Science News Digest - 30 January 2009
In the science news this week: minister calls for science focus debate, serotonin is the key to locust swarming and multiple sclerosis stem cell treatment shows promising results. Plus, the scent of a lady is not so sweet...
The government launched a new campaign this week called Science: So What?, designed to help promote science and challenge attitudes and preconceptions about the subject. Celebrities such as authors Terry Pratchet and Bill Bryson, and chef Heston Blumenthal gave their support to the campaign and attended the launch at Downing Street on Wednesday 28th, reported the Guardian.
Science Minister Lord Drayson said: ‘Continued success in science and technology is vital to our future – and yet there is still a perception among many of our people that science is too clever for them or elitist in some way. We must challenge myths like these if we are to build a prosperous, science-literate society, able to tackle the difficult issues that modern science presents and work them through to create the jobs and growth of the future.’
The new Science: So What? website includes information about relevant careers and events such as National Science and Engineering Week, reported Channel 4.
Secretary of State for Innovation, Universities and Skills John Denham said: ‘Driving up the number of people who have the skills in science, technology, engineering and maths required by emerging and growth industries will help ensure the UK remains strong in an increasingly competitive global economy and win the jobs of tomorrow.’
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Lord Drayson also called for the country to consider focusing its science spending on a few key areas in which it could lead the world.
’I think that we need to look at the global environment, we need to note that the countries with whom we are competing have made strategic choices about the areas they believe they are best placed to focus on,’ he said.
He told the Commons Innovation, Universities, Science and Skills committee that he wasn’t advocating that Ministers make the choices or take funding decisions away from scientists, but that we look at ‘where we are best placed to compete in the future based around our strengths’.
’I’m calling for a serious debate about the areas of focus for this country in the future,’ he explained. ‘This is not about ministers making these choices. We do have a very effective process based on peer review. But it’s about asking the question, given that we are in an environment where other countries are doing this, given we see real need to rebalance our economy, we need to be clear about what are our assets that put the UK in a strong position, and where they are deployed for our best interests.’
The government launched a new campaign this week called Science: So What?, designed to help promote science and challenge attitudes and preconceptions about the subject. Celebrities such as authors Terry Pratchet and Bill Bryson, and chef Heston Blumenthal gave their support to the campaign and attended the launch at Downing Street on Wednesday 28th, reported the Guardian.
Science Minister Lord Drayson said: ‘Continued success in science and technology is vital to our future – and yet there is still a perception among many of our people that science is too clever for them or elitist in some way. We must challenge myths like these if we are to build a prosperous, science-literate society, able to tackle the difficult issues that modern science presents and work them through to create the jobs and growth of the future.’
The new Science: So What? website includes information about relevant careers and events such as National Science and Engineering Week, reported Channel 4.
Secretary of State for Innovation, Universities and Skills John Denham said: ‘Driving up the number of people who have the skills in science, technology, engineering and maths required by emerging and growth industries will help ensure the UK remains strong in an increasingly competitive global economy and win the jobs of tomorrow.’
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Lord Drayson also called for the country to consider focusing its science spending on a few key areas in which it could lead the world.
’I think that we need to look at the global environment, we need to note that the countries with whom we are competing have made strategic choices about the areas they believe they are best placed to focus on,’ he said.
He told the Commons Innovation, Universities, Science and Skills committee that he wasn’t advocating that Ministers make the choices or take funding decisions away from scientists, but that we look at ‘where we are best placed to compete in the future based around our strengths’.
’I’m calling for a serious debate about the areas of focus for this country in the future,’ he explained. ‘This is not about ministers making these choices. We do have a very effective process based on peer review. But it’s about asking the question, given that we are in an environment where other countries are doing this, given we see real need to rebalance our economy, we need to be clear about what are our assets that put the UK in a strong position, and where they are deployed for our best interests.’
The Times highlighted that the radical proposal for a national science strategy could cause alarm among many scientists, since it could lead to funding cuts in areas not considered national priorities.
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In a week where the European Commission called for the US to sign up to a global system of carbon trading, and a report by the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration in Colorado warned that many climate change effects are irreversible, Nature published research that demonstrated extra iron in the sea could reduce the amount of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere.
Iron fertilisation is one of several schemes proposed to try to slow global warming. In theory, iron particles would stimulate plankton growth leading them to absorb and lock away more carbon.
The latest research by a team from the National Oceanography Centre in Southampton is the first to show that the method could take carbon out of circulation for at least a century – as when the plankton died, they sank more than 200m down. It would take this long for currents to lift them back to shallow water where the carbon would be released.
The study also had significant implications for plans to develop the process as a commercial technique to counteract climate change, reported the Times, as 15 to 50 times less carbon was taken out of circulation than had been predicted by some experts.
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In other news, a tiny crustacean with a penchant for munching piers could help provide the next breakthrough in green energy, according to the Guardian.
The gribble uses enzymes in its gut to break down wood. Scientists hope these enzymes could help make second-generation biofuels a commercial reality within 10 years.
Second-generation biofuels are made from natural products such as willow and straw. Ethanol or butanol is made by breaking down cell wall cellulose and fermenting it. Unlike first-generation biofuels produced from crops that store sugars and starches in their grains, that are very energy intensive to grow, use a lot of nitrogen fertiliser and divert crops away from the food chain, second-general biofuels can be made from the waste materials of normal food crops, as well as non-food plants that still produce a large amount of biomass quickly.
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New Scientist reported on a small-scale study that showed a reversal of some of the disability associated with multiple sclerosis for the first time ever. Stem cells were used to treat 23 men and women in the early stages of the autoimmune disease.
First stem cells were taken from their bone marrow, and then chemicals used to destroy their immune cells before the stem cells were reinjected. The stem cells developed into naive immune cells that didn’t see the myelin that insulates nerve cells as alien, and therefore didn’t destroy it.
After three years, 17 of the patients had improved by one point on a standard disability scale. None had deteriorated. Randomised clinical trials on large numbers of people are now needed to confirm the findings.
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The government have nominated Charles Darwin’s home and surrounding ‘landscape laboratory’ in Kent as a world heritage site. Darwin wrote On The Origin Of Species at Down House and rarely left for more than a few days after moving there in 1842. He chose it for its wealth of wildlife habitat – gathering wild orchids to propagate and study in his glasshouses, drawing tiny insect-eating plants from the bog, and collecting mud to see what seeds would sprout from the pond.
’What is remarkable is the extent to which we can still walk in Darwin’s footsteps, out from his own garden into the fields and woodlands which inspired him,’ said his great-great-grandson, Randall Keynes. ‘In a field where he recorded 13 species of orchid, we were still able to find 12.’
(Read more in the Guardian)
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The mystery of why and how desert locusts sometimes form huge hungry swarms when usually they live shy solitary lives has finally been solved by scientists.
According to the Independent, one-tenth of the world’s population’s livelihoods are at risk of massive destruction by locust swarms.
The discovery of the mechanism that controls the swarming process – a build-up of serotonin in the nerves of the middle part of the solitary locust’s body that controls its wings and legs causes – opens up the possibility of stopping it.
Dr Steve Rogers, a member of the group that published the study in Science, said it is enforced mingling that triggers the physical change from solitary to gregarious – such as when rainfall causes an explosion in numbers, followed by subsequent drought.
‘The gregarious phase is a strategy born of desperation and driven by hunger – swarming is a response to find pastures new,’ he said. ‘We have now found the mechanism that controls the process. We’ve opened the black box of how this works.’
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And finally...
The latest from the Telegraph on how the sexes differ: men smell of cheese and women smell of onion. That’s according to a Swiss study by a company that researches flavours and smells for the food and perfume industry.
Samples were taken from 24 men and 25 women after they’d spent time in a sauna or on an exercise bike. Women’s samples contained high amounts of an odourless sulphur-containing compound that transformed to thiol – well-known for its onion odour – when mixed with underarm bacteria. Men, on the otherhand, sweated high levels of a fatty acid which released a cheesy smell when exposed to the same bacterial enzymes.
Potentially, the findings could be used to develop deodorants aimed specifically at men or women. However, other smell experts emphasized that the impact of other factors could lead to other results outside of Switzerland, since what you eat, wash with, wear and your genes all affect your smell.
-------------------
New Scientist reported on a small-scale study that showed a reversal of some of the disability associated with multiple sclerosis for the first time ever. Stem cells were used to treat 23 men and women in the early stages of the autoimmune disease.
First stem cells were taken from their bone marrow, and then chemicals used to destroy their immune cells before the stem cells were reinjected. The stem cells developed into naive immune cells that didn’t see the myelin that insulates nerve cells as alien, and therefore didn’t destroy it.
After three years, 17 of the patients had improved by one point on a standard disability scale. None had deteriorated. Randomised clinical trials on large numbers of people are now needed to confirm the findings.
-------------------
The government have nominated Charles Darwin’s home and surrounding ‘landscape laboratory’ in Kent as a world heritage site. Darwin wrote On The Origin Of Species at Down House and rarely left for more than a few days after moving there in 1842. He chose it for its wealth of wildlife habitat – gathering wild orchids to propagate and study in his glasshouses, drawing tiny insect-eating plants from the bog, and collecting mud to see what seeds would sprout from the pond.
’What is remarkable is the extent to which we can still walk in Darwin’s footsteps, out from his own garden into the fields and woodlands which inspired him,’ said his great-great-grandson, Randall Keynes. ‘In a field where he recorded 13 species of orchid, we were still able to find 12.’
(Read more in the Guardian)
-------------------
The mystery of why and how desert locusts sometimes form huge hungry swarms when usually they live shy solitary lives has finally been solved by scientists.
According to the Independent, one-tenth of the world’s population’s livelihoods are at risk of massive destruction by locust swarms.
The discovery of the mechanism that controls the swarming process – a build-up of serotonin in the nerves of the middle part of the solitary locust’s body that controls its wings and legs causes – opens up the possibility of stopping it.
Dr Steve Rogers, a member of the group that published the study in Science, said it is enforced mingling that triggers the physical change from solitary to gregarious – such as when rainfall causes an explosion in numbers, followed by subsequent drought.
‘The gregarious phase is a strategy born of desperation and driven by hunger – swarming is a response to find pastures new,’ he said. ‘We have now found the mechanism that controls the process. We’ve opened the black box of how this works.’
-------------------
And finally...
The latest from the Telegraph on how the sexes differ: men smell of cheese and women smell of onion. That’s according to a Swiss study by a company that researches flavours and smells for the food and perfume industry.
Samples were taken from 24 men and 25 women after they’d spent time in a sauna or on an exercise bike. Women’s samples contained high amounts of an odourless sulphur-containing compound that transformed to thiol – well-known for its onion odour – when mixed with underarm bacteria. Men, on the otherhand, sweated high levels of a fatty acid which released a cheesy smell when exposed to the same bacterial enzymes.
Potentially, the findings could be used to develop deodorants aimed specifically at men or women. However, other smell experts emphasized that the impact of other factors could lead to other results outside of Switzerland, since what you eat, wash with, wear and your genes all affect your smell.
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