Hydrocarbons In The Deep Earth?

This artistic view of the Earth's interior shows hydrocarbons forming in the upper mantle and transported through deep faults to shallower depths in the Earth's crust. The inset shows a snapshot of the methane dissociation reaction studied in this work. (Credit: Image courtesy A. Kolesnikov and V. Kutcherov)

From Science Daily:

ScienceDaily (July 27, 2009) — The oil and gas that fuels our homes and cars started out as living organisms that died, were compressed, and heated under heavy layers of sediments in the Earth's crust. Scientists have debated for years whether some of these hydrocarbons could also have been created deeper in the Earth and formed without organic matter. Now for the first time, scientists have found that ethane and heavier hydrocarbons can be synthesized under the pressure-temperature conditions of the upper mantle —the layer of Earth under the crust and on top of the core.

The research was conducted by scientists at the Carnegie Institution's Geophysical Laboratory, with colleagues from Russia and Sweden, and is published in the July 26, advanced online issue of Nature Geoscience.

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Brain's Potential Explained by Big New Idea

From Live Magazine:

Different species and individuals have limits as to what they can learn. For instance, you can't teach your dog to read. But what sets these boundaries?

According to a new hypothesis, components of an organism's brain cortex may help determine how well that organism — be it dog, monkey or human — learns and improves its cognitive skills.
The cortex is your brain's outer layer — the exterior part you can see if you look at a picture of the whole organ.

The new idea posits that small sets of neuronal cells in the cortex, called cortical modules, determine our "cognitive plasticity," that is, our capacity to learn new ways of thinking, or improve upon old ones.

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Food Dye 'May Ease Spinal Injury'

From The BBC:

A dye similar to that used in sweets may potentially minimise the severity of spinal cord injuries.

A cascade of molecular changes triggered in the hours following an initial injury can cause further severe damage to the spinal cord.

But US researchers found this can be halted by using a dye known as Brilliant Blue G (BBG).

However, rats given the treatment in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences study turned blue.

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Like Tarzan, Orangutans Glide Through Trees

DLILLC / Corbis

From Time Magazine:

Husky and hairy, with the flaming orange coloring of a bad dye job, the orangutan doesn't look like the most agile of primates. But in fact these great apes, native to the jungles of Malaysia and Indonesia, climb and swing nimbly through the canopy more than 100 feet in the air, their fleet-footed acrobatics allowing them to make their home in the treetops and access remote food sources, like the fruit at the very ends of branches.

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One Quarter Of Giant Panda Habitat Lost In Sichuan Quake

From CNN:

(CNN) -- The earthquake in Sichuan, southwestern China, last May left around 69,000 people dead and 15 million people displaced. Now ecologists have assessed the earthquake's impact on biodiversity and the habitat for some of the last existing wild giant pandas.

According to the report published in "Frontiers in Ecology and the Environment", 23 percent of the pandas' habitat in the study area was destroyed, and fragmentation of the remaining habitat could hinder panda reproduction.

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Sleeping in Space is Easy, But There's No Shower

From Space:

Astronauts may have some tough jobs in orbit - like building a $100 billion International Space Station - but apparently getting a goodnight's sleep isn't one of them.

In fact, sleeping is pretty comfy in space because you can slumber without gravity's incessant pull, according to Canadian astronaut Julie Payette, who has been living aboard the linked space station and shuttle Endeavour for more than a week.

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Crowd Sees Spaceship Launcher Fly

WhiteKnightTwo follows two photos planes as it circles Monday, July 27, 2009 above the Experimental Aircraft Association's annual AirVenture convention in Oshkosh, Wis. British billionaire Sir Richard Branson hopes to use WhiteKnightTwo to carry a spaceship into the upper atmosphere. The spaceship would then detach and rocket into space. Branson hopes to use the system to create a commercial space travel business. (AP Photo/Mike Roemer)

From Yahoo News/AP:

OSHKOSH, Wis. – Hundreds of earthlings turned their faces to the sky Monday to see an airplane built to launch a ship into space, watching the gleaming white craft soar overhead.

The twin-fuselage craft named WhiteKnightTwo, looking like two planes connected at the wing tips, circled the runway several times before touching down at the Experimental Aircraft Association's Air Venture annual gathering.

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Australia's Swine Flu Fight Holds Lessons For World, Say Scientists

Credit: AFP

From COSMOS:

MELBOURNE: Hard-hit Australia has become a global case study for swine flu, with Europe and the United States watching closely as it battles the disease in the southern hemisphere winter.

The outbreak began here in early May, as Australia was entering its annual flu season, speeding up infections so much that in a month Melbourne was the world's 'swine flu capital' with the highest number of cases per capita in the world.

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Photo: Docked Space Shuttle And Station Cross The Sun

From Wired News:

A photographer has captured a stunning photo of the space shuttle Endeavor docked with the International Space Station crossing the face of the sun.

You couldn’t just aim your digital camera at the sky and get results like this. Thierry Legault, who is known for his amazing astronomical imagery, uses specialized solar filters to capture the images.

When the shuttle docked with the ISS on July 15, the combined crews set a new record for space-vehicle occupancy. The 13 people aboard the station are the most that have been aboard the same vehicle in space. The astronauts have installed a “porch” on the space station for space-exposed experiments. The new addition effectively completes the Japanese Kibo laboratory.

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Fertile Crescent 'Will Disappear This Century'

Photo: The Fertile Crescent is left dry as Turkish dams reduce the Tigris and Euphrates rivers to a trickle (Image: AP Photo/Hadi Mizban)

From The New Scientist:

Is it the final curtain for the Fertile Crescent? This summer, as Turkish dams reduce the Tigris and Euphrates rivers to a trickle, farmers abandon their desiccated fields across Iraq and Syria, and efforts to revive the Mesopotamian marshes appear to be abandoned, climate modellers are warning that the current drought is likely to become permanent. The Mesopotamian cradle of civilisation seems to be returning to desert.

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Containing The Sahara With Bacteria-Built Walls

From Popsci.com:

Bacteria that construct walls out of sand could save a third of the world's population from desertification

The Sahara, as well as other deserts around the world, is growing, in a process called desertification that ends up displacing people and crops. The situation has become drastic in a number of sub-Saharan countries. One suggestion from architect Magnus Larsson at the recent TED Global conference suggests constructing a massive wall, 3,700 miles long -- built from the sand itself. The trick would be to use bacterial labor to build it.

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Transparent Aluminum Is ‘New State Of Matter’

Experimental set-up at the FLASH laser used to discover the new state of matter. (Credit: Image courtesy of University of Oxford)

From Science Daily:

ScienceDaily (July 27, 2009) — Oxford scientists have created a transparent form of aluminium by bombarding the metal with the world’s most powerful soft X-ray laser. ‘Transparent aluminium’ previously only existed in science fiction, featuring in the movie Star Trek IV, but the real material is an exotic new state of matter with implications for planetary science and nuclear fusion.

In the journal Nature Physics an international team, led by Oxford University scientists, report that a short pulse from the FLASH laser ‘knocked out’ a core electron from every aluminium atom in a sample without disrupting the metal’s crystalline structure. This turned the aluminium nearly invisible to extreme ultraviolet radiation.

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Divorce Hurts Health Even After Remarriage

From Live Science:

Divorce can wreak havoc on a person's health, even after remarriage, a new study finds.

Scientists have known that marriage can boost a man's health and augment a women's purse. The new study shows that divorce or losing a spouse to death can exact an immediate and long-lasting toll on those mental and physical gains.

"That period during the time that this event is taking place is extremely stressful," said study researcher Linda Waite, a sociologist and director of the Center on Aging at the National Opinion Research Center at the University of Chicago. "People ignore their health; they're stressed, which is itself a health risk; they're less likely to go to the doctor; they're less likely to exercise; they're sleeping poorly."

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My Comment: My friends who are divorce will probably agree with this.

Gray Hair Caused by Stress (Cell Stress, That Is)

DNA damage from chemicals, ultraviolet light, and ionizing radiation can turn hair gray (above, an elderly man in Lincoln, Nebraska), according a June 2009 study that examined hair color cells in mice. Photograph by Joel Sartore/NGS

From National Geographic:

Work or personal stress may make you want to pull your hair out, but it's cellular stress that actually turns it gray, a new study has found.

That's because DNA is "under constant attack" by damaging agents, such as chemicals, ultraviolet light, and ionizing radiation, according to study lead author Emi Nishimura of Tokyo Medical and Dental University.

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Gentlemen, You've Never Had It So Good: Women Are Getting More Attractive In Evolutionary 'Beauty Race'

From The Daily Mail:

They are called the fairer sex – and it appears it is becoming increasingly true.

Women are gradually becoming more attractive in an evolutionary ‘beauty race’, according to scientific research.

Beautiful women have more children than their plainer counterparts, and a higher proportion of those children are girls, a study claims.

These daughters, once adult, also tend to be attractive and so the pattern continues.

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A Vaccine For Colon Cancer

Colon cancer: This x-ray image shows a barium enema in a patient with cancer of the bowel. Credit: Centers for Disease Control

From Technology Review:

A new approach to preventing cancer teaches the immune system to seek and destroy emerging tumors.

A cancer vaccine with a twist is making headway in clinical trials at the University of Pittsburgh School of Medicine. Rather than targeting a cancer-related virus--the way Gardasil targets human papillomavirus to prevent some cervical cancers--the new vaccine triggers the immune system to attack a faulty protein that's often abundant in colorectal cancer tissue and precancerous tissue.

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Human History Written in Stone and Blood

Figure 1. Hunter-gatherer people living in southern Africa in the Middle Stone Age left behind artifacts in natural rock shelters and caves. At top is Sibudu Cave, located about 40 kilometers north of Durban. Below that is Ntloana Tsoana, a rock shelter located on the south bank of the Phuthiatsana River in the Lesotho highlands. At bottom, right of center in the photo, is Blombos Cave, located about 300 kilometers east of Cape Town. That’s where archaeologists found artifacts representing innovative behavior previously thought to have emerged in Europe much later. Improved dating of such artifacts helped the authors evaluate what contemporary factors might have contributed to the origins of modern human behavior.

Top photograph courtesy of Lyn Wadley. Middle photograph courtesy of Richard Roberts. Bottom photograph courtesy of Chris Henshilwood.

From American Scientist:

Two bursts of human innovation in southern Africa during the Middle Stone Age may be linked to population growth and early migration off the continent.

In the past decade it has become clear that symbolic expression associated with modern human behavior began in Africa, not Europe. And it occurred tens of thousands of years earlier than was once thought. Answering why is difficult. A first step was more reliable dating of when culturally and technologically advanced people lived during the Middle Stone Age in the south of Africa. Zenobia Jacobs and Richard G. Roberts accomplished that dating, which prompted them to reject climate change as a primary cause for the advancements. Instead, drawing on genetic research, they embrace population growth as a likely, key influence.

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GM Crop Trials Start Again In Britain In 'Secret': Report

Photo illustration of potatoes. Genetically modified crops are being grown in Britain for the first time in 12 months after controversial trials were resumed without alerting the public, a newspaper reported Monday. (AFP/File/Omar Torres)

From Yahoo News/AFP:

LONDON (AFP) – Genetically modified crops are being grown in Britain for the first time in 12 months after controversial trials were resumed without alerting the public, a newspaper reported Monday.

Cultivation of a field of potatoes designed to be resistant to pests was abandoned more than a year ago when environmental protesters ripped up the crop, the Daily Telegraph said.

But, without alerting the public, the project near Tadcaster in northern England has been restarted, prompting warnings from green groups that local farms and residents could be put at risk, the newspaper said.

One group accused the government of trying to "slip it under the radar."

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Red Wine Increases Women's Sexual Desire

Chemical compounds found in red wine may improve blood flow Photo: GETTY

From The Telegraph:

A glass or two of red wine may increase a woman's libido, a scientific study has found.

Researchers concluded that levels of sexual desire were higher in women who were moderate drinkers of red wine than in their counterparts who preferred other alcoholic drinks, or were teetotal.

One theory put forward by the team of Italian doctors who carried out the study is that chemical compounds found in red wine may improve sexual functioning by increasing blood flow to key areas of the body.

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Climate Study Puts Incas’ Success Down To 400 Years Of Warm Weather

The Inca City of Machu Picchu was built during the 400-year warm spell,
scientists say. (Paolo Aguilar/EPA)

From Times Online:

Supreme military organisation and a flair for agricultural invention are traditionally credited for the rise of the Incas. However, their success may have owed more to a spell of good weather — a spell that lasted for more than 400 years.

According to new research, an increase in temperature of several degrees between AD1100 and 1533 allowed vast areas of mountain land to be used for agriculture for the first time. This fuelled the territorial expansion of the Incas, which at its peak stretched from the modern Colombian border to the middle of Chile.

“Yes, they were highly organised, and they had a sophisticated hierarchical system, but it wouldn’t have counted a jot without being underpinned by the warming of the climate,” says Dr Alex Chepstow-Lusty, a palaeo-ecologist from the French Institute for Andean Studies in Lima, Peru.

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