Science News Digest - 16th January 2012
In the science news this week, a mission to explore an underground lake, scientists discover an unsavoury taste in our mouths, the truth behind internet addiction, and finally… Phobos-Grunt plunged into the Pacific after all.
Mission to explore underground Antarctic lake
The first stages of preparation for a mission to drill down to an underground lake in Antarctica have begun.
The ambitious project aims to take samples of the water and the sediment at the bottom of the lake to determine whether there is any life down there, reported the BBC.
If life does exist, it would give an opportunity to study organisms which have evolved in a completely isolated environment.
The project is being conducted by a team of scientists from the British Antarctic Survey and some of the equipment has already been put in place on the ice shelf above Lake Ellsworth.
The journey of 150km across deep snow and ice took three days to complete, and over 70 tonnes of equipment have been left out on the shelf to wait for next summer.
One of the team, Andy Tait of the British Antarctic Survey, now back in the UK, told the BBC about the difficult conditions.
"The maximum summer temperature is minus 20 and with a wind of something like 30 knots you can imagine the cold.
"It is really harsh and working there with equipment means you have to use thin gloves - it is really cold."
The team will drill down to a depth of over two miles using a specially designed drill. The mission is due to begin at the end of this year, at the height of the Antarctic summer.
The main concern for the scientists, however, is to ensure the equipment is incredibly clean and sterile. Because they are hunting for life in an isolated environment it would be disastrous if they were to introduce bacteria to the lake from their own instruments.
Another lake group in Antarctica also caught the attention of the press this week. New Scientist reported on the discovery of a moving group of lakes on the George VI ice shelf, which are travelling at a rate of half a kilometre a year – in the opposite direction to the ice shelf itself!
The 11 lakes are on the edge of the ice shelf between the Antarctic Peninsula and Alexander Island. They were first noticed in the 1970s but it was only in the last year that scientists realised the lakes were moving at such a fast rate.
Douglas MacAyeal at the University of Chicago noticed the movement after one of his undergraduate students, Claire LaBarberan, pointed it out to him. "I thought, what a nice curiosity," MacAyeal says.
When he took a closer look, he realised the lakes were moving five to ten times faster than the ice shelf itself and in a different direction.
It is believed the reason behind the lakes strange movement is due to the unusual location of the ice shelf they sit on.
Trapped between the Peninsula and Alexander Island, the shelf gets squeezed through the channel, making the outer edge buckle creating grooves where the lakes form. As the shelf moves along, the grooves get caught on the coastline, taking the lakes with them.
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Scientists discover a sixth taste on our tongues
A team of scientists from Washington University in the United States have discovered a sixth taste on our tongues – fat.
The chemical receptor not only identifies fat but also has a different level of sensitivity depending on the person. The researchers have suggested this may be a reason why some individuals eat more fatty foods than the rest of us – simply because they can’t taste the fat as much.
Reported in The Telegraph, the team hope that this discovery could help tackle obesity by allowing people to better taste the fat they are eating.
Previously, it was believed that the tongue was only able to detect four different tastes – sweet, sour, bitter and salt. Then, in 1985, umami, or savouriness, was officially recognised as the fifth taste.
The team found that people with a variation of the gene that produces a receptor called CD36 were better at detecting fat in food.
Professor Nada Abumrad, who led the research team, explained that, “the ultimate goal is to understand how our perception of fat in food might influence what foods we eat and the qualities of fat that we consume.
"We've found one potential reason for individual variability in how people sense fat. What we will need to determine in the future is whether our ability to detect fat in foods influences our fat intake, which clearly would have an impact on obesity."
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Internet addiction alters brain chemistry
For the first time, scientists have been able to show that internet addiction changes the brain in a similar way to those who are addicted to alcohol, cocaine or cannabis.
The team from China used MRI scanners to reveal abnormalities in the brains of 17 adolescents who had been diagnosed with “internet addiction disorder” when compared to the brains of 16 peers.
The diagnosis of “internet addiction disorder” is typified by a person who spends many hours at a time on the internet, to the detriment of their social, working and personal lives.
Speaking to The Independent, Henrietta Bowden Jones, consultant psychiatrist at Imperial College London, the home of the UK’s only NHS clinic for internet addicts and problem gamblers, explained the issues for those addicted to the internet.
"The majority of people we see with serious internet addiction are gamers – people who spend long hours in roles in various games that cause them to disregard their obligations. I have seen people who stopped attending university lectures, failed their degrees or their marriages broke down because they were unable to emotionally connect with anything outside the game."
This latest study from China, although from a very small sample group, has started to show some promising results. Those diagnosed with internet addiction showed impairment in the white matter fibres of the brain connecting regions involved in emotional processing, attention, decision-making and cognitive control. These are similar changes to the ones shown in people with an alcohol or cocaine addiction.
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And finally…
Phobos-Grunt crashes into the Pacific
You may remember in the Science News Digest two weeks ago, we reported on the doomed Phobos-Grunt spacecraft, which was expected to crash to Earth in the next week.
It turns out the spacecraft re-entered the atmosphere on January 15th, plunging into the Pacific Ocean 775 miles west of the coastal island of Wellington.
Reported in The Guardian, it still isn’t clear if all of the debris from the craft fell in the same place. The constant changes in the upper atmosphere made it very difficult to predict when and where the craft would re-enter the atmosphere.
The mission was supposed to travel to one of Mars’ moons, Phobos, to collect samples from the surface for the first time.
There were also a number of vials of bacteria on board, which were there to test their survival abilities in space. However, shortly after the launch, a computer malfunction meant that the spacecraft was unable to leave its orbit from around the Earth, and after several attempts at contacting it, the mission had to be abandoned.
Bizarrely, the chief of the Russian space agency, Roscosmos, hinted last week that foreign sabotage could be to blame for the misfortune the agency had recently suffered. "I don't want to blame anyone, but there are very powerful means to interfere with spacecraft today whose use cannot be ruled out," Vladimir Popovkin told the daily Izvestia.
Mission to explore underground Antarctic lake
The first stages of preparation for a mission to drill down to an underground lake in Antarctica have begun.
The ambitious project aims to take samples of the water and the sediment at the bottom of the lake to determine whether there is any life down there, reported the BBC.
If life does exist, it would give an opportunity to study organisms which have evolved in a completely isolated environment.
The project is being conducted by a team of scientists from the British Antarctic Survey and some of the equipment has already been put in place on the ice shelf above Lake Ellsworth.
The journey of 150km across deep snow and ice took three days to complete, and over 70 tonnes of equipment have been left out on the shelf to wait for next summer.
One of the team, Andy Tait of the British Antarctic Survey, now back in the UK, told the BBC about the difficult conditions.
"The maximum summer temperature is minus 20 and with a wind of something like 30 knots you can imagine the cold.
"It is really harsh and working there with equipment means you have to use thin gloves - it is really cold."
The team will drill down to a depth of over two miles using a specially designed drill. The mission is due to begin at the end of this year, at the height of the Antarctic summer.
The main concern for the scientists, however, is to ensure the equipment is incredibly clean and sterile. Because they are hunting for life in an isolated environment it would be disastrous if they were to introduce bacteria to the lake from their own instruments.
Another lake group in Antarctica also caught the attention of the press this week. New Scientist reported on the discovery of a moving group of lakes on the George VI ice shelf, which are travelling at a rate of half a kilometre a year – in the opposite direction to the ice shelf itself!
The 11 lakes are on the edge of the ice shelf between the Antarctic Peninsula and Alexander Island. They were first noticed in the 1970s but it was only in the last year that scientists realised the lakes were moving at such a fast rate.
Douglas MacAyeal at the University of Chicago noticed the movement after one of his undergraduate students, Claire LaBarberan, pointed it out to him. "I thought, what a nice curiosity," MacAyeal says.
When he took a closer look, he realised the lakes were moving five to ten times faster than the ice shelf itself and in a different direction.
It is believed the reason behind the lakes strange movement is due to the unusual location of the ice shelf they sit on.
Trapped between the Peninsula and Alexander Island, the shelf gets squeezed through the channel, making the outer edge buckle creating grooves where the lakes form. As the shelf moves along, the grooves get caught on the coastline, taking the lakes with them.
-------------------------------------------------
Scientists discover a sixth taste on our tongues
A team of scientists from Washington University in the United States have discovered a sixth taste on our tongues – fat.
The chemical receptor not only identifies fat but also has a different level of sensitivity depending on the person. The researchers have suggested this may be a reason why some individuals eat more fatty foods than the rest of us – simply because they can’t taste the fat as much.
Reported in The Telegraph, the team hope that this discovery could help tackle obesity by allowing people to better taste the fat they are eating.
Previously, it was believed that the tongue was only able to detect four different tastes – sweet, sour, bitter and salt. Then, in 1985, umami, or savouriness, was officially recognised as the fifth taste.
The team found that people with a variation of the gene that produces a receptor called CD36 were better at detecting fat in food.
Professor Nada Abumrad, who led the research team, explained that, “the ultimate goal is to understand how our perception of fat in food might influence what foods we eat and the qualities of fat that we consume.
"We've found one potential reason for individual variability in how people sense fat. What we will need to determine in the future is whether our ability to detect fat in foods influences our fat intake, which clearly would have an impact on obesity."
----------------------------------------------
Internet addiction alters brain chemistry
For the first time, scientists have been able to show that internet addiction changes the brain in a similar way to those who are addicted to alcohol, cocaine or cannabis.
The team from China used MRI scanners to reveal abnormalities in the brains of 17 adolescents who had been diagnosed with “internet addiction disorder” when compared to the brains of 16 peers.
The diagnosis of “internet addiction disorder” is typified by a person who spends many hours at a time on the internet, to the detriment of their social, working and personal lives.
Speaking to The Independent, Henrietta Bowden Jones, consultant psychiatrist at Imperial College London, the home of the UK’s only NHS clinic for internet addicts and problem gamblers, explained the issues for those addicted to the internet.
"The majority of people we see with serious internet addiction are gamers – people who spend long hours in roles in various games that cause them to disregard their obligations. I have seen people who stopped attending university lectures, failed their degrees or their marriages broke down because they were unable to emotionally connect with anything outside the game."
This latest study from China, although from a very small sample group, has started to show some promising results. Those diagnosed with internet addiction showed impairment in the white matter fibres of the brain connecting regions involved in emotional processing, attention, decision-making and cognitive control. These are similar changes to the ones shown in people with an alcohol or cocaine addiction.
------------------------------------------
And finally…
Phobos-Grunt crashes into the Pacific
You may remember in the Science News Digest two weeks ago, we reported on the doomed Phobos-Grunt spacecraft, which was expected to crash to Earth in the next week.
It turns out the spacecraft re-entered the atmosphere on January 15th, plunging into the Pacific Ocean 775 miles west of the coastal island of Wellington.
Reported in The Guardian, it still isn’t clear if all of the debris from the craft fell in the same place. The constant changes in the upper atmosphere made it very difficult to predict when and where the craft would re-enter the atmosphere.
The mission was supposed to travel to one of Mars’ moons, Phobos, to collect samples from the surface for the first time.
There were also a number of vials of bacteria on board, which were there to test their survival abilities in space. However, shortly after the launch, a computer malfunction meant that the spacecraft was unable to leave its orbit from around the Earth, and after several attempts at contacting it, the mission had to be abandoned.
Bizarrely, the chief of the Russian space agency, Roscosmos, hinted last week that foreign sabotage could be to blame for the misfortune the agency had recently suffered. "I don't want to blame anyone, but there are very powerful means to interfere with spacecraft today whose use cannot be ruled out," Vladimir Popovkin told the daily Izvestia.
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