A study of the energetic value of food wasted in the US each year shows the scale of the problem

An eclectic mix of science snips from Sciencebase:

• Novel algorithm cuts the risks of choosing ineffectual team members – The risky business of putting together a team
• Counterfeit spectroscopy – Banknote counterfeiting is a growing problem for fraud investigators across the globe and criminals involved in this highly profitable system are constantly developing their techniques to stay one step ahead of the authorities and their forensic detection methods. Now, researchers in Brazil and the US have taken a mass spectrometric approach that can produce a near-instantaneous chemical profile of a banknote to check against database entries and spot counterfeit notes very quickly.
• Frozen Frogs – Frost-proof tree frogs offer new clues as to how some animals protect themselves from the lethal effects of ice crystals forming within their tissues.
• Latest chemistry news round-up from David Bradley – Buckyballs reach for the stars in this week's Alchemist chemistry news round-up while the oxygen levels in dead zones of the oceanic depths brings us back down to earth. An obvious contaminant explains why graphite oxides and related materials are wont to burst into flames and a prostate gel offers an improved diagnostic for a lethal disease. In the analytical arena, atomic absorption spectroscopy shows just how much iodine is present in a milk sample and could improve nutrition and nutritional studies. Finally, organic solar cells look set for a boost thanks to an NSF grant to aid their development over the next five years.
• Plankton decline across oceans as waters warm – If you thought climate change was only about unfortunates living in extreme environments, then think again, the oceans and consequently all species are going to suffer if this turns out to be true: The amount of phytoplankton – tiny marine plants – in the top layers of the oceans has declined markedly over the last century, research suggests.
• Science Online London 2010 – Nature, Mendeley, and the British Library are excited to present Science Online London 2010. How is the web changing the way we conduct, communicate, share, and evaluate research? How can we employ these trends for the greater good? This September, a brilliant group of scientists, bloggers, web entrepreneurs, and publishers will be meeting for two days to address these very questions.

Risky teams, forged banknotes, frost-proof frogs is a post from: Sciencebase Science Blog

Natural organisms never had anything like source code. The genetic
code of an organism is more comparable to a binary (in fact,
quaternary) executable. Imagine a C compiler made by patching the
binary of hello.c a billion times in a genetic algorithm and you'll
see how hard this is to understand. -in an answer to a question (question 14).

That's a nifty insight that compares software and wetware!

Read the comments on this post...

Also check out the featured ScienceBlog of the week: Inside the Outbreaks on the ScienceBlogs Book Club

Great illustration for children, even though it may not be anatomically correct.

By Peter Slight - Larger version can be found here.

Seeing piece like this makes me think a wonderful art project would be to create a whole new design driven anatomy book - one that may even be as comprehensive as Gray's Anatomy (the book not the TV series).

Read the comments on this post...

Also check out the featured ScienceBlog of the week: Inside the Outbreaks on the ScienceBlogs Book Club

Our roadsides here on the Dingle Peninsula are ablaze with color. Fuchsia. Montbretia. Meadowsweet. Buttercups. Tick trefoil. Vetch.

And purple loosestrife, that European native that has made itself very much at home in North America, to the extent that many people consider the plant a pernicious weed.

But consider this.

Inside each loosestrife blossom, the sexual organs come in three different lengths: short, medium, long. These are arranged male-male-female, male-female-male, or female-male-male. All blossoms on any one loosestrife plant are of the same kind, as one can ascertain with a bit of patience and a magnifier.

Now here's the clever thing: A plant can only be fertilized when pollen from a male part lands on a female part of the same length. This means a plant can never fertilize itself, because only a different plant will have a male part of the same length as the female part.

This guarantees cross-pollination between plants, which confers evolutionary advantages. Cross-pollinated plants are often better adapted to survival and reproduction than either parent, and they avoid the genetic deterioration that sometimes results from inbreeding.

Imagine the exquisite molecular chemistry that regulates fertilization. The lock-and-key fit between loosestrife sperm and egg must be a thing of almost unbelievable subtlety and refinement.

In his delicious little book Saving Graces, the horticulturist Roger Swain tries to remember what it was like to be a sneaker-clad child in nature:

All of us are born wild-eyed, but our outlook changes with time. First you stop seeing camels in the clouds, then you outgrow the fear that there is a snake in your bed, then you learn that there aren't really alligators in the sewers. Plans to become a forest ranger disappear along with any chance of seeing an ivory-billed woodpecker. The expansive optimism of childhood becomes as limited as a two-week summer vacation.

What a shame that we loose the ability to see wonders where everyone else see a weed.

A recent study from Australian researchers determined that transforaminal injection of steroids was a viable alternative to surgery for lumbar radicular pain due to disc herniation. Full details of...

DURHAM, N.C. — Practitioners of clinical medicine are familiar with learning curves, and strategies like simulation are increasingly used to minimize learning-curve effects on clinical care....

We've had a lull in the tropics since the short-lived Tropical Storm Bonnie died nearly a week ago, but look for that to change during the next week or so. Presently the National Hurricane Center has identified two areas to...

Dr. Jennifer Ashton talks about the Seattle Longitudinal Study, a research group that has been testing six thousand people every seven years since 1956. The studies have found that many people perform better on cognitive tests in their forties and fifties than they did when they were in their twenties. The tests found people in there 40s and 50s ranked higher in scores on deductive reasoning, spatial orientation skills, verbal memory and problem solving. However, people with younger brains did better on mental skill tests, such as rapid number computation and how fast you can press a button when prompted. Take a look:



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The personal genomics industry has been bruised by the US Congress, but embracing sensible regulation could shift it to the heart of clinical medicine

Genetically modified bacteria that munch on sugar to produce refinable oil could bring down the cost of switching to cleaner liquid fuels

All today's stories on NewScientist.com, including: doubts over shaken baby syndrome, a new take on Alzheimer's and the decline of Phytoplankton

The World Heritage Committee has taken the Galapagos off its Danger List, says Michael Marshall. In other news, mice have nothing to fear from cats

A trick used in 3D-movie theatres could enable totally secure quantum communication with satellites

Tiny marine plants that help support life in the oceans are declining in numbers – and that's worth worrying about, says Michael Marshall

A new robot called TRAK has been programmed to map its surroundings – but it could also tell us more about the human brain

As you may know there's this rather intense competition among 20-odd institutions to obtain one of NASA's three retiring space shuttles. Space Center Houston, with its proximity to Johnson Space Center, is among the favorites. It is all but certain...

If a potential dark matter particle – the axion – exists, it could reveal itself in explosions around black holes

A pathologist in the UK who argues that symptoms of "shaken baby syndrome" can have an innocent cause has been prevented from testifying in court

Attempts to treat the world's most common form of dementia may have been attacking its symptoms, not its root cause

Many people keep books or magazines by their toilet, to bide the time while they are sitting on the can. I keep a daddy-long-legs. Or a mommy-long-legs.

A common "cellar" spider, Pholcus phalangioides. They love to winter here in my studio, and when I arrive I generally sweep dozens out with a broom. But I keep a few -- one here under the shelf over my desk, and one in the loo. They are endlessly interesting to watch, although they don't do much but sit there in their almost invisible webs and hope something falls on their plate. Whatever mating they do is done with some discretion -- they like to do it in the dark -- and I suppose my broom makes rather a dint in available partners. But when the tiny baby spiders are born it's all rather exciting, and I feel the proud parent.

Touch the web with a pencil point and they do a dervish dance, some reflex ingrained in deep time, possibly to further entangle a prey in the web, or to make the spider invisible, or to scare away a predator. I don't scare, but I like to see them dance. Imagine that tiny brain controlling those sprawling legs with the skateboarder knee pads.

Here's a mystery. In these climes, at least, Pholcus phalangioides is never found outdoors, or so I'm reliably told by a guidebook. How then do they colonize new barns, cellars, and homes? When we built our cottage it was a quarter-mile from other buildings of any sort, and yet it soon had its population of Pholcus phalangioides. Did they "balloon" here? Some spiders let out a thread that catches the wind and if the thread is long enough the spider can let go of its perch and sail away. It would seem a rather catch-as-catch-can way of finding new indoor spaces to inhabit, but here is this mommy-long-legs, watching me on the can as I watch her. If a reader knows of an answer to this mystery, I'd like to hear it. Surely some arachnidologist has made it her life's work to illuminate Pholcus phalangioides migration. The Book of Job had it long ago: "Ask now the beasts, and they shall teach thee; and the fowls of the air, and they shall tell thee."

Two satellites that were doomed to die if they remained in orbit around Earth are heading to the moon for a life extension

An online talk by a member of NASA's Kepler mission fuels speculation that the telescope has found Earth-like planets

Researchers at Stanford Unviersity created Stickybot, a robot with sticky feet that was inspired by geckos. Stickybot is a climbing machine that can climb straight up walls. The feet contain rubber bads made up of microscopic hairs. Each legs is powered by four mini motors and the tail acts as an anchor to balance Stickybot. The research was funded partially by the Department of Defense. You can read more about Stickybot here and here. Take a look:



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As East and West Germany became one, a government ecologist got huge areas of land protected – such "hot moments" are key for maximising conservation

All today's stories on NewScientist.com, including: force fields to protect astronauts, lizards that squirt tears of blood and a crowd sourced tattoo

With inquiries into the affair now complete, Phil Jones reflects on his bruising experiences at the centre of the storm

Some dinosaurs' skulls changed so much as they matured that we've mistaken young and old for completely different species

The emotions you feel have evolved as tools to manipulate others into cooperating with you, says a controversial new theory

John Sulston is leading a study into the future and sustainability of global human population

A crowdsourced tattoo could have been a brave art experiment – but did contradictory priorities make this project wide of the mark, asks Kat Austen

The death of the computer mouse must rank as one of the slowest in history. Could Apple's latest offering provide the killer blow?

If ever there was an animal that said "Don't even think about eating me," it would be the blood-spraying Texas horned lizard

Another oil leak hit Louisiana's coastal waters yesterday when a barge hit a shallow well – are such accidents surprisingly common, asks Sujata Gupta

Interplanetary adventurers must contend with deadly solar radiation – but the moon's magnetic memories may hold the key to safe space flight

What looks like a patch of dead moss on a tree is actually a mass of hundreds or thousands of Daddy Long Legs, also known as Harvestmen. The cluster of arachnids, from the order Opiliones, was found in a tree near a stream in Nogales, Arizona. Boing Boing just posted the video, but it appears to have been on the Internet since 2009 or earlier. There are also photos of harvestmen clusters on the Internet, see here and here. Take a look:



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Thousands of endangered baby sea turtles are being released into the Gulf of Mexico from the Texas coast. The Kemp's ridley turtle hatchlings are being released from the Padre Island National Seashore. The Houston Chronicle says scientists say the "risks of holding turtles in captivity at a critical stage in their life cycles could be worse than the dangers of oil more than 400 miles away." The Chronicle says the decision is controversial because there is the possibility a hurricane could push oil towards the Texas coast where the turtle hatchlings are being released.

Here is a video of the turtle hatchlings being released. Sea Turtle, Inc. also has information about the hatchling releases here. Take a look:



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The most accurate clock ever sent to space will soon be hosted by the International Space Station – it could help to reveal changes in nature's fundamental constants

Science news links for July 23rd through July 26th:

• ACS and RSC Sustainability Alliance – The Royal Society of Chemistry and the American Chemical Society have joined forces to launch a sustainability website. Be interesting to know what is the carbon footprint of this endeavour and the server electricity bills…
• Carcinogen suspects – A new report from the American Cancer Society and other world-leading health groups identifies gaps in research for 20 suspected carcinogens whose potential to cause cancer is as yet unresolved. Of course, that research could prove that any one of those agents doesn't actually cause cancer at all, which will be annoying for the activists. But, it's the inclusion of "shift work" in the list that is perhaps most confusing? How do they anticipate extracting exposure to shift work from all the many other factors…?
• No more squeaky voiced party tricks – What do MRI machines, rockets, fibre optics, LCDs, food production, welding, and lighter-than-air party balloons all have in common? They all need helium. But, we're running out of this gas and it could all be gone in less than three decades.
• Cialis in stained glass – Chemical artwork created in stained glass shows 2D structures of theobromine (chocolate's "analog" of coffee's caffeine and coca's cocaine) as well as Lilly's answer to erectile dysfunction drug Viagra, Cialis.
• Latest issue of The Alchemist on Chemweb – New light is shed on the crystallization processes involved in constructing polymer-based photovoltaic materials, The Alchemist this week learns, while a novel framework for improving magnetic resonance imaging is also explored. In physical science a fundamental property, the size of a proton, is not what it seems and may impact on fundamental physics, chemistry, and spectroscopy alike. New work on phytochemicals reveals that compounds found in celery and various other plants may have an anti-inflammatory effect through their interaction with a specific enzyme. Remote analysis of materials using laser fluorescence triggered by the terahertz waves emitted by explosives and chemical weapons could improve homeland security. Finally, expertise in pyrolysis has led to the establishment of a startup company at Iowa State that will help develop novel liquid bio-oils.

Cialis in glass and a shortage of helium is a post from: Sciencebase Science Blog

Archaeologists in East Timor have unearthed the bones of the biggest rat that ever lived. The rat bones of 13 spieces - 11 new to science - were found in caves. The largest rat had a a body weight around 6 kg (over 13 pounds). The giant rats jaw was about as large as the skull of common rat. The image above compares the upper toothrows of Timor's enormous extinct giant rat (left), with the skull of a common black rat (right).

Carbon dating shows that the biggest rat that ever lived survived until around 1000 to 2000 years ago, along with most of the other Timorese rodents found during the excavation. Only one of the smaller species found is known to survive on Timor today.

"People have lived on the island of Timor for over 40,000 years and hunted and ate rats throughout this period, yet extinctions did not occur until quite recently," CSIRO's Dr Ken Aplin says. "We think this shows people used to live sustainably on Timor until around 1000 to 2000 years ago. This means extinctions aren't inevitable when people arrive on an island. Large scale clearing of forest for agriculture probably caused the extinctions, and this may have only been possible following the introduction of metal tools."

Timor has very few native mammals. Bats and rodents make up the majority of species. Most of Timor today is arid, transformed from the lush rainforests of the past.

"Although less than 15 per cent of Timor's original forest cover remains, parts of the island are still heavily forested, so who knows what might be out there?" Dr Aplin says.

'Quaternary murid rodents of Timor' by Ken Aplin of CSIRO and Kris Helgen of the Smithsonian Institution was published this week in the Bulletin of the American Museum of Natural History.

The image belows shows the skull of a common black rat compared with one of Timor's extinct giant rats. The rat skull shown here is not even the biggest of the extinct rats, which was about 25% bigger than the skull shown below.



Photo: Ken Aplin, CSIRO

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A robot slowly learns how to throw and catch a pancake in a pan in this video. The robot is made by Barrett Technology, a company that makes robot arms. An artificial pancake was used in the experiment. The robot learns using complex computer algorithms. After about fifty tries the robot finally figures it out. Take a look:



(via Wired)

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A rare "corpse flower", which is billed as the world's stinkiest flower, is blooming at the Houston Museum of Natural Science. The smell of the Titan arum or Amorphophallus titanum is said to resemble smell of a decomposing mammal. The huge flowering plants do not bloom very frequently. The flower has been nicknamed Lois. You can read more about Lois here.

Take a look:





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The Boston Globe reports that a large, dead jellyfish stung 100 to 150 people at a New Hampshire beach. The jellyfish broke apart offshore and its tentacles spread out in the water stinging many people. The jellyfish was reportedly a Lion's mane jellyfish, which is one of the largest sized jellyfish. Take a look:



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NASA reports that scientists have created a new map using NASA satellite data that details the height of he world's forest. The map is based on data collectoin by NASA's ICESat, Terra, and Aqua satellites. One of the ways scientists will use the map will be to build an inventory of how much carbon the world's forests store and how fast that carbon cycles through ecosystems and back into the atmosphere.

You can see a much larger version of the map here. You can also view a map here that shows the height of forest in the United States.

Image: NASA Earth Observatory/Image by Jesse Allen and Robert Simmon/Based on data from Michael Lefsky

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Maurizio Porfiri, an Assistant Professor of Engineering at the Polytechnic Institute of NYU, believes a robotic fish may one day help lure schools fish out of danger areas like those created by the Gulf of Mexico oil spill. Porfiri says the most difficult part of building the robotic fish has been determining what makes a fish a leader.

Porfiri says, "If you take a propeller and you put it into the water it may swim as fast as the fish, but the fish may not like it. If you can make something that can swim like a fish, then the fish may perceive it as a mate, even if it looks different."

You can read more about Porfiri's research here. Take a look:



Photo: Dr. Maurizio Porfiri and his Robot Fish/ Polytechnic Institute of New York University

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Kory Stamper, an Associate Editor at Merriam-Webster, talks about the plural version of octopus. She says you can use octopuses, octopi or octopodes. Take a look:



(via Buzzfeed)

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The European Space Agency's Rosetta spacecraft recently beamed back close-up photographs of asteroid Asteroid 21 Lutetia, which Nasa describes as "an ancient, cratered relic from the dawn of the solar system." Scientists were stunned by the images, especially the haunting image above, which has been dubbed the "Alfred Hitchcock" shot. You can see a larger version of the amazing photo here.

"I've never seen anything like it," says Claudia Alexander, project scientist for the U.S. Rosetta Project. "It looked as though it could have been fractured off of a mother asteroid - it was all angles and flat planes, ancient impacts overlaid by newer ones, covered by dust of some kind."

Scientists are trying to determine what caused the large dent in the asteroid. Alexander says, "My first guess would be that it's the remnant of a giant collision that occurred sometime in the distant past. The edges look shallow rather than sharp and deep as might be the case with a fresh crater. I'm sure there will be much more analysis of that feature in the weeks to come."

You can read more about the ancient asteroid here and here.



Photos: ESA

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Tiny fly brains can process visual movements in only fractions of a second. Flies can process a vast amount of information about motion and movement in their environment in real time. This is a feat that no computer, and certainly none the size of a fly's brain, can match. Scientists at the Max Planck Institute of Neurobiology are attempting to decode the underlying mechanisms of the fly's rapid motion vision.

Dierk Reiff from the Max Planck Institute of Neurobiology in Martinsried says one sixth of a cubic millimetre of fly rain matter contains more than 100,000 nerve cells - each of which has multiple connections to its neighbouring cells. Neurobiologists in Martinsried have managed to single out the reaction of a certain cell to any particular movement stimulus.

"We had to find some way of observing the activity of these tiny nerve cells without electrodes", Dierk Reiff explains one of the challenges that faced the scientists. The scientists used the fruit fly Drosophila melanogaster and some of the most up-to-date genetic methods available. They succeeded in introducing the indicator molecule TN-XXL into individual nerve cells. By altering its fluorescent properties, TN-XXL indicates the activity of nerve cells.

To examine how the brains of fruit flies process motion, the neurobiologists presented the insects with moving stripe patterns on a light-diode screen. The nerve cells in the flies' brains react to these LED light impulses by becoming active, thus causing the luminance of the indicator molecules to change.

The scientists observed the activity of cells known as L2-cells, which receive information from the photoreceptors of the eye. The photoreceptors react when the light intensity increases or decreases. The reaction of the L2-cells is similar in that part of the cell where the information from the photoreceptor is picked up. However, the neurobiologists discovered that the L2-cell transforms these data and in particular, that it relays information only about the reduction in light intensity to the following nerve cells. The latter then calculate the direction of motion and pass this information on to the flight control system.

Now that the first step has been taken, the scientists intend to examine - cell by cell - the motion detection circuitry in the fly brain to explain how it computes motion information at the cellular level.

Photo: Max Planck Institute of Neurobiology

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Many athletes are very superstitious. Michael Jordan wore his college team shorts underneath his NBA uniform for good luck and Tiger Woods wears a red shirt on tournament Sundays. New research shows that having some kind of lucky charm can actually improve an individual's performance, if the individual truly believes the object will give them luck. The researchers say it works because the object increases the individual's self-confidence.

"I watch a lot of sports, and I read about sports, and I noticed that very often athletes - also famous athletes - hold superstitions," says Lysann Damisch of the University of Cologne and lead author of the study. "And I was wondering, why are they doing so?"

Damisch thought that a belief in superstition might help people do better by improving their confidence. With her colleagues Barbara Stoberock and Thomas Mussweiler, also of the University of Cologne, she designed a set of experiments to see if activating people's superstitious beliefs would improve their performance on a task.

In one of the experiments, volunteers were told to bring a lucky charm with them. Then the researchers took it away to take a picture. People brought in all kinds of items, from old stuffed animals to wedding rings to lucky stones. Some of the objects people brought in are pictured above. Half of the volunteers were given their charm back before the test started. The other half of the volunteers did not get their item back before testing began - they were told there was a problem with the camera equipment and they would get it back later. Volunteers who had their lucky charm performed better on a computer memory game. Other tests showed that this difference was because they felt more confident. The volunteers who were given back their lucky items also set higher goals for themselves.

The research is published in Psychological Science, a journal of the Association for Psychological Science. Psychology Today also has an article about the study here.

Photo: Association for Psychological Science

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Kayaker Craig Whalley captured this great footage of a huge basking shark off the Isle of Man. Basking sharks can be as long as 30 to 40 feet. The basking shark is the second largest living shark, after the whale shark, and it is the only member of the family Cetorhinidae. Basking sharks eat zooplankton, small fish and invertebrates by holding their huge mouths wide open near the surface of the water. Take a look:



More information about basking sharks, including another video of a basking shark feeding, can be found here on the Florida Museum of Natural History's website.

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A new study by Stanford University climate scientists indicates that exceptionally long heat waves could become commonplace in the United States in the next 30 years. The image above shows the increase in the number of extremely hot seasons per decade over the next three decades. The study follows a recent NASA report, which concluded that the previous decade, January 2000 to December 2009, was the warmest on record.

"Using a large suite of climate model experiments, we see a clear emergence of much more intense, hot conditions in the U.S. within the next three decades," said Noah Diffenbaugh, an assistant professor of environmental Earth system science at Stanford and the lead author of the study.

Writing in the journal Geophysical Research Letters (GRL), Diffenbaugh concluded that hot temperature extremes could become frequent events in the U.S. by 2039, posing serious risks to agriculture and human health. Diffenbaugh is also concerned that we could see heat waves in the U.S. as bad as the 2003 heat wave in Europe that killed 35,000 people.

"In the next 30 years, we could see an increase in heat waves like the one now occurring in the eastern United States or the kind that swept across Europe in 2003 that caused tens of thousands of fatalities," said Diffenbaugh. "Those kinds of severe heat events also put enormous stress on major crops like corn, soybean, cotton and wine grapes, causing a significant reduction in yields."

You can read more about the Stanford climate study here.

Image: Noah Diffenbaugh, Stanford University

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Saber-toothed cats (Smilodon fatalis) are best known for their huge canines, but a new study found the predators also had exceptionally strong forelimbs for pinning prey. Smilodon fatalis roamed North and South America until 10,000 years ago, preying on large mammals such as bison, camels, mastodons and mammoths. A new study, reported in the journal PLoS ONE, found clues from bones and teeth that suggest Smilodon relied on their forelimbs as well as their fangs to catch and kill their prey. If a 500 pound saber-toothed cat were alive today and in pursuit of you, it might first pin you to the ground with its powerful forearms, before biting into you with its enormous canines.

Study author Julie Meachen-Samuels, a paleontologist at the National Evolutionary Synthesis Center in Durham, NC., says the size and shape of sabertooth canines made them more vulnerable to fracture than cats living today. She thinks Saber-toothed cats may have used their muscular arms to immobilize prey and protect their teeth from fracture.

To estimate how strong sabertooth forelimbs were relative to other cats, the researchers used x-rays to measure the cross-sectional dimensions of the upper arm and leg bones of fossils recovered from the La Brea Tar Pits in Los Angeles. They also measured the limb bones of 28 cat species living today, as well as the extinct American lion, the largest conical-toothed cat that ever lived.

The researchers used the cross-sectional measurements to estimate bone strength and rigidity for each species. When they plotted rigidity against length for the 30 species in their study, species with longer limbs generally had stronger bones. But the data for the saber-toothed cat fell well outside the normal range -- while their leg bones scaled to size, their arm bones were exceptionally thick for their length. Sabertooth arm bones were not only larger in diameter than other cats, they also had thicker cortical bone, the dense outer layer that makes bones strong and stiff. Prominent muscle attachment scars on sabertooth limb bones also suggest the cat was powerfully built.

These X-ray images show cross-sectional dimensions of the upper arm bone of a jaguar (A and B) compared to a saber-toothed cat (C and D).



Photos: Wikimedia Commons (first photo), Julie Meachen-Samuels (second photo)

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A newly discovered species of batfish, Halieutichthys intermedius, lives in the waters completely encompassed by the Gulf oil spill. New research published in the Journal of Fish Biology describes two new species of pancake batfishes (Halieutichthys intermedius (pictured above) and H. bispinosus) and re-describes another (H. aculeatus), all of which live in waters either partially or fully encompassed by the recent oil spill. The researechers say H. intermedius does not have a known population outside of the Gulf of Mexico.

"One of the fishes that we describe is completely restricted to the oil spill area," says John Sparks, curator of Ichthyology at the American Museum of Natural History. "If we are still finding new species of fishes in the Gulf, imagine how much diversity-especially microdiversity-is out there that we do not know about. These discoveries underscore the potential loss of undocumented biodiversity that a disaster of this scale may portend."

Pancake batfishes are members of the anglerfish family Ogcocephalidae, a group of about 70 species of flat bottom-dwellers that often live in deep, perpetually dark waters. Pancake batfishes have enormous heads and mouths that can thrust forward. They are also able to cryptically blend in with their surroundings, which gives them an advantage for capturing prey. The pancake batfish "walk" using their stout, arm-like fins. They are said to resemble a walking bat when they move.

Photo: Ho, Chakrabarty & Sparks

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LiveScience.com reports that new brain research appears to confirm that yearning for a lost love can be as bad as addiction cravings. The researchers looked at brain scans of heartbroken men and women while they were viewing photographs of their former partners. The regions of the brain that were activated are the areas of the brain associated with addictions cravings, physical pain and distress. LiveScience.com says during the brain scans, brain regions known as the nucleus accumbens and orbitofrontal/prefrontal cortex were activated - these regions are associated with cocaine addiction and cigarette addiction.

The researchers found that, for heartbroken men and women, looking at photographs of former partners activated regions in the brain associated with rewards, addiction cravings, control of emotions, feelings of attachment and physical pain and distress.

The results provide insight into why it might be hard for some people to get over a break up, and why, in some cases, people are driven to commit extreme behaviors, such as stalking and homicide, after losing love.

Helen E. Fisher, the author of the study and a biological anthropologist at Rutgers University who studies love, says, "Romantic love is an addiction. It's a very powerfully wonderful addiction when things are going well and a perfectly horrible addiction when things are going poorly."

Helen E. Fisher also maintains that taking serotonin-enhancing antidepressants (SSRIs) can potentially dampen feelings of romantic love and attachment, as well as the sex drive.

Other studies have also linked love to specific areas in the brain. Genetics also likely play a role. One study found that the a primitive region of the brain called the ventral tegmental area (VTA) is linked the strong romantic love people feel when they first fall in love. Another study links a gene called AVPR1A to reluctance to marry.

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Scientists discovered different varities of the Enteropneust acorn worm during a search of deep-sea life in the Atlantic Ocean. The researchers believe the acorn worm may be a transitional species between invertebrates and backboned animals. The scientists were completing the last leg of MAR-ECO, an international research program, which is part of the Census of Marine Life. The research was conducted using Isis, the UK's deepest diving remotely operated vehicle (ROV) to depths of between 700m right down to 3,600m. Researchers surveyed flat plains, cliff faces and slopes of the giant mountain range that divides the Atlantic Ocean into two halves, east and west.



The researchers say little is known about these deep-sea enteropneust acorn worms. The worms leave spiral traces on the sea floor. They have no eyes or brain. Pink, purple and white acorn worms were discovered. Using the remotely operated Isis vehicle, high quality complete specimens of all three different-coloured species were captured and will be sent to specialists for further investigations.



Professor Monty Priede, Director of the University of Aberdeen's Oceanlab, said: "We were surprised at how different the animals were on either side of the ridge which is just tens of miles apart. In the west the cliffs faced east and in the east the cliffs faced west. The terrain looked the same, mirror images of each other, but that is where the similarity ended. It seemed like we were in a scene from Alice Through the Looking Glass. In the north-east, sea urchins were dominant on the flat plains and the cliffs were colourful and rich with sponges, corals and other life. In the north-west, the cliffs were dull grey bare rock with much less life. The north-west plains were the home of deep-sea enteropneust acorn worms. Only a few specimens, from the Pacific Ocean, were previously known to science. These worms are members of a little-known group of animals close to the missing link in evolution between backboned and invertebrate animals. The creatures were observed feeding and leaving characteristic spiral traces on the sea floor. They have no eyes, no obvious sense organs or brain but there is a head end, tail end and the primitive body plan of back-boned animals is established. One was observed showing rudimentary swimming behaviour. By the end of the expedition three different species were discovered each with a different colour, pink, purple and white with distinctly different shapes."

Photos: David Shale

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Researchers at Harvard and MIT have created self-folding sheets. These Origami robots can folding themselves into the shape of a boat or a plane. The sheet, a thin composite of rigid tiles and elastomer joints, is studded with thin foil actuators (motorized switches) and flexible electronics. The demonstration material contains twenty-five total actuators, divided into five groupings. A shape is produced by triggering the proper actuator groups in sequence. You can see the sheets in action in the video below.

The article was published in the online Early Edition of the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (PNAS) during the week of June 28. The lead authors are Robert Wood, associate professor of electrical engineering at the Harvard School of Engineering and Applied Sciences (SEAS) and Daniela Rus, a professor in the Electrical Engineering and Computer Science department at MIT.

"Smart sheets are Origami Robots that will make any shape on demand for their user," says Daniela Rus. "A big achievement was discovering the theoretical foundations and universality of folding and fold planning, which provide the brain and the decision making system for the smart sheet."



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CNN reports that some tar balls have been found on beaches in Galveston County in Texas this weekend. The tar balls have been confirmed to be from the BP oil spill.

The tar balls collected from beaches in Galveston County over the weekend could fit in a five-gallon bucket, but have been confirmed to have originated from the ruptured BP well off Louisiana, said Jim Suydan of the Texas General Land Office.

Galveston is about 400 miles west of the site of the worst oil spill in U.S. history, which began in late April with the sinking of the offshore drill rig Deepwater Horizon. Coast Guard Capt. Marcus Woodring said authorities weren't sure how the tar balls made it that far, but tests confirmed that at least the first batch collected Saturday came from the Deepwater Horizon spill off Louisiana, he said.

The AP reported at the end of April that tar balls could impact Texas beaches.

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CNN decided today was a good day to interview a theoretical physicist about the science in Back to the Future II. Dr. Michio Kaku, Professor of Theoretical Physicist at the City University of New York, says the hoverboard could be possible if room temperature superconductors became a reality. Kaku says fusion is a long ways off. The 3-D movies in the Back to the Future II are here, but they aren't nearly as cool as they appeared in the film. Take a look:



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The video features demonstrations by fireworks expert John A. Conkling, Ph.D., Washington College, Chestertown, Md., author of The Chemistry of Pyrotechnics, Basic Principles and Theory. The video was produced by the American Chemical Society (ACS) Office of Public Affairs and takes a close look at the components of fireworks, including time fuses, fuel and bursting charges, and explains how the vibrant colors are generated. Conkling also explains the oxiders and fuels involved in fireworks. Take a look:



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International conservation group WildAid has released the above photo of shark fins sold in San Francisco Chinatown. The photographs proves that sharks are being finned alive for soup sold in the United States. Most Americans are unaware of the damage caused by the shark fin industry and that shark fin soup is widely available from Chinese restaurants in the U.S. WildAid's recent survey found one third of Chinese restaurants in San Francisco serving the dish priced from $6.95 to $85 a bowl.

Fins from up to 70 million sharks a year are used for shark fin soup often with the bodies of the animal dumped overboard dead or alive. In a recent study from the IUCN Shark Specialist Group the world's top shark scientists reported that of 64 species of open ocean sharks and rays 32% are "threatened with extinction," primarily due to overfishing. In addition, 24% were "near threatened," while another 25% could not be assessed due to lack of data.

Only 3 species of sharks have any kind of international protection. The UN CITES convention recently declined to take any action due to opposition led by Japan.

Peter Benchley, author of Jaws, says you are more likely to be killed by bee stings or falling off a ladder than a shark. He says sharks are the victims not the villains in the modern world. WARNING: This video shows sharks being captured and their fins being removed while they are still alive. Take a look:



Hawaii recently became the first state to ban the sale of shark fin soup.

Champion of the Bill Senator Clayton Hee says, "Hawaii is proud to be at the forefront of the movement to save threatened sharks. For native Hawaiians and other Pacific Islanders sharks are revered, because we recognize their ecological importance, but we have been silent for too long on the decimation of shark stocks globally."

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