SCIENCE IN THE NEWS
from Sigma Xi, The Scientific Research Society
Today's Headlines - March 14, 2008
Scientist: Hong Kong Flu Virus Not Deadlier Than Past Viruses
from the Los Angeles Times (Registration Required)
HONG KONG (Associated Press) -- A top Hong Kong scientist said today a
flu
outbreak that prompted authorities to keep more than 500,000 primary and
kindergarten students home wasn't deadlier than past viruses.
Yuen Kwok-yung and a panel of experts studied two flu patients who died
amid the outbreak -- a 7-year-old boy and a 3-year-old girl -- and found
that the flu virus hadn't spread beyond their lungs, which suggests the
virus isn't exceptionally virulent.
"If it is a more virulent virus, we should be able to find the flu virus
in
other organs," Yuen told reporters after a four-hour meeting with his
colleagues. Earlier today, the World Health Organization also said there
was no sign that the situation in Hong Kong was anything but a regular
seasonal flu outbreak.
To read more:
http://www.latimes.com/news/custom/scimedemail/la-fg-
flu13mar13,0,1255799.story
Or: http://snipurl.com/21osu
Brain Map Project Set to Revolutionise Neuroscience
from New Scientist
Take the most complex organ in the human body, superimpose the legacy of
biology's biggest research project, and what have you got? An
unprecedented
brain map that is set to transform studies of neuroscience and brain
disease.
The Allen Institute for Brain Science in Seattle, Washington, US, is ...
launching a four-year, $55-million effort to build a three-dimensional
map
documenting the levels of activity of some 20,000 different genes across
the human brain.
"The Human Genome Project was the 'what,' and our project is the
'where,'"
says Allan Jones, the institute's chief scientific officer. Established
in
2003 with a $100-million gift from Microsoft co-founder Paul Allen, the
Allen institute has already created a similar atlas of the mouse brain,
unveiled in December 2006.
To read more:
http://www.newscientist.com/article/dn13458-brain-map-project-
set-to-revolutionise-neuroscience.html
Or: http://snipurl.com/21ow0
Hair's Breadth: Why Do We Have It in Some Places, but Not Others?
from the San Diego Union-Tribune (Registration Required)
Humans were once as hairy as the next ape. Fact is, we still are.
"Humans don't actually have any fewer hairs than a chimpanzee or a
gorilla," says Christophe Soligo, a biological anthropologist at the
Natural History Museum in London. "The difference is simply that over
most
of our human bodies, the hair has become so short and flimsy as to be
virtually invisible. Some of it never even makes it to the surface of
the
skin."
The obvious exception is the head, of course, which remains tressed to
excess. Homo sapiens is, in fact, one of just a few mammals with hair
that
grows almost continuously throughout life.
To read more:
http://www.signonsandiego.com/news/science/20080313-9999-
1c13hair.html
Or: http://snipurl.com/21oxh
Ulysses Satellite's Heroic Journey Comes to an End
from the Christian Science Monitor
After a nearly 30-year odyssey navigating political shoals and
weathering
solar storms, a 900-pound robotic explorer dubbed Ulysses is slowly
beaming
back its final dispatches.
Sometime in the next few weeks, the craft will fall silent, ending an
era
of solar exploration that has given scientists their first 3-D view of
the
vast magnetic cocoon the sun builds around the solar system.
Ulysses helped unveil processes that have given scientists a deeper
understanding of how solar storms form and move through the solar
system.
It made the first direct measurements of the interstellar dust that the
solar system collects as it plows through interstellar space. And
Ulysses
helped scientists study distant gamma ray bursts - a phenomenon one
astrophysicist has dubbed "the birth-cry of a black hole."
To read more:
http://www.csmonitor.com/2008/0313/p13s01-stss.html
Or: http://snipurl.com/21p1g
Solution Elusive for Awaking in Surgery
from the Philadelphia Inquirer
One patient heard a crunching noise when the surgeon cut through his
bones.
Another felt "white-hot fire pain" as a physician probed his insides,
but
he was unable to speak.
It sounds like grist for a lurid movie, and indeed last fall, Awake
explored this notion of patients waking up, paralyzed, while under
general
anesthesia. But the episodes above, though highly unusual, are all too
real, as described [yesterday] in the august pages of the New England
Journal of Medicine.
For many hospitals, the answer to this "anesthesia awareness" is to use
a
brain monitor so doctors can give more drugs to patients who seem to be
awaking. Yet the new study, which sought to gauge the effectiveness of
the
most common such device, found it might not reduce this risk at all.
To read more:
http://www.philly.com/inquirer/health_science/daily/20080313_Solution_el
usiv
e_for_awaking_in_surgery.html
Or: http://snipurl.com/21p22
Huge Ice Deposits 'Seen' on Mars
from BBC News Online
Large volumes of water ice have probably been detected below Mars'
surface,
far from the planet's polar ice caps, scientists have said. The Sharad
radar experiment, on Nasa's Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter (MRO) spacecraft
made the discovery in Mars' mid-northern latitudes.
The ice is found in distinctive geological structures on Mars' surface
that
are hundreds of metres thick. The radar data suggest that some of these
features consist mostly of ice.
The latest evidence was presented at the 39th Lunar and Planetary
Science
Conference here in Houston, Texas. Sharad (SHAllow RADar) is able to
probe
up to 1km beneath the Martian surface to seek out liquid or surface
water.
To read more:
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/science/nature/7294767.stm
Or: http://snipurl.com/21pcp
Water in Dams, Reservoirs Preventing Sea-Level Rise
from National Geographic News
Dams and reservoirs have stored so much water over the past several
decades
that they have masked surging sea levels, a new study says.
But dam building has slowed, meaning sea levels could rise more quickly
than researchers predicted in a 2007 Intergovernmental Panel on Climate
Change (IPCC) report. Sea levels have been rising for decades, due
mostly
to global warming caused by greenhouse gases.
The oceans are on average about 6.3 inches higher now than in 1930, when
they started a noticeable upward climb. Melting glaciers and ice caps,
along with ocean warming - water expands as it heats up - are the main
culprits behind the increase. But the new study shows that reservoirs
are
also an important factor. Rather than adding to sea-level rise, however,
they have counteracted it by storing more water on land.
To read more:
http://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/2008/03/080313-dams-
water.html
Or: http://snipurl.com/21pd0
Japanese Satellite First to Use Magnetic Memory
from Scientific American
When Japan's SpriteSat research satellite launches in October on its
three-
year mission to study Earth's magnetic field, it will be equipped with a
special type of computer memory that will allow it to operate despite
extreme temperatures and radiation in Earth's upper atmosphere.
The so-called magnetoresistive random access memory (MRAM) made by
Freescale Semiconductor, Inc., in Austin, Tex., (and integrated into the
satellite built by the Angstrom Aerospace Corporation) is smaller,
leaving
more space for transponders and other signal transmitters and receivers.
The reason: thanks to its speed, capacity and durability, MRAM can do
the
job of both flash memory and static random access memory (SRAM) that
normally are part of a satellite's electronics.
To read more:
http://www.sciam.com/article.cfm?id=japanese-satellite-mram-
freescale
Or: http://snipurl.com/21pdc
Indian DNA Links to 6 'Founding Mothers'
from the Los Angeles Times (Registration Required)
NEW YORK (Associated Press) -- Nearly all of today's Native Americans in
North, Central and South America can trace part of their ancestry to six
women whose descendants immigrated around 20,000 years ago, a DNA study
suggests.
Those women left a particular DNA legacy that persists to today in about
about 95 percent of Native Americans, researchers said. The finding does
not mean that only these six women gave rise to the migrants who crossed
into North America from Asia in the initial populating of the continent,
said study co-author Ugo Perego.
The women lived between 18,000 and 21,000 years ago, though not
necessarily
at exactly the same time, he said. The work was published this week by
the
journal PLoS One. Perego is from the Sorenson Molecular Genealogy
Foundation in Salt Lake City and the University of Pavia in Italy.
To read more:
http://www.latimes.com/news/science/wire/sns-ap-native-
american-dna,1,3574987.story
Or: http://snipurl.com/21pdz
Cassini Gets a Cool Shower From an Ice-Spewing Moon
from the New York Times (Registration Required)
No other 310-mile-wide ice ball in the solar system is attracting quite
the
attention as Enceladus, a moon of Saturn.
NASA's Cassini spacecraft had a deliberate near-miss with Enceladus on
Wednesday afternoon, passing about 30 miles above its surface at a speed
of
more than 32,000 miles per hour. Over the next couple of years, Cassini
is
to swing by another seven times, scrutinizing this little moon more than
all of the 50-odd others circling Saturn, except perhaps Titan.
Then again, no other 310-mile-wide ice-ball moon in the solar system has
a
geyser of icy particles shooting out of its south pole.
To read more:
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/03/13/science/space/13plumew.html
Or: http://snipurl.com/21peg