Politics

Nature is offering free access to its Focus on human origins papers. This includes free access to journal articles relating to the recent Toumaï skull and a paper from 1925 about Australopithecus africanus. Click here for the Evolution/Morphology forum.

MSNBC reports: STORY: EDISON HISTORIAN Jack Stanley, who is leading the dig, said a crevice lined with craggy red bricks is believed to lead into the basement of the now-destroyed 1882 building that housed Edison’s library and stood next to the famed laboratory. The team plans to unearth the site Saturday. A team of diggers from nearby Monmouth College working at the 34-acre laboratory complex site found a hole they thought was only a sinkhole until they identified it as the building site from photographs and a survey done by Henry Ford in 1928. ..... The dig is part of a project to underline Edison’s historical importance. Plans call for building a n…

Science has published a paper (reported by the BBC) detailing the cDNA poliovirus being synthesized by assembling oligonucleotides of +/- polarity. The assembly was then transcribed by RNA polymerase into viral RNA. The viral DNA then paralyzed and killed test subjects, and CD155 receptor-specific antibodies confirmed it having the properties of polio. This marks our first successful attempt to synthesize a virus. Also of interest, the sequence they used was obtained from a public mail-order service and a method downloaded from the internet. Click here for the Biochemistry/Molecular Biology forum. Click here for the Genetics forum.

CNN is carrying this story: No further comment on my part should be needed.

The New England Journal of Medicine is reporting that patients who underwent placebo knee surgery for osteoarthritis were just as likely to report pain relief as those who had the real procedure. In other words, the surgery is worthless. Click here for the Medicine Forum.

Akio Mori, a professor in Nihon University's College of Humanities and Sciences, conducted a study which claims prolonged use of video games causes less beta wave activity in the prefrontal region of the brain, the region which is responsible for emotion and creativity. The study links this decrease in activity to loss of concentration, having a short temper, and decline in social skills. Personally, I'd say it was the monitor radiation rather than the content of the games themselves responsible for this, if this study is even peer reviewed and found to be valid, which I doubt. Click read more to discuss this article. Click here for the Neuroscience forum.

CNN is reporting on an article in the July 10th Edition of Astrophysical Journal letters that quasar APM 08279+5255 has an iron content far greater than it should, implying the age of the universe to be older than previously suspected, given that this quasar is 13.5 billion light years away. Click read more to discuss this article. Click here for the Astrophysics Forum Click here for the Cosmology forum.

CNN has an interesting article about how scientists are testing to see if neutrinos have mass. The experiment will cost 170 million dollars. The article states: The beam will be fired from a particle accelerator near Chicago toward Soudan where it will pass through magnetized sheets of metal. Because of their elusive nature, most of the neutrinos in the beam will pass right through the solid rock between the two places. Most will pass through Soudan's metal plates as well, but a few will collide with atoms in the sheets and computers will record and document the interaction. In other words, "We're going to take a sawed-off shotgun and blast a bunch of neu…

In an upcoming issue of Science, Froehlich et al. open the door to a new understand of how light works in the body. From the abstract in Science Express:

BBC News is reporting that European Southern Observatory group (ESO) is negotiating rights to a place in chili to build this monster. The main mirror would be 100m across, and the predicted resolution is 40 times better than hubble's. It will take 15 years to build and approx 1 billion euros.

An article in Nature Science Update talks about the recent finding of a pattern in ant cemeteries with the activator-inhibitor mechanism. It has long been established certain occurences in nature following Turing patterns, mathematical equations that accurately describe the structure of seemingly random events. The ants use of this in the patterns of burying their dead is the first example of such a pattern in higher organisms. Click read more to discuss this article. Click here for the Biology forum.

A new discovery implying to be a new "last resort" to security defenses on government computer systems and really important servers. The quote below is from Oracle Magazine "Those wishing to see a pilfered peripheral taken dead rather than alive may be encouraged by the work of a team of chemists at University Of California, San Diego. Researchers have created computer chips that can ruin the circuitry in anything from a spy plane to a cell phone. It involves applying an oxidizing chemical alled gadolinium nitrate to a permeable silicon chip. When an appropriate electric charge is applyed to the chemical--a detonation command sent to a laptop computer, for example--t…

Nanotechweb has an article describing a nanofabricated amperometrical detector that Cornell researchers are using to explore the process by which chemicals such as neurotransmitters are excreted from cells. The original paper appears in Nanotechnology, June 2002 Click read more to discuss this article. Click here for the Biochemistry/Molecular Biology forum.

Wake Forest Univeristy researchers have a press release detailing an ion channel in the thalamus that increases in activity with moderate alcohol consumption, and is deactivated by higher amounts. This apparently explains why alcohol lets you sleep better at night, but disrupts sleep in the early morning. Click read more to discuss this article. Click here for the Neuroscience forum.

Space.com has an article about the possible observation of a gas giant planet forming. A large deuterium concentration was found about 10AU from HD 141569. Oringinal Paper in Nature, 4 July 2002 Click read more to discuss this article Click here for the Astronomy forum. Click here for the Astrophyscis forum.

New Scientist is reporting that only keeping big fish can cause them to evolve into smaller fish in just four generations. . Bad news for us fisherman. Journal reference: Science (vol 297, p 94).

According to this article on Nature Science Update, scientists at MIT have constructed a prototype of a nitric oxide sensor using a polymer that is lined with Co ions that change the conductivity of the chain when NO bonds with them. NO causes blood vessels to dilate, and also is released by some CNS neurons death, which is associated with neurodegenerative disorders such as Alzheimer's. Detecting NO levels is useful for diagnosing this and various other diseases.