Science News Digest 11th January 2010
In the science news this week....celebrity science, mosquito's love songs, ice on Mars, a new record for Pi and finally virtual reality gaming comes into your living room.
Follywood
In New Scientist this week Sense About Science’s ‘celebrity watch’ review has publicised some alarming gaffes made by celebrities touting incorrect statements as scientific fact in 2009.
The bizarre claims range from Roger Moore asserting that foie gras causes Alzheimer's disease and Sarah Palin dismissing evolution to Arsenal football star Robin van Persie publicising a treatment for injuries where placental fluid from horses is dripped onto the affected area.
However, topping the list of idiocy has to be Heather Mills’ claims that meat stays in your gut for 40 years, putrefies and results in a fatal disease.
Sense About Science has published an annual review since 2007 after being alerted to ‘scientifically questionable or incorrect statements by public figures’.
Ellen Raphael, the charity's director said;
"We try hard to explain why it was wrong, and why what might appear to be true isn't,"
Read the full report at Sense About Science.
------------------------------------
Flight of fancy
Despite the fact that there are six different groups of the Anopheles gambiae mosquito living together in Burkina Faso who all look identical, they still manage not to mate with each other, leading scientists to ponder how they can tell the difference.
Well according to a new study conducted between the University of Sussex and the Natural Resources Institute of the University of Greenwich, it’s all down to the love song they chose to sing to each other.
The researchers looked at two types of A. gambiae known as ‘m’ and ‘s’ who fly together in swarms. By collecting the larvae of the insect and raising them in a lab, the team attached a short piece of wire to adults of the same type with bees wax to act as a leash and held mosquitoes of opposite sexes within close proximity to each other. They then recorded their ‘music’ with a microphone to detect the speeding or slowing of wing beats which changes the frequency of their buzz.
Only mosquitoes of the same type can harmonise with each other by aligning their wing beats, while mosquitoes of a different type don’t quite come together.
"It's very sweet," says Medical entomologist Gabriella Gibson for the University of Sussex who led the study. "When they're doing this singing thing, they're reaching their legs across to the other one, trying to do footsies."
When the songs are in full flow, the insects are sensing the vibrations on their antenna, so if the song clashes the antenna vibrates oddly and breaks off the courtship.
However, other scientists have warned that these results may not be relevant to other parts of Africa such as Mali where other ‘m’ and ‘s’ mosquitoes do the reverse by not swarming together, but will mate together if they are introduced.
Read more in ScienceNOW
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A record breaking piece of Pi
In the BBC this week, a man has won the ultimate Pi contest and broken the record for calculating the mathematical constant to an impressive 2.7 trillion digits, smashing the previous record by 123 billion.
Even more astounding is the fact that Fabrice Bellard used a humble desktop computer to achieve this feat. Overall it took him 131 days to run the calculation, complete it and check the result.
In contrast to the supercomputers used previously in record breaking calculation, Bellard claims his method is in fact 20 times more efficient, although the previous record of 2.6 trillion digits took just 29 hours to complete.
However, the latter computer was 2,000 times faster and similarly expensive.
Over a terabyte of hard disk space is required to store this version of pi and reciting one number a second would take more than 85,000 years.
Before dismissing this feat as a ‘geeky’ pursuit, it actually has a very practical application. Rather than using Pi for fun, it is actually a good way to test a method according to Bellard.
Ivars Peterson, director of publications at the Mathematical Association of America, said that; "People have used (Pi) as a vehicle for testing algorithms and for testing computers; pi has a precise sequence of digits, it's exactly that, and if your computer isn't operating flawlessly some of those digits will be wrong,"
"It's more than just for the fun of it - pi is a way of testing a method and then the method can be used for other purposes."
---------------------------------
Life on Mars?
Using new high-definition images from Nasa's Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter a team of British-led scientists believe that they have found evidence of 12 mile-wide lakes of melted ice existed along parts of the Martian equator 3bn years ago.
These assertions have come as a shock to some scientists, who wrote off Mars as being a frozen wasteland during this period as reported in the Guardian.
Dr Nicholas Warner, from Imperial College London, whose team analysed the images, said: "Most of the research on Mars has focused on its early history and the recent past. Scientists had largely overlooked the Hesperian Epoch as it was thought that Mars was then a frozen wasteland. Excitingly, our study now shows that this middle period in Mars' history was much more dynamic than we previously thought."
On top of these findings, they now believe that lakes, seas and rivers could have existed between 3.8 billion and four billion years ago. The now dry lakes are a good bet to go to looking for signs of extinct microbial life.
--------------------------------
And Finally.....
Virtually a reality.
It’s the news we’ve all been waiting for- soon we will be able to play videogames using our bodies to control them without the need for a controller.
The new system dubbed Project Natal is being developed by Microsoft and will be available to use on the Xbox 360 from November 2010.
It uses a 3-D camera that is connected to the console to gauge the positioning of the user and mimic their actions on the screen.
“With Project Natal we are removing the last barrier to gaming, the controller, freeing you to have the experience you want with technology that is natural for you.” commented Robbie Bach, Microsoft’s president of entertainment and devices.
Its main rival, the Nintendo Wii has come under fire for having games that become uninvolving after a few sessions, so Microsoft are hoping that the Xbox 360’s processing power will allow players to get immersed in much more engaging games.
Read more in the Times
Follywood
In New Scientist this week Sense About Science’s ‘celebrity watch’ review has publicised some alarming gaffes made by celebrities touting incorrect statements as scientific fact in 2009.
The bizarre claims range from Roger Moore asserting that foie gras causes Alzheimer's disease and Sarah Palin dismissing evolution to Arsenal football star Robin van Persie publicising a treatment for injuries where placental fluid from horses is dripped onto the affected area.
However, topping the list of idiocy has to be Heather Mills’ claims that meat stays in your gut for 40 years, putrefies and results in a fatal disease.
Sense About Science has published an annual review since 2007 after being alerted to ‘scientifically questionable or incorrect statements by public figures’.
Ellen Raphael, the charity's director said;
"We try hard to explain why it was wrong, and why what might appear to be true isn't,"
Read the full report at Sense About Science.
------------------------------------
Flight of fancy
Despite the fact that there are six different groups of the Anopheles gambiae mosquito living together in Burkina Faso who all look identical, they still manage not to mate with each other, leading scientists to ponder how they can tell the difference.
Well according to a new study conducted between the University of Sussex and the Natural Resources Institute of the University of Greenwich, it’s all down to the love song they chose to sing to each other.
The researchers looked at two types of A. gambiae known as ‘m’ and ‘s’ who fly together in swarms. By collecting the larvae of the insect and raising them in a lab, the team attached a short piece of wire to adults of the same type with bees wax to act as a leash and held mosquitoes of opposite sexes within close proximity to each other. They then recorded their ‘music’ with a microphone to detect the speeding or slowing of wing beats which changes the frequency of their buzz.
Only mosquitoes of the same type can harmonise with each other by aligning their wing beats, while mosquitoes of a different type don’t quite come together.
"It's very sweet," says Medical entomologist Gabriella Gibson for the University of Sussex who led the study. "When they're doing this singing thing, they're reaching their legs across to the other one, trying to do footsies."
When the songs are in full flow, the insects are sensing the vibrations on their antenna, so if the song clashes the antenna vibrates oddly and breaks off the courtship.
However, other scientists have warned that these results may not be relevant to other parts of Africa such as Mali where other ‘m’ and ‘s’ mosquitoes do the reverse by not swarming together, but will mate together if they are introduced.
Read more in ScienceNOW
----------------------------------
A record breaking piece of Pi
In the BBC this week, a man has won the ultimate Pi contest and broken the record for calculating the mathematical constant to an impressive 2.7 trillion digits, smashing the previous record by 123 billion.
Even more astounding is the fact that Fabrice Bellard used a humble desktop computer to achieve this feat. Overall it took him 131 days to run the calculation, complete it and check the result.
In contrast to the supercomputers used previously in record breaking calculation, Bellard claims his method is in fact 20 times more efficient, although the previous record of 2.6 trillion digits took just 29 hours to complete.
However, the latter computer was 2,000 times faster and similarly expensive.
Over a terabyte of hard disk space is required to store this version of pi and reciting one number a second would take more than 85,000 years.
Before dismissing this feat as a ‘geeky’ pursuit, it actually has a very practical application. Rather than using Pi for fun, it is actually a good way to test a method according to Bellard.
Ivars Peterson, director of publications at the Mathematical Association of America, said that; "People have used (Pi) as a vehicle for testing algorithms and for testing computers; pi has a precise sequence of digits, it's exactly that, and if your computer isn't operating flawlessly some of those digits will be wrong,"
"It's more than just for the fun of it - pi is a way of testing a method and then the method can be used for other purposes."
---------------------------------
Life on Mars?
Using new high-definition images from Nasa's Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter a team of British-led scientists believe that they have found evidence of 12 mile-wide lakes of melted ice existed along parts of the Martian equator 3bn years ago.
These assertions have come as a shock to some scientists, who wrote off Mars as being a frozen wasteland during this period as reported in the Guardian.
Dr Nicholas Warner, from Imperial College London, whose team analysed the images, said: "Most of the research on Mars has focused on its early history and the recent past. Scientists had largely overlooked the Hesperian Epoch as it was thought that Mars was then a frozen wasteland. Excitingly, our study now shows that this middle period in Mars' history was much more dynamic than we previously thought."
On top of these findings, they now believe that lakes, seas and rivers could have existed between 3.8 billion and four billion years ago. The now dry lakes are a good bet to go to looking for signs of extinct microbial life.
--------------------------------
And Finally.....
Virtually a reality.
It’s the news we’ve all been waiting for- soon we will be able to play videogames using our bodies to control them without the need for a controller.
The new system dubbed Project Natal is being developed by Microsoft and will be available to use on the Xbox 360 from November 2010.
It uses a 3-D camera that is connected to the console to gauge the positioning of the user and mimic their actions on the screen.
“With Project Natal we are removing the last barrier to gaming, the controller, freeing you to have the experience you want with technology that is natural for you.” commented Robbie Bach, Microsoft’s president of entertainment and devices.
Its main rival, the Nintendo Wii has come under fire for having games that become uninvolving after a few sessions, so Microsoft are hoping that the Xbox 360’s processing power will allow players to get immersed in much more engaging games.
Read more in the Times
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