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

Today's Headlines - March 4, 2008

Sociable, and Smart

from the New York Times (Registration Required)

For the past two decades, Kay E. Holekamp has been chronicling the lives
of
spotted hyenas on the savannas of southern Kenya. She has watched cubs
emerge from their dens and take their place in the hyena hierarchy; she
has
seen alliances form and collapse.

She has observed clan wars, in which dozens of hyenas have joined
together
to defend their hunting grounds against invaders. "It's like following a
soap opera," said Dr. Holekamp, a professor at Michigan State
University.

... She does not think of the hyenas as long-eared people running around
on
all fours. But the lives of spotted hyenas, she has concluded, share
some
profound similarities with our own. In both species, a complex social
world
has driven the evolution of a big, complex brain.

To read more: http://www.nytimes.com/2008/03/04/science/04hyen.html

Or: http://snipurl.com/20xyy


Brain Scans Support Cultural Differences in Perception

from the Boston Globe (Registration Required)

...New brain research is adding high-tech evidence to what lower-tech
psychology experiments have found for years: Culture can affect not just
language and custom, but how people experience the world at stunningly
basic levels - what they see when they look at a city street, for
example,
or even how they perceive a simple line in a square.

Western culture, they have found, conditions people to think of
themselves
as highly independent entities. And when looking at scenes, Westerners
tend
to focus on central objects more than on their surroundings.

In contrast, East Asian cultures stress interdependence. When Easterners
take in a scene, they tend to focus more on the context as well as the
object: the whole block, say, rather than the BMW parked in the
foreground.

To read more:
http://www.boston.com/news/science/articles/2008/03/03/cultural_insights
/

Or: http://snipurl.com/20xz1


Hefty Find: Density Has Starring Role in Making Stars Massive

from Science News

From their earliest moments, massive stars play the heavy. As infants,
their fierce winds and harsh ultraviolet radiation tear away at the
fragile
gas clouds in which their lighter-weight cousins are born.

Eventually, these behemoths explode, dumping vast amounts of energy into
space along with an assortment of heavy elements.

Yet for all the drama, astronomers aren't quite sure how these rare,
oversized stars form. ... In the Feb. 28 Nature, two theorists offer a
partial solution to the puzzle. [Researchers] ... calculate that the gas
in
star-forming regions must have a minimum density in order to produce
massive stars.

To read more: http://www.sciencenews.org/articles/20080301/fob3.asp

Or: http://snipurl.com/20xz4


Intimate Rivalries: A Mixture of Pride and Envy

from the Washington Post (Registration Required)

The young woman had done well in a recent exam, but was feeling awful
because she had just found out that a close friend had done even better.

When she confided in social psychologist Abraham Tesser, he immediately
recognized that the woman was standing at the fault line of two emotions
that each say something very interesting about human nature.

When someone we know or love excels at something, we take pride in her
accomplishment .... But when we are involved in the same activity as
that
friend or intimate partner -- and feel bested by that person -- we can
simultaneously feel envious and threatened, in a way we would not if the
star performer were a stranger.

To read more: http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-
dyn/content/article/2008/03/02/AR2008030201674.html

Or: http://snipurl.com/20xz8


Are Immune System Molecules Brain-Builders - and Destroyers?

from Scientific American

About five years ago, a team of Stanford University scientists set out
to
determine how the developing brain establishes its final set of
synapses,
connections through which cells of the nervous system communicate with
one
another and with nonneural cells.

But when they tried to pinpoint the genes involved, something unexpected
happened: they stumbled on C1q, a gene for a protein important in the
body's immune system.

"We were like 'Wait a minute - this an immune system molecule. What's
this
doing in the brain?'" recalls lead researcher Ben Barres, a
neurobiologist. "It stunned us."

To read more: http://www.sciam.com/article.cfm?id=are-immune-system-
molecules-build-brains

Or: http://snipurl.com/20xz9


Wave-Power Proposals Alarm Locals

from the Christian Science Monitor

Fort Bragg, Calif. - From roadless villages in Alaska to remote bends in
the Mississippi River, developers are staking claim to thousands of
miles
of America's oceans and rivers to test devices that use waves and
currents
to produce electric power.

Their experiments are launching a new industry that has the potential to
supply up to 10 percent of America's electric needs. But critics say
rapid
federal approval of the exclusive right to conduct these experiments
amounts to a private seizure of communities' waterfronts.

"This process, especially in Oregon, feels like a new Klondike gold
rush,"
says environmentalist Richard Charter, a longtime leader in ocean-
protection efforts. "There are people filing claims, people jumping
claims,
and nobody looking at the big picture. The most amazing part of this
power
gold rush is that it seems to be happening entirely under the national
radar."

To read more: http://www.csmonitor.com/2008/0304/p03s03-usgn.html

Or: http://snipurl.com/20xza


Cool View of Science at Meeting on Warming

from the New York Times (Registration Required)

Several hundred people sat in a fifth-floor ballroom at the Marriott
Marquis Hotel in Times Square on Monday eating pasta and trying hard to
prove that they had unraveled the established science showing that
humans
are warming the world in potentially disruptive ways.

One challenge they faced was that even within their own ranks, the group
-
among them government and university scientists, antiregulatory
campaigners
and Congressional staff members - displayed a dizzying range of ideas on
what was, or was not, influencing climate.

...The main targets at the meeting were former Vice President Al Gore,
who
has portrayed global warming as a "planetary emergency," and the
Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, which has issued four sets of
reports assessing the human impact on climate over 20 years.

To read more:
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/03/04/science/earth/04climate.html

Or: http://snipurl.com/20xzb


The Cadillac of Mars Rovers

from the Los Angeles Times (Registration Required)

Wider than a Hummer, tall enough to roll over boulders and toting a
laser "ray gun" that can zap rocks at 30 feet, NASA's next-generation
Mars
rover looks like something you would paint a skull and crossbones on and
enter in a demolition derby.

Compared to Sojourner, the dowdy little robot that tooled around on Mars
for three months in 1997, the atomic-powered Mars Science Laboratory
rover
being built at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory in La Canada Flintridge is
an
interplanetary beast.

"Nothing like this has ever been sent to Mars before," said Joy Crisp,
49,
deputy project scientist for the new mission. But then, this new rover
has
a big job: settling once and for all whether the conditions on ancient
Mars
were suitable for life.

To read more: http://www.latimes.com/news/science/la-sci-
giantrover4mar04,1,2571143.story

Or: http://snipurl.com/20xzc


Oldest Primate Fossil in North America Discovered

from National Geographic News

A newly found species small enough to fit in the palm of a hand is North
America's oldest known primate, according to a new study. Christopher
Beard, a paleontologist at the Carnegie Museum of Natural History in
Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, recently discovered fossils of the 55-million-
year-old creature on the Gulf Coastal Plain of Mississippi.

Named Teilhardina magnoliana, the animal is related to similarly aged
fossils from China, Europe, and Wyoming's Big Horn Basin. "They are
very,
very primitive relatives of living primates called tarsiers, which live
today in Southeast Asia," Beard said.

But the layer of rock in which the new fossils were found raises the
controversial possibility that primates appeared in North America before
their close relatives showed up in Europe, as previous studies had
suggested, Beard added.

To read more: http://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/2008/03/080303-
american-primate.html

Or: http://snipurl.com/20xzd


Why Flu Strikes in Cold Weather

from BBC News Online

Scientists believe they have uncovered a key reason why flu viruses tend
to
strike in cold weather. They found the viruses coat themselves in fatty
material that hardens to a gel, protecting them in the cold.

This coating melts in the higher temperatures of the respiratory tract,
allowing the virus to infect cells. The US National Institutes of Health
team hope their study, which features in the journal Nature Chemical
Biology, could lead to new treatments.

However, a UK expert said the discovery did not explain why some flu
viruses also thrived in tropical climates.

To read more: http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/health/7276447.stm

Or: http://snipurl.com/20xzg