The Science News Digest - 14 August 2009
In the science news this week: the push to make legal highs illegal, the price of your decoded genome, and why exactly flamingos stand on one leg...
Inside information
Buying a new sports car, or unlocking the secrets of your personal genetic code? Both cost around £31,000; but if you knew that the latter could warn you of future life-threatening conditions, mean therapies could be tailored to you, and allow you to make personalised life-extending choices, would the car be less appealing?
Professor Stephen Quake, of Stanford University in Palo Alto, California, now knows what’s in his DNA. He has produced a “working draft” of his entire genome using a revolutionary technique he helped to pioneer. Unlike previous methods, this new technique needs only a single DNA molecule.
His genome can now be analysed for genetic predispositions to physical and mental disorders and traits, as well as possible adverse reactions to certain drugs.
Until only a few years ago, decoding this information was estimated at costing tens of millions of pounds. Professor Quake said there was nothing to stop the technique being refined further to make it cheap enough for the NHS and the person on the street.
“This can now be done in one lab, with one machine, at a modest cost” said Professor Quake.
However he warned the technology would throw up a new set of ethical questions.
“The $1,000 genome is just around the corner, and when everybody will be able to have their genome sequenced, what’s it going to mean for privacy, health insurance and decisions about human health?”
Find out more in the Independent.
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Experts advise against Spice
A legal herbal mixture found to be as strong as some forms of cannabis is expected to be banned by the home secretary, after advice from the government’s drugs experts, reports the Guardian.
The product in question is Spice, a smoking mixture imported from China which has been around since 2006.
“These are not harmless herbal alternatives and have been found to cause paranoia and panic attacks” stressed Professor David Nutt, chair of the Advisory Council on the Misuse of Drugs (ACMD), speaking about the synthetic cannabinoids. “People need to know they pose a real danger and should not be seen as safe alternatives to illegal substances.”
Sales of herbal drug substitutes have grown rapidly. The decision, which the home secretary Alan Johnson is expected to endorse, marks the first move to curb the market in “legal highs”.
Backing the ban, Martin Barnes – chief executive of the drugs information charity DrugScope – said making Spice a class B drug would remove the incentive for its manufacture and supply.
It’s expected the ACMD will now consider the position of other legal highs. An official consultation over plans to ban two synthetic “herbal ecstasy” party drugs - GBL and BZP – was due to end last Thursday.
---------------------------------------
Meteor watch knocks off Disney star
The Perseids meteor shower topic has become a hit on Twitter, with an estimated 10,000 tweets. The campaign even pushed Disney star Miley Cyrus’s topic off the top spot for two hours, writes the Telegraph.
Created to promote the International Year of Astronomy, the campaign was set-up by the Newbury Astronomical Society. “We certainly didn’t expect to compete with an international pop star” commented Steve Owens, the project’s co-ordinator.
The topic seemed to capture the imaginations of twitterers, as a majority of first-time star-gazers from around the world joined amateur astronomers and societies.
August 11 was the beginning of the Perseids shower’s peak, which the topic was timed to coincide with. Owens is encouraging people to get online throughout the shower, regardless of weather conditions. “Even if you can’t directly experience the meteor shower, you can experience it virtually via Twitter”.
The shower occurs every summer when the earth moves through debris scattered by the Swift-Tuttle comet. Where weather conditions are clearest, gazers can expect to see up to 20 shooting stars every hour.
---------------------------------------
Extinction runs in the family
It seems for some species, matters of life and death come down to which family they belong too. Scientists studying 200 million years of fossil records believe that genes destine some lines of organisms to pervade and others to die out.
Extinctions are smattered throughout Earth’s history; when single species or bigger groups such as genera or families are lost. One of the most cataclysmic was 65 million years ago, at the end of the Cretaceous period. However they can be more subtle, as today, when habitats are lost and species slip away.
The authors of this new work investigated a novel hypothesis: that certain types of creatures are simply more prone to dying out.
They studied marine bivalves – for example oysters and clams – examining evolutionary relationships and fossil records for nearly 1,700 types. They found a close relationship between the disappearance of some groups and their closest genetic relatives.
“History really does matter” said David Joblonski of the Univeristy of Chicago in Illinois, co-author of the study.
Lead author Kaustuv Roy of the University of California, San Diego, says the work has implications for conservation today. He believes that in the current extinction crisis, we won’t be able to save every species. But by focussing on strategies to preserve groups we can protect the potential for these lineages to diversify again in the future.
The paper was published in Science and reported by ScienceNOW.
---------------------------------------
Between a rock and a hard blade
Archaeologists studying ancient blades made by prehistoric humans believe fire was harnessed to harden them, reports New Scientist. These artefacts could date back to the dawn of modern human behaviour, involving not just complex tool use but also language and art.
“These people were extremely smart”, voiced Kyle Brown, an experimental archaeologist at the University of Cape Town, South Africa. “I don’t think you could have passed down these skills from generation to generation without language.”
The 47,000 to 164,000 year old sharp stone blades were dug up from sites several hundreds of kilometres east of Cape Town. Brown began wondering about heat treatment after noticing the difference between the crumbly local stone and the recovered ancient blades.
He heated some of the local stone, and found it did indeed become harder, stiffer and more brittle. His team next examined the artefacts for signs of heat treatment. Two different experiments indicated this in all of their samples.
A “greasy” sheen on the blades also suggested that the tools had been flaked – fashioned by chipping off small pieces of rock – after heating.
This pushes the earliest evidence for fire-treated tools to not long after the emergence of Homo sapiens in eastern Europe. Brown argues the blades were part of a “tool kit” that modern humans took to other parts of the world.
---------------------------------------
A leg up
Why do flamingos stand on one leg? It’s a question uttered by zoo visitors and biologists alike, and now two comparative psychologists believe they have the answer.
Matthew Anderson and Sarah Williams - based at Saint Joseph’s University in Philadelphia - exhaustively studied captive Caribbean flamingos.
“I was very surprised to discover how little systematic, hypothesis-driven empirical research had been conducted on flamingos” commented Anderson.
They began by studying laterality – or ‘handedness’ - in the birds. Whilst individual flamingos preferred to rest their heads on one side or the other, they didn’t exhibit a particular leg preference.
More work ruled out the possibilities that the birds stood on one leg to reduce fatigue or to prepare them to escape from predators.
But the researchers did notice the birds preferred to stand on only one leg in water far more than on land. “As water invariably draws away more body heat, this result supports the thermoregulation hypothesis” concluded Anderson.
If they put two legs in the water, flamingos would lose more heat than is healthy, particularly as they spend so much time wading. The birds also like to alternate which leg they stand on, to prevent one becoming too cold.
Read all about in on the BBC.
Inside information
Buying a new sports car, or unlocking the secrets of your personal genetic code? Both cost around £31,000; but if you knew that the latter could warn you of future life-threatening conditions, mean therapies could be tailored to you, and allow you to make personalised life-extending choices, would the car be less appealing?
Professor Stephen Quake, of Stanford University in Palo Alto, California, now knows what’s in his DNA. He has produced a “working draft” of his entire genome using a revolutionary technique he helped to pioneer. Unlike previous methods, this new technique needs only a single DNA molecule.
His genome can now be analysed for genetic predispositions to physical and mental disorders and traits, as well as possible adverse reactions to certain drugs.
Until only a few years ago, decoding this information was estimated at costing tens of millions of pounds. Professor Quake said there was nothing to stop the technique being refined further to make it cheap enough for the NHS and the person on the street.
“This can now be done in one lab, with one machine, at a modest cost” said Professor Quake.
However he warned the technology would throw up a new set of ethical questions.
“The $1,000 genome is just around the corner, and when everybody will be able to have their genome sequenced, what’s it going to mean for privacy, health insurance and decisions about human health?”
Find out more in the Independent.
---------------------------------------
Experts advise against Spice
A legal herbal mixture found to be as strong as some forms of cannabis is expected to be banned by the home secretary, after advice from the government’s drugs experts, reports the Guardian.
The product in question is Spice, a smoking mixture imported from China which has been around since 2006.
“These are not harmless herbal alternatives and have been found to cause paranoia and panic attacks” stressed Professor David Nutt, chair of the Advisory Council on the Misuse of Drugs (ACMD), speaking about the synthetic cannabinoids. “People need to know they pose a real danger and should not be seen as safe alternatives to illegal substances.”
Sales of herbal drug substitutes have grown rapidly. The decision, which the home secretary Alan Johnson is expected to endorse, marks the first move to curb the market in “legal highs”.
Backing the ban, Martin Barnes – chief executive of the drugs information charity DrugScope – said making Spice a class B drug would remove the incentive for its manufacture and supply.
It’s expected the ACMD will now consider the position of other legal highs. An official consultation over plans to ban two synthetic “herbal ecstasy” party drugs - GBL and BZP – was due to end last Thursday.
---------------------------------------
Meteor watch knocks off Disney star
The Perseids meteor shower topic has become a hit on Twitter, with an estimated 10,000 tweets. The campaign even pushed Disney star Miley Cyrus’s topic off the top spot for two hours, writes the Telegraph.
Created to promote the International Year of Astronomy, the campaign was set-up by the Newbury Astronomical Society. “We certainly didn’t expect to compete with an international pop star” commented Steve Owens, the project’s co-ordinator.
The topic seemed to capture the imaginations of twitterers, as a majority of first-time star-gazers from around the world joined amateur astronomers and societies.
August 11 was the beginning of the Perseids shower’s peak, which the topic was timed to coincide with. Owens is encouraging people to get online throughout the shower, regardless of weather conditions. “Even if you can’t directly experience the meteor shower, you can experience it virtually via Twitter”.
The shower occurs every summer when the earth moves through debris scattered by the Swift-Tuttle comet. Where weather conditions are clearest, gazers can expect to see up to 20 shooting stars every hour.
---------------------------------------
Extinction runs in the family
It seems for some species, matters of life and death come down to which family they belong too. Scientists studying 200 million years of fossil records believe that genes destine some lines of organisms to pervade and others to die out.
Extinctions are smattered throughout Earth’s history; when single species or bigger groups such as genera or families are lost. One of the most cataclysmic was 65 million years ago, at the end of the Cretaceous period. However they can be more subtle, as today, when habitats are lost and species slip away.
The authors of this new work investigated a novel hypothesis: that certain types of creatures are simply more prone to dying out.
They studied marine bivalves – for example oysters and clams – examining evolutionary relationships and fossil records for nearly 1,700 types. They found a close relationship between the disappearance of some groups and their closest genetic relatives.
“History really does matter” said David Joblonski of the Univeristy of Chicago in Illinois, co-author of the study.
Lead author Kaustuv Roy of the University of California, San Diego, says the work has implications for conservation today. He believes that in the current extinction crisis, we won’t be able to save every species. But by focussing on strategies to preserve groups we can protect the potential for these lineages to diversify again in the future.
The paper was published in Science and reported by ScienceNOW.
---------------------------------------
Between a rock and a hard blade
Archaeologists studying ancient blades made by prehistoric humans believe fire was harnessed to harden them, reports New Scientist. These artefacts could date back to the dawn of modern human behaviour, involving not just complex tool use but also language and art.
“These people were extremely smart”, voiced Kyle Brown, an experimental archaeologist at the University of Cape Town, South Africa. “I don’t think you could have passed down these skills from generation to generation without language.”
The 47,000 to 164,000 year old sharp stone blades were dug up from sites several hundreds of kilometres east of Cape Town. Brown began wondering about heat treatment after noticing the difference between the crumbly local stone and the recovered ancient blades.
He heated some of the local stone, and found it did indeed become harder, stiffer and more brittle. His team next examined the artefacts for signs of heat treatment. Two different experiments indicated this in all of their samples.
A “greasy” sheen on the blades also suggested that the tools had been flaked – fashioned by chipping off small pieces of rock – after heating.
This pushes the earliest evidence for fire-treated tools to not long after the emergence of Homo sapiens in eastern Europe. Brown argues the blades were part of a “tool kit” that modern humans took to other parts of the world.
---------------------------------------
A leg up
Why do flamingos stand on one leg? It’s a question uttered by zoo visitors and biologists alike, and now two comparative psychologists believe they have the answer.
Matthew Anderson and Sarah Williams - based at Saint Joseph’s University in Philadelphia - exhaustively studied captive Caribbean flamingos.
“I was very surprised to discover how little systematic, hypothesis-driven empirical research had been conducted on flamingos” commented Anderson.
They began by studying laterality – or ‘handedness’ - in the birds. Whilst individual flamingos preferred to rest their heads on one side or the other, they didn’t exhibit a particular leg preference.
More work ruled out the possibilities that the birds stood on one leg to reduce fatigue or to prepare them to escape from predators.
But the researchers did notice the birds preferred to stand on only one leg in water far more than on land. “As water invariably draws away more body heat, this result supports the thermoregulation hypothesis” concluded Anderson.
If they put two legs in the water, flamingos would lose more heat than is healthy, particularly as they spend so much time wading. The birds also like to alternate which leg they stand on, to prevent one becoming too cold.
Read all about in on the BBC.
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