The Great Beyond

You can exhale now. The near-Earth asteroid Apophis has even less of a chance of hitting Earth than before, NASA has announced. The new calculations lower the chances of doomsday, for a 2036 close approach, by a factor of five for the 270-metre asteroid: from 1 in 45,000 to 1 in 250,000. The calculations were based on observations from a Hawaiian telescope and were announced at a conference in Puerto Rico -- the location of that famous asteroid super-spotter, the Arecibo radio telescope, which also factored into the new probability estimate.
Initially, Apophis was thought to have a 2.7 percent chance of impacting Earth in 2029. Though that has been ruled out, the asteroid will still swing closer than some Earth-orbiting satellites, and that whip-around may end up altering its course. That's why the Planetary Society sponsored a contest to a design a small tracking spacecraft which would allow more precise measurements of its path.
Image: UH/IA

Posted by Eric Hand
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Developing countries have more than doubled spending on science over a 5 year period, from US$134 billion in 2002 and to US$272 billion in 2007, new figures show.

The number of researchers in developing nations jumped from 1.8 million to 2.7 million over the same time period, according to data release from the UNESCO Institute for Statistics (UIS) on 6 October. During the same period, the number of researchers in developed countries increased by only 8.6% to 4.4 million.

Continue reading "Science spending up in developing countries" »

Posted by Natasha Gilbert
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The US Chamber of Commerce has hit back at Apple, after the computer company joined the list of members who have left the group over its views on climate change.

In a letter to Apple, the chamber’s president Thomas Donohue writes:

It is unfortunate that your company didn’t take the time to understand the Chamber’s position on climate and forfeited the opportunity to advance a 21st century approach to climate change.
…
While we do support legislation to address climate change, we oppose legislation such as the Waxman-Markey bill that numerous studies show will cause Americans to lose their jobs and shift greenhouse gas emissions overseas, negating potential climate benefits.
(Full letter on Under the Influence blog.)

Earlier this week Apple said it was leaving the chamber, with VP Catherine Novelli saying, “Apple supports regulating greenhouse gas emissions, and it is frustrating to find the Chamber at odds with us in this effort.” (Various sources, eg ARS Technica.)

Earlier this month the not-insignificant energy companies Exelon, the Public Service Company and Pacific Gas and Electric also left the chamber over climate change differences. In August the chamber called for a public trial of climate change.

Image: Thomas Donohue. Photo by Ian Wagreich / © U.S. Chamber of Commerce

Posted by Daniel Cressey
Categories: Earth, environment & ecology, Energy, Road to Copenhagen | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

CSIRO is Australia’s national research organisation. But in a new claim to fame, the Commonwealth Scientific and Industrial Research Organisation is also the inspiration for this Backstreet Boys-inspired science song.

Which one of these likely lads is your favourite?

The CSIRO Song was filmed as part of the University of Sydney’s Science Revue, which also included When Semester Ends. We’d be very grateful if someone could tell us where to get this necklace one of the singers is wearing:

[Hat tip: Pharyngula]

Below the fold: Previously on Songs about Science.

Continue reading "Songs About Science XXIX: See-Ess-Eye-Are-Oh" »

Posted by Daniel Cressey
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Those from the most privileged backgrounds have come to dominate British science and will continue to do so, according to new report.

Researchers from the Sutton Trust, which campaigns for educational equality, analysed the school and university backgrounds of 1,700 fellows of the Royal Society and the British Academy. They found 42% of them were educated in private schools.

“This report is yet more evidence of the uneven life chances in Britain,” says Peter Lampl, chairman of the trust (press release). “Students from the independent sector, which educates just seven percent of children, are substantially more likely to reach the top of our most coveted professions and succeed in influential walks of life.”

A small number of elite individual schools are also overrepresented, with list of schools contributing the most fellows having the recognisable names of Eton, Winchester, and St Paul’s at the top. The report also found that of those educated in the UK, 68% of British Academy fellows and 47% of Royal Society fellows went of either Oxford or Cambridge university.

Continue reading "Privately educated dominate UK science" »

Posted by Daniel Cressey
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The European Commission has proposed investing an additional €50 billion into a new research and development programme for low-carbon energy over the next decade, ramping up annual investments from the current €3 billion to €8 billion annually.

The proposal lays out funding goals in six sectors - wind, solar, nuclear, bio-energy, electricity grids and carbon capture and storage, while creating a new "Smart Cities Initiative" focusing on urban energy efficiency. Solar came out on top with €16 billion, followed by CCS at €13 billion. For a quick summary of investments, check Reuters.

The plan sounds good but is missing one thing: Money. The commission readily acknowledges that it can't foot the entire bill itself, meaning "public and private sectors at national and EU level" will need to step up to make it a reality. Indeed, the Wall Street Journal reports EU Commissioner Janez Potocnik saying that most of the money will need to come from the private sector.

Response to the plan has generally been positive, despite some questions about priorities. The European Wind Energy Association wonders why CCS and nuclear received more money than wind, which is ready to go. Along similar lines, the European Photovoltaic Industry Association suggests the commission would be wise to put more resources into clean energy deployment.

Policymakers, researchers and business representatives will discuss the proposal later this month at the European Energy Technology Summit in Stockholm.

Posted by Jeff Tollefson
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The American scientific elite found itself in a rare place this afternoon: the White House.

Hours before a high-stakes meeting on the US stance in Afghanistan and Pakistan, President Barack Obama took a little break by handing out this year's crop of National Medals of Science and National Medals of Technology and Innovation. In a packed ceremony in the White House's East Room, with cabinet secretaries including Kathleen Sebelius (health), Steve Chu (energy), and Gary Locke (commerce) looking on, Obama seemed to enjoy riffing on the joys of science. (Plus an obligatory opening joke about how his daughter Sasha has a science fair coming up, "and I was thinking that you guys could give us a few tips".)

"We see the promise -- not just for our economy but for our health and well-being -- in the human capacity for creativity and ingenuity," he told the audience, which included presidential science advisor John Holdren and National Academy of Sciences president Ralph Cicerone. "And we are reminded of the power of free and open inquiry, which is not only at the heart of all of your work, but at the heart of this experiment we call America."

Two of the awardees shared what might even be interpreted as warm glances at each other before receiving their medals from Obama. Francis Collins and J. Craig Venter, once heads of the competing teams in the race to sequence the human genome, both now have identical gold medals on red, white and blue ribbons. Collins, of course, is the recently appointed director of the National Institutes of Health (see Nature Q&A with him here), an agency that marked a sad moment today with the news of the death of Ruth Kirschstein, who served as the first female head of an NIH institute when she assumed directorship of the National Institute of General Medical Sciences in 1974.

The other winners of this year's science medals are:

Berni Alder, Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory
Joanna Fowler, Brookhaven National Laboratory
Elaine Fuchs, The Rockefeller University
James Gunn, Princeton University
Rudolf Kalman, Swiss Federal Institute of Technology, Zurich
Michael Posner, University of Oregon
JoAnne Stubbe, Massachusetts Institute of Technology

Next up on the Obama Science Fair Tour: a star party on the White House's south lawn tonight.

Image: Collins, seated at far left, while Venter waits to receive his medal

Posted by Alex Witze
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“According to the researchers’ preliminary inspections, the footprints appear to be the biggest seen so far. The prints are very big, reaching 1.20 to 1.50 metres across, which corresponds to animals exceeding 30 or 40 tonnes in weight and measuring more than 25 metres in length.”
The French National Centre for Scientific Research comments on some huge dinosaur footprints found near Lyon (AFP).

“They are increasingly identified as a stumbling block for the negotiations and it’s up to them to dispel this perception and to show the real leadership we’re expecting from them.”
Fernando Tudela, head of the Mexican delegation to the climate change meeting in Bangkok, says the United States is shaping up as the biggest problem in negotiations (Reuters).

“Thousands of fish have already died. The warning to stay out of the river applies to everyone, including farmers, anglers, dog walkers, boaters and anyone using the river for work or pleasure.”
The UK’s Environment Agency issues a warning after cyanide and sewage leak into the River Trent (Times).

“It seems obvious that it makes sense from a self-interested point of view to accept the Cryonic Wager. If you’re wrong, you’ve wasted a bit of money but you won’t ever be able to regret it. If you’re right, you will certainly live longer, and might well live forever.”
Bioethicist David Shaw, of the University of Glasgow, applies a modified version of Pascal’s Wager to the issue of cryogenic suspension (Bioethics).

Posted by Daniel Cressey
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It is sometimes said in academic circles that you’re not a proper researcher until you’ve got your first rejection letter from Nature or Science. But does it really make sense to submit your paper to the most highly cited journals and work your way down?

Martin Heintzelman and Diego Nocetti, two economists at Clarkson University in Potsdam, New York, aimed to find out. Their latest paper in the B.E. Journal of Economic Analysis and Policy is entitled “Where Should we Submit our Manuscript?”

“The journal submission process is a controversial and stressful part of academia. There are many dimensions of uncertainty, and bad decisions could greatly delay publication of important results and harm one’s career,” they write.

They constructed models of increasing complexity, starting with just the journal’s characteristics (fees, time taken to decide) and the impatience of the author and moving on to include factors such as the quality of the manuscript, flaws in the reviewing process and how impatient authors are to get their work published in economics journals.

Applying mathematics to this question proves common sense correct: “This paper provides new evidence that, on the whole, the advice supplied to young faculty members by veterans of academia is correct. Authors largely have an incentive to submit to the best journals and then subsequently, work their way down a schedule of journals.”

However, there is an exception to this: “particularly impatient or risk-averse” researchers should begin their submission ordeal further down the chain.

Finally, Heintzelman and Nocetti discuss the implications of their work for journals themselves. They conclude that the best thing for journals to do would be to review papers faster and charge higher submission fees. This would reduce the impact of time lags on impatient authors and reduce the number of lower-quality paper submissions trying their luck with an imperfect reviewing system.

Posted by Daniel Cressey
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X-ray free-electron lasers fire up
California's project has the lead as its facility goes live, but Europe aims for its own rapid-fire device.

Huge 'ghost' ring discovered around Saturn
Spitzer Space Telescope reveals a supersized dust belt.

Global warming may worsen locust swarms
Ancient records link a hotter climate to more damaging infestations.

Posted by Daniel Cressey
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Mere hours after a Nobel Prize was awarded for an invention that allowed the modern digital camera to come into being, a tiny example of this technology has flown into the news on the back of an albatross.

Writing in Plos One, Akinori Takahashi, of Japan’s National Institute of Polar Research, and colleagues report the first recordings of the birds using killer whales as unwitting food providers.

Using data from cameras and depth gages mounted on the backs of black-browed albatrosses (Thalassarche melanophrys) the researchers report that the birds appear to follow Orcinus orca and probably scavenge from the scraps they leave behind

“A close association with foraging killer whales would help albatrosses to find food more efficiently in the apparently ‘featureless’ sea, especially in a year when the availability of aggregative prey species, such as Antarctic krill in South Georgia, is low,” they write.

Richard Phillips, of the British Antarctic Survey, suggests that the whales may also be driving prey to the surface where they are easier for the birds to catch. Phillips was not involved in the research but another BAS researcher was (press release).

You may not think the photo to the right is that impressive, but keep in mind it was recorded in the open ocean on a device the size of a lipstick.

Image: BAS

Posted by Daniel Cressey
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The 2009 Nobel Prize for chemistry has gone to Thomas Steitz, Venkatraman Ramakrishnan and Ada Yonath for “studies of the structure and function of the ribosome”. They take a third of the prize home each.

The new laureates used X-ray crystallography to reveal the structure of the ribosome, the factories in cells that turn DNA blueprints into the the finished products of proteins.

Contacted by Nature News, Ramakrishnan said “I’m in a bit of shock at the moment. So many people contributed, and the ribosome is so important, that I am just pleased to be one of the three.” (Read the full story later today.)

The prize committee notes that Ramakrishnan, Steitz and Yonath “showed what the ribosome looks like and how it functions at the atomic level. All three have used a method called X-ray crystallography to map the position for each and every one of the hundreds of thousands of atoms that make up the ribosome.”

Understanding the ribosome is also of importance to those designing antibiotics, which can work by blocking bacterial ribosomes.

Of course you can’t please everyone. One member of the Nature office who is rather purist about his science was heard muttering, “they gave it to biologists again”.

Ramakrishnan works at the MRC Laboratory of Molecular Biology in Cambridge, UK. Steitz is at Yale University, USA. Yonath is at the Weizmann Institute of Science in Israel. Congratulations to all!

Continue reading "Nobels 09: Chemistry" »

Posted by Daniel Cressey
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Computer giant IBM is the latest company to say it will try to build a DNA sequencing machine. IBM appears to be years behind other companies that are taking similar approaches, but the company's announcement has caused quite a stir among tech journalists.

PC World says that IBM will "expand the life span of humans," while the New York Times' John Markoff predicts that the company will cut the cost of DNA sequencing to under $100, "making a personal genome cheaper than a ticket to a Broadway play."

Sequencing a whole human genome currently costs tens of thousands of dollars at a minimum.

Continue reading "IBM dips toe into DNA sequencing; tech press swoons" »

Posted by Erika Check Hayden
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