Accra | May 11

IPS - You've heard of solar power, and also wind power. Now, you might start hearing about soil power as well.

Microbial fuel cells (MFCs) that make use of the energy given off by soil microbes are amongst the technologies that hold promise for bringing power to developing states, where electricity is often scarce.

The cells also form part of a project that has just won a grant of almost 200,000 dollars in the 'Development Marketplace' competition, for which results were announced at 'Lighting Africa 2008' this May 5-8 conference took place in the Ghanaian capital of Accra. The project, developed by six students at Harvard University in the United States, was one of 16 winners selected from 52 finalists competing to bring innovative lighting products to the 74 percent of Africans without access to electricity.

The Development Marketplace competition was held under the 'Lighting Africa' campaign, launched towards the end of last year by the World Bank Group. Lighting Africa aims to provide 250 million people on the continent with safe, reliable and economical lighting products and energy services that do not make use of fossil fuels, by 2030.

South African Hugo Van Vuuren, founder and managing partner of Lebônê, says the cells are very simple to make and can be built locally. He sat down with IPS environment correspondent Stephen Leahy to chat about the grant soon after the results of the competition were announced.

Andrew Anthony | May 11

The Observer - IQ levels rocketed in the last century, but argument still rages about how our brain power should be tested, and the roles played by genetics, social conditions, culture and even race. Keen to find out whether he might pass for a genius, our reporter puts himself to the test at Mensa, and asks the question: why are some people smarter than others?

David Perlman | Monte Verde, Chile | May 9

San Francisco Chronicle - Southward those First Americans must have come - all the way from Alaska to South America, generation after generation.

And at the end of their migration route 14,000 years ago, they built their wood-framed tents of hide, cooked their food, found medicines in seaweeds, and settled only a few miles from the sea where shellfish of all kinds abounded.

John Noble Wilford | St. Louis | May 8

NYT - If it has a bill and webbed feet like a duck, lays eggs like a bird or reptile but also produces milk and has a coat of fur like a mammal, what could the genetics of the duck-billed platypus possibly be like? Well, just as peculiar — an amalgam of genes reflecting significant branching and transitions in evolution.

An international scientific team, which announced the first decoding of the platypus genome on Wednesday, said the findings provided “many clues to the function and evolution of all mammalian genomes,” including that of humans, and should “inspire rapid advances in other investigations of mammalian biology and evolution.”

Aliyah Baruchin | London | May 6

NYT - A formerly controversial high-fat diet has proved highly effective in reducing seizures in children whose epilepsy does not respond to medication, British researchers are reporting.

As the first randomized trial of the diet, the new study lends legitimacy to a treatment that has been used since the 1920s but has until recently been dismissed by many doctors as a marginal alternative therapy.

May 7

The Guardian -

Initial calculations showed that there was a chance that the asteroid Apophis would strike Earth at its close approach on April 13 2029. Photograph: Science Photo Library

· US eyes 2000SG344 for Armageddon-type mission
· Rock seen as stepping stone to deep space

It was once considered the most dangerous object in the universe, heading for Earth with the explosive power of 84 Hiroshimas. Now an asteroid called 2000SG344, a lump of rock barely the size of a large yacht, is in the spotlight again, this time as a contender for the next giant leap for mankind.

Nasa engineers have identified the 1.1m tonne asteroid, which in 2000 was given a significant chance of slamming into Earth, as a potential landing site for astronauts, ahead of the Bush administration's plans to venture deeper into the solar system with a crewed voyage to Mars.

The mission - the first to what officials call a Near Earth Object (NEO) - is being floated within the US space agency as a crucial stepping stone to future space exploration.

NYT, By Carl Zimmer, May 6

“Why are humans so smart?” is a question that fascinates scientists. Tadeusz Kawecki, an evolutionary biologist at the University of Fribourg, likes to turn around the question.

“If it’s so great to be smart,” Dr. Kawecki asks, “why have most animals remained dumb?”

Huangzhong Agricultural University, Wuhan, China | May 04, 2008

AFP - Researchers in China have pinpointed an elusive gene that plays a linchpin role in determining the harvest potential of rice, according to a study released on Sunday by the journal Nature Genetics.

Alan Boyle | May 2

MSNBC - One of the nation's top fusion researchers is worried that America is already falling behind in an energy race that won't start for 30 or 40 years.

"We're losing our lead to other countries in the world," Gerald Kulcinski, director of the Fusion Technology Institute at the University of Wisconsin at Madison, told me in his office last week.

How can that be, when most of the world's top technological powers are working together on a $13 billion nuclear fusion research project that hasn't even started construction yet? Kulcinski's answer demonstrates why an "Apollo-scale" effort to solve America's energy woes just might require more thought and time than the original Apollo moon effort.


more at the link...

Nick Bostrom | May

Technology Review - What could be more fascinating than discovering life that had evolved entirely independently of life here on Earth? Many people would also find it heartening to learn that we are not entirely alone in this vast, cold cosmos.

But I hope that our Mars probes discover nothing. It would be good news if we find Mars to be sterile. Dead rocks and lifeless sands would lift my spirit.

Conversely, if we discovered traces of some simple, extinct life-form--some bacteria, some algae--it would be bad news. If we found fossils of something more advanced, perhaps something that looked like the remnants of a trilobite or even the skeleton of a small mammal, it would be very bad news. The more complex the life-form we found, the more depressing the news would be. I would find it interesting, certainly--but a bad omen for the future of the human race.

more at the link

Arms Race in Space
Wed, 30 Apr 2008 11:31:40 -0500
By Marko Beljac - GNN

It's on. It's expensive. And it could destablize the world.

Seth Borenstein | April 26

AP - The polar bear has become an icon of global warming vulnerability, but a new study found an Arctic mammal that may be even more at risk to climate change: the narwhal.

The narwhal, a whale with a long spiral tusk that inspired the myth of the unicorn, edged out the polar bear for the ranking of most potentially vulnerable in a climate change risk analysis of Arctic marine mammals.

Washington | April 24

AP - Human beings may have had a brush with extinction 70,000 years ago, an extensive genetic study suggests. The human population at that time was reduced to small isolated groups in Africa, apparently because of drought, according to an analysis released Thursday.

The report notes that a separate study by researchers at Stanford University estimated the number of early humans may have shrunk as low as 2,000 before numbers began to expand again in the early Stone Age.

* Ian Sample | Italy | * Thursday April 24

* The Guardian, -

Scientists hunting an invisible form of matter that pervades the universe and holds galaxies together claim to have found it underneath a mountain in Italy.

The discovery, at a laboratory built deep into the Gran Sasso mountain in Abruzzo, could end a 70-year race to find the elusive "dark matter" that physicists believe accounts for 90% of the mass of the universe. Its existence was first postulated in 1933 by a Swiss astronomer who observed that distant galaxies must be held together by a huge gravitational pull caused by some apparently invisible form of matter. It gained the name "dark matter" because it does not shine or reflect light.

Carolyn abraham | Toronto | April 24

The Globe and Mail - Scientists have found a way to reliably grow large quantities of heart cells from human embryonic stem cells - a feat that marks a significant step toward generating replacement tissue for failing hearts.

Using a recipe of growth-factor proteins that mimics heart development in a fetus, researchers from Canada, the United States and England were able to transform embryonic stem cells into cardiovascular progenitor cells - the most immature heart cell identified to date.

Since I was having Marvin L. Zimmerman, the author of The Ovum Factor, on my radio show (http://www.blogtalkradio.com/liberalpro you can hear the podcast of the interview there), it meant that I was obliged to peruse the novel that was sent to me by his publicist. The Ovum Factor arrived at my home, and before I got a chance to look through it, my wife picked it up first and wouldn’t let go of it for three days. During that time my dinner was late, I had to do the vacuuming (the dogs are shedding), and I had no real conversation with her as her head was behind the novel. When she finished it, she just looked at me and said “Wow”. That meant only one thing… I had to read it.

Nicholas Birch | Istanbul | April 23

The Guardian - As a child, Klaus Schmidt used to grub around in caves in his native Germany in the hope of finding prehistoric paintings. Thirty years later, a member of the German Archaeological Institute, he found something infinitely more important: a temple complex almost twice as old as anything comparable on the planet.

"This place is a supernova," said Schmidt, standing under a lone tree on a windswept hilltop 35 miles north of Turkey's border with Syria. "Within a minute of first seeing it I knew I had two choices: go away and tell nobody, or spend the rest of my life working here."

New York Times, By Carl Zimmer, April 22

We humans differ from one another in too many ways to count. We are shy and bold, freckled and pale, truckers and hairdressers, Buddhists and Presbyterians. We get cancers in the third grade and live for a century. We have fingerprints.

Scientists have only a rough understanding of how this diversity arises. Some of it stems from the different experiences we have, from our time in the womb on through childhood and into our mature years. These molding influences include things like the books we read and the air we breathe. Our diversity also stems from our genes — the millions of typographical differences between one genome and another.

Geoffrey Lean | April 20

Independent - Major new study shows that modified soya produces 10 per cent less food than its conventional equivalent

Genetic modification actually cuts the productivity of crops, an authoritative new study shows, undermining repeated claims that a switch to the controversial technology is needed to solve the growing world food crisis.

The study – carried out over the past three years at the University of Kansas in the US grain belt – has found that GM soya produces about 10 per cent less food than its conventional equivalent, contradicting assertions by advocates of the technology that it increases yields.

Professor Barney Gordon, of the university's department of agronomy, said he started the research – reported in the journal Better Crops – because many farmers who had changed over to the GM crop had "noticed that yields are not as high as expected even under optimal conditions". He added: "People were asking the question 'how come I don't get as high a yield as I used to?'"

He grew a Monsanto GM soybean and an almost identical conventional variety in the same field. The modified crop produced only 70 bushels of grain per acre, compared with 77 bushels from the non-GM one.

Robin McKie | April 20

The Observer - Researchers will gather in London this week to outline plans to promote one of the most audacious, and controversial, scientific ideas of the 21st century - synthetic biology.

The new discipline, established by scientists such as human genome pioneer Craig Venter, involves stripping microbes down to their basic genetic constituents so they can be reassembled and manipulated to create new life forms. These organisms can then be exploited to manufacture drugs and fuels or to act as bio-sensors inside the body.

However, some researchers warn that synthetic biology - which is accelerating at a dramatic pace - also poses dangers. In particular, they fear it may already be possible to create deadly pathogens, such as polio or smallpox viruses, from pieces of synthetic DNA ordered over the internet. In future, completely new - and highly dangerous - microbes could be made this way.

April 10

U Va. - Air pollution from power plants and automobiles is destroying the fragrance of flowers and thereby inhibiting the ability of pollinating insects to follow scent trails to their source, a new University of Virginia study indicates. This could partially explain why wild populations of some pollinators, particularly bees – which need nectar for food – are declining in several areas of the world, including California and the Netherlands.

The study appears online in the journal Atmospheric Environment.

"The scent molecules produced by flowers in a less polluted environment, such as in the 1800s, could travel for roughly 1,000 to 1,200 meters; but in today's polluted environment downwind of major cites, they may travel only 200 to 300 meters," said Jose D. Fuentes, a professor of environmental sciences at the University of Virginia and a co-author of the study. "This makes it increasingly difficult for pollinators to locate the flowers."

April 17

BBC - The first draft of a book which changed the world's attitude to evolution is available for the first time online.

Papers which led to Charles Darwin's theory of evolution were previously only available to scholars at Cambridge University's library.

The draft notes are among 20,000 archive items created by the 19th Century naturalist during his lifetime.

Dr John van Wyhe, a Darwin specialist at Cambridge University, said: "He changed our understanding of nature.

Angela Balakrishnan | Potsdam, Germany | April 16

The Guardian - NASA has been outsmarted by a German schoolboy who corrected its estimates of the chances of an asteroid colliding with Earth, it was reported today.

The German Potsdamer Neueste Nachrichten newspaper said 13-year-old Nico Marquardt came across the NASA miscalculation after conducting a study as part of a regional science competition.

Richard O'Mara | Baltimore, MD | April 15

CSM - Deciphering latent script on ancient parchment makes curator Will Noel's job an Indiana Jones-style adventure

This is about an ancient book called The Archimedes Codex, bought for $2.2 million in October, 1998, at an auction in New York City by an anonymous collector who sent it to the Walters Art Museum, here to be restored, conserved, and probed for its content. It was thought to contain mathematical theses conceived by the genius of Syracuse (287-212 BC), whose name it bears, ideas not found anywhere else in the world.

Alicia Chang | Los Angeles | April 14

AP -

California faces an almost certain risk of being rocked by a strong earthquake by 2037, according to the first statewide temblor forecast, released today.

New calculations reveal there is a 99.7 percent chance a magnitude 6.7 quake or larger will strike in the next 30 years.

The odds of such an event are higher in southern California than northern California—97 percent versus 93 percent. click pic to enlarge

(Related: "Major Quake May Strike Bay Area Next Year, Experts Say" [December 12, 2007].)