By offering a panoramic view of how substances behave in the real world, the theory gives scientists a tool for developing materials that can be used for designing new technologies. Car frames made from lighter, strong metal alloys, for instance, might make vehicles more energy efficient, and smaller, faster electronic devices might be produced using nanowires with diameters tens of thousands of times smaller than that of a human hair.

And

The researchers hope that by moving beyond the concepts introduced by Thomas and Fermi more than 80 years ago, their work will speed future innovations. “Before people could only look at small bits of materials and perfect crystals,” Carter said. “Now we can accurately apply quantum mechanics at scales of matter never possible before.

It’s Miller Time.

Pretty big news, but I thought it should be here. australian news link Billion tons, dude. WTF.

“Incredibly rare” set of complete sauropod skulls unearthed

Another orca-related fatality at SeaWorld.

According to a witness, one of the trainers got pulled into the Shamu tank in Shamu Stadium and was killed. It happened during a Dine With Shamu event.

UPDATE: Informative National Geographic article about it here:

“I don’t think the animal was trying to eat her. It just roughed her up,” he said.

Perryman points out that other captive animals are known to snap and turn on their trainers—not just killer whales.

“I think this isn’t really a killer whale issue,” he said. “It’s when you’re dealing with large mammals in a captive situation.

“It doesn’t make a difference whether its elephants or bears or whatever. These kinds of things can happen.”

Especially if one develops a taste for it, I would think:

Tilikum has been involved in two deaths before.

In 1991, Tilikum and two other killer whales drowned a trainer at Sealand of the Pacific in British Columbia, which shut down soon after.

In 1999 a dead man was found lying across his back at SeaWorld Orlando. In the latter case, authorities concluded the man had snuck into the park after hours and likely drowned after suffering hypothermia.

Rut ro.

Komodo Dragon attack:

… a nearly 7-foot-long (more than 2-meter-long) dragon grabbed hold of his right foot …

The dragon had Subanghadir’s foot clamped in its shark-like, serrated teeth until fellow rangers heard his screams and drove it off with wooden clubs …
suffered deep lacerations

It’s a dirty bite too.

How does one species evolve into two? A new study on lizards shows how different types or “morphs” within one species can start to evolve away from each other:

“It’s like an evolutionary clock ticking between rock, paper, scissors then back to rock,” he said. “Ammon’s research indicates that the game has been cycling for millions of years at some sites, and yet at other sites it collapses on one or two strategies and begins to create new species. It is simply mind-boggling to think about deep time and these evolutionary cycles.”

… ”For most species, the speciation process is thought to begin only after populations are geographically separated. Our study shows that the distinctive morphs that build up within populations are important for understanding speciation. Thus, the first stages of new species may occur within and not between populations.”

I do feel like a different species sometimes.

Concerning a new specimen of the “giant Jurassic fish Leedsichthys” - some Gonzo Science themes in this find, which they are calling a “missing piece in the evolutionary story of fish, mammals and ocean ecosystems”:

Scientific anomaly:

Dr Jeff Liston, from Glasgow University, ran the excavation in Peterborough and found the new specimen to be an anomaly.

Excavate the Museums:

“We then started to go back to museum collections, and we began finding suspension-feeding fish fossils from all round the world, often unstudied or misidentified.” … One of the best preserved Kansas specimens had previously been interpreted as similar to a fanged predatory swordfish. When members of the team began to clean the specimen, they found a toothless gaping mouth, with an extensive network of thin elongate bony plates to extract huge quantities of microscopic plankton.

Revised Timelines:

“These specimens indicated that there were giant filter-feeding fishes for much longer than we thought. … The fact that creatures of this kind were missing from the fossil record for over 100 million years seemed peculiar.

“What we have demonstrated here is that a long dynasty of giant bony fish filled this space in time for more than 100 million years.”

Hmm, pursuing scientific anomalies yields fruitful results? Nobody tell the astronomers…

Shit hits fan in India:

Monsanto’s former managing directior of India operations is talking, and it’s not pretty for the behemoth of genetic modification. Tiruvadi Jagadisan is accusing his former employer of faking scientific data with the intent of evading the government’s regulatory requirements.

The 84 year-old Jagadisan is quoted as saying, “I retired from the company as I felt the management of Monsanto, USA, was exploiting our country.” Jagadisan had been with Monsanto for almost 20 years.

File under “thanks for the confirmation but everybody already knew this“:

The first U.S. clinical trials in more than two decades on the medical benefits of marijuana confirm pot is effective in reducing muscle spasms associated with multiple sclerosis and pain caused by certain neurological injuries or illnesses, according to a report issued Wednesday.

Good legislation now?

Choice quote-

“I was flabbergasted,” said Boston University archaeologist and stone-tool expert Curtis Runnels. “The idea of finding tools from this very early time period on Crete was about as believable as finding an iPod in King Tut’s tomb.”

And another-

Moreover, the discovery could spark a host of other scientific debates.

If ancient humans were crossing the Mediterranean, Runnels said, then they certainly could have crossed other water barriers, such as the Red Sea or the Gulf of Aden. “And that means that the assumptions that we have had—that the peopling of Eurasia was done by early hominins moving overland through the Near East, into India and down—will have to be revisited.” Hominins, or hominids, are members of humankind’s ancestral lineage.

Time just gets deeper and deeper…

From the always exceptional folks at Counterpunch comes this photographic essay on the human cost of Chernobyl.

Migraine headaches in women linked to the neurological disorder multiple sclerosis:

“We can’t say if migraines slightly increase a person’s chances of developing MS, or if they are one of the early symptoms of MS,” he says. “What we can say is that individual migraine patients have little cause for panic or concern because more than 99% of them will never develop MS.”

Judiciously put.

Political interference with science, UK style: In which the sacking of Professor Nutt causes a kerfuffle, but the proposed remedy itself is a bit of a bother:

Prof Nutt had criticised a government decision to reclassify cannabis, saying it was less harmful than alcohol and nicotine and claiming it had been upgraded to Class B for political reasons.

As a result of his sacking, several other advisers resigned and over 20 scientists called for ministers to sign up to a code of conduct to prevent political interference in the system of scientific advice.

In response, Science minister Lord Drayson published a set of principles in December - one of which stated that scientists and ministers should “work together to reach a shared position”.

But… the last time scientists and ministers worked together to reach a shared position (they) wrongly assured the public (BSE) infected beef was safe to eat.

I say, old chap.

BBC News:

When ants of the species Temnothorax unifasciatus get sick, they abandon their nest, walking far away from their relatives to die alone.

They perform this act of heroism to prevent the illness that is killing them from spreading to the colony.

The discovery, published in Current Biology, is the first time that such behaviour has been shown in ants or any other social insect.

…
By choosing to face death alone, the ants were making a truly altruistic act.

Compared to bumblebees:

… the exact opposite has been found in the bumblebee, another social insect.

Bees infected by fly larvae move out of the hive into colder air.

But in doing so, the cold temperatures slow the lifecycle of the parasite.

So the infected bees are actually trying to extend their own lives, rather than save their nest mates.

That last bit seems like a false choice, because they could be trying to both extend their own lives AND save their nest mates. Still, the trend worth noting is that scientists speak openly these days of insects “making choices” which implies minds and self-awareness. The idea of animals as creatures of “pure instinct” is rapidly fading.

Which brings me to one of my favorite scientific papers (pdf file) on bacterial cognition.

Up with anthropomorphism!

India rejects genetically modified crop. I especially like this paragraph about it from Beyond Pesticides:

Advocates of genetically engineered crops have argued that they are the only way to meet the world’s growing demand for food, and that they reduce the need for pesticides, while increasing yields. Studies have shown these claims to be false. The widespread adoption of GE crops in the United States has actually increased pesticide use but failed to increase yield. Recent studies have also linked GMO consumption to organ failure.

Those are the facts. God forbid the press - and the scientific press - should be so objective.

Too good a fate for these lads.

Three crew members of a Japanese whaling vessel suffered face and eye injuries from acid fired by anti-whaling protesters during their latest clash in the Antarctic Ocean, their Japanese employers said Friday.

The Sea Shepherd protesters said they shot butyric acid, produced from stinking rancid butter, which they often aim at the whalers to try to disrupt the annual Japanese hunt. The activists maintain that butyric acid is nontoxic.

The injuries Thursday were the first to Japanese whalers this year during confrontations with Sea Shepherd, although there have been two ship collisions that each side blamed on the other.

Japanese Fisheries Minister Hirotaka Akamatsu lashed out at the activists on Friday, telling reporters: “I am full of rage. I could not believe they did such a thing.”

Glenn Inwood, spokesman for Japan’s Institute of Cetacean Research, which sponsors the hunt, said the injuries were not serious, but he cautioned that butyric acid can cause temporary blindness.

And harpoons can cause permanent deathness.

Now things are getting interesting:

“We think the ev­i­dence is fi­nally show­ing that these [rap­tors] which are usu­ally con­sid­ered di­no­saurs were ac­tu­ally de­scended from birds, not the oth­er way around,” Ruben added.

…University of Kansas sci­en­tists ex­am­ined a fos­sil that showed feath­ers on all four limbs, some­what re­sem­bling a bi-plane. Glide tests based on its struc­ture con­clud­ed it would not have been prac­ti­cal for it to have flown from the ground up, but it could have glid­ed from the trees down, some­what like a mod­ern-day fly­ing squir­rel. Many re­search­ers have long be­lieved that glid­ers such as this were the an­ces­tors of mod­ern birds.

“This mod­el was not con­sist­ent with suc­cess­ful flight from the ground up, and that makes it pret­ty dif­fi­cult to make a case for a ground-dwelling the­ro­pod di­no­saur to have de­vel­oped wings and flown away,” Ruben said. “On the oth­er hand, it would have been quite pos­si­ble for birds to have evolved and then, at some point, have var­i­ous spe­cies lose their flight ca­pa­bil­i­ties and be­come ground-dwelling, flight­less an­i­mals – the rap­tors. This may be hugely up­set­ting to a lot of peo­ple, but it makes per­fect sense.”

I like this guy.

What do you effing know. Well i guess we get a new theory then, right?

“The level is somewhat higher than the most popular models had predicted, and it looks like it is going to increase with energy a little bit more steeply than we expected,” said Roland Gunter, a CMS collaboration scientist from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in the US.

“I think it’s not going to be a problem, but it is one of the many things that we need to know as we move toward searches for the most rare particles and new physics,” he told BBC News.

Didn’t think so.

Theory demonstrably wrong = “something we need to know as we move toward … new physics”.

I should say so. GOD FORBID they find the less “popular” theory that predicted the results they actually got, and start using it.

Curse you big government!!!

Federal regulators will require manufacturers of high-grade medical imaging machines to include safety controls that prevent patients from receiving excessive radiation doses.

Fascists!

Mae Wan-Ho of the Institute for Science in Society writes about the dawning consequences of genetically engineering plants for herbicide tolerance and insect resistance.

It is the Day of the Triffids - not the genetically modified plants themselves as alluded to in John Wyndham’s novel - but “super weeds that can’t be killed” [2], created by the planting of genetically modified HT crops, as seen on ABC TV news.

The scene is set at harvest time in Arkansas October 2009. Grim-faced farmers and scientists speak from fields infested with giant pigweed plants that can withstand as much glyphosate herbicide as you can afford to douse on them. One farmer spent US$0.5 million in three months trying to clear the monster weeds in vain; they stop combine harvesters and break hand tools. Already, an estimated one million acres of soybean and cotton crops in Arkansas have become infested.

The palmer amaranth or palmer pigweed is the most dreaded weed. It can grow 7-8 feet tall, withstand withering heat and prolonged droughts, produce thousands of seeds and has a root system that drains nutrients away from crops. If left unchecked, it would take over a field in a year.

Meanwhile in North Carolina Perquimans County, farmer and extension worker Paul Smith has just found the offending weed in his field [3], and he too, will have to hire a migrant crew to remove the weed by hand.

The resistant weed is expected to move into neighbouring counties. It has already developed resistance to at least three other types of herbicides.

Herbicide-resistance in weeds is nothing new. Ten weed species in North Carolina and 189 weed species nationally have developed resistance to some herbicide.

Amazing that a technology designed to eliminate hand-weeding and mechanical cultivation will bring about the triumphant return of: hand-weeding and mechanical cultivation.

Also: Yet another update on the legal fallout of the white rice GMO contamination debacle which we’ve written about here, here and here.

New blurry Hubble images of Pluto nonetheless show that its surface is wildly dynamic, moving scientists to sound like they’re using hyperbole:

“[With Pluto] you are looking at the surface in the Solar System that has the biggest changes of anything we’ve ever seen.”

That’s not even hyperbole. Whatever the nature of these extensive, rapid surface changes, they dwarf anything visible on the other solar system bodies.

Marc Buie said the exact mechanism was a mystery … “It’s close to springtime on Pluto. In the fall, it will be so much further away from the Sun, and so much colder. Things that boiled up in the spring will condense.”

“We think that these things are driven by seasonal processes on Pluto,” said Dr Buie, “But it’s a little bit of a surprise that you would see this big of a change this fast because the seasons take 248 of our years to progress.”

Space probe flyby in 2015!

sweet pic from the Hubble

Robert Anton Wilson riffs on accelerating weirdness.

We just joined Facebook, a handy way to follow this blog if you are a Facebook user or Facebook curious. Thank you.

He’ll be amazed to read this science article that attributes the creation of the “holographic universe” theory to these dudes in 1990s. That’s funny to me because Bohm published a vigorous scientific case for the holographic universe, the book Wholeness and the Implicate Order, in 1980.

Basically, the 1990s dudes published their work in a peer-reviewed journal, as an offshoot of well-accepted black hole work. So they get official credit. Meanwhile, although Bohm was a giant among quantum mechanics, Wholeness and the Implicate Order was a “popular” book and so doesn’t count, if you can call a book with tons of equations in it “popular.”
Seems like you would give the guy a mention is all.

Happens a lot where the heretical theories become accepted just a few years later, with the heretic not allowed a shred of acknowledgment - certainly not from the scientific press, who really are just mouthpieces for the establishment.

When Bohm said it, it was heretical and involved some “challenges to prevailing views”. Now that we know he was right about the whole holographic universe thing, maybe those challenges should get a second look too.

Must read.

The shrimp pond preparation begins with urea, superphosphate, and diesel, then progresses to the use of piscicides (fish-killing chemicals like chlorine and rotenone), pesticides and antibiotics (including some that are banned in the U.S.), and ends by treating the shrimp with sodium tripolyphosphate (a suspected neurotoxicant), Borax, and occasionally caustic soda.

But they’re so tasty…

The first vertebrates to walk the Earth emerged from the sea almost 20 million years earlier than previously thought, say scientists who have discovered footprints from an eight-foot-long prehistoric creature.

Is 20 million years a lot?

Abuse of the Journal/Peer Review system?? What??!?

Bayblab has more.
Good thing this is only confined to stem cell journals and not, say, cosmology or astronomy journals grumble grumble

The question is, since the system of doing science is broken, what are scientists going to do to fix it?

New research has officially “over turned” the “Primordial Soup” theory of the origin of life. It had an 80-year run where it was the dominant paradigm.

But the geochemical energy of hydrothermal vents is the new hotness:

“Textbooks have it that life arose from organic soup and that the first cells grew by fermenting these organics to generate energy in the form of ATP. We provide a new perspective on why that old and familiar view won’t work at all,” said team leader Dr Nick lane from University College London. … “It is time to cast off the shackles of fermentation in some primordial soup as ‘life without oxygen’ — an idea that dates back to a time before anybody in biology had any understanding of how ATP is made.”

Someone be sure and tell Tommy Gold, whose eye has been on deep sea vents for some time, in relation to the origin of life. Gold’s “Deep Hot Biosphere” theory (presented in a book of that title based on this paper) argues that life teems at the vents because it is upwelling from deeper inside the planet. Life’s true origin is in the geological depths, by Gold’s reckoning. And Gold is no slouch.

So, glad to see we’re getting down to the nitty-gritty, and this “primordial soup” nonsense doesn’t have to get in the way any more.

Still panspermia to contend with too, re: origin of life. Remember, even if panspermia champion Fred Hoyle was wrong about why the primordial soup idea was incorrect - it turns out it is incorrect anyway. So seems to me that Hoyle’s modern-day panspermia work should be given a second look. Because he wasn’t just criticizing the primordial soup theory, he was also advancing a positive case for panspermia, before it was cool as it were.

[The biographical side note I would offer is that Gold and Hoyle were close associates and shared a similar cognitive style - in that each found it fruitful to simply invert the common idea and see where it leads you. Don’t be too surprised if they turn out to have been right about everything.]