Science News Digest - 16 January 2009
In the science news this week: the overlooked British astronomer who was first to map the moon, methane on Mars may mean presence of life, and how Victorian novels helped us evolve socially into better people...
According to the European Space Agency, 2009 will be a busy year for them in space.
They are due to launch two flagship space telescopes, as well as three satellites. These include the first of their Earth Explorers, GOCE, that will map subtle gravity differences across the Earth’s surface, revealing new details about ocean behaviour; SMOS, the Soil Moisture and Ocean Salinity mission that will improve our understanding of ocean circulation patterns and the Earth’s water cycle; and CRYOSAT-2, that will provide precise information about the rates of change of land and marine ice thickness.
(Read more at BBC News)
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The International Year of Astronomy was officially launched this week in Paris, to commemorate the 400th anniversary of Galileo’s use of a telescope to make recorded astronomical observations. However, science historians claim that a little-known Englishman actually beat Galileo to it.
‘Moon maps’ created by Thomas Harriot have gone on display to mark IYA and British astronomers hope that, 400 years on, he will finally get some of the recognition he deserves.
‘Thomas Harriot was not only the first person ever to draw an astronomical body with a telescope on 26 July 1609,’ explained science historian Dr Allan Chapman of Oxford University, ‘he rapidly developed to become an absolutely superb lunar cartographer. There weren’t equivalent lunar drawings to be done for another 30 years. Tragically, no-one knew of it until relatively recent times, so Galileo gets all the credit.’
Astronomer Patrick Moore told BBC News: ‘Harriot was first... and his map of the Moon is better than Galileo’s.
’Galileo came after, but went much further. Harriot never took things as far as he might have done. We’ve got to give Galileo pride of place but don’t forget Harriot.’
--------------------
NASA scientists have detected large quantities of methane gas on Mars that could be the product of Martian microbe colonies, reported the Guardian.
A seven-year survey of the red planet using powerful telescopes based in Hawaii, Arizona and Chile, revealed huge volumes of the gas were being emitted from ground in the northern hemisphere during the Martian summer. Findings are published in the journal Science.
The gas could be the result of living or geological mechanisms. On Earth, 90 per cent of atmospheric methane is the by-product of food digestion by living things. Methane is also produced in magma underneath volcanoes, or via sepentinisation, a geological process that requires heat, water and carbon dioxide. If such processes were responsible, it would mean that Mars was still active.
’We do not claim to have identified life, nor do we think it is possible to draw that conclusion solely on the basis of methane detection,’ clarified the Director of NASA’s Goddard Centre for Astrobiology, Michael Mumma. ‘But we now know where, and maybe when, to go and look for other chemical signatures that will distinguish whether this is biology or other processes at work. To me it is compelling and imperative that we now map the entire planet repeatedly over two Mars years to identify all of the active regions of methane release and establish their seasonal variability.’
--------------------
Researchers claim that much of Europe and North America could be cooled by up to one degree Celsius during the summer growing season by cultivating carefully selected varieties of food crops.
Growing crops already cools the climate because they reflect more sunlight back into space compared with natural vegetation.
Dr Andy Ridgwell and University of Bristol colleagues, made their case for selecting crop varieties to exert a control on the climate in the journal Current Biology. They believe selective breeding or genetic modification could be used to further optimise crop plant albedo (solar reflectivity), reports the Telegraph.
--------------------
MPs have called for the Medical Research Council (MRC) and Biotechnology and Biological Sciences Research Council (BBSRC) to explain why they have turned down grant applications to fund stem cell research using human-animal ‘hybrid’ embryos.
Less than a year after the controversial technique was legalised, two out of the three licence holders have been denied the research funds needed to continue the work.
Dr Evan Harris, Liberal Democrat spokesman on science, said he had written to the research councils to make sure their decisions were made on scientific grounds alone, rather than being influenced by the personal moral position of anyone sitting on the funding panels.
Phil Willis, Chairman of the Commons Innovation, Universities and Skills Select Committee also sought assurances that moral concerns played no part in funding decisions. ‘King’s College and Newcastle are regarded as world-leading laboratories in terms of this science and I find it quite staggering that both have had their applications turned down.
’We don’t want government to be the arbiter of research funding. Equally when there is significant public interest in something that took over two years to get through Parliament then there is a right to know what the grounds are for deciding.’ he said.
(Read more in the Independent)
--------------------
Research from some of Britain’s leading autism resarchers was published this week, linking high levels of testosterone in the womb of pregnant women to autistic traits in their children.
The British Journal of Psychology study by Dr Bonnie Auyeung, Professor Simon Baron-Cohen and colleagues at Cambridge University, monitored the development of 235 children whose mothers had an amniocentesis during pregnancy. The procedure is used to draw off amniotic fluid from around the baby to test for Down’s syndrome.
The children are now between eight and ten, and old enough to be assessed using autism rating tests. Two separate tests revealed a clear link between higher prenatal testosterone levels and autistic traits, such as lack of sociability and verbal skills, in the children.
The work brings the possibility of a prenatal screening test closer. Such a test would give parents advance warning and enable them to help their child from birth, wrote the Guardian.
--------------------
BBC News announced that the first detailed soil map is to be created for sub-Saharan Africa. The map will combine nutrient analysis with satellite data to build a high resolution map that will offer a ‘soil health diagnosis’ to farmers in 42 countries, along with advice on crop yields and how to tackle nutrient-deficient soils.
It will be disseminated freely to poor farmers and is the first stage in the GlobalSoilMap.net project that aims to build a global digital map covering 80 per cent of the world’s soils.
Pedro Sanchez, of Columbia University’s Earth Institute, a partner in the project, said it was bringing soil science into the 21st century.
--------------------
You might simply enjoy reading about striking characters such as Count Dracula or Heathcliff as a form of escapism. But according to a new study published in the journal Evolutionary Psychology, literature may act as a ‘social glue’, reinforcing the types of behaviour that benefit society.
In the research, discussed in New Scientist, a team investigated how Darwin’s theories of evolution applied to literature. 500 academics were asked to fill in a questionnare about 200 classic Victorian novels, defining characters as protagonists or antagonists, and describing their personality and motives.
They discovered that leading characters fell into groups that mirrored the cooperative nature of a hunter-gatherer society where individual urges for power and wealth are suppressed for the greater good. Dominant behaviour is ‘powerfully stigmatised’ in the novels, says co-author Jonathan Gottschall of Washington and Jefferson College, Pennsylvania.
He added: ’Maybe storytelling – from TV to folk tales – actually serves some specific evolutionary function. They’re not just by-products of evolutionary adaptation.’
According to the European Space Agency, 2009 will be a busy year for them in space.
They are due to launch two flagship space telescopes, as well as three satellites. These include the first of their Earth Explorers, GOCE, that will map subtle gravity differences across the Earth’s surface, revealing new details about ocean behaviour; SMOS, the Soil Moisture and Ocean Salinity mission that will improve our understanding of ocean circulation patterns and the Earth’s water cycle; and CRYOSAT-2, that will provide precise information about the rates of change of land and marine ice thickness.
(Read more at BBC News)
--------------------
The International Year of Astronomy was officially launched this week in Paris, to commemorate the 400th anniversary of Galileo’s use of a telescope to make recorded astronomical observations. However, science historians claim that a little-known Englishman actually beat Galileo to it.
‘Moon maps’ created by Thomas Harriot have gone on display to mark IYA and British astronomers hope that, 400 years on, he will finally get some of the recognition he deserves.
‘Thomas Harriot was not only the first person ever to draw an astronomical body with a telescope on 26 July 1609,’ explained science historian Dr Allan Chapman of Oxford University, ‘he rapidly developed to become an absolutely superb lunar cartographer. There weren’t equivalent lunar drawings to be done for another 30 years. Tragically, no-one knew of it until relatively recent times, so Galileo gets all the credit.’
Astronomer Patrick Moore told BBC News: ‘Harriot was first... and his map of the Moon is better than Galileo’s.
’Galileo came after, but went much further. Harriot never took things as far as he might have done. We’ve got to give Galileo pride of place but don’t forget Harriot.’
--------------------
NASA scientists have detected large quantities of methane gas on Mars that could be the product of Martian microbe colonies, reported the Guardian.
A seven-year survey of the red planet using powerful telescopes based in Hawaii, Arizona and Chile, revealed huge volumes of the gas were being emitted from ground in the northern hemisphere during the Martian summer. Findings are published in the journal Science.
The gas could be the result of living or geological mechanisms. On Earth, 90 per cent of atmospheric methane is the by-product of food digestion by living things. Methane is also produced in magma underneath volcanoes, or via sepentinisation, a geological process that requires heat, water and carbon dioxide. If such processes were responsible, it would mean that Mars was still active.
’We do not claim to have identified life, nor do we think it is possible to draw that conclusion solely on the basis of methane detection,’ clarified the Director of NASA’s Goddard Centre for Astrobiology, Michael Mumma. ‘But we now know where, and maybe when, to go and look for other chemical signatures that will distinguish whether this is biology or other processes at work. To me it is compelling and imperative that we now map the entire planet repeatedly over two Mars years to identify all of the active regions of methane release and establish their seasonal variability.’
--------------------
Researchers claim that much of Europe and North America could be cooled by up to one degree Celsius during the summer growing season by cultivating carefully selected varieties of food crops.
Growing crops already cools the climate because they reflect more sunlight back into space compared with natural vegetation.
Dr Andy Ridgwell and University of Bristol colleagues, made their case for selecting crop varieties to exert a control on the climate in the journal Current Biology. They believe selective breeding or genetic modification could be used to further optimise crop plant albedo (solar reflectivity), reports the Telegraph.
--------------------
MPs have called for the Medical Research Council (MRC) and Biotechnology and Biological Sciences Research Council (BBSRC) to explain why they have turned down grant applications to fund stem cell research using human-animal ‘hybrid’ embryos.
Less than a year after the controversial technique was legalised, two out of the three licence holders have been denied the research funds needed to continue the work.
Dr Evan Harris, Liberal Democrat spokesman on science, said he had written to the research councils to make sure their decisions were made on scientific grounds alone, rather than being influenced by the personal moral position of anyone sitting on the funding panels.
Phil Willis, Chairman of the Commons Innovation, Universities and Skills Select Committee also sought assurances that moral concerns played no part in funding decisions. ‘King’s College and Newcastle are regarded as world-leading laboratories in terms of this science and I find it quite staggering that both have had their applications turned down.
’We don’t want government to be the arbiter of research funding. Equally when there is significant public interest in something that took over two years to get through Parliament then there is a right to know what the grounds are for deciding.’ he said.
(Read more in the Independent)
--------------------
Research from some of Britain’s leading autism resarchers was published this week, linking high levels of testosterone in the womb of pregnant women to autistic traits in their children.
The British Journal of Psychology study by Dr Bonnie Auyeung, Professor Simon Baron-Cohen and colleagues at Cambridge University, monitored the development of 235 children whose mothers had an amniocentesis during pregnancy. The procedure is used to draw off amniotic fluid from around the baby to test for Down’s syndrome.
The children are now between eight and ten, and old enough to be assessed using autism rating tests. Two separate tests revealed a clear link between higher prenatal testosterone levels and autistic traits, such as lack of sociability and verbal skills, in the children.
The work brings the possibility of a prenatal screening test closer. Such a test would give parents advance warning and enable them to help their child from birth, wrote the Guardian.
--------------------
BBC News announced that the first detailed soil map is to be created for sub-Saharan Africa. The map will combine nutrient analysis with satellite data to build a high resolution map that will offer a ‘soil health diagnosis’ to farmers in 42 countries, along with advice on crop yields and how to tackle nutrient-deficient soils.
It will be disseminated freely to poor farmers and is the first stage in the GlobalSoilMap.net project that aims to build a global digital map covering 80 per cent of the world’s soils.
Pedro Sanchez, of Columbia University’s Earth Institute, a partner in the project, said it was bringing soil science into the 21st century.
--------------------
You might simply enjoy reading about striking characters such as Count Dracula or Heathcliff as a form of escapism. But according to a new study published in the journal Evolutionary Psychology, literature may act as a ‘social glue’, reinforcing the types of behaviour that benefit society.
In the research, discussed in New Scientist, a team investigated how Darwin’s theories of evolution applied to literature. 500 academics were asked to fill in a questionnare about 200 classic Victorian novels, defining characters as protagonists or antagonists, and describing their personality and motives.
They discovered that leading characters fell into groups that mirrored the cooperative nature of a hunter-gatherer society where individual urges for power and wealth are suppressed for the greater good. Dominant behaviour is ‘powerfully stigmatised’ in the novels, says co-author Jonathan Gottschall of Washington and Jefferson College, Pennsylvania.
He added: ’Maybe storytelling – from TV to folk tales – actually serves some specific evolutionary function. They’re not just by-products of evolutionary adaptation.’
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