The Science News Digest - 3 July 2009
In this week’s science news: why mums could have been right all along about eating up greens, how corporate insurance giants are helping battle climate change and why chicken feathers could be the best thing under car bonnets.
Solar expedition
Clearly the world isn’t enough for Swiss adventurer Betrand Piccard. After making history flying around the globe in a balloon he wants to do it again – albeit this time in a solar-powered plane.
His Solar Impulse team unveiled their prototype last Friday at Dubendorf airfield near Zürich. At 61m, it has a wingspan to rival modern airliners, yet looks more akin to a glider and weighs just 1,500kg.
Dr Piccard plans to trial a final model across the Atlantic in 2012, before ultimately circling the Earth. He wants to use this endeavour to highlight the potential of renewable energies.
"The real success for Solar Impulse would be to have enough millions of people following the project, saying 'if they managed to do it around the world with renewable energies and energy savings, then we should be able to do it in our daily life' ", he enthused to the BBC.
His team used composite materials to keep the aeroplane light. They also incorporated super-efficient solar cells, batteries, motors and propellers to keep it going in the dark hours.
Flying at night is risky, as solar and battery power are only just becoming mature enough to do this.
Dr Piccard estimates the plane could circumvent the globe in 20-25 days, but is let down by a navigator’s need for sleep. "The aeroplane could do it theoretically non-stop - but not the pilot," he said.
--------------------------------
Globally positioned puffins
GPS-tagged puffins are helping scientists fathom steep declines in seabird populations across Britain, reports The Guardian.
Last year, large numbers of the species were found washed up dead along the UK’s coast. Some populations crashed by a third or more, and many adults were malnourished.
Seabird numbers have declined by up to 40% in just eight years, along with other evidence of a significant change in the North Sea’s health. Conservationists have now begun a series of urgent studies to try and work out what’s going on.
One of these involves puffins on the Farne Islands – a low-lying archipelago off the Northumberland coast – being fitted with tracking devices to monitor where and how they feed and behave.
Food is a critical issue; zoologists suspect that last year’s slump is tied to a decline in the puffins’ main food source, the sandeel. In turn this drop could be due to heavy trawling and rising sea temperatures.
Currently what the puffins do when they leave the islands is a mystery. Knowing more about their life-cycles will focus conservation efforts, and this knowledge will also help protect other seabird colonies.
Dr Richard Bevan, who is leading the research on the Farnes, says last year’s puffin crash could be a blip not a trend. However, he adds: “We don’t know what’s happening out there. There’s a change in the ecology of the North Sea. What the implications are of that, we have no idea”.
---------------------------------
Rain fall and windfalls
They may seem unlikely saviours, but giants of the insurance world could be instrumental in helping the world’s poorest cope with climate change.
Farmers especially are under growing pressure from increasingly unpredictable weather, with many agricultural livelihoods dependant on certain quantities or timings of rain.
Now corporate leaders such as Swiss Re and Munich Re are rolling out ‘index insurance’ schemes to help. These protect against the vagaries of the weather. For example if rain fails to fall before a cut-off date, companies can automatically transfer a payout. This system also avoids the prohibitive costs of checking claims from smallholder farmers.
The schemes are products of alliances between NGOs, charities and insurance firms; seemingly unlikely bedfellows. “Oxfam went through a big soul-searching process before jumping on board” said Marjorie Victor of Oxfam America, one of the bodies involved. “The trick is to balance the needs of companies to make a profit with the needs of farmers”.
As well as offering protection, insurance could act as a powerful incentive for people to adapt their behaviour. For instance farmers may be more inclined to plant drought-resistant crops if it makes their premiums cheaper.
Insurance could be as little as a few dollars a year, and is being considered as part of the successor to the Kyoto protocol. However particular people will be excluded: as climate change renders some regions increasingly inhospitable, premiums may become unaffordable.
Read more in New Scientist.
---------------------------------
One man’s meat is another man’s poison.
Being a vegetarian means you’re less likely to develop certain types of cancer, a major study reported by the BBC has concluded.
The research took 60,000 people who were either meat-eaters, ate fish but not meat, and those who ate neither meat nor fish. One of the biggest differences was for risk of cancers of the lymph and blood. Vegetarians were just over half as likely to develop these as meat-eaters. They were also 75% less likely to suffer from a rare cancer of the bone marrow - multiple myeloma. Both fish-eaters and vegetarians were around a third as likely to develop stomach cancer as meat-eaters.
The general risk of cancer was also reduced from about 33 sufferers in 100 for the overall population to around 29 in 100 for vegetarians.
Researchers said differences could be down to viruses and mutation-causing compounds in meat, or vegetables offering special protection. For stomach cancer, it’s thought compounds found in meat may damage DNA, or cooking temperatures could produce carcinogens.
However protection was not found to stretch to bowl cancer. Vegetarians were also twice as at risk of cervical cancer compared to meat-eaters. The authors say this result could be down to chance, but that it was possible diet influenced this form of the disease.
A spokesperson from Cancer Research UK, who funded the research, said: “These interesting results add to the evidence that what we eat affects our chances of developing cancer. But the links between diet and cancer are complex and more research is needed”.
---------------------------------
Flesh and Stone
Scientists studying the most intact mummified dinosaur discovered yet, have revealed it was probably larger and faster than previously thought.
The team at the University of Manchester examined the mineralized skin of the hadrosaur –dubbed Dakota - which is complete with organic compounds and mummified soft tissue. “This is the closest you’ll get to touching a real dinosaur” says Phillip Manning, a palaeontologist on the team.
Dakota was excavated from one of the richest fossil troves known, the Hell Creek Formation which stretches across the Dakotas and Montana in the USA. It’s thought the 7.5m long dinosaur fell into water-logged soil which entombed it in a mineral-rich soup; inhibiting decay and ensured highly detailed preservation.
The researchers uncovered extraordinary amounts of leg, tail and arm skin. These suggest that the hadrosaur’s backside was 25% larger than once believed and that - at 45km per hour - it could run faster than top human sprinters. They also confirm previous suspicions that the dinosaur was striped.
Mike Benton of the University of Bristol, who did not take part in the study, said “Phil Manning and his large team have spent the past three years applying every possible kind of modern analytical technology”. Their battery of tests included electron microscopy, infrared spectroscopy and x-ray analysis.
Organic compounds from the mummy also seem to be products of protein decay. “These could help us understand more about the process of decay and preservation of biomolecules, which is a bit of a black box right now” added Manning.
Have a look at Scientific American for more.
---------------------------------
Fiat Chick-a-cento
Scientists working on technology for vehicles of the future have found a surprising ally in chickens, writes New Scientist.
A team at the University of Delaware in Newark studied how the birds’ feathers performed in storing hydrogen for fuel-cell-powered vehicles. They found these could store almost as much hydrogen as pricey carbon nanotubes.
"You can afford carbon nanotubes if you want to go to the moon, but if you just want to go to the grocery store, you need something cheaper," says Richard Wool, who presented the results last week.
The work is also hoped to improve another issue – that of Delaware’s huge chicken feather waste problem.
Solar expedition
Clearly the world isn’t enough for Swiss adventurer Betrand Piccard. After making history flying around the globe in a balloon he wants to do it again – albeit this time in a solar-powered plane.
His Solar Impulse team unveiled their prototype last Friday at Dubendorf airfield near Zürich. At 61m, it has a wingspan to rival modern airliners, yet looks more akin to a glider and weighs just 1,500kg.
Dr Piccard plans to trial a final model across the Atlantic in 2012, before ultimately circling the Earth. He wants to use this endeavour to highlight the potential of renewable energies.
"The real success for Solar Impulse would be to have enough millions of people following the project, saying 'if they managed to do it around the world with renewable energies and energy savings, then we should be able to do it in our daily life' ", he enthused to the BBC.
His team used composite materials to keep the aeroplane light. They also incorporated super-efficient solar cells, batteries, motors and propellers to keep it going in the dark hours.
Flying at night is risky, as solar and battery power are only just becoming mature enough to do this.
Dr Piccard estimates the plane could circumvent the globe in 20-25 days, but is let down by a navigator’s need for sleep. "The aeroplane could do it theoretically non-stop - but not the pilot," he said.
--------------------------------
Globally positioned puffins
GPS-tagged puffins are helping scientists fathom steep declines in seabird populations across Britain, reports The Guardian.
Last year, large numbers of the species were found washed up dead along the UK’s coast. Some populations crashed by a third or more, and many adults were malnourished.
Seabird numbers have declined by up to 40% in just eight years, along with other evidence of a significant change in the North Sea’s health. Conservationists have now begun a series of urgent studies to try and work out what’s going on.
One of these involves puffins on the Farne Islands – a low-lying archipelago off the Northumberland coast – being fitted with tracking devices to monitor where and how they feed and behave.
Food is a critical issue; zoologists suspect that last year’s slump is tied to a decline in the puffins’ main food source, the sandeel. In turn this drop could be due to heavy trawling and rising sea temperatures.
Currently what the puffins do when they leave the islands is a mystery. Knowing more about their life-cycles will focus conservation efforts, and this knowledge will also help protect other seabird colonies.
Dr Richard Bevan, who is leading the research on the Farnes, says last year’s puffin crash could be a blip not a trend. However, he adds: “We don’t know what’s happening out there. There’s a change in the ecology of the North Sea. What the implications are of that, we have no idea”.
---------------------------------
Rain fall and windfalls
They may seem unlikely saviours, but giants of the insurance world could be instrumental in helping the world’s poorest cope with climate change.
Farmers especially are under growing pressure from increasingly unpredictable weather, with many agricultural livelihoods dependant on certain quantities or timings of rain.
Now corporate leaders such as Swiss Re and Munich Re are rolling out ‘index insurance’ schemes to help. These protect against the vagaries of the weather. For example if rain fails to fall before a cut-off date, companies can automatically transfer a payout. This system also avoids the prohibitive costs of checking claims from smallholder farmers.
The schemes are products of alliances between NGOs, charities and insurance firms; seemingly unlikely bedfellows. “Oxfam went through a big soul-searching process before jumping on board” said Marjorie Victor of Oxfam America, one of the bodies involved. “The trick is to balance the needs of companies to make a profit with the needs of farmers”.
As well as offering protection, insurance could act as a powerful incentive for people to adapt their behaviour. For instance farmers may be more inclined to plant drought-resistant crops if it makes their premiums cheaper.
Insurance could be as little as a few dollars a year, and is being considered as part of the successor to the Kyoto protocol. However particular people will be excluded: as climate change renders some regions increasingly inhospitable, premiums may become unaffordable.
Read more in New Scientist.
---------------------------------
One man’s meat is another man’s poison.
Being a vegetarian means you’re less likely to develop certain types of cancer, a major study reported by the BBC has concluded.
The research took 60,000 people who were either meat-eaters, ate fish but not meat, and those who ate neither meat nor fish. One of the biggest differences was for risk of cancers of the lymph and blood. Vegetarians were just over half as likely to develop these as meat-eaters. They were also 75% less likely to suffer from a rare cancer of the bone marrow - multiple myeloma. Both fish-eaters and vegetarians were around a third as likely to develop stomach cancer as meat-eaters.
The general risk of cancer was also reduced from about 33 sufferers in 100 for the overall population to around 29 in 100 for vegetarians.
Researchers said differences could be down to viruses and mutation-causing compounds in meat, or vegetables offering special protection. For stomach cancer, it’s thought compounds found in meat may damage DNA, or cooking temperatures could produce carcinogens.
However protection was not found to stretch to bowl cancer. Vegetarians were also twice as at risk of cervical cancer compared to meat-eaters. The authors say this result could be down to chance, but that it was possible diet influenced this form of the disease.
A spokesperson from Cancer Research UK, who funded the research, said: “These interesting results add to the evidence that what we eat affects our chances of developing cancer. But the links between diet and cancer are complex and more research is needed”.
---------------------------------
Flesh and Stone
Scientists studying the most intact mummified dinosaur discovered yet, have revealed it was probably larger and faster than previously thought.
The team at the University of Manchester examined the mineralized skin of the hadrosaur –dubbed Dakota - which is complete with organic compounds and mummified soft tissue. “This is the closest you’ll get to touching a real dinosaur” says Phillip Manning, a palaeontologist on the team.
Dakota was excavated from one of the richest fossil troves known, the Hell Creek Formation which stretches across the Dakotas and Montana in the USA. It’s thought the 7.5m long dinosaur fell into water-logged soil which entombed it in a mineral-rich soup; inhibiting decay and ensured highly detailed preservation.
The researchers uncovered extraordinary amounts of leg, tail and arm skin. These suggest that the hadrosaur’s backside was 25% larger than once believed and that - at 45km per hour - it could run faster than top human sprinters. They also confirm previous suspicions that the dinosaur was striped.
Mike Benton of the University of Bristol, who did not take part in the study, said “Phil Manning and his large team have spent the past three years applying every possible kind of modern analytical technology”. Their battery of tests included electron microscopy, infrared spectroscopy and x-ray analysis.
Organic compounds from the mummy also seem to be products of protein decay. “These could help us understand more about the process of decay and preservation of biomolecules, which is a bit of a black box right now” added Manning.
Have a look at Scientific American for more.
---------------------------------
Fiat Chick-a-cento
Scientists working on technology for vehicles of the future have found a surprising ally in chickens, writes New Scientist.
A team at the University of Delaware in Newark studied how the birds’ feathers performed in storing hydrogen for fuel-cell-powered vehicles. They found these could store almost as much hydrogen as pricey carbon nanotubes.
"You can afford carbon nanotubes if you want to go to the moon, but if you just want to go to the grocery store, you need something cheaper," says Richard Wool, who presented the results last week.
The work is also hoped to improve another issue – that of Delaware’s huge chicken feather waste problem.
search this section
