scientifically accurate than the book. That doesn't happen often.
Biodiversity
Washington University St. Louis: Chickens 'one-up' humans in ability to see color
By Michael C. Purdy
Researchers at Washington University School of Medicine in St. Louis have peered deep into the eye of the chicken and found a masterpiece of biological design.
Scientists mapped five types of light receptors in the chicken's eye. They discovered the receptors were laid out in interwoven mosaics that maximized the chicken's ability to see many colors in any given part of the retina, the light-sensing structure at the back of the eye.
"Based on this analysis, birds have clearly one-upped us in several ways in terms of color vision," says Joseph C. Corbo, M.D., Ph.D., senior author and assistant professor of pathology and immunology and of genetics. "Color receptor organization in the chicken retina greatly exceeds that seen in most other retinas and certainly that in most mammalian retinas."
Biotechnology/Health
University of Michigan: Artificial foot recycles energy for easier walking
ANN ARBOR, Mich.—An artificial foot that recycles energy otherwise wasted in between steps could make it easier for amputees to walk, its developers say.
"For amputees, what they experience when they're trying to walk normally is what I would experience if I were carrying an extra 30 pounds," said Art Kuo, professor in the University of Michigan departments of Biomedical Engineering and Mechanical Engineering.
Compared with conventional prosthetic feet, the new prototype device significantly cuts the energy spent per step.
Science News: Tumor tracking gets personal
By Eva Emerson
SAN DIEGO – A new way to identify cancer’s genetic scrambling may allow doctors to better monitor how individual patients respond to treatment and detect a recurrence of a tumor.
Wholesale juggling of chunks of DNA is common in cancer cells, but cataloging those changes hasn’t been easy. Now, a small study of colorectal and breast tumor cells shows that these genetic rearrangements can be reliably identified. Unlike with some other types of cancer, these genetic changes are unique to each individual’s tumor. While that individuality may stymie efforts to design therapies to target these rearrangements, their presence alone can be useful as a marker of cancer’s waxing and waning, scientists said during a news briefing February 18 at a meeting of the American Association for the Advancement of Science.
The team’s new technique to rapidly identify such rearrangements from individual tumors offers doctors a potentially powerful way to track tumor activity in patients. The research is scheduled to appear in the Feb. 24 issue of Science Translational Medicine.
Science News: Lunch time for stem cells
By Janet Raloff
Kristen Brennand is trying to tease out how the cells in brains of healthy people differ from those in schizophrenic patients. The problem: No one wants to give up a chunk of brain for her to study. So she’s fashioning her own clumps of brain cells from tissue people willingly part with – skin.
In the lab, it takes her a month to regress mature skin cells into immature I-could-be-anything starter units – or stem cells. It takes another three months to coax these into becoming neurons, the type of cells that populate the brain.
Embryonic stem cells could do the same thing. But there’s a lot of political baggage that comes with using them in research. Moreover, Kristen points out, by selecting skin cells from adults with and without disease, she can be reasonably confident the neurons these cells develop into will reflect the differences in their donors’ brains.
Science News: Dolphins may offer clues to treating diabetes
By Rachel Ehrenberg
SAN DIEGO — Fish might be brain food, but it doesn’t supply the high levels of fuel needed to keep a dolphin brain functioning. New research adds to evidence suggesting that bottlenose dolphins go into a harmless diabetic state during overnight fasting, thereby maintaining high levels of glucose in the blood. The research, presented at a news briefing February 18 at the annual meeting of the American Association for the Advancement of Science, suggests that dolphins may be a good model for studying diabetes and could offer insights into treating the disease in people.
Carbohydrates typically provide animals a glucose fix. But dolphin diets are high in protein and very low in glucose-rich carbs. Dolphins may have a "diabetic switch" that "helps keep the brain well-fed" even when they haven’t eaten for a while, said veterinary epidemiologist Stephanie Venn-Watson of the National Marine Mammal Foundation in San Diego. "Brains need sugar to function, but a diet of fish has no sugar," she said.
Climate/Environment
NOAA: Dolphins’ Health Shed Light on Human and Ocean Health
A panel of governmental, academic and non-profit scientists speaking today at the annual meeting of the American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS) unveiled research suggesting that diseases found in dolphins are similar to human diseases and can provide clues into how human health might be affected by exposure to contaminated coastal water or seafood.
"Dolphins and humans are both mammals, and their diet includes much of the same seafood that we consume. Unlike us, however, they are exposed to potential ocean health threats such as toxic algae or poor water quality 24 hours a day," said Carolyn Sotka of the NOAA Oceans and Human Health Initiative and lead organizer of the session. "Our ecological and physiological similarities make dolphins an important ‘sentinel species’ to not only warn us of health risks, but also provide insight into how our health can benefit from new medical discoveries."
"Marine animal and ecosystem health are connected to public health and well-being," said Jane Lubchenco, Ph.D., under secretary of commerce for oceans and atmosphere and NOAA administrator. "NOAA is committed to better understanding these connections and building the partnerships necessary to have healthy oceans, including healthy dolphins."
Science Daily: Arctic Glacial Dust May Affect Climate and Health in North America and Europe
ScienceDaily (Feb. 20, 2010) — Residents of the southern United States and the Caribbean have seen it many times during the summer months -- a whitish haze in the sky that seems to hang around for days. The resulting thin film of dust on their homes and cars actually is soil from the deserts of Africa, blown across the Atlantic Ocean.
Now, there is new evidence that similar dust storms in the arctic, possibly caused by receding glaciers, may be making similar deposits in northern Europe and North America, according to Joseph Prospero from the University of Miami in a February 19 presentation to the American Association for the Advancement of Science.
"Our recent work in Iceland has shown that most of the dust events there are associated with dust emitted from glacial outwash deposits, which may be carried into the northern latitudes and into Europe by synoptic weather events," says Prospero, professor of marine and atmospheric chemistry at the University of Miami Rosenstiel School of Marine and Atmospheric Science, in his talk "Intercontinental Dust Transport: The Linkage to Climate and its Environmental Impact."
Geology/Geophysics
Science Daily: Upside-Down Answer for Deep Mystery: What Caused Earth to Hold Its Last Breath?
ScienceDaily (Feb. 18, 2010) — When Earth was young, it exhaled the atmosphere. During a period of intense volcanic activity, lava carried light elements from the planet's molten interior and released them into the sky. However, some light elements got trapped inside the planet. In the journal Nature, a Rice University-based team of scientists is offering a new answer to a longstanding mystery: What caused Earth to hold its last breath?
For some time, scientists have known that a large cache of light elements like helium and argon still reside inside the planet. This has perplexed scientists because such elements tend to escape into the atmosphere during volcanism. However, because these elements are depleted in the Earth's upper mantle, Earth scientists are fairly certain the retained elements lie in a deeper portion of the mantle. Researchers have struggled to explain why some gases would be retained while others would rise and escape into the air. The dominant view has been that the lowermost mantle has been largely isolated from the upper mantle and therefore retains its primordial composition.
In the new study, a team of researchers from Rice, the University of Michigan and the University of California-Berkeley suggests that a particular set of geophysical conditions that existed about 3.5 billion years ago -- when Earth's interior was much warmer -- led to the formation of a "density trap" about 400 kilometers below the planet's surface. In the trap, a precise combination of heat and pressure led to a geophysical rarity, an area where liquids were denser than solids.
Psychology/Behavior
Science News: Brain at the breaking point
By Laura Sanders
SAN DIEGO — Rigid pathways in brain cell connections buckle and break when stretched, scientists report, a finding that could aid in the understanding of exactly what happens when traumatic brain injuries occur.
Up to 20 percent of combat soldiers and an estimated 1.4 million U.S. civilians sustain traumatic brain injuries each year. But the mechanics behind these injuries have remained mysterious.
New research, described February 19 at the annual meeting of the American Association for the Advancement of Science, suggests exactly how a blow to the brain disrupts this complex organ.
Science News: Cell phone distraction while driving is a two-way street
By Bruce Bower
Cell phone conversations don’t just interfere with driving. Driving dents the capacity to describe and remember cell phone messages, at least for some of the youngest and oldest drivers, a new study finds.
Routine driving impedes a person’s ability to relay information from a cell phone call accurately to a conversation partner and to remember key elements of that information, say psychologist Gary Dell of the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign and his colleagues. Although many drivers regard talking while cruising a straightaway as no harder than walking while chewing gum, "that intuition is incorrect," Dell says.
Both older and younger drivers seated next to a passenger and operating a vehicle in a simulator had more difficulty correctly retelling brief stories, versus retelling stories while sitting in an unmoving "car," the researchers report in the February Psychonomic Bulletin & Review. Participants, especially those over age 60, remembered less about stories after simulated driving than after sitting in the unmoving car. That might reflect a greater emphasis on defensive driving among older drivers.
Science News: Human noise may distract animals
By Susan Milius
Hermit crabs don’t send text messages while scurrying, but human technology may be distracting them all the same.
When boat noise roared over a beach, the crabs weren’t as quick as usual to hide inside their shells to avoid a potential predator, says behavioral ecologist Daniel T. Blumstein of UCLA.
The boat roar may not be masking the sound of an approaching predator so much as distracting the crabs from looking out for danger, Blumstein and his students propose in an upcoming Biology Letters.
Archeology/Anthropology
National Geographic News: Primitive Humans Conquered Sea, Surprising Finds Suggest
Heather Pringle
It wasn't supposed to happen like this.
Two years ago a team of U.S. and Greek archaeologists were combing a gorge on the island of Crete (map) in Greece, hoping to find tiny stone tools employed by seafaring people who had plied nearby waters some 11,000 years ago.
Instead, in the midst of the search, Providence College archaeologist Thomas Strasser and his team came across a whopping surprise—a sturdy 5-inch-long (13-centimeter-long) hand ax.
Knapped from a cobble of local quartz stone, the rough-looking tool resembled hand axes discovered in Africa and mainland Europe and used by human ancestors until about 175,000 years ago. This stone tool technology, which could have been useful for smashing bones and cutting flesh, had been relatively static for over a million years.
People's Daily (China): Archaeological discovery adds up to 2,000 years onto Chinese brick-making history
Bricks dating back 5,000 to 7,000 years have been unearthed in northwest China's Shaanxi Province, adding between 1,000 to 2,000 years onto Chinese brick-making history, archaeologists claimed Saturday.
"The five calcined bricks were unearthed from a site of the Yangshao Culture Period dating 5,000 to 7,000 years ago. Previously, the oldest known bricks in the country were more than 4,000 years old," Shaanxi Provincial Institute of Archaeology researcher Yang Yachang said.
Agence France Presse: Unearthing the riches of Ur in war-ravaged Iraq
By Mehdi Lebouachera (AFP) – 1 day ago
TELL AL-MUQAYYAR, Iraq — The buried antiquities of Ur, Biblical birthplace of Abraham and one of the cradles of civilisation, could one day outshine those of ancient Egypt, archaeologists and workers on the site believe.
With Iraq ravaged by war and strife since the 2003 US-led invasion that toppled Saddam Hussein, Baghdad's struggling government has had greater priorities than funding large-scale digs at Ur, where only small teams have been working since 2005.
"When the (large-scale) excavations restart, tons of antiquities will see the light of day, filling entire museum wings," enthused Dhaif Moussin, who is in charge of protecting a site that has been prone to looting.
Nature: King Tut's death explained?
Declan Butler
A research team says it has solved the mystery surrounding the death of the Egyptian boy-king Tutankhamun, who died in about 1324 B.C. at the age of 19. Some outside experts contacted by Nature, however, are sceptical, saying that the paper's conclusions overstep its data.
Genetic fingerprinting done on Tutankhamun, commonly known as King Tut, and ten other mummies also yielded a putative five-generation family tree that includes King Tut's parents.
"The paper is of importance since it deals with the most famous of Egyptian mummies. However, most of the results are predictable," says Frank Rühli of the Institute of Anatomy at the University of Zurich in Switzerland and joint head of the Swiss Mummy Project.
Reuters: How Reuters told the world about Tutanhkamun in February 1923
It was on the November 26, 1922 that archaeologist, Howard Carter looked through a small opening chipped in a 3000 year old wall and saw the glittering chaos of the ante room of the tomb of the Boy Pharaoh Tutankhamun.
"Can you see anything?" asked Lord Carnarvon, his chief backer.
"Yes, wonderful things" replied Carter.
The world went ‘Tut’ mad. From fashion to interior design, from Hollywood movies to hairstyles, ‘Egyptian’ became the ‘must-have-theme’ of the moment.
BBC: Bronze Age shipwreck artefacts found near Salcombe
Experts have said 300 Bronze Age artefacts found in a shipwreck off the Devon coast could prove European trade thrived as far back as 3,000 years.
The artefacts, including copper and tin ingots, gold bracelets and a bronze sword, were found near Salcombe by amateur archaeologists last year.
Oxford University experts are now studying the objects.
The Daily Telegraph also has an article on this story.
Seattle Post-Intelligencer: Has This Library Solved "The Mystery Of The Mummy Paper?"
Reality or urban legend: were the wrappings of ancient Egyptian corpses recycled and pulped to create so-called "mummy paper?" Archaeologists and other scholars have long debated the veracity of claims that mummies were imported into the U.S. in the mid-nineteenth century, stripped of their burial shrouds, and their bindings (largely composed of linen and other fibers such as papyrus and something akin to canvas) repurposed into printing paper. But, did this really happen? Are we being fleeced? Is this a fabricated tale? Can this yarn be unwound to get to the meat of the matter?
The answer to this puzzler, perhaps the holy grail of American Egyptology research (pardon the mixed metaphor), may have at long last been found at Brown University's John Hay Library. According to independent scholar and self-taught Egyptologist S.J. Wolfe, a document found in university's rare book collection is "the smoking gun" that proves mummies were mulched for newsprint.
PR Newswire via Yahoo! News: Looting Matters: Do Coin Collectors Care About the Archaeology of Cyprus?
SWANSEA, Wales, Feb. 19 PRNewswire -- David Gill, archaeologist, reflects on the legal action taken by the Ancient Coin Collectors Guild (ACCG).
Earlier in February 2010 a Washington law-firm acting for the Ancient Coin Collectors Guild filed an action against (among others) the US Department of State and the US Customs and Border Protection. The action had been triggered by the deliberate import of coins minted on ancient Cyprus and in China, and allegedly purchased in London. Instead of presenting the papers demonstrating the collecting history (or "provenance") of the coins, a decision had been taken to challenge the separate Memoranda of Understanding (MOU) with Cyprus and China. The coins were seized.
BBC: Ghana dig reveals ancient society
Archaeologists have unearthed dozens of clay figures in Ghana, shedding light on a sophisticated society which existed before the arrival of Islam.
Experts from the University of Ghana found 80 sculptures believed to be between 800 and 1,400 years old.
Guardian (UK): Silver badge and lead shot pinpoint site of Battle of Bosworth
Archaeologists find spot where Richard III died 500 years ago
A thumbnail-sized silver gilt boar, still snarling ferociously after 500 years, and a little heap of battered lead balls have pinpointed the much disputed site of the Battle of Bosworth, and even the spot where Richard III was cut down by Tudor swords, becoming the last English king to die in battle.
Archaeologists made the announcement today close to the site where Henry Tudor was crowned Henry VII with the crown that had tumbled from the dying Richard's head. The archaeologists believe the boar badge, his personal emblem, was worn by someone who died at his side.
Hat/Tip to annetteboardman, who sent in the above articles.
Science News: Decoding diversity in Bushmen
By Tina Hesman Saey
An archbishop and four Bushmen walk into a lab. What emerges is no joke, but a more complete picture of human genetic diversity than ever seen before.
This new study of five Africans has identified more than 1.3 million new human genetic variants and could contribute to a better understanding of the genetic underpinnings of human diseases. The data might also help drug companies devise more effective medications to treat diseases in Africa, where many drugs do not work as well as they do in people of European ancestry, who were the primary test subjects in designing the drugs.
Archbishop Desmond Tutu and four Bushmen community leaders from Namibia contributed their DNA for the new study, published in the Feb. 18 Nature. Researchers decoded the complete genetic blueprint of Tutu, who represents the Bantu ethnic group, and of one of the Bushmen, a man named !Gubi (punctuation characters in Bushmen names represent click consonants). The international team of scientists also deciphered the protein-coding portions of the genomes from three other Bushmen, G/aq’o, D#kgao and !Aî.
Physics
Science News: Powerful collider set to smash protons
By Ron Cowen
After more than a year of delays, the most powerful atom smasher on Earth will finally begin regular collisions of its two proton beams around February 20. But to help safeguard CERN’s Large Hadron Collider from further electrical problems, the accelerator will run at only half its maximum energy for the next 18 months to two years, said Steve Myers, CERN’S director for accelerators and technology.
That decision all but guarantees a new and major delay in discovering new elementary particles — including the long-sought Higgs boson, whose existence would account for why subatomic particles have mass.
Starting in mid-March, each of the twin beams of protons accelerated by CERN’s Large Hadron Collider are expected to carry an unprecedented energy of 3.5 trillion electron-volts. But that’s just half the 7 TeV per beam that the particle accelerator is designed to have, Myers noted. The collider won’t run at full power until 2013, he said on February 13 during a talk at a meeting of the American Physical Society in Washington, D.C.
Science News: Higgs and his particle prove elusive
By Ron Cowen
It somehow seemed fitting that the eminent physicist Peter Higgs was a no-show at a meeting of the American Physical Society, proving just as elusive as the long-sought elementary particle that bears his name.
Quite understandably, Higgs, now 80 and one of six winners of this year's J.J. Sakurai Prize for Theoretical Particle Physics, declined to venture from England to snowy Washington to give a talk on his work.
Higgs first proposed in 1964 the existence of a subatomic particle, later dubbed the Higgs, that could explain why the known elementary particles have mass.
Science News: Hot and heavy matter runs a 4 trillion degree fever
By Laura Sanders
WASHINGTON—Talk about hot and heavy. Scientists have taken the temperature of a minuscule glob of dense, hot matter formed in the grisly aftermath of collisions between gold atoms traveling near the speed of light. The material reaches an estimated 4 trillion degrees Celsius, about 250,000 times hotter than the sun’s interior, and higher than any temperature ever reached in a laboratory, researchers reported February 15 at a meeting of the American Physical Society.
The measurements, which will be published in an upcoming Physical Review Letters, provide a more detailed description of the superhot, superdense soup of matter called quark-gluon plasma, which may mimic the conditions of the infant universe, the researchers say. Other studies of the soup hint that discrete pockets of the matter break special kinds of symmetry.
In the new study, gold ions were smashed inside an underground 2.4-mile-circumference track at Brookhaven National Laboratory's Relativistic Heavy Ion Collider on Long Island. The messy collisions were so energetic that they caused protons and neutrons to melt, sending their constituent particles, known as quarks and gluons, into the fray.
Chemistry
Science News: Tiny molecules walk the track
By Laura Sanders
In one very small step for mankind, researchers have designed a tiny molecule that can walk on a track. Such artificial walkers may one day carry cargo purposefully, much like natural proteins in the body.
The new walking system, reported in the February Nature Chemistry, is "a pretty big leap forward," comments chemist Charles Sykes of Tufts University in Medford, Mass.
In the body, motor proteins walk in one direction along molecular tracks inside cells, hauling their load as they go. These biomotors transport big loads, such as organelles, lipids and vesicles, to the desired destinations in the cell.
Energy
BioFuels Digest: Biofuels Interagency Working Group report released by USDA, DOE, EPA: Growing America’s Fuel
In Washington, the Biofuels Interagency Working Group – co-chaired by USDA, DOE, and EPA, and with input from many others – released its first report: Growing America’s Fuel – a new U.S. Government strategy for meeting or beating the country’s biofuel targets.
"The U.S .is producing 12billion gallons per year of biofuels, mostly from corn grain ethanol, but we are not on a trajectory to reach the Congressional 36 billion gallons per year goal by 2022 or to meet the 100 million gallons cellulosic biofuels target in 2010," began the report.
The report called for a "New approach, an outocme-driven, re-engineered system, managed by a small centrally-located team accountable to the President’s Biofuels Interagency Working Group that has clearly defined roles and deliverables for all participating federal department, private sector, tribal, and international partners."
Midwest AG Network: Algae, brine shrimp and tilapia make recipe for biofuel
COLUMBIA, Mo.(UM Cooperative Media Group Release) – Using algae, brine shrimp and tilapia, researchers have designed a novel system that extracts oil for use as biofuel, potentially reducing greenhouse gas emissions in a proposed electric power plant.
Microalgal biomass production offers the potential to reduce greenhouse gas emissions by providing biofuel replacement of fossil fuels as well as carbon-neutral animal feeds, said David Brune, bioprocessing engineering professor at the University of Missouri.
"Algae have been shown to produce 100 times more fuel than soybean oil, but they are hard to extract and convert into usable fuel," Brune said.
Hat/Tip to FarWestGirl for these stories.
Science News: Leasing car batteries to the power company
By Janet Raloff
SAN DIEGO — Most people, on average, drive their cars only an hour or two a day. The rest of the time, those pricey vehicles sit parked on the street or in some garage. But if those cars had a big bank of batteries – typical of today’s gasoline hybrids or soon-to-hit-the-road plug-in hybrids – they could be earning their owners money while sitting parked. Maybe $5 to $10 a day, just by serving as a back-up energy-storage system for the electric-utility grid.
Or at least that’s the idea behind the V2G – vehicle-to-grid – movement. A panel of experts described the promise (and hinted at some of the pitfalls) of this power-sharing arrangement, where people agree to effectively lease their cars’ batteries, when they’re not in use, to the power company. It was part of a preview for reporters of a symposium to take place early tomorrow, here at the American Association for the Advancement of Science annual meeting.
Discovery News: Fusion-Powered Express to the Planets
By Ray Villard
A few months ago the U.S. Navy awarded $7.9 million in government stimulus funds to a small New Mexico R&D facility called EMC2 Fusion. The money is to go toward building a scaled-up version of a nuclear fusion reactor that would be small enough to loft into space.
This reactor would generate an enormous amount of energy under a somewhat unorthodox scheme called inertial electrostatic confinement fusion (IEC). The dream is that a relatively small piece of equipment could release energy by fusing atoms without the need for duplicating temperatures inside the sun. Conventional fusion experiments require maintaining enormous temperatures and pressures in a confined space to convert mass to energy.
Given the long history of unsuccessful fusion research –- especially the cold fusion debacle of 1989 -- taking this idea seriously is a barrier to the development of this technology, say some supporters.
Science, Space, Environment, and Energy Policy
Science News: Assessing the state of U.S. science and engineering
By Louis Lanzerotti
Every two years, the National Science Board reports to the president and Congress about the state of the science landscape. This year’s Science and Engineering Indicators report was presented to the White House on January 15. The chairman of the board’s Science and Engineering Indicators committee, physicist Louis Lanzerotti of the New Jersey Institute of Technology in Newark, recently spoke with staff writer Laura Sanders about how the lay of the science land has changed.
Overall, is this report good news, bad news or interesting news?
Overall, I view these data as good. The United States is still very strong in research and development, and I think the data show that. But they also demonstrate that there are areas we need to look at and adapt to. The rest of the world is catching up to us in many instances — China and some of the Far East countries, for example.
Reuters: Obama says his commitment to NASA is "unwavering"
Chris Baltimore
HOUSTON (Reuters) - President Barack Obama on Wednesday said his commitment to NASA was "unwavering" after his administration's 2011 budget slashed funding to return U.S. astronauts to the moon.
"My commitment to NASA is unwavering," Obama said on a video-conference with astronauts aboard the International Space Station. Speaking from the White House, Obama called the outpost orbiting 200 miles above the Earth "a testimony to human ingenuity."
They were Obama's first public comments on NASA since his administration submitted a $19 billion budget to Congress for the agency that would kill the Constellation lunar program begun under former President George W. Bush.
Discovery News: NASA Ponies Up for Commercial Suborbital Space Rides
By Irene Klotz
Even at $200,000 a ticket, the lines for a suborbital ride into space may soon be growing longer. The U.S. government is proposing to spend $75 million over the next five years to send science experiments -- and presumably scientists -- into space.
"For everyone who has dreamed of participating in the grand adventure of spaceflight, this $75 million commitment marks the dawn of a new space age," said Alan Stern, NASA’s former lead scientist who is now spearheading several commercial and research agency initiatives interested in suborbital spaceflight.
NASA’s deputy administrator Lori Garver this week outlined plans for a $15-million-per-year program to pay for dozens of science and educational experiments to fly on commercial suborbital vehicles.
Washington Post via the Arizona Daily Star: This snowy winter is consistent with climate research
Eugene Robinson, Washington Post Writers Group
We're the nation that put a man on the moon, so we can't be stupid. We're just pretending, right? We're not really taking seriously the "argument" that the big snowstorms that have hit the Northeast in recent weeks constitute evidence - even proof - that climate change is a hoax.
That would be unbelievably dumb. Yet there are elected officials in Washington who apparently believe such nonsense. Sen. Jim Inhofe, R-Okla., had his family build an igloo near the Capitol and label it "Al Gore's New Home." Sen. Jim DeMint, R-S.C., boasted on Twitter that the snows would continue "until Al Gore cries uncle." Talking heads are seriously debating whether the record snowstorms doom the prospects for comprehensive legislation to deal with energy policy and climate change, which is one of President Obama's top priorities.
Michigan State University: AAAS symposium to discuss societal and ecosystems interaction
SAN DIEGO — Science and society need to come together if we are to effectively address the pressing environmental challenges we now face, a Michigan State University professor told a symposium at this year’s meeting of the American Association for the Advancement of Science.
Phil Robertson, chairperson of the National Science Foundation’s Long-term Ecological Research (LTER) Network and University Distinguished Professor of crop and soil sciences, organized and moderated a session titled "Integrated Science for Society and the Environment."
Michigan State University: MSU prof calls for more efficient methods of food-recall notices
SAN DIEGO — Consumers need faster, more efficient ways of being notified when there is a recall of food products.
That’s the message Michigan State University’s Ewen Todd gave to a symposium at the 2010 American Association for the Advancement of Science annual meeting being held in San Diego.
Todd, a professor of advertising, public relations and retailing, spoke at a symposium titled "Tracking and Tracing Our Food Supply: The Way Forward."
Science Education
Michigan State University: Parents still major influence on child’s decision to pursue science careers
SAN DIEGO — Parental influence and access to mathematics courses are likely to guide students to careers in science, technology, engineering, mathematics or medicine (STEMM), according to research from Michigan State University.
The findings of Jon Miller, MSU Hannah Professor of Integrative Studies, and colleagues were presented at a symposium titled "Tomorrow’s Scientists and Engineers" at this year’s meeting of the American Association for the Advancement of Science.
The education of more researchers, engineers and others in the field of science is critical, Miller said.
"Failure to build and maintain a competitive scientific work force in the decades ahead," Miller said, "will inevitably lead to a decline in the American standard of living."
Science Writing and Reporting
Science News: Book Review: The Hidden Brain
By Shankar Vedantam
Review by Erika Engelhaupt
A crowd watches passively as a man brutally beats a woman on a Detroit bridge. An investor selects a company solely on the basis of an easy-to-read ticker symbol. A worker in a burning building wastes precious seconds asking others whether to evacuate. The decisions these real-life people made may sound cruel or stupid, but to be fair, Vedantam says, they weren’t thinking consciously. They were thinking with their hidden brains.
"The hidden brain" is a shorthand term that Vedantam, a science journalist for The Washington Post, has coined to help readers grasp what is by definition obscure: the unconscious. This collection of cognitive and emotional processes does much of the brain’s routine work, he says.
Alternet has an excerpt from this book: How the Unconscious Mind Can Act Out Our Prejudices. It's a particularly appropriate one for progressives to read, as it describes how the "hidden brain" played out in the Lilly Ledbetter case.
Science News: Book Review: Get Me Out: A History of Childbirth
By Randi Hutter Epstein
Review by Kristina Bartlett Brody
The "me" in the title of Epstein’s book refers not only to the baby, but also to any mother who might want out of the medical way of giving birth prevalent in Western culture today.
After saying that the book’s guidance "should pique your curiosity to think about the medical maze in a different sort of way," Epstein describes childbirth from the 1600s to the present, ultimately tackling how modern medicine influences the way women conceive and give birth.
Science is Cool
Science News: Finding coolable hot spots for crime
By Lisa Grossman
San Diego — Not all crime hot spots are created equal, a new mathematical model suggests. For some areas repeatedly hit hard with crime, police intervention can shut down lawlessness and keep it down. But for others, police involvement just shifts the trouble around.
"If you see a hot area of crime, you want to know: If you send the police in, will that displace the crime or get rid of the crime altogether?" said Andrea Bertozzi, a mathematician at UCLA who presented the new model February 20 at the annual meeting of the American Association for the Advancement of Science. "We were able to predict the ability to suppress or otherwise displace hot spots." The results will also appear February 22 in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.