SCIENCE IN THE NEWS
from Sigma Xi, The Scientific Research Society


Today's Headlines - February 26, 2008

Safer Vehicles for People and the Planet

from American Scientist

The cars and trucks plying America's roads and highways generate roughly
20
percent of the nation's total emissions of carbon dioxide, a pollutant
that
is, of course, of increasing concern because of its influence on
climate.
Motor vehicles also account for most of our country's dependence on
imported petroleum, the price of which has recently skyrocketed to near-
record levels.

So policymakers would welcome the many benefits that would accrue from
lessening the amount of fuel consumed in this way. Yet the fuel economy
of
the new-car fleet has not risen since the late 1980s, when it exceeded
27.5
miles per gallon .... One of the historical impediments to imposing
tougher
fuel-economy standards has been the long-standing worry that reducing
the
mass of a car or truck to help meet these requirements would make it
more
dangerous to its occupants in a crash.

... [However], the use of high-strength steel, light-weight metals ...
and
fiber-reinforced plastics now offers automotive engineers the means to
fashion vehicles that are simultaneously safer and less massive than
their
predecessors, and such designs would, of course, enjoy the better fuel
economy that shedding pounds brings.

To read more:
http://www.americanscientist.org/template/AssetDetail/assetid/56708?
fulltext=true

Or: http://tinyurl.com/ytwqw3


Plan for Telescopes on Moon's Far Side Is Revived

from the Washington Post (Registration Required)

Since the beginning of the space age, astronomers have dreamed of
putting
telescopes and other instruments on the far side of the moon. Not only
would that avoid all the distortions and disturbances caused by Earth's
turbulent atmosphere, but equally important, the moon's mass would block
the noisy torrent of radio signals emanating from Earth.

Only in the moon's radio "shadow" could the farseeing radio telescopes
envisioned for the future pick up the extremely faint signals left over
from the early universe, signals that would otherwise be drowned out by
the
broadcast barrage from Earth.

... With NASA planning to send astronauts back to the moon sometime
after
2019, those dreams of a radio telescope looking out through the galaxies
from the protected side of the moon have been revived.

To read more: http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-
dyn/content/article/2008/02/24/AR2008022401337.html

Or: http://tinyurl.com/yv8yty


Radioactive Eyes Don't Lie (About Your Age, Anyway)

from the Los Angeles Times (Registration Required)

Radioactive carbon-14 trapped in the lens of the eye permits researchers
to
accurately date the year of a person's birth, Danish scientists report.

The lens contains proteins, called lens crystallines, that are
transparent,
allowing light to pass through to the retina. These proteins are
produced
during the first year of life and are unchanged afterward, providing a
unique record of the time of birth.

The only other bodily proteins that remain unchanged throughout life are
those in the enamel of teeth, but they are formed over a five- to
six-year
period and are thus less useful in dating.

To read more: http://www.latimes.com/news/science/la-sci-
lens23feb23,1,6680100.story

Or: http://tinyurl.com/2wmf5r


Peru's "Lost City" Is a Natural Formation, Experts Rule

from National Geographic News

Stone structures in Peru recently suggested to be the ruins of an
ancient "lost city" were actually shaped by natural forces, not Inca
stone
workers, officials say.

The announcement comes from archaeologists with Peru's culture ministry,
clouding the prospects of one local politician to turn the site into a
tourist attraction. On January 10, Peruvian state media reported that a
stone fortress had been discovered on the heavily forested eastern
slopes
of the Andes Mountains.

The story quoted the local mayor as saying the structures were
discovered
under heavy vegetation by villagers, who dubbed the site Manco Pata.
Guillermo Torres, the mayor of nearby Kimbiri, suggested that the
complex
could be the lost city of Paititi, described in local legend as a
citadel
built by the Inca hero Inkarri after the Spanish conquest.

To read more:
http://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/2008/02/080222-lost-
city.html

Or: http://tinyurl.com/37zpsm


Exoskeleton Shows Running, Not Walking, Best on Moon

from New Scientist

Future astronauts should run, not walk, across the lunar surface to
conserve energy, new laboratory tests suggest. The tests were done using
an
MIT-built exoskeleton that mimics the experience of moving around in a
spacesuit.

Astronauts move differently on the Moon than on Earth because of the
Moon's
weaker gravity and the constricting properties of spacesuits. So
Christopher Carr and Dava Newman of MIT in Cambridge, US, have devised a
way to simulate that motion in the hopes of designing better spacesuits
and
planning future lunar activities.

They reasoned that walking inside a pressurised spacesuit is like
wearing
an air-filled balloon. Like balloons, the suits resist bending and tend
to
want to return to their original shape, making it harder for
Moon-walking
astronauts to bend their legs at the knee.

To read more: http://space.newscientist.com/article/dn13364-exoskeleton-
shows-running-not-walking-best-on-moon.html

Or: http://tinyurl.com/376xk3


Water Filtration System in a Straw

from Scientific American

Sometimes, it's the simplest technologies that have the greatest
potential
impact on people's lives. Take the Vestergaard Frandsen Group's mobile
personal filtration system, otherwise known as LifeStraw. It is a
powder-
blue plastic tube - much thicker than an ordinary straw - containing
filters that make water teeming with typhoid-, cholera- and diarrhea-
causing microorganisms drinkable.

The filters, made up of a halogenated resin, kill nearly 100 percent of
bacteria and nearly 99 percent of the viruses that pass through
LifeStraw.

A University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill evaluation tested the
device's performance in water containing Escherichia coli B and
Enterococcus faecalis bacteria and the MS2 coliphage virus as well as
iodine and silver. The results indicated that LifeStraw filtered out all
contaminants to levels where they don't pose a health risk to someone
drinking the water.

To read more:
http://www.sciam.com/article.cfm?id=water-filtration-system

Or: http://tinyurl.com/3a5gar


Limiting Catch to Largest Fish May Promote Weak Gene Pool

from the Seattle Times

WASHINGTON (Associated Press) -- Rules that allow only the catching of
larger fish may encourage their replacement with slower growing, more
timid
varieties.

That, at least, is the concern of researchers who studied test
populations
in two artificial lakes and report their findings in this week's edition
of
Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.

Peter Biro of the department of environmental science at the University
of
Technology in Sydney, Australia, explained that it's the fast-growing,
more
aggressive fish that tend to get caught, removing them from the breeding
pool. That leaves reproduction up to slower-growing fish who are more
timid, he said.

To read more:
http://seattletimes.nwsource.com/html/nationworld/2004203435_fishy26.htm
l

Or: http://tinyurl.com/2qffqj


First Look at Vast 'Book of Life'

from BBC News Online

The first 30,000 pages have been unveiled of a vast encyclopedia which
aims
to catalogue every one of our planet's 1.8 million species.

The immense online resource is designed to greatly enhance our
understanding of the world's diminishing biodiversity. The creators of
the
database say it could have an impact on human knowledge comparable to
that
which followed the microscope's invention in the 1600s.

It is designed to be used by everyone from scientists to lay readers.
The
Encyclopedia of Life (EOL) - described as the "ultimate field guide" -
is
to encompass all six kingdoms of life, and even viruses - which many
researchers do not consider to be living organisms.

To read more: http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/science/nature/7263134.stm

Or: http://tinyurl.com/2hxdw7


Robots Set to Overhaul Service Industry, Jobs

from the Christian Science Monitor

Pittsburgh - At a mall in Osaka, Japan, lost shoppers can get directions
from a robot that looks like something out of "The Jetsons." In
hospitals
across the US, disc-shaped robots deliver bed linens and meals to rooms.
In
some homes, robots are already doing a range of chores, such as
vacuuming
rooms and cleaning gutters. At least one company is working on a robot
that
works on a farm.

As a growing number of robots become capable of working alongside
humans,
the service industry may face a pattern all too familiar in the
manufacturing sector: robots replacing humans in jobs.

"The service sector, which is a gigantic part of the employment
landscape
in the United States, is inevitably going to be a place where you can
replace millions of people with robots that work 24/7 for less money,"
says
futurist Marshall Brain.

To read more: http://www.csmonitor.com/2008/0225/p01s01-usgn.html

Or: http://tinyurl.com/32sg5h


Human Shadows on the Seas

from the New York Times (Registration Required)

In 1980, after college, I joined the crew of a sailboat partway through
a
circumnavigation of the globe. Becalmed and roasting one day during a
21-
day crossing of the western Indian Ocean, several of us dived over the
side. Within a few swimming strokes, the bobbing hull seemed a toy over
my
shoulder as I glanced back through my diving mask. ... Human activity
seemed nothing when set against the sea itself.

Just a few weeks later, on an uninhabited island in a remote part of the
Red Sea, I was proved wrong. The shore above the tide line was covered
with
old light bulbs, apparently tossed from the endless parade of ships over
the years.

Now scientists are building the first worldwide portrait of such
dispersed
human impacts on the oceans, revealing a planet-spanning mix of depleted
resources, degraded ecosystems and disruptive biological blending as
species are moved around the globe by accident and intent.

To read more:
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/02/26/science/earth/26coas.html