This new study seems to validate the role of cell phone radiation as a contributing factor in declining bee populations.

Andrew Goldsworthy, a biologist from the UK’s Imperial College, London, has studied the biological effects of electromagnetic fields. He thinks it’s possible bees could be affected by cell phone radiation.

The reason, Goldsworthy says, could hinge on a pigment in bees called cryptochrome.

“Animals, including insects, use cryptochrome for navigation,” Goldsworthy told CNN.

“They use it to sense the direction of the earth’s magnetic field and their ability to do this is compromised by radiation from [cell] phones and their base stations. So basically bees do not find their way back to the hive.”

Trying to iron out all the ways animals sense the earth’s magnetic field, researchers have managed to overturn a “widely held view” about the functioning of certain photoreceptor molecules:

…states Dr. Reppert, “the finding provides the first genetic evidence that a vertebrate-like (photoreceptor molecule) can function as a magnetoreceptor.”

An interesting feature of the team’s work disproved a widely held view about how these proteins can chemically sense a magnetic field.

In your face!!

“These findings suggest that there is an unknown photochemical mechanism that the (photoreceptor molecules) use instead,” says Dr. Gegear, lead author on the paper, “one that we are hotly pursuing.”

Mission: tag and bag all unknown photochemical mechanisms.

From cool science blog Bayblab, discussion of a critique of the rash of physicists making evolutionary models:

They continue:

[O]ur model predicts that simple statistical-physical models of evolution will continue to proliferate until either (a) all the available models are exhausted, or (b) they become as common and as boring as any other subject in the statistical physics literature, or (c) physicists learn some actual biology. We are not entirely confident that the third limiting factor will become operational before the others.

So there you have it: this will continue to be a problem until everybody learns more biology.

They might as well be talking about the cell phone/EMF safety debate, which frequently consists of physicists explaining how harm is impossible vs. biologists armed with studies that, y’know, show harm. The physicists’ reply is that any studies showing harm are de facto poorly designed. And as pointed out at Bayblab, this problem is not limited to physicists.

I didn’t think that those words were allowed to be used by the mainstream science community? What ever is going on here?

Physicists at Yale University have made the first definitive measurements of “persistent current,” a small but perpetual electric current that flows naturally through tiny rings of metal wire even without an external power source.

“Yet these currents will flow forever, even in the absence of an applied voltage.”

No sure about the applicability of this as a power source. Definitely going to keep an eye out for follow ups on this.

Jim, where is that electromagnetism category!? Maybe a Plasma Physics as well?

The shape of the heliosphere is defying all attempts at analysis:

Ibex was launched nearly one year ago to map the heliosphere, the region of space defined by the extent of our Sun’s solar wind.

Ibex’s first glimpses show that the heliosphere is not shaped as many astronomers have believed.

….But the exact shape, and the forces that cause it, are still a matter of debate between the teams.

In other words, these are all wrong.

UPDATE: The “Electric Universe” crowd has claimed this anomaly proves what they’ve been saying all along.