The BA Science News Digest - 22 September 2006
Stories on climate change have dominated the news again this week: the destruction of some of the world’s leading holiday destinations may be the end result of global warming, California sues carmakers, and sea levels are rising faster than UN scientists predicted only five years ago. Plus, the remains of the earliest known child from humanity’s family tree have been discovered in Ethiopia, a British company wins the top AI prize, and the latest news from the International Space Station.
The Independent reports on gloomy predictions of extreme heat and destruction of some of the world's leading holiday destinations made on Thursday in a report assessing the impact of the dangers of mass tourism and climate change.
The Future of World Travel report found that by 2020 the natural features of some of the wonders of the world will be damaged by global warming, while other resorts will become seriously overcrowded. It has predicted that in a little more than a decade global warming will erode Goa's beaches and lead to more hurricanes sweeping across the Everglades, while the increase in tourism would send an army of skiers into the once remote kingdom of Nepal.
The Guardian reports that California, America's most populous state, opened a new front in its struggle with climate change on Wednesday when it announced that it was suing the six largest carmakers in the US for allegedly contributing to global warming. In the unprecedented lawsuit, the state accused Ford, General Motors, Toyota, Honda, Chrysler and Nissan of creating a "public nuisance" and costing it millions of dollars.
Environmental campaigners hailed the lawsuit as a landmark event in the effort to deal with global warming. The suit, filed in a US district court in northern California, alleges that vehicle emissions have contributed significantly to global warming, and argues that the car manufacturers should be held responsible for the past and future cost of combating this crisis.
The Telegraph reports that Arctic ice cover has melted so much that a ship could have sailed unhindered from northern Europe to the North Pole itself a few weeks ago, according to images released on Wednesday by scientists. Satellite images acquired from Aug 23-25 have shown for the first time dramatic openings — larger than the size of the British Isles — in the Arctic's year-round sea ice pack north of Svalbard, and extending into the Russian Arctic all the way to the North Pole.
The images were acquired by instruments aboard Envisat and EOS Aqua, two satellites operated by the European Space Agency (ESA). Regular satellite monitoring over the past 25 years shows that the northern polar ice cover has shrunk and thinned as global temperatures have risen. But this year's images are unprecedented, and fierce storms that fragmented and scattered already thin pack ice may be to blame, the scientists believe.
The Independent reports that the global sea level rise caused by climate change, severely threatening many of the world's coastal and low-lying areas from Bangladesh to East Anglia, is proceeding faster than UN scientists predicted only five years ago, according to Professor Chris Rapley, director of the British Antarctic Survey.
The present prediction of the UN's Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, from its third assessment report in 2001, is that global sea levels will rise by between 9cm and 88cm by 2100, depending on a number of factors including how far emissions are controlled, with a best guess of about 50cm over the century. But the new evidence, from a series of scientific papers published this year, indicates that this rate would be exceeded, said Professor Rapley, who runs the world's leading institute on Antarctic science - although he could not say what any new rate would be. Rises of this order will present a substantial threat of flooding, storm surge and even complete submersion of many of the world's populous low-lying areas,such as Bangladesh, the Nile Delta and even London.
The Guardian reports that Sir Richard Branson joined the growing ranks of global warming activists on Thursday, by committing $3bn (£1.6bn) to tackle climate change. The billionaire pledged all profits from his Virgin air and rail interests over the next 10 years to combating rising global temperatures. However, the money will not go to charities and is instead being invested in a new branch of Sir Richard's ever-expanding Virgin conglomerate, Virgin Fuels. Much of the investment will focus on biofuels, an alternative to oil-based fuels made from plants.
The Guardian also reports that Britain's leading scientists have challenged the US oil company ExxonMobil to stop funding groups that attempt to undermine the scientific consensus on climate change. In an unprecedented step, Britain's premier scientific academy has written to the oil giant to demand that the company withdraws support for dozens of groups that have "misrepresented the science of climate change by outright denial of the evidence". The scientists also strongly criticise the company's public statements on global warming, which they describe as "inaccurate and misleading".
In a letter earlier this month to Esso, the UK arm of ExxonMobil, the Royal Society cites its own survey which found that ExxonMobil last year distributed $2.9m to 39 groups that the society says misrepresent the science of climate change.
In other science news…
The remains of the earliest known child from humanity’s family tree have been discovered in Ethiopia, filling in a critical missing link in evolution, reports the Times. The almost complete skeleton belongs to a young girl of the species Australopithecus afarensis — a probable human ancestor that was among the first to walk on two legs — who died at the age of 3 about 3.3 million years ago.
The girl, named “Selam” after the word for peace in several Ethiopian languages, is by far the oldest fossil of a hominin child yet unearthed and blurs the line between apes and humans. She has also been nicknamed “little Lucy”, after the specimen of the same species discovered just 2½ miles (4km) away in 1974.
Early analysis has already started to transform understanding of a pivotal stage in the evolutionary process that led ultimately to Homo sapiens. Her anatomical features lie squarely in between those of humans and other apes, showing adaptations for walking upright on two legs and for climbing and swinging from trees.
The government's food safety watchdog is facing a legal challenge over allegations that it failed to take sufficient precautions to stop genetically modified rice entering the food chain. The Guardian reports that the environmental group Friends of the Earth has written to the Food Standards Agency as a first step towards bringing a judicial review after tests revealed GM contamination in two own-brands of rice sold by Morrisons. The supermarket has since withdrawn the brands. Friends of the Earth sent several samples for tests after it emerged last month that US rice had been contaminated with a GM variety grown in trials by Bayer CropScience between 1998 and 2001.
BBC News reports that a prestigious Artificial Intelligence (AI) prize has been won for the second year running by a British company. Icogno scooped the 2006 Loebner Prize Bronze Medal after judges decided that its AI, known as Joan, was the "most human computer program".
Last year's Loebner prize went to another Icogno AI called George, whose visual avatar was one of the stars of this year's BA Festival of Science. The prize is awarded after judges hold a conversation with the AI, asking questions to determine its "humanity" and the quality of its responses. The competition is based on the Turing test, which suggests computers can be seen as "intelligent" if their conversation is indistinguishable from humans. The gold and silver medals, which only go to an AI that fools more than half the judges, are as yet unclaimed.
The Guardian reports that scientists met on Monday to give a green light to Britain's pioneering stem cell bank, allowing researchers to request embryonic stem cells for the first time. The £9m bank, the first of its kind in the world, was set up in 2003 by the Medical Research Council and will ultimately hold every kind of stem cell created in Britain, with hundreds of others from countries such as the US and Australia. It will supply cells to researchers around the world. The meeting, at the government's National Institute for Biological Standards and Control in Hertfordshire confirmed that six kinds of embryonic cells are ready to be released, with others including adult and foetal cells to follow.
Scientists around the country will be invited to apply for cells, which will be ready for dispatch from the end of the month.
The Times reports that traces of a cocktail of toxic chemicals linked to cancer and foetal deformities are being eaten even in the healthiest of diets. Man-made pollutants and chemicals were found in every one of 27 food products, including staples such as bread and eggs, that were tested by experts.
In further tests carried out by WWF, formerly the World Wide Fund for Nature, every one of 352 people who provided blood samples over the past five years was found to be contaminated with toxic chemicals. All the contaminants found in the samples were at low levels, well within legal limits, but there are serious fears for long-term health.
None of the contaminants in the quantities detected is thought to pose an immediate, direct risk. There is concern among toxicologists, however, that even at low concentrations the chemicals may represent a serious risk when they mix together in the body.
BBC News reports that scientists have given mice a tan without exposing them to the sun, using a cream that switches on the tanning machinery in skin cells. Although it is yet to be tested on humans, the breakthrough treatment also raises the prospect of a new way to protect fair-skinned people from skin cancer caused by exposure to sunlight.
The researchers, from the Dana-Farber Cancer Institute and Children's Hospital Boston, genetically engineered fair-skinned, red-haired mice who did not tan when exposed to low levels of UV radiation, but did burn when the dose was cranked up. They then treated the skin of the animals with a compound containing a small molecule that essentially mimics the process that occurs when skin cells are struck by ultraviolet light from the sun.. The mice turned dark, proving that melanocytes in redheads can make pigment if appropriately stimulated. Further experiments showed that this sunless tanning process was virtually indistinguishable from that in dark-haired mice that tan naturally. The researchers also found that the tans acquired protected the skin against cancer caused by exposure to UV light.
New Scientist reports that the first female space tourist, 40-year-old Anousheh Ansari, an Iranian-born US businesswoman, has successfully made it to the International Space Station. The Russian Soyuz craft carrying Ansari and two professional astronauts successfully docked with the ISS on Wednesday at 0521 GMT. The Soyuz, which blasted off Monday from the Baikonur Cosmodrome in Kazakhstan, docked autonomously.
Meanwhile BBC News reports that the US space agency's Atlantis shuttle, which recently left the ISS, has touched down safely in Florida, ending a 12-day mission to re-start construction of the station. A landing on Wednesday was postponed after unidentified objects were seen floating near the vehicle. Inspections found no damage to the spacecraft from the objects, thought to be debris from the shuttle's cargo bay, and NASA was happy that none of the items posed a further risk to the vehicle.
And finally…
The Guardian reports that Chinese surgeons have performed the world's first penis transplant on a man whose organ was damaged beyond repair in an accident this year. The incident left the man with a 1cm-long stump with which he was unable to urinate or have sexual intercourse.
Doctors spent 15 hours attaching a 10cm penis to the 44-year-old patient after the parents of a brain-dead man half his age agreed to donate their son's organ.
The procedure, described in a case study due to appear in the journal European Urology next month, represents a big leap forward in transplant surgery; it required complex microsurgery to connect nerves and tiny blood vessels.
The surgical team claims the operation was a success. After 10 days, tests revealed the organ had a rich blood supply and the man was able to urinate normally.
Although the operation was a surgical success, surgeons said they had to remove the penis two weeks later. "Because of a severe psychological problem of the recipient and his wife, the transplanted penis regretfully had to be cut off," said Dr Weilie Hu, a surgeon at Guangzhou General Hospital.. An examination of the organ showed no signs of it being rejected by the body.
The Independent reports on gloomy predictions of extreme heat and destruction of some of the world's leading holiday destinations made on Thursday in a report assessing the impact of the dangers of mass tourism and climate change.
The Future of World Travel report found that by 2020 the natural features of some of the wonders of the world will be damaged by global warming, while other resorts will become seriously overcrowded. It has predicted that in a little more than a decade global warming will erode Goa's beaches and lead to more hurricanes sweeping across the Everglades, while the increase in tourism would send an army of skiers into the once remote kingdom of Nepal.
The Guardian reports that California, America's most populous state, opened a new front in its struggle with climate change on Wednesday when it announced that it was suing the six largest carmakers in the US for allegedly contributing to global warming. In the unprecedented lawsuit, the state accused Ford, General Motors, Toyota, Honda, Chrysler and Nissan of creating a "public nuisance" and costing it millions of dollars.
Environmental campaigners hailed the lawsuit as a landmark event in the effort to deal with global warming. The suit, filed in a US district court in northern California, alleges that vehicle emissions have contributed significantly to global warming, and argues that the car manufacturers should be held responsible for the past and future cost of combating this crisis.
The Telegraph reports that Arctic ice cover has melted so much that a ship could have sailed unhindered from northern Europe to the North Pole itself a few weeks ago, according to images released on Wednesday by scientists. Satellite images acquired from Aug 23-25 have shown for the first time dramatic openings — larger than the size of the British Isles — in the Arctic's year-round sea ice pack north of Svalbard, and extending into the Russian Arctic all the way to the North Pole.
The images were acquired by instruments aboard Envisat and EOS Aqua, two satellites operated by the European Space Agency (ESA). Regular satellite monitoring over the past 25 years shows that the northern polar ice cover has shrunk and thinned as global temperatures have risen. But this year's images are unprecedented, and fierce storms that fragmented and scattered already thin pack ice may be to blame, the scientists believe.
The Independent reports that the global sea level rise caused by climate change, severely threatening many of the world's coastal and low-lying areas from Bangladesh to East Anglia, is proceeding faster than UN scientists predicted only five years ago, according to Professor Chris Rapley, director of the British Antarctic Survey.
The present prediction of the UN's Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, from its third assessment report in 2001, is that global sea levels will rise by between 9cm and 88cm by 2100, depending on a number of factors including how far emissions are controlled, with a best guess of about 50cm over the century. But the new evidence, from a series of scientific papers published this year, indicates that this rate would be exceeded, said Professor Rapley, who runs the world's leading institute on Antarctic science - although he could not say what any new rate would be. Rises of this order will present a substantial threat of flooding, storm surge and even complete submersion of many of the world's populous low-lying areas,such as Bangladesh, the Nile Delta and even London.
The Guardian reports that Sir Richard Branson joined the growing ranks of global warming activists on Thursday, by committing $3bn (£1.6bn) to tackle climate change. The billionaire pledged all profits from his Virgin air and rail interests over the next 10 years to combating rising global temperatures. However, the money will not go to charities and is instead being invested in a new branch of Sir Richard's ever-expanding Virgin conglomerate, Virgin Fuels. Much of the investment will focus on biofuels, an alternative to oil-based fuels made from plants.
The Guardian also reports that Britain's leading scientists have challenged the US oil company ExxonMobil to stop funding groups that attempt to undermine the scientific consensus on climate change. In an unprecedented step, Britain's premier scientific academy has written to the oil giant to demand that the company withdraws support for dozens of groups that have "misrepresented the science of climate change by outright denial of the evidence". The scientists also strongly criticise the company's public statements on global warming, which they describe as "inaccurate and misleading".
In a letter earlier this month to Esso, the UK arm of ExxonMobil, the Royal Society cites its own survey which found that ExxonMobil last year distributed $2.9m to 39 groups that the society says misrepresent the science of climate change.
In other science news…
The remains of the earliest known child from humanity’s family tree have been discovered in Ethiopia, filling in a critical missing link in evolution, reports the Times. The almost complete skeleton belongs to a young girl of the species Australopithecus afarensis — a probable human ancestor that was among the first to walk on two legs — who died at the age of 3 about 3.3 million years ago.
The girl, named “Selam” after the word for peace in several Ethiopian languages, is by far the oldest fossil of a hominin child yet unearthed and blurs the line between apes and humans. She has also been nicknamed “little Lucy”, after the specimen of the same species discovered just 2½ miles (4km) away in 1974.
Early analysis has already started to transform understanding of a pivotal stage in the evolutionary process that led ultimately to Homo sapiens. Her anatomical features lie squarely in between those of humans and other apes, showing adaptations for walking upright on two legs and for climbing and swinging from trees.
The government's food safety watchdog is facing a legal challenge over allegations that it failed to take sufficient precautions to stop genetically modified rice entering the food chain. The Guardian reports that the environmental group Friends of the Earth has written to the Food Standards Agency as a first step towards bringing a judicial review after tests revealed GM contamination in two own-brands of rice sold by Morrisons. The supermarket has since withdrawn the brands. Friends of the Earth sent several samples for tests after it emerged last month that US rice had been contaminated with a GM variety grown in trials by Bayer CropScience between 1998 and 2001.
BBC News reports that a prestigious Artificial Intelligence (AI) prize has been won for the second year running by a British company. Icogno scooped the 2006 Loebner Prize Bronze Medal after judges decided that its AI, known as Joan, was the "most human computer program".
Last year's Loebner prize went to another Icogno AI called George, whose visual avatar was one of the stars of this year's BA Festival of Science. The prize is awarded after judges hold a conversation with the AI, asking questions to determine its "humanity" and the quality of its responses. The competition is based on the Turing test, which suggests computers can be seen as "intelligent" if their conversation is indistinguishable from humans. The gold and silver medals, which only go to an AI that fools more than half the judges, are as yet unclaimed.
The Guardian reports that scientists met on Monday to give a green light to Britain's pioneering stem cell bank, allowing researchers to request embryonic stem cells for the first time. The £9m bank, the first of its kind in the world, was set up in 2003 by the Medical Research Council and will ultimately hold every kind of stem cell created in Britain, with hundreds of others from countries such as the US and Australia. It will supply cells to researchers around the world. The meeting, at the government's National Institute for Biological Standards and Control in Hertfordshire confirmed that six kinds of embryonic cells are ready to be released, with others including adult and foetal cells to follow.
Scientists around the country will be invited to apply for cells, which will be ready for dispatch from the end of the month.
The Times reports that traces of a cocktail of toxic chemicals linked to cancer and foetal deformities are being eaten even in the healthiest of diets. Man-made pollutants and chemicals were found in every one of 27 food products, including staples such as bread and eggs, that were tested by experts.
In further tests carried out by WWF, formerly the World Wide Fund for Nature, every one of 352 people who provided blood samples over the past five years was found to be contaminated with toxic chemicals. All the contaminants found in the samples were at low levels, well within legal limits, but there are serious fears for long-term health.
None of the contaminants in the quantities detected is thought to pose an immediate, direct risk. There is concern among toxicologists, however, that even at low concentrations the chemicals may represent a serious risk when they mix together in the body.
BBC News reports that scientists have given mice a tan without exposing them to the sun, using a cream that switches on the tanning machinery in skin cells. Although it is yet to be tested on humans, the breakthrough treatment also raises the prospect of a new way to protect fair-skinned people from skin cancer caused by exposure to sunlight.
The researchers, from the Dana-Farber Cancer Institute and Children's Hospital Boston, genetically engineered fair-skinned, red-haired mice who did not tan when exposed to low levels of UV radiation, but did burn when the dose was cranked up. They then treated the skin of the animals with a compound containing a small molecule that essentially mimics the process that occurs when skin cells are struck by ultraviolet light from the sun.. The mice turned dark, proving that melanocytes in redheads can make pigment if appropriately stimulated. Further experiments showed that this sunless tanning process was virtually indistinguishable from that in dark-haired mice that tan naturally. The researchers also found that the tans acquired protected the skin against cancer caused by exposure to UV light.
New Scientist reports that the first female space tourist, 40-year-old Anousheh Ansari, an Iranian-born US businesswoman, has successfully made it to the International Space Station. The Russian Soyuz craft carrying Ansari and two professional astronauts successfully docked with the ISS on Wednesday at 0521 GMT. The Soyuz, which blasted off Monday from the Baikonur Cosmodrome in Kazakhstan, docked autonomously.
Meanwhile BBC News reports that the US space agency's Atlantis shuttle, which recently left the ISS, has touched down safely in Florida, ending a 12-day mission to re-start construction of the station. A landing on Wednesday was postponed after unidentified objects were seen floating near the vehicle. Inspections found no damage to the spacecraft from the objects, thought to be debris from the shuttle's cargo bay, and NASA was happy that none of the items posed a further risk to the vehicle.
And finally…
The Guardian reports that Chinese surgeons have performed the world's first penis transplant on a man whose organ was damaged beyond repair in an accident this year. The incident left the man with a 1cm-long stump with which he was unable to urinate or have sexual intercourse.
Doctors spent 15 hours attaching a 10cm penis to the 44-year-old patient after the parents of a brain-dead man half his age agreed to donate their son's organ.
The procedure, described in a case study due to appear in the journal European Urology next month, represents a big leap forward in transplant surgery; it required complex microsurgery to connect nerves and tiny blood vessels.
The surgical team claims the operation was a success. After 10 days, tests revealed the organ had a rich blood supply and the man was able to urinate normally.
Although the operation was a surgical success, surgeons said they had to remove the penis two weeks later. "Because of a severe psychological problem of the recipient and his wife, the transplanted penis regretfully had to be cut off," said Dr Weilie Hu, a surgeon at Guangzhou General Hospital.. An examination of the organ showed no signs of it being rejected by the body.
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