Science News Digest- 1st February 2010
In the science news this week, how running shoes may be doing more harm than good, is Earth becoming hidden to aliens, encouraging news for victims of serious injuries, an exciting advancement in biofuels and finally..... the 'sex factor' of politics.
Bare your sole.
New research from Harvard University into the effects shoes have on the way we run has uncovered some interesting results as reported in the BBC this week.
By looking at the differences between barefoot runners and those wearing shoes, the researchers have noted that those who are ‘unshod’ strike the ground with their forefoot or midfoot, whereas those wearing shoes strike the ground with their heel.
The significance of this is that they now think barefoot runners are at less risk of certain types of injury because the front of the foot can take the impact of running more effectively than the heel and you can also take fuller advantage of energy stored in the ankle and in the arch of the foot.
Impacting the ground with your heel has been likened to someone hitting it with a hammer with up to three times your body weight and can cause a repetitive strain injury. Naturally the shoes cushion this blow and slow down the force, but it begs the question of whether they were necessary in the first place.
The leader of the research, Dr Lieberman said;
"By forefoot or mid-foot striking correctly, one can almost completely eliminate that collision, making barefoot running comfortable,"
Dr Jay Stock, an evolutionary biologist from the University of Cambridge in the UK, told BBC News: "This provides compelling evidence that modern footwear may change the way in which people run, and in turn, cause greater stress on our bodies."
He said that it was also very interesting that "many of the world's best athletes run with a forefoot strike".
------------------------------------
Radio silence
A special meeting on the search for extraterrestrial intelligence (Seti) has warned that we are making ourselves invisible to alien life forms that may be on the search for TV and radio signals being beamed into space.
With the onward march of technology and Britain’s switch from analogue to digital, our communications are becoming increasingly satellite based. In the past we used huge ground stations that beamed signals at thousands of watts into the atmosphere, but now we use satellites that beam down towards the Earth at around 75 watts.
The assumption is that aliens are looking out for interstellar signals in the same way that we are looking out for theirs, so with an increasing radio silence due to our own efficiency we are reducing the chances of being found.
"The trouble is that we are making ourselves more and more difficult to be heard," said Dr Drake, the world’s foremost expert on the search for alien life . "We are broadcasting in much more efficient ways today and are making our signals fainter and fainter."
Read more in the Guardian.
-----------------------------------
A matter of life and death
Tragically those who suffer severe injuries on the battlefield have a poor chance of surviving unless they are taken to a hospital quickly, but new research from Massachusetts General Hospital in Boston may have found a miracle drug that can sustain the wounded long enough for them to receive life saving treatment.
By preventing certain biological functions from shutting down that are usually switched off when the body goes into shock, the drug can keep vital systems running as reported in New Scientist this week.
It is known from previous research that shock causes the blood pressure to rise and the expression of some proteins to shut down, conserving energy in the short time, but if the body remains in shock it can result in organ failure and death. Furthermore, when the body is in shock, some of the genes change their expression via a process called acetylations that remove chemical additions to the genome.
The drug works by releasing histone deacetylase (HDAC) inhibitors into the body, such as valproic acid, which prevent the removal of acetylations, allowing certain ‘survival pathways’ to remain switched on.
The lead researcher Hasan Alam has already tested this theory on rats and pigs, but is yet to begin trials with human subjects. With the pigs, Alam anaesthetised the animals and drained 60% of their blood, as well as inflicting other injuries before giving them a saline solution, much as a soldier on the battlefield would have been given. After this, some of the pigs were given a blood transfusion, some were given valproic acid and left the remainder untreated.
Only a quarter of the pigs given saline survived for four hours (the average time it takes to get hospital treatment on the battlefield), but 86% of those given valproic acid survived and 100% of those given a blood transfusion recovered.
After waiting to see if there are any longer term effects of this treatment on the pigs, Alam is looking to begin human trials soon.
---------------------------------
Plant Power
Biofuel has been under fire in recent years for being a contributing factor to the growing global food crisis, but a collaboration between organisations including University of California, Berkeley, and the biotech firm LS9 of South San Francisco have unveiled what they believe may be a solution to the allocation of resources.
The researchers have created a bacterium capable of converting a form of raw plant biomass into road-ready clean diesel that provides a viable alternative to current biofuels.
According to Nature, this method uses grass or crop waste to fill up gas tanks without affecting food prices or causing more deforestation and the production process is much more climate friendly than producing ethanol from maize.
Previous biofuels have been mainly in the form of ethanol, but this new method using modified Escherichia coli bacterium can make the fuel out of sugars or a component of plant fibre called hemicellulose. Furthermore, this method can be altered to create other high value chemicals, such as a mimic for petrol.
LS9 has calculated that the biodiesel it is preparing to release onto the market would produce 85% less greenhouse-gas than standard diesel.
The process itself involved making over a dozen genetic modifications, including amplifying and short-circuiting the E.coli’s internal machinery to allow them to produce large fatty-acid molecules and convert precursor molecules into fuels.
Commercial scale demonstrations are planned for later this year.
-----------------------------------
And finally.....
The Sex Factor
With the general election looming, politicians around the UK had better sits up and listen to this latest research from the Department of Economics at the University of Helsinki.
Their researchers carried out a large scale experiment on just over 10,000 people on whether attractiveness makes a difference when selecting which candidate to vote for.
Using photos of nearly 2,000 political candidates, it was found that both men and women are lured towards the candidates that they find more attractive, labeling them as being more trustworthy, intelligent, likeable and able based on their appearance.
However, even when the participants were made privy to the candidate’s education details and their occupation, it made no difference to the results.
In fact, for every small increase in attractiveness there was a much larger jump in their perceived intelligence, competence, likeability and trustworthiness said the study reported in the Telegraph this week.
The study authors said: "Are good looks an advantage in politics? For several reasons they could be.”
"If good-looking people are more persuasive, are treated better in social interaction and achieve higher occupational success they might also do better in politics.”
"Our main result is that beauty seems to help.” Attractive people are seen as more successful in general, said the study, which is true of politics as much as show business.
The decision to air-brush David Cameron’s election poster doesn’t look quite so silly now…
Bare your sole.
New research from Harvard University into the effects shoes have on the way we run has uncovered some interesting results as reported in the BBC this week.
By looking at the differences between barefoot runners and those wearing shoes, the researchers have noted that those who are ‘unshod’ strike the ground with their forefoot or midfoot, whereas those wearing shoes strike the ground with their heel.
The significance of this is that they now think barefoot runners are at less risk of certain types of injury because the front of the foot can take the impact of running more effectively than the heel and you can also take fuller advantage of energy stored in the ankle and in the arch of the foot.
Impacting the ground with your heel has been likened to someone hitting it with a hammer with up to three times your body weight and can cause a repetitive strain injury. Naturally the shoes cushion this blow and slow down the force, but it begs the question of whether they were necessary in the first place.
The leader of the research, Dr Lieberman said;
"By forefoot or mid-foot striking correctly, one can almost completely eliminate that collision, making barefoot running comfortable,"
Dr Jay Stock, an evolutionary biologist from the University of Cambridge in the UK, told BBC News: "This provides compelling evidence that modern footwear may change the way in which people run, and in turn, cause greater stress on our bodies."
He said that it was also very interesting that "many of the world's best athletes run with a forefoot strike".
------------------------------------
Radio silence
A special meeting on the search for extraterrestrial intelligence (Seti) has warned that we are making ourselves invisible to alien life forms that may be on the search for TV and radio signals being beamed into space.
With the onward march of technology and Britain’s switch from analogue to digital, our communications are becoming increasingly satellite based. In the past we used huge ground stations that beamed signals at thousands of watts into the atmosphere, but now we use satellites that beam down towards the Earth at around 75 watts.
The assumption is that aliens are looking out for interstellar signals in the same way that we are looking out for theirs, so with an increasing radio silence due to our own efficiency we are reducing the chances of being found.
"The trouble is that we are making ourselves more and more difficult to be heard," said Dr Drake, the world’s foremost expert on the search for alien life . "We are broadcasting in much more efficient ways today and are making our signals fainter and fainter."
Read more in the Guardian.
-----------------------------------
A matter of life and death
Tragically those who suffer severe injuries on the battlefield have a poor chance of surviving unless they are taken to a hospital quickly, but new research from Massachusetts General Hospital in Boston may have found a miracle drug that can sustain the wounded long enough for them to receive life saving treatment.
By preventing certain biological functions from shutting down that are usually switched off when the body goes into shock, the drug can keep vital systems running as reported in New Scientist this week.
It is known from previous research that shock causes the blood pressure to rise and the expression of some proteins to shut down, conserving energy in the short time, but if the body remains in shock it can result in organ failure and death. Furthermore, when the body is in shock, some of the genes change their expression via a process called acetylations that remove chemical additions to the genome.
The drug works by releasing histone deacetylase (HDAC) inhibitors into the body, such as valproic acid, which prevent the removal of acetylations, allowing certain ‘survival pathways’ to remain switched on.
The lead researcher Hasan Alam has already tested this theory on rats and pigs, but is yet to begin trials with human subjects. With the pigs, Alam anaesthetised the animals and drained 60% of their blood, as well as inflicting other injuries before giving them a saline solution, much as a soldier on the battlefield would have been given. After this, some of the pigs were given a blood transfusion, some were given valproic acid and left the remainder untreated.
Only a quarter of the pigs given saline survived for four hours (the average time it takes to get hospital treatment on the battlefield), but 86% of those given valproic acid survived and 100% of those given a blood transfusion recovered.
After waiting to see if there are any longer term effects of this treatment on the pigs, Alam is looking to begin human trials soon.
---------------------------------
Plant Power
Biofuel has been under fire in recent years for being a contributing factor to the growing global food crisis, but a collaboration between organisations including University of California, Berkeley, and the biotech firm LS9 of South San Francisco have unveiled what they believe may be a solution to the allocation of resources.
The researchers have created a bacterium capable of converting a form of raw plant biomass into road-ready clean diesel that provides a viable alternative to current biofuels.
According to Nature, this method uses grass or crop waste to fill up gas tanks without affecting food prices or causing more deforestation and the production process is much more climate friendly than producing ethanol from maize.
Previous biofuels have been mainly in the form of ethanol, but this new method using modified Escherichia coli bacterium can make the fuel out of sugars or a component of plant fibre called hemicellulose. Furthermore, this method can be altered to create other high value chemicals, such as a mimic for petrol.
LS9 has calculated that the biodiesel it is preparing to release onto the market would produce 85% less greenhouse-gas than standard diesel.
The process itself involved making over a dozen genetic modifications, including amplifying and short-circuiting the E.coli’s internal machinery to allow them to produce large fatty-acid molecules and convert precursor molecules into fuels.
Commercial scale demonstrations are planned for later this year.
-----------------------------------
And finally.....
The Sex Factor
With the general election looming, politicians around the UK had better sits up and listen to this latest research from the Department of Economics at the University of Helsinki.
Their researchers carried out a large scale experiment on just over 10,000 people on whether attractiveness makes a difference when selecting which candidate to vote for.
Using photos of nearly 2,000 political candidates, it was found that both men and women are lured towards the candidates that they find more attractive, labeling them as being more trustworthy, intelligent, likeable and able based on their appearance.
However, even when the participants were made privy to the candidate’s education details and their occupation, it made no difference to the results.
In fact, for every small increase in attractiveness there was a much larger jump in their perceived intelligence, competence, likeability and trustworthiness said the study reported in the Telegraph this week.
The study authors said: "Are good looks an advantage in politics? For several reasons they could be.”
"If good-looking people are more persuasive, are treated better in social interaction and achieve higher occupational success they might also do better in politics.”
"Our main result is that beauty seems to help.” Attractive people are seen as more successful in general, said the study, which is true of politics as much as show business.
The decision to air-brush David Cameron’s election poster doesn’t look quite so silly now…
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