German bank 'blown up by robbers in botched raid'

Suspected robbers in Germany appear to have miscalculated the quantity of explosives needed to blow their way into a rural bank.

The building housing the bank in the northern village of Malliss was largely destroyed by an overnight explosion.

The bank's cash machine survived intact and the suspected thieves are not thought to have made away with any money, Germany's Welt Online reported.

No-one was injured, though the blast damaged nearby cars and buildings.

Investigators were working on the assumption that robbers had placed their explosives, possibly made from petrol or acetylene, at the entrance to the bank, German broadcaster NDR said.

The presence of a delivery van near the site of the explosion indicated that the suspected thieves may have intended to drive off with the cash dispenser, local media reported.

via BBC News - German bank 'blown up by robbers in botched raid'.

Meteorites Land in SoHo's Evolution Store

Meteorites have landed in New York City's SoHo neighborhood.

But fear not, fashionistas and art lovers: The boutiques and galleries are perfectly intact. The meteorites arrived last week, not from outer space but from Sweden, and they are for sale at a small shop called Evolution.

The 4.5-billion-year-old alien rocks, known as Muonionalusta meteorites, came from a strewfield first discovered in 1906 by two children tending cattle in a pasture. While kicking stones, they found one that stood out from the rest and brought it back to their village. It was later identified as an iron meteorite.

Since then, meteorite hunters have found pieces in the area and sold them to dealers and stores like Evolution.

But how can the casual shopper be sure they're really rocks that journeyed through the solar system and crashed to Earth before ending up in the middle of SoHo -- and not just rocks?

"The crystalline structure of the iron that they're made out of -- which is typical of meteorites -- you don't see that in iron on the Earth because the crystalline structure can't form this way here," store manager Alex Minott explained to AOL News. "The exterior surface of the meteorite is covered in something called the fusion crust -- when the meteorite passes through the upper atmosphere and gets heated up."

As for the age, the 4.5 billion years is merely an estimate. But give or take a billion years, it's still ridiculously old.

"It's based on what is currently believed by scientists about the origin of the solar system, that iron meteorites of these types are formed roughly coevally with the planets," Minott said. "And since the Earth formed about 4.5 billion years ago, we put in about the same date. No one can say exactly, but the iron in the solar system seems to have formed all around the same time." ...

via Meteorites Land in SoHo's Evolution Store - AOL News.

Farmers brace for grasshopper invasion

A major infestation of grasshoppers could descend this summer on Wyoming, Montana, Nebraska and the Dakotas, damaging rangeland and crops, ranchers, farmers and scientists say.

In some places, this summer could be the worst for grasshoppers since the mid-1980s, said Charles Brown, a grasshopper suppression specialist with the U.S. Department of Agriculture.

"There is the potential for widespread outbreaks this summer," Brown said. "We could see grasshopper levels several times of what you would see in a normal year."

Less severe but significant outbreaks are possible in Nevada, Utah and Idaho, according to the USDA.

TECH: Insect wing evolution revealed in recycled genes

The threat assessment is based on results from the USDA's annual survey of adult grasshopper populations conducted in late summer, Brown said. High numbers recorded last year were part of a natural buildup of grasshopper populations that occurs periodically. Those adult grasshoppers laid eggs that could hatch bugs that cause a much bigger problem this summer, he said.

Last year was trouble enough, said Marge West, whose family operates a 10,000-acre cattle, wheat and alfalfa ranch northwest of Gillette, Wyo.

"Last year we lost probably a third of our rangeland," said West, 74. "If it's any worse this year, we're going to have a real disaster."

via Farmers brace for grasshopper invasion - USATODAY.com.

Online record of 'religious dissenters' published for first time

The records of religious dissenters, including William Blake, Daniel Defoe and JS Mill, have been published online for the first time.

The first tranche of the “Non Conformist Registers” has been put online detailing the hundreds of thousands of people who shook up the established order with alternative ideas over the past 225 years.

The database, which goes live on Wednesday, discloses those who refused to conform to the doctrine of the established Anglican Church including Methodists, Presbyterians, Congregationalists, Baptists and Quakers.

The Quakers were the first religious group to denounce slavery while Methodists were great advocates of women’s rights.

More than 224,000 names are included in the register, which dates from the late 17th century, which also detail baptisms, marriages and burial inscriptions.

The digitised papers originally come from the London Metropolitan Archives, which is run by the City of London authority and were compiled by Ancestry.co.uk, a family history website.

Some of those who feature in the archive include George Fox (1624-1691), founder of the Religious Society of Friends (Quakers), Daniel Defoe (1659-1731), the author of Robinson Crusoe who was the son of Presbyterian nonconformists, William Blake (1757-1827), one of Britain's greatest artists, and John Stuart Mill (1806-1873), the British philosopher and politician.

As British non conformists were not recorded by the state until 1837, these documents are, for the most part, the only records of these non conformists in existence. They also form part of the London Historical Records.

Experts say non conformists, who were simply labelled if they listed themselves as being part of “dissenting organisations”, were often intellectuals and freethinkers, who can largely be credited with being behind modern civil liberties. ...

via Online record of 'religious dissenters' published for first time - Telegraph.

Video Gamers Can Control Dreams, Study Suggests

Playing video games before bedtime may give people an unusual level of awareness and control in their dreams, LiveScience has learned.

That ability to shape the alternate reality of dream worlds might not match mind-bending Hollywood films such as "The Matrix," but it could provide an edge when fighting nightmares or even mental trauma.

Dreams and video games both represent alternate realities, according to Jayne Gackenbach, a psychologist at Grant MacEwan University in Canada. But she pointed out that dreams arise biologically from the human mind, while video games are technologically driven by computers and gaming consoles.

"If you're spending hours a day in a virtual reality, if nothing else it's practice," said Jayne Gackenbach, a psychologist at Grant MacEwan University in Canada. "Gamers are used to controlling their game environments, so that can translate into dreams."

Gackenbach first became interested in video games in the 1990s, when she watched her son repeatedly kiss a new Nintendo gaming console on the way home from a Toys "R" Us. She had previously focused on studying lucid dreams, in which people have awareness of being in a dream.

The last decade of game-related research has since yielded several surprises, although the findings represent suggestive associations rather than definitive proof, Gackenbach cautioned. She is scheduled to discuss her work as a featured speaker at the Sixth Annual Games for Health Conference in Boston this week.

via Video Gamers Can Control Dreams, Study Suggests | LiveScience.

Jayne is great. I've been a fan since I read Conscious Mind, Sleeping Brain. (Plenum Publishers (1988). Ed. with Dr. Stephen LaBerge.)

LaBerge is the person who proved to the scientific community that lucid dreams exist.  He did this by planning with lucid dreamers that once they became aware they were dreaming, they would signal with their eyes.  Eye movements can be recorded as can brain waves. By getting simultaneous brain waves along with specific planned eye signals (such as left, forward, left, forward, up, forward,   up, forward,  down, forward, down, forward),  LaBerge showed that lucid dreamers were aware inside of their dreams and could remember and carry out specific experiments.  When you are dreaming, you send out signals to your body when you attempt to move, but quickly afterward, you send a suppression signal. This keeps you from moving while dreaming, but you can still read the signals that are sent to the body with certain instruments. I believe another thing LaBerge did, just to show that the eye signals were not chance, is to plan to tap out his name in Morse code while dreaming. As planned, did this while brain waves showed he was in a dream state.  This is what got me excited about lucid dreams. Communication with the outside world is possible.

GPS is getting $8-billion upgrade

Improvements, including the replacement of satellites, aim to make the system more reliable, more widespread and much more accurate.Without it, ATMs would stop spitting out cash, Wall Street could blunder billions of dollars in stock trades and clueless drivers would get lost.It's GPS, and it's everywhere.

Although most people may associate the Global Positioning System with the navigation devices that are becoming standard equipment on new cars, GPS has become a nerve center for the 21st century rivaling the Internet — enabling cargo companies to track shipments, guiding firefighters to hot spots and even helping people find lost dogs.

"It's a ubiquitous utility that everybody takes for granted now," said Bradford W. Parkinson.

He should know. Three decades ago, as a baby-faced Air Force colonel just out of the Vietnam War, Parkinson led the Pentagon team that developed GPS at a military base in El Segundo.

Now, scientists and engineers — including those at a sprawling satellite-making factory in El Segundo — are developing an $8-billion GPS upgrade that will make the system more reliable, more widespread and much more accurate.

The new system is designed to pinpoint someone's location within an arm's length, compared with a margin of error of 20 feet or more today. With that kind of precision, a GPS-enabled mobile phone could guide you right to the front steps of Starbucks, rather than somewhere on the block.

"This new system has the potential to deliver capabilities we haven't seen yet," said Marco Caceres, senior space analyst for aerospace research firm Teal Group. "Because GPS touches so many industries, it's hard to imagine what industry wouldn't be affected."

The 24 satellites that make up the GPS constellation — many of them built at the former Rockwell plant in Seal Beach — will be replaced one by one. The first replacement was scheduled to be launched from Cape Canaveral this weekend. The overhaul will take a decade and is being overseen by engineers at Los Angeles Air Force Base in El Segundo, where Parkinson and his team developed the current system.

"We know that the world relies on GPS," said Col. David B. Goldstein, the chief engineer for the upgrade. ...

via GPS is getting $8-billion upgrade - latimes.com.

Discovery of stem cell illuminates human brain evolution, points to therapies

UCSF scientists have discovered a new stem cell in the developing human brain. The cell produces nerve cells that help form the neocortex – the site of higher cognitive function—and likely accounts for the dramatic expansion of the region in the lineages that lead to man, the researchers say.

Future studies of these cells are expected to shed light on developmental diseases such as autism and schizophrenia and malformations of brain development, including microcephaly, lissencephaly and neuronal migration disorders, they say, as well as age-related illnesses, such as Alzheimer’s disease.

Studies also will allow scientists to track the molecular steps that the cell goes through as it evolves into the nerve cell, or neuron, it produces. This information could then be used to prompt embryonic stem cells to differentiate in the culture dish into neurons for potential use in cell-replacement therapy.

The study is reported in a recent issue of the journal Nature, (vol. no. 464, 554-561; issue 7288).

“This discovery has the potential to transform our understanding of the development and evolution of the human neocortex, the most uniquely human part of the central nervous system,” says the senior author of the study, neurologist Arnold Kriegstein, MD, PhD, director of the Eli and Edythe Broad Center of Regeneration Medicine and Stem Cell Research at UCSF.

“It also should inform our understanding of developmental diseases and advance the creation of cell-based therapies. Many neurological diseases develop in neurons or the neural circuits between them. If we’re going to understand how these disorders develop, we have to better understand how the human and primate cerebral cortex develops.” ...

via Discovery of stem cell illuminates human brain evolution, points to therapies - UCSF News Office.

New study first to directly measure body temperatures of extinct species

A new study by researchers from five institutions including the University of Florida introduces the first method to directly measure body temperatures of extinct vertebrates and help reconstruct temperatures of ancient environments.

The study, appearing in this week’s online early edition of Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, describes how scientists could use carbon and oxygen isotopes from fossils to more accurately determine whether extinct animals were warm-blooded or cold-blooded and better estimate temperature ranges during the times these animals lived.

“Without a time machine, it has previously been impossible to directly take the temperature of extinct animals such as dinosaurs or megalodon sharks,” said study co-author Richard Hulbert, a vertebrate paleontologist at the Florida Museum of Natural History on the UF campus. “The method described in the study has been shown to work with 12-million-year-old fossils from Florida and the next step is to look at even older fossils. For example, we have no teeth of Titanoboa, the largest snake ever discovered, but we could use 60-million-year-old crocodylian teeth from the same deposit to find out more about the snake’s environment.”

Funded in part by the National Science Foundation, the new “clumped-isotope” paleothermometer method used in the study analyzes two rare heavy isotopes, carbon-13 and oxygen-18, found in tooth enamel, bones and eggshells.

“Clumping is temperature dependent, so at low temperatures you get more clumping together in a mineral while high temperatures mean less clumping,” said lead author and California Institute of Technology postdoctoral scholar Robert Eagle. “If you can measure the clumping accurately enough, you can work out the temperature at which a mineral formed. In the case of teeth and bone, this will be the body temperature of the organism.”

The researchers first tested the method on modern species: the white rhinoceros, Indian elephant, Nile crocodile, American alligator and sand tiger shark. The study confirmed the rhinoceros and elephant, like all mammals, are warm-blooded, and their tooth enamel forms at about 37 degrees Celsius. Researchers confirmed the accuracy within 2 degrees Celsius by measuring teeth of modern sharks from temperature-controlled aquariums. In the next stage of the study, researchers tested fossils of mammoths and older extinct Florida alligator and rhinoceros species.

“The method we present is a big advance because it allows a direct measurement of the body temperature of extinct species, free from the assumptions required with other approaches,” Eagle said. ...

via University of Florida News – New study first to directly measure body temperatures of extinct species.

Deadly, ultra-pure heroin arrives in US

In this April 22, 2010 photo, Sue Tayon poses for a photo in her home holding an urn containing her daughter Nikki Tayon's ashes in Overland, Mo. Tayon's 28-year-old daughter, Nikki, died of an overdose on heroin that was 90 percent pure, her mother said. (AP Photo/Jeff Roberson)

Mexican drug smugglers are increasingly peddling a form of ultra-potent heroin that sells for as little as $10 a bag and is so pure it can kill unsuspecting users instantly, sometimes before they even remove the syringe from their veins.

An Associated Press review of drug overdose data shows that so-called "black tar" heroin - named for its dark, gooey consistency - and other forms of the drug are contributing to a spike in overdose deaths across the nation and attracting a new generation of users who are caught off guard by its potency.

"We found people who snorted it lying face-down with the straw lying next to them," said Patrick O'Neil, coroner in suburban Chicago's Will County, where annual heroin deaths have nearly tripled - from 10 to 29 - since 2006. "It's so potent that we occasionally find the needle in the arm at the death scene."

Authorities are concerned that the potency and price of the heroin from Mexico and Colombia could widen the drug's appeal, just as crack did for cocaine decades ago.

The Latin American heroin comes in the form of black tar or brown powder, and it has proven especially popular in rural and suburban areas.

Originally associated with rock stars, hippies and inner-city junkies, heroin in the 1970s was usually smuggled from Asia and the Middle East and was around 5 percent pure. The rest was "filler" such as sugar, starch, powdered milk, even brick dust. The low potency meant that many users injected the drug to maximize the effect.

But in recent years, Mexican drug dealers have improved the way they process poppies, the brightly colored flowers supplied by drug farmers that provide the raw ingredients for heroin, opium and painkillers such as morphine. Purity levels have increased, and prices have fallen.

Federal agents now commonly find heroin that is 50 percent pure and sometimes as much as 80 percent pure.

The greater potency allows more heroin users to snort the drug or smoke it and still achieve a sustained high - an attractive alternative for teenagers and suburbanites who don't want the HIV risk or the track marks on their arms that come with repeated injections. ...

via The Galveston County Daily News.

Google's Pac-Man Tribute: Bad for Business?

Pac-Man, a video game hero from the early 1980s, got a major publicity boost last weekend when Google placed a fully-functional version of the classic arcade hit on its home page. The tribute was in honor of Pac-Man's 30th anniversary.

Great, so millions of people spent their precious weekend minutes (hours?) maneuvering a maze and gobbling up pac-dots. Problem is, their Pac-Man addiction may have crossed over into the workplace too.

The RescueTime Blog did some quick calculations over the weekend to quantify just how much productivity was lost as a result of workers engaged in Pac-Man rather than their jobs. (RescueTime is a monitoring app for businesses that tracks which software and websites their employees use.)

The RescueTime folks took a random sample of its users--about 11,000 people who spent some "3 million seconds" on Google on Friday May 21, the day the playable Pac-Man logo appeared. They determined that 4.82 million hours of valuable work time were frittered away on Blinky, Pinky, Inky, and Clyde.

Here's the breakdown from RescueTime's Tony Wright:

· The average user spent 36 seconds more than usual on Google.com on Friday.

· Google Pac-Man consumed 4,819,352 hours of time.

· Lost productivity totaled $120,483,800, assuming the average Google user has a cost of $25/hour.

· That $120 million is enough to pay all 19,835 Google employees for 6 weeks. ...

via Google's Pac-Man Tribute: Bad for Business? - PCWorld.

You can play here, but do it on your own time: http://www.google.com/pacman

Mobile phone number suspended after three users die in 10 years

A mobile phone company has suspended the number 0888 888 888 – after every single person assigned to it died in the last 10 years.

The first owner Vladimir Grashnov – the former CEO of Bulgarian mobile phone company Mobitel which issued the number – died of cancer in 2001 aged just 48.

Despite a spotless business record there were persistent rumours that his cancer had been caused by a business rival using radioactive poisoning.

The number then passed to Bulgarian mafia boss, Konstantin Dimitrov, who was gunned down in 2003 by a lone assassin in the Netherlands during a trip to inspect his £500 million drug smuggling empire.

Dimitrov, who died aged 31, had the mobile with him when he was shot while eating out with a model.

Russian mafia bosses – jealous of his drug smuggling operation – were said to have been behind the killing.

The phone number then passed to Konstantin Dishliev, a crooked businessman, who was gunned down outside an Indian restaurant in Bulgaria's capital Sofia after taking over the jinxed line.

Dishliev, an estate agent, had secretly been running a massive cocaine trafficking operation before his assassination in 2005.

He died after £130 million of the drug was intercepted by police on its way into the country from Colombia.

Since then, the number is understood to have been dormant while police maintained an open file on Dishliev's killing and his smuggling ring.

Now phone bosses are said to have suspended the number for good. Callers now get a recorded message saying the phone is "outside network coverage."

A Mobitel spokesman would only say: "We have no comment to make. We won't discuss individual numbers."

via Mobile phone number suspended after three users die in 10 years - Telegraph.

Navy drops buoy on Florida house

A sonar buoy from a Navy plane on a training flight crashed through the roof of a north Florida home.

Officials say the P-3 Orion had just taken off from Jacksonville Naval Air Station Friday morning when the 3-foot-long, 40-pound cylinder fell more than 500 feet.

The device went through the roof of a Mandarin house, landing next to a bed. Resident Marwan Saman says his daughter had just gotten out of that bed about a half hour earlier.

The Navy sent an explosives demolition team to retrieve the buoy. No injuries were reported, and the Navy was making arrangements to pay for the damage.

A P-3 can carry dozens of the devices to help track submarines. It’s possible a malfunctioning launch tube caused the plane to drop a buoy Friday morning.

via Navy drops buoy on Florida house | navy, buoy, drops - News - Northwest Florida Daily News.

Mind if the US Navy drops in? So, are these buoys explosive? I guess they just sent the explosives team because they don't really have a buoy retrieval from a girl's bedroom team.

Study sheds light into the nature of embryonic stem cells

New insight into what stem cells are and how they behave could help scientists to grow cells that form different tissues.

A study at the University of Edinburgh has shown that embryonic stem cells consist of cells that switch back and forth between precursors of different cell types. This may be linked to their potential to become any cell type in the body.

The findings could help scientists catch embryonic stem cells at exactly the right point when they are primed to differentiate into cells that form specific tissues.

The study indicates that embryonic stem cells are not a single cell type as previously thought, but comprise a mixture of different cell types from the early embryo that can transform themselves from one type to another.

Scientists previously thought that embryonic stem cells were only able to become the embryonic precursors for adult cells, a property known as pluripotency.

The researchers have now found that they can also turn into cells associated with the placenta. These cells – known as the primitive endoderm - form the yolk sac that helps provide nutrients to the early embryo.

The study, published in the journal PLoS Biology, also shows that embryonic stem cells are able to alternate and transform themselves between cells that create the primitive endoderm and founder embryonic cells, which will go onto form tissues in the body.

Although cells in early embryonic development switch back and forth between these two different cells, signals received from surrounding cells and the embryonic environment allow them to quickly fix on becoming one specific cell type.

However, in the laboratory embryonic stem cells are grown in a dish away from the embryo and as a result exist in a captured state where their identity does not become fixed.

Scientists hope that better understanding of how embryonic stem cells change will enable them create an environment to encourage growth of specific cells.

Dr Josh Brickman, from the University's Medical Research Council Centre for Regenerative Medicine, said: "This study changes our view of what embryonic stem cells are and how they behave. Knowing that embryonic stem cells can switch between different founder cell types could help us isolate cells at a point in time when they are primed to become specific cells. This could improve the ability to produce specific cells in the laboratory."

via Study sheds light into the nature of embryonic stem cells.

Visually-guided laser may be viable treatment for abnormal heartbeat

A new treatment known as a visually-guided laser-balloon catheter successfully interrupted abnormal electrical pulses in patients and pigs with intermittent, irregular heartbeats, in a study reported in Circulation: Arrhythmia and Electrophysiology, a journal of the American Heart Association.

Severe cases of irregular heartbeat may require a procedure called ablation, which destroys a group of “misfiring” cells to stop abnormal electrical impulses that cause erratic heartbeats.

Investigators aimed at cells in the pulmonary veins that carry blood from the lungs to the heart. In the clinical part of the study, they ablated the misfiring cells with 100 percent accuracy. In 84 percent of the pulmonary veins treated, electrical pulses ceased after just one set of laser treatments. Three months after treatment, 90 percent of the treated veins remained inactive.

Unlike other catheters that rely on X-rays for visual guidance, in the new treatment doctors use a slender instrument called an endoscope that provides continuous real-time images. This allows investigators to aim the laser at precise locations in the pulmonary veins. The investigators destroyed cells in an overlapping pattern to completely “disconnect” them and prevent new electrical connections from forming later.

The study’s clinical component included 27 patients, average age 53, two-thirds male, with diagnosed intermittent, abnormal heartbeat (called paroxysmal atrial fibrillation, or PAF). All patients had tried at least one drug that did not relieve their symptoms.

For the animal model, the scientists examined pigs because their hearts are structured similar to humans. The investigators inactivated abnormally functioning pulmonary veins 97 percent of the time after the first set of laser-energy treatments. Four weeks later, 80 percent of the ablated veins were still inactive.

Additional research is needed to determine long-term safety and efficacy of balloon-guided, laser catheter, researchers said.

via Visually-guided laser may be viable treatment for abnormal heartbeat.

Dangerous lung worms found in people who eat raw crayfish

If you're headed to a freshwater stream this summer and a friend dares you to eat a raw crayfish – don't do it. You could end up in the hospital with a severe parasitic infection.

Physicians at Washington University School of Medicine in St. Louis have diagnosed a rare parasitic infection in six people who had consumed raw crayfish from streams and rivers in Missouri. The cases occurred over the past three years, but three have been diagnosed since last September; the latest in April. Before these six, only seven such cases had ever been reported in North America, where the parasite, Paragonimus kellicotti, is common in crayfish.

"The infection, called paragonimiasis, is very rare, so it's extremely unusual to see this many cases in one medical center in a relatively short period of time," says Washington University infectious diseases specialist Gary Weil, MD, professor of medicine and of molecular microbiology, who treated some of the patients. "We are almost certain there are other people out there with the infection who haven't been diagnosed. That's why we want to get the word out."

Paragonimiasis causes fever, cough, chest pain, shortness of breath and extreme fatigue. The infection is generally not fatal, and it is easily treated if properly diagnosed. But the illness is so unusual that most doctors are not aware of it. Most of the patients had received multiple treatments for pneumonia and undergone invasive procedures before they were referred to Barnes-Jewish Hospital or St. Louis Children's Hospital at Washington University Medical Center.

The half-inch, oval-shaped parasitic worms at the root of the infection primarily travel from the intestine to the lungs. They also can migrate to the brain, causing severe headaches or vision problems, or under the skin, appearing as small, moving nodules.

Some of the patients had been in and out of the hospital for months as physicians tried to diagnose their mysterious illness and treat their symptoms, which also included a buildup of fluid around the lungs and around the heart. One patient even had his gallbladder removed, to no avail.

"Some of these invasive procedures could have been avoided if the patients had received a prompt diagnosis," says Michael Lane, MD, an infectious diseases fellow at the School of Medicine who treated some of the patients. "We hope more doctors will now have this infection on their radar screens for patients with an unexplained lingering fever, cough and fatigue."

Once the diagnosis is made, paragonimiasis is easily treated with an oral drug, praziquantel, taken three times a day for only two days. Symptoms begin to improve within a few days and are typically gone within seven to 10 days. All the patients have completely recovered, even one patient who temporarily lost his vision when parasites invaded the brain.  ...

via Dangerous lung worms found in people who eat raw crayfish.

Meltdown: Why ice ages don't last forever

BACK in 1993, a boy playing football near Nanjing, China, suddenly fell through the ground. He had inadvertently found a new cave, later named Hulu, which has turned out to be a scientific treasure chest. Besides two Homo erectus skeletons, it contains stalagmites that have helped solve one of the greatest mysteries in climate science: why the ice ages came and went when they did.

For more than 2 million years, Earth's climate has been oscillating wildly. Immense ice sheets slowly advance across northern lands, then suddenly melt away to leave the planet basking in a relatively brief period of warmth before the ice creeps back again. Climate scientists have long suspected that these glacial cycles are triggered by changes in our planet's orbit. Yet while this theory has had many successes, it fails to explain one critical fact: why the ice ages end every 100,000 years or so. "It's a big problem," says Larry Edwards of the University of Minnesota in Minneapolis.

Edwards is part of a group of researchers who may finally have the answer, thanks to Hulu and other nearby caves. If their conclusions are right, then the greatest ice sheets of the past were remarkably vulnerable, melting away when there was just a glimmer of extra sunlight.

...

This was far from the end of the story, though. We now know that the polar ice caps started to form around 30 million years ago, as carbon dioxide levels fell. Around 2.5 million years ago, as it got colder still, a cycle began in which more extensive ice sheets repeatedly spread across the northern hemisphere and then retreated. At first, these ice ages were relatively minor and occurred roughly every 41,000 years - just as you would expect based on the changing tilt of Earth's axis.

But then, a little less than a million years ago, the pattern changed. A series of much more severe ice ages began that lasted 100,000 years. That is a big mystery, because although the shape of the Earth's orbit alters slightly over periods of 95,000 and 125,000 years, this has a far weaker effect on the seasons than the other orbital cycles. Why would the deepest ice ages be driven by the smallest changes in summer sunshine?

Faced with this conundrum, some researchers began to explore alternatives to the mainstream orbital theory. One idea is that Earth sometimes passes through interplanetary dust clouds that cut off some of the sun's heat. Or perhaps our star could be periodically getting brighter and dimmer.

Studies of ice cores from Antarctica, however, were starting to point in a different direction. The cores showed there was a close correlation between temperature and the levels of greenhouse gases in the atmosphere. This suggested a partial answer to the 100,000-year problem: small changes in sunshine might be greatly amplified by rises in CO₂ levels. But there was too much uncertainty about the timing of events to say what caused what.

To find out what really happened, researchers need accurate dates, especially for the ends of the ice ages. "I've been after the timing of these terminations for 25 years," says Edwards. While marine sediments and ice cores record the sequence of events, it is difficult to date those events precisely. ...

The stalagmites hold indirect clues to the climate in the form of oxygen isotopes, which record the strength of the summer monsoon. Water containing heavy oxygen condenses more easily, so the moisture-laden air of the monsoon loses most of its oxygen-18 as it moves inland. By the time it reaches central China, the rains are low in oxygen-18, and the stalagmites there record this depletion. But as the last ice age was ending, 11,000 to 17,000 years ago, the oxygen-18 content of the stalagmites increased - a sign that summer monsoon rains were much weaker than usual.

Wang then went looking for a cave with older stalagmites. He struck lucky at nearby Linzhu cave, despite a rather unusual hazard. "Bats stole our guide rope," says Wang. "The cave has many branches, and we lost our way out." When his team did eventually escape, around midnight, they brought out samples that held a much longer climate record. And stalagmites from another nearby cave called Sanbao provided even more precise dates.

... the new evidence points to a coherent story. Ice sheets build up until they near the brink of stability, at which point a modest rise in summer sunshine is enough to tip them over the edge. As the ice sheets melt, fresh water is released into the Atlantic, shutting down ocean circulation and pumping CO₂ into the atmosphere. As long as the combined effect of extra summer sunshine and rising CO₂ outweighs the regional cooling produced by the shutdown of ocean circulation, the ice keeps melting, pouring more fresh water into the Atlantic. And the melting of a really large ice sheet keeps ocean circulation shut down for a long time, eventually pumping so much CO₂ into the atmosphere that the ice sheets melt away in just a few thousand years. ...

via Meltdown: Why ice ages don't last forever - environment - 24 May 2010 - New Scientist.

Study: Many Sunscreens May Be Accelerating Cancer

Almost half of the 500 most popular sunscreen products may actually increase the speed at which malignant cells develop and spread skin cancer because they contain vitamin A or its derivatives, according to an evaluation of those products released today.

AOL News also has learned through documents and interviews that the Food and Drug Administration has known of the potential danger for as long as a decade without alerting the public, which the FDA denies.

The study was released with Memorial Day weekend approaching. Store shelves throughout the country are already crammed with tubes, jars, bottles and spray cans of sunscreen.

The white goop, creams and ointments might prevent sunburn. But don't count on them to keep the ultraviolet light from destroying your skin cells and causing tumors and lesions, according to researchers at Environmental Working Group.

In their annual report to consumers on sunscreen, they say that only 39 of the 500 products they examined were considered safe and effective to use.

The report cites these problems with bogus sun protection factor (SPF) numbers:

* The use of the hormone-disrupting chemical oxybenzone, which penetrates the skin and enters the bloodstream.

* Overstated claims about performance.

* The lack of needed regulations and oversight by the Food and Drug Administration.

But the most alarming disclosure in this year's report is the finding that vitamin A and its derivatives, retinol and retinyl palmitate, may speed up the cancer that sunscreen is used to prevent.

A dangerous additive

The industry includes vitamin A in its sunscreen formulations because it is an anti-oxidant that slows skin aging.

But the EWG researchers found the initial findings of an FDA study of vitamin A's photocarcinogenic properties, meaning the possibility that it results in cancerous tumors when used on skin exposed to sunlight.

"In that yearlong study, tumors and lesions developed up to 21 percent faster in lab animals coated in a vitamin A-laced cream than animals treated with a vitamin-free cream," the report said.  ...

via Study: Many Sunscreens May Be Accelerating Cancer - AOL News.

Slate conducted a mass experiment in altering political memories. Were you fooled?

We altered or fabricated five events: Sen. Joe Lieberman voting to convict President Clinton at his impeachment trial (Lieberman actually voted for acquittal); Vice President Cheney rebuking Sen. John Edwards in their debate for mentioning Cheney's lesbian daughter (in fact, Cheney thanked him); President Bush relaxing at his ranch with Roger Clemens during Hurricane Katrina (Bush was at the White House that day, and Clemens didn't visit the ranch); Hillary Clinton using Jeremiah Wright in a 2008 TV ad (she never did); and President Obama shaking hands with Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad (it never happened). ...

In the first three days the experiment was posted, 5,279 subjects participated. All of the true incidents outscored the false ones. Our subjects were more likely to remember seeing Powell's Iraq presentation (75 percent), Katherine Harris presiding over the Florida recount (67 percent), or Tom DeLay leading the congressional effort to save Schiavo (50 percent) than any of the five fake scenes.

But the fake images were effective. Through random distribution, each fabricated scene was viewed by a subsample of more than 1,000 people. Fifteen percent of the Bush subsample (those who were shown the composite photo of Bush with Clemens) said they remembered seeing that incident at the time. Fifteen percent of the Lieberman subsample (those who were shown the altered screen shot of his impeachment vote) said they had seen it. For Obama meeting Ahmadinejad, the number who remembered seeing it was 26 percent. For the Hillary Clinton ad, the number was 36 percent. For the Edwards-Cheney confrontation, it was 42 percent, just seven points shy of the percentage who remembered seeing the DeLay/Schiavo episode.

When we pooled these subjects with those who remembered the false events but didn't specifically remember seeing them, the numbers nearly doubled. For Bush, the percentage who remembered the false event was 31. For Lieberman, it was 41. For Obama, it was 47. For Cheney, it was 65. For Hillary Clinton, it was 68.

These figures match previous findings. In memory-implanting experiments, the average rate of false memories is about 30 percent. But when visual images are used to substantiate the bogus memory, the number can increase. Several years ago, researchers using doctored photos persuaded 10 of 20 college students that they had gone up in hot-air balloons as children. Seeing is believing, even when what you're seeing is fabricated.

via Slate conducted a mass experiment in altering political memories. Were you fooled? - By William Saletan - Slate Magazine.

Can bacteria make you smarter?

Exposure to specific bacteria in the environment, already believed to have antidepressant qualities, could increase learning behavior according to research presented today at the 110th General Meeting of the American Society for Microbiology in San Diego.

"Mycobacterium vaccae is a natural soil bacterium which people likely ingest or breath in when they spend time in nature," says Dorothy Matthews of The Sage Colleges in Troy, New York, who conducted the research with her colleague Susan Jenks.

Previous research studies on M. vaccae showed that heat-killed bacteria injected into mice stimulated growth of some neurons in the brain that resulted in increased levels of serotonin and decreased anxiety.

"Since serotonin plays a role in learning we wondered if live M. vaccae could improve learning in mice," says Matthews.

Matthews and Jenks fed live bacteria to mice and assessed their ability to navigate a maze compared to control mice that were not fed the bacteria.

"We found that mice that were fed live M. vaccae navigated the maze twice as fast and with less demonstrated anxiety behaviors as control mice," says Matthews.

In a second experiment the bacteria were removed from the diet of the experimental mice and they were retested. While the mice ran the maze slower than they did when they were ingesting the bacteria, on average they were still faster than the controls.

A final test was given to the mice after three weeks' rest. While the experimental mice continued to navigate the maze faster than the controls, the results were no longer statistically significant, suggesting the effect is temporary.

"This research suggests that M. vaccae may play a role in anxiety and learning in mammals," says Matthews. "It is interesting to speculate that creating learning environments in schools that include time in the outdoors where M. vaccae is present may decrease anxiety and improve the ability to learn new tasks."

via Can bacteria make you smarter?.

Related

The results so far suggest that simply inhaling M. vaccae—you get a dose just by taking a walk in the wild or rooting around in the garden—could help elicit a jolly state of mind. “You can also ingest mycobacteria either through water sources or through eating plants—lettuce that you pick from the garden, or carrots,” Lowry says.

Graham Rook, an immunologist at University College London and a coauthor of the paper, adds that depression itself may be in part an inflammatory disorder. By triggering the production of immune cells that curb the inflammatory reaction typical of allergies, M. vaccae may ease that inflammation and hence depression. Therapy with M. vaccae—or with drugs based on the bacterium’s molecular components—might someday be used to treat depression. “It’s not clear to me whether the way ahead will be drugs that circumvent the use of these bugs,” Rook says, “or whether it will be easier to say, ‘The hell with it, let’s use the bugs.’”

- discovermagazine

Surprising new evidence for asymmetry between matter and antimatter

Why is there matter in the universe and not antimatter, its opposite?

Physicists at Fermi National Accelerator Laboratory, including John Ellison, a professor of physics at UC Riverside, have announced that they have found evidence for a significant violation of matter-antimatter symmetry in decays of B-mesons, which are exotic particles produced in high energy particle collisions.

To arrive at their result, the research team, known as the DZero collaboration, analyzed billions of proton-antiproton collisions at Fermilab's Tevatron particle collider, and found a 1 percent excess of pairs of muons over pairs of antimuons produced in the decays of B-mesons. Muons, which occur naturally in cosmic rays, are fundamental particles similar to electrons but 200 times heavier.

Ellison said this result is exciting and surprising since it is not predicted in the Standard Model, the comprehensive theory that explains the interactions between all fundamental elementary particles.

He explained that the dominance of matter we observe in the universe is possible only if there are differences, called "CP violation," in the behavior of particles and antiparticles.

"The reason this is important is that CP violation – the fact that physics does not look the same when particles and antiparticles are interchanged and all processes are mirror-reflected – is one of the three ingredients identified by Andrei Sakharov, the famous Soviet physicist and dissident, needed to explain the matter-antimatter asymmetry observed in our universe," Ellison said. "That the universe is completely dominated by matter is a mystery because the Big Bang theory predicts that there should have been equal amounts of matter and antimatter."

According to Ellison and his DZero peers, the explanation for the dominance of matter in the present day universe is that the CP violation treated matter and antimatter differently and allowed the early universe to evolve into a situation with matter dominating completely over antimatter.

"CP violation as predicted in the Standard Model has been observed before but at a level many orders of magnitude too small to explain the asymmetry," Ellison said. "This is the first evidence for anomalous CP violation. If confirmed by further measurements, this points to new physics phenomena in particle interactions that give rise to the matter-antimatter asymmetry, and may be another step forward in our understanding of why matter dominates over antimatter in the universe.

via Surprising new evidence for asymmetry between matter and antimatter.