Headlines science: August 2009

Why managing risk is a risky business

From swine flu to locking up the wrong people, grappling with risk means juggling our emotional and analytical selves

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Black hole parasites explain cosmic flashes

Gamma-ray bursts, the brightest flashes in the universe, may be caused by black holes burrowing into stars and eating them from the inside

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New Law of Physics Could Explain Quantum Mysteries

(PhysOrg.com) -- Since the early days of quantum mechanics, scientists have been trying to understand the many strange implications of the theory: superpositions, wave-particle duality, and the observer`s role in measurements, to name a few. Now, a new proposed law of physics that describes the geometry of physical reality on the cosmological scale might help answer some of these questions. Plus, the new law could give some clues about the role of gravity in quantum physics, possibly pointing the way to a unified theory of physics.
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Arabic chemists from the 'Golden Age' given long overdue credit

You've heard of Louis Pasteur and George Washington Carver, no doubt. And probably Joseph Priestley, one of the founders of modern chemistry. Names like Antoine Lavoisier, John Dalton, and Amadeo Avogadro may even bring a twinkle of recognition to the eye for their famous roles in establishing chemistry as a modern science.
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For Winter Games in Vancouver, Ice Isnâ€™t So Easy

Icemeisters face challenges in getting the ice just right in an area at sea-level elevation with high humidity.

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Thai Elephant Injured by Land Mine Gets Artificial Leg

Motola was injured in 1999 while working at a logging camp along the Myanmar-Thailand border, a region peppered with land mines after half a century of insurgency.
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Drug-resistant swine flu cases discovered in patients in Seattle

The country's first cases of drug-resistant swine flu were discovered in two leukemia patients in Seattle, the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention reported Friday.
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Researchers sequence exomes of 12 people

In a pioneering effort that generated massive amounts of DNA sequence data from 12 people, a team supported by the National Institutes of Health (NIH) has demonstrated the feasibility and value of a new strategy for identifying relatively rare genetic variants that may cause or contribute to disease. The proof-of-concept findings were published online today in the journal Nature.
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New 'biofactories' produce rare healing substances in the endangered Devil's claw plant

Deep in Africa's Kalahari Desert lies the "Devil's claw," a plant that may hold the key to effective treatments for arthritis, tendonitis and other illnesses that affect millions each year. Unfortunately, years of drought have pushed the Devil's claw toward extinction, so scientists are scrambling to devise new ways to produce the valuable medicinal chemicals of the Devil's claw and other rare plants.

Two Tropical Storms Swirl in Atlantic

Tropical Storm Bill has formed in the far eastern Atlantic and the government of the Netherland Antilles has issued a tropical storm watch for St. Maarten, Saba and St. Eustatius because of Tropical Storm Ana.
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Obstructive sleep apnea is prevalent in adults with Down syndrome

A study in the Aug. 15 issue of the Journal of Clinical Sleep Medicine shows that adults with Down syndrome also frequently suffer from obstructive sleep apnea (OSA). However, complications of untreated OSA such as cardiovascular disease, daytime sleepiness and impaired cognitive functioning overlap with the manifestations of Down syndrome; therefore, OSA may not be detected.
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Obama Downplays Health Plan Anger

President Barack Obama on Friday denounced what he suggested was news media overemphasis on scenes of angry protesters at town-hall meetings on health care. "TV loves a ruckus," Obama said.
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Tiny Flares Responsible for Outsized Heat of Sun's Atmosphere

(PhysOrg.com) -- Solar physicists at NASA have confirmed that small, sudden bursts of heat and energy, called nanoflares, cause temperatures in the thin, translucent gas of the sun's atmosphere to reach millions of degrees.
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Rocket to Launch Inflatable Re-entry Capsule

(PhysOrg.com) -- Inflatable aircraft are not a new idea. Hot air balloons have been around for more than two centuries and blimps are a common sight over many sports stadiums. But it's hard to imagine an inflatable spacecraft.
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NASA Drops Probes Into Volatile Volcano (LiveScience.com)

LiveScience.com - High-tech sensor pods were recently air lifted into the mouth of a volcano to monitor hot spots and provide early warning if the peak starts to blow.
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Cities of light

See how the night-time world looks from space â€" and how we can judge a country's GDP from the amount of light it produces

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Exporting ponchos to a land 'where the devil lost his poncho'

University of Leicester researcher reveals history of British textiles trade in South America We may think of ponchos as quintessentially South American, but new research by a University of Leicester historian reveals that there was a time when a great deal of the ponchos worn in the southern end of South America were actually made in Britain.
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Book Review : The Mathematical Mechanic: Using Physical Reasoning to Solve Problems by Mark Levi

A Pennsylvania State University professor reveals how physics can simplify proofs, illustrate theorems and offer quick mathematical solutions. Princeton Univ., 2009, 186 p., $19.95.
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Ground beetles produce lemon/orange-scented aromas as predator repellents

(PhysOrg.com) -- In a paper to appear in the journal `Naturwissenschaften,` Stevens Institute of Technology Professor Athula Attygalle and his research student, Xiaogang Wu, report for the first ...
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FAA Suspends 2 Over Hudson Crash

A video shot by a New York City tourist shows a small plane and a sightseeing helicopter colliding over the Hudson River, killing nine people. The accident was caught on video Saturday by an Italian tourist who was practicing with a new camera. It was aired Thursday on "NBC Nightly News."
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Free radio stations and podcasts sans computer

Television and radio broadcasts used to be free. Stick an antenna in the air and that's still true even though much of it has now gone digital. As technology advanced, we got better delivery methods of those free signals such as cable and satellite TV. These methods brought better pictures and sound, more channels, more choices, more variety and more cost. Of course a lot of that programming such as HBO and other premium channels were never really free in the first place so I'm not counting those. But there's still a lot of that originally free content that you now must pay for but I guess that's the price we pay for that better delivery service. Fortunately there are still some exceptions out there.
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Bureaucracy stifling studies

A group of researchers whose planned leg ulceration study was hamstrung by a physician recruitment rate of 2% have published the reasons why so many doctors turned them down. The qualitative information, featured in the open access journal BMC Medical Research Methodology, should be of use to those designing trials of their own.
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Second backwards planet found, a day after the first

Just a day after the announcement of the first 'retrograde' exoplanet, two teams announce the discovery of another – though they disagree on the tilt of its orbit

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Review: `Madden NFL 10' is franchise's best yet

(AP) -- Football fans have grown accustomed to spending their Sundays in front of gigantic high-def TVs, and they can't just drop their visual expectations when the game goes virtual.
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Measuring the road to mental health

(PhysOrg.com) -- Takuya Minami, assistant professor of counseling and applied psychology at Northeastern, is doing something that might have made even Dr. Freud blanch. Minami is trying to quantify how well psychotherapy works.
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First human gene implicated in regulating length of human sleep

Scientists have discovered the first gene involved in regulating the optimal length of human sleep, offering a window into a key aspect of slumber, an enigmatic phenomenon that is critical to human physical and mental health.

They Snooze Less, But They Don't Lose (HealthDay)

HealthDay - THURSDAY, Aug. 13 (HealthDay News) -- A lucky few can get by just fine on six hours of sleep, and a new study suggests a genetic mutation might help explain why.
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Why are autumn leaves red in America and yellow in Europe?

Walking outdoors in the fall, the splendidly colorful leaves adorning the trees are a delight to the eye. In Europe these autumn leaves are mostly yellow, while the United States and East Asia boast lustrous red foliage. But why is it that there are such differences in autumnal hues around the world? A new theory provided by Prof. Simcha Lev-Yadun of the Department of Science Education- Biology at the University of Haifa-Oranim and Prof. Jarmo Holopainen of the University of Kuopio in Finland and published in the Journal New Phytologist proposes taking a step 35 million years back to solve the color mystery.
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New study reveals unexpected relationship between climate warming and advancing treelines

A new study reveals that treelines are not responding to climate warming as expected. The research, the first global quantitative assessment of the relationship between climate warming and treeline advance, is published in Ecology Letters and tests the premise that treelines are globally advancing in response to climate warming since 1900.
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Planet found orbiting its star backwards for first time

The planet is also the most bloated yet detected – its low density and strange path might both be traced back to a close encounter with a planetary sibling

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Facebook testing Twitter-like 'Lite' version

The Internet was buzzing Wednesday with talk of Facebook testing a streamlined "Lite" version of the social-networking service that could challenge microblogging sensation Twitter.
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Stanford researchers call for drug labels to disclose lack of comparison with existing medications

The labeling information that comes with prescription drugs tells you what's known about the medication, but researchers from the Stanford University School of Medicine think it's high time that the labeling tell you what isn't known.
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Atmospheric 'pulse' may spread rain clouds across Titan

Cloud-generating waves in the atmosphere of the Saturn moon could explain how rain reaches the moon's desert regions

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Lifting weights reduces lymphedema symptoms following breast cancer surgery

Breast cancer survivors who lift weights are less likely than their non-weightlifting peers to experience worsening symptoms of lymphedema, the arm- and hand-swelling condition that plagues many women following surgery for their disease, according to new University of Pennsylvania School of Medicine research published in the August 13 issue of the New England Journal of Medicine. The findings challenge the advice commonly given to lymphedema sufferers, who may worry that weight training or even carrying children or bags of groceries will exacerbate their symptoms.
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Scientists demonstrate importance of niche differences in biodiversity

Scientists at UC Santa Barbara have found strong evidence that niche differences are critical to biodiversity. Their findings are published online in this week's issue of the journal Nature.
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Fungus found in humans shown to be nimble in mating game

Brown University researchers have discovered that Candida albicans, a human fungal pathogen that causes thrush and other diseases, pursues same-sex mating in addition to conventional opposite-sex mating.

The tourist trap: Galapagos victim of its own success

(PhysOrg.com) -- Mosquitoes with the potential to carry diseases lethal to many unique species of Galapagos wildlife are being regularly introduced to the islands via aircraft, according to ...
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Rove Had Central Role in Justice Firing

Newly released transcripts of closed-door congressional testimony indicate that Karl Rove, the former White House political advisor, played a central role in the ouster of David Iglesias, one of the nine federal prosecutors fired in a series of politically tinged dismissals in 2006.
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Clone ranger sniffs out airport drugs

A cloned sniffer dog has proved itself smarter than the average pup by detecting drugs at South Korea's main airport just weeks after starting service, officials said Wednesday.
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Heart transplant record holder dies of cancer

(AP) -- A heart transplant recipient who lived a record 31 years with a single donated organ has died at age 51 of cancer, his heart still going strong, his widow said.
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Parasite causes zombie ants to die in an ideal spot

A study in the September issue of The American Naturalist describes new details about a fungal parasite that coerces ants into dying in just the right spot -- one that is ideal for the fungus ...
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Budesonide is not beneficial for the treatment of diarrhea in metastatic melanoma patients

Patients with stage III or IV melanoma taking ipilimumab and the oral steroid budesonide to reduce side effects did not have less diarrhea, a known side effect of ipilimumab, according to results of a phase II trial published in Clinical Cancer Research, a journal of the American Association for Cancer Research.
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Scientists study past flu pandemics for clues to future course of 2009 H1N1 virus

A commonly held belief that severe influenza pandemics are preceded by a milder wave of illness arose because some accounts of the devastating flu pandemic of 1918-19 suggested that it may have followed such a pattern. But two scientists from the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases (NIAID), part of the National Institutes of Health, say the existing data are insufficient to conclude decisively that the 1918-19 pandemic was presaged by a mild, so-called spring wave, or that the responsible virus had increased in lethality between the beginning and end of 1918.
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Discovery to aid study of biological structures, molecules

Researchers in the United States and Spain have discovered that a tool widely used in nanoscale imaging works differently in watery environments, a step toward better using the instrument to study biological molecules and structures.

New gene linked to muscular dystrophy

Muscular dystrophy, a group of inherited diseases characterized by progressive skeletal muscle weakness, can be caused by mutations in any one of a number of genes. Another gene can now be added to this list, as Yukiko Hayashi and colleagues, at the National Center of Neurology and Psychiatry, Japan, have now identified mutations in a gene not previously linked to muscular dystrophy as causative of a form of the disease in five nonconsanguineous Japanese patients.

What's luck got to do with it? The maths of gambling ((send by free-web-host.me user))

Even if you can't beat the system, there are some cunning ways to tilt the odds in your favour

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Hawaii Under Tropical Storm Watch ((send by free-web-host.me user))

Hawaii gears up for a lashing by Tropical Storm Felicia as a new tropical depression forms in the Atlantic. The new tropical depression is only the second of what has been a quieter-than-normal Atlantic hurricane season.
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Physicists make crystal/liquid interface visible for first time ((send by free-web-host.me user))

"Imagine you're a water molecule in a glass of ice water, and you're floating right on the boundary of the ice and the water," proposes Emory University physicist Eric Weeks. "So how do you know if you're a solid or a liquid?"
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China wind farms sprout amid 'green' energy push ((send by free-web-host.me user))

As Deng Hui looks out at a forest of towering turbines dotting his company's wind farm north of Beijing, a cold, drizzly wind howls in his face, but he doesn't mind.
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'Spiderbots' talk amongst themselves inside active volcano ((send by free-web-host.me user))

A squadron of spindly robots dropped into Mount St Helens is the first network of volcano sensors that can route data to each other and to space, making them robust and efficient

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Bone-cell control of energy generation is regulated by the protein Atf4 ((send by free-web-host.me user))

Bone cells known as osteoblasts were recently shown to have a role in controlling the biochemical reactions that generate energy via secretion of the molecule osteocalcin. Gerard Karsenty and colleagues, at Columbia University College of Physicians and Surgeons, New York, therefore hypothesized that osteoblasts express a regulatory gene(s) that controls this osteoblast function and then identified Atf4 as this regulatory gene in mice.
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Weight Loss Among Widows More Harmful to Health Than Post-Wedding Weight Gain, Research Shows ((send by free-web-host.me user))

(PhysOrg.com) -- The death of a spouse has a much more profound effect on weight change than marital status, according to new research by sociologists at The University of Texas at Austin.
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How mice and humans differ immunologically ((send by free-web-host.me user))

Edith Hessel and colleagues, at Dynavax Technologies Corporation, Berkeley, have identified the reason that humans and rodents respond differently to a molecule that is being developed to treat allergic diseases.
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Stanford professor sequences his entire genome at low cost, with small team ((send by free-web-host.me user))

The first few times that scientists mapped out all the DNA in a human being in 2001, each effort cost hundreds of millions of dollars and involved more than 250 people. Even last year, when the lowest reported cost was $250,000, genome sequencing still required almost 200 people. In a paper to be published online Aug. 9 by Nature Biotechnology, a Stanford University professor reports sequencing his entire genome for less than $50,000 and with a team of just two other people.

GM maize has built-in SOS chemical ((send by free-web-host.me user))

A genetically modified maize plant is genetically engineered to produce a chemical rallying cry that summons help against a damaging pests

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Obama Attends 'Three Amigos' Summit ((send by free-web-host.me user))

President Barack Obama travels to Mexico for the so-called "Three Amigos" summit with his North American counterparts -- Mexican President Felipe Calderon and Canadian Prime Minister Stephen Harper. The leaders, however, will likely find more agreement on fighting swine flu together than thorny trade issues.
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Cancer Found in Young 9/11 Rescuers ((send by free-web-host.me user))

Researchers say a small number of young law enforcement officers who participated in the World Trade Center rescue and cleanup operation have developed an immune system cancer called multiple myeloma.
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New class of compounds discovered for potential Alzheimer's disease drug ((send by free-web-host.me user))

A new class of molecules capable of blocking the formation of specific protein clumps that are believed to contribute to Alzheimer's disease pathology has been discovered by researchers at the University of Pennsylvania School of Medicine. By assaying close to 300,000 compounds, they have identified drug-like inhibitors of AD tau protein clumping, as reported in the journal Biochemistry.
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Computer scientists take over electronic voting machine with new programming technique (w/ Video) ((send by free-web-host.me user))

Computer scientists demonstrated that criminals could hack an electronic voting machine and steal votes using a malicious programming approach that had not been invented when the voting machine was designed. The team of scientists from University of California, San Diego, the University of Michigan, and Princeton University employed `return-oriented programming` to force a Sequoia AVC Advantage electronic voting machine to turn against itself and steal votes.
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Exploring the standard model of physics without the high-energy collider ((send by free-web-host.me user))

Scientists at the University of California, Berkeley, and Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory in the US, have performed sophisticated laser measurements to detect the subtle effects of one of nature's most elusive forces - the "weak interaction". Their work, which reveals the largest effect of the weak interaction ever observed in an atom, is reported in Physical Review Letters and highlighted in the August 10th issue of APS's on-line journal Physics (physics.aps.org).

Research reveals how science changed methods of execution ((send by free-web-host.me user))

A University of Cincinnati sociologist combed through newspaper accounts of 19th and 20th century Ohio executions to understand how executions became more "professional and scientific" in character. Annulla Linders, an associate professor of sociology, presented the paper Aug. 9 at the 104th annual meeting of the American Sociological Association in San Francisco.

New class of compounds discovered for potential Alzheimer's disease drug ((send by free-web-host.me user))

Miniature gravity detector could peer inside planets ((send by free-web-host.me user))

A device designed from a single wafer of silicon could help planetary scientists study the gravitational fields of Mars and other planets in unprecedented detail

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EBay, GM set to start car-selling trial Tuesday ((send by free-web-host.me user))

(AP) -- General Motors and eBay Inc. are expected to announce Monday that hundreds of the auto maker's California dealers will let consumers haggle over the prices of new cars and trucks through the online marketplace, as part of a previously disclosed trial.
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Growth in number of Americans citing no religion may be slower than previously reported ((send by free-web-host.me user))

Americans continue to pull away from organized religion, but the rate of departure previously reported may not have been as abrupt as originally thought, according to research to be presented at the 104th annual meeting of the American Sociological Association.
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4 Young Children Die in Police Chase ((send by free-web-host.me user))

The California Highway Patrol says a car fleeing from police ran a stop sign and slammed into a pickup, killing three people in the car and four young children in the truck. The patrol says police in Dinuba, southeast of Fresno, were trying to stop the car Saturday afternoon for a traffic infraction.
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Vast expanses of Arctic ice melt in summer heat (AP) ((send by free-web-host.me user))

The shore line from Tuktoyaktuk, in the Northwest Territories, Canada, is shown on Saturday Aug. 8, 2009. The Arctic Ocean has given up tens of thousands more square miles of ice in a relentless summer of melt, as scientists watched through satellite eyes for a possible record low polar ice cap. (AP Photo/Rick Bowmer) AP - The Arctic Ocean has given up tens of thousands more square miles (square kilometers) of ice in a relentless summer of melt, with scientists watching through satellite eyes for a possible record low polar ice cap.

China lifts blockade around plague-stricken town ((send by free-web-host.me user))

(AP) -- A blockade around a remote northwest Chinese town where deadly pneumonic plague killed three people and sickened nine was lifted after no new infections were reported, an official said Sunday.
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Psychologists offer ways to improve prison environment, reduce violent crime ((send by free-web-host.me user))

U.S. prisons are too punitive and often fail to rehabilitate, but targeting prisoners' behavior, reducing prison populations and offering job skills could reduce prisoner aggression and prevent recidivism, a researcher told the American Psychological Association on Saturday.
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