From the BBC:

Click here to see this article with pictures

Richard Branson's lemur plan raises alarm

By Richard Black Environment correspondent, BBC News

Sir Richard Branson is to import lemurs to the Caribbean, where they will live wild in the forest on his islands.

The project has alarmed conservation scientists, who point out that many previous species introductions have proved disastrous to native wildlife.

But Sir Richard's team maintains that both the lemurs, which will come from zoos, and native animals will be fine.

Introducing species found on one continent into another for conservation purposes is virtually unprecedented.

Lemurs are found only on the African island of Madagascar and many species are threatened, largely because of deforestation.

The threat has grown worse since the toppling of President Marc Ravalomanana's government two years ago, which allowed illegal logging to flourish.

"We've been helping to try and preserve lemurs, and sadly in Madagascar because of the government being overthrown the space for lemurs is getting less and less," Sir Richard told BBC News from his Caribbean property.

"Here on Moskito Island we've got a beautiful rainforest - we brought in experts from South Africa, and they say it would be an absolutely perfect place where lemurs can be protected and breed."

Ring-tailed and red ruffed lemurs are two of the species in the plan. Both are on the Red List of Threatened Species.

Moskito (also spelled Mosquito) Island is one of two that Sir Richard owns in the British Virgin Islands (BVI). Several luxury houses, including one for the boss of the Virgin business empire himself, are being built on it.

His other island is Necker, home to an eco-tourism resort where a stay is priced at around $2,000 (£1,200) per day.

The plan has aroused a lot if interest locally, with the bulletin boards of BVI news websites buzzing with comments for and against, and politicians locking horns.

And it concerned conservation scientists contacted by BBC News.

"Maybe [Sir Richard] has got some people to say it is alright - but what else lives on the island, and how might they be affected?" asked Simon Stuart, chair of the International Union for the Conservation of Nature's Species Survival Commission (IUCN SSC).

"It's pretty weird - I would be alarmed about it and would want some reassurances."

Dr Stuart suggested the project could contravene the IUCN's code for translocations - designed to prevent the repetition of disastrous events such as the introduction of rabbits and cane toads to Australia.

Among other things, it says that translocations should never happen into natural ecosystems.

When they do happen into areas that have already been altered by human hand, there should be a controlled trial period with continual assessment.

In the past, it says: "The damage done by harmful introductions to natural systems far outweighs the benefit derived from them".

And Christoph Schwitzer, who co-ordinates the Madagascar work of the IUCN SSC Primate Specialist Group, said the lemurs should really be kept in some kind of confinement.

"The project would only be acceptable if he intended to keep them in a controlled environment - that is, in some kind of fenced-in enclosure where they cannot become a problem to the native fauna and flora," he said.

"It's crucial that this move does not send the wrong message to people that it may be a good idea to keep lemurs as pets for their own personal pleasure."

And he warned that there could be impacts on local wildlife.

While some species of lemur are faithful to a diet of fruit, others will grab whatever is around, including lizards and other small animals.

"There may be birds nesting, and if there are some of the lemurs would attempt to predate on their eggs - or there may be small invertebrates that they'd go for," said Dr Schwitzer.

Necker and Moskito Island are home to reptiles such as the stout iguana, the turnip-tailed gecko and the dwarf gecko that local conservationists have identified as being of specific concern.

Sir Richard told BBC News that an environmental impact assessment had been carried out for Moskito Island; but critics in the BVI said it did not include evaluation of "introduced exotic species".

Welfare benefits

Sir Richard's motivation for wanting to introduce the animals is not entirely clear.

They seem unlikely to make a significant difference to his eco-tourism business.

One of his principal advisors is Lara Mostert, one of the managers of the Monkeyland Primate Sanctuary, a South African facility where many species of monkey and lemur live together in a patch of forest.

She said Sir Richard's lemurs would have a much better life than in the zoos where they currently live - some, she said, in "horrific" conditions.

"Unfortunately, primates have become rather like a business - the animals are seen as a commodity and apart from that they don't really have an identity," she said.

"And that's one of the things I like about Sir Richard's plan - he's not going to sell them."

She thinks the animals will thrive on Moskito Island.

Sir Richard sees the project as bringing conservation benefits, envisaging that at some point in the future, lemurs could be re-introduced from Moskito Island to Madagascar.

But captive breeding programmes already exist for this purpose.

Lara Mostert suggested Sir Richard's son "wanted a lemur after seeing the movie 'Madagascar'".

Despite the concerns, the plan has been approved by the BVI government and appears to be going ahead.

The first consignment, consisting of about 30 ring-tailed lemurs, is due to arrive within a few weeks, moved from zoos in Sweden, South Africa and Canada.

The much more imperilled red ruffed lemur may follow, possibly alongside some of the sifakas, famed for their calls and their jumping, may follow.

As threats to natural diversity multiply around the world, transporting species from place to place for conservation is one of the "extreme schemes" that conservationists are talking about and even beginning to implement.

But almost without exception, these translocations are taking place within the ecological region where the animal originated, rather than halfway across the planet.

From the BBC:

Drugs lose effectiveness in space

By James Gallagher Health reporter, BBC News

Astronauts on long space missions may not be able to take paracetamol to treat a headache or antibiotics to fight infection, a study has found.

Scientists at the Johnson Space Centre have shown that the effectiveness of drugs declines more rapidly in space.

Continuous doses of radiation onboard spacecraft may be to blame, according to the study published in the AAPS Journal.

The authors said longer missions have increased the need for drugs in space.

On Earth, medication is typically designed to be stored for a couple years from the manufacture date. They normally need to be kept in precise conditions, such as away from direct sunlight or in a cool, dry space.

The research team investigated whether the unique environment of space - including radiation, excessive vibrations, microgravity, a carbon dioxide rich environment and variations in humidity and temperature - affected drugs' effectiveness.

Space trip

Four boxes of drugs, containing 35 different medications, were flown to the International Space Station.

Four identical boxes were kept in controlled conditions at the Johnson Space Centre.

The boxes came back to Earth after varying lengths of time in space. One was there for just 13 days, whereas another spent 28 months on the space station.

The study concluded: "A number of formulations tested had a lower potency after storage in space with consistently higher numbers of formulations failing United States Pharmacopeia potency requirement after each storage period interval in space than on Earth.

"This reduction in potency of flight samples occurred sooner than the labelled expiration date for many formulations suggesting that storage conditions unique to the spacecraft environment may influence stability of pharmaceuticals in space".

Dr Colin Cable, science information adviser at the Royal Pharmaceutical Society, said: "On Earth, medicines are tested to assess the effects of, for example, temperature, moisture, oxygen and light, and are packaged and stored to ensure they remain stable and effective over their shelf life.

"Repackaging of medicines into containers that do not give the medicines the protection required to moisture, oxygen and light can have a detrimental effect on their stability."

He added that radiation was known to affect medicines, depending on the dose used.

"One potential benefit of keeping medicines in a Space Station is that the medicines will be exposed to a carbon dioxide-rich environment, this may help minimise the degradation of those medicines prone to oxidation, such as adrenaline, vitamin C and vitamin A."

From the BBC:

A rather unusual series of film festivals.

Scots plan Reel Festivals 2011 as Middle East exchange

Classic films such as Gregory's Girl and The Wicker Man are to be screened in Syria and Lebanon in a trilateral exchange of music, poetry and film.

Reel Festivals 2011 is being run by a charity which aims to "shine a little light" on the positive aspects of the Middle East.

A series of events will be held in Scotland, Damascus and Beirut in May.

The festivals programme will see Scots musicians and writers visit the Middle East as part of a cultural exchange.

Reel Festivals 2011 is being organised by Firefly International, a Scottish charity which has held similar events with Iraq and Afghanistan.

Edinburgh and Glasgow will host an eclectic range of film screenings, concerts and poetry events from the Middle East, including Syrian documentary Shout and Zeina Daccache's 2009 film, 12 Angry Lebanese.

The capital will also play host to a photography exhibition portraying the lives of young people living in cities throughout Syria.

Beirut and Damascus film highlights include screenings of Scottish classics Gregory's Girl, Hallam Foe and The Wicker Man, and Scottish Gaelic feature film Seach'd, directed by Christopher Young in 2007.

Progressive Celtic band Shooglenifty and Scottish musician Bill Drummond will also visit Syria and Lebanon, while there will be Arabic-English poetry collaborations from Emily Ballou, Ryan Van Winkle, Tom Pow and William Letson, Golan Haji and Rasha Omran, and Yehia Jaber and Mazen Maarouf.

Syrian voice

A Reel Festivals spokeswoman said Syria especially had featured prominently in the news recently, but for all the wrong reasons.

She said: "We want people to see another Syria and Lebanon, brimming with creativity, humour and beauty - the human side of these countries, that those who are fortunate enough to travel there all experience.

"Right now, it's even more important for us to bring Syria to Scotland, and to give Syrian culture a voice on the international stage, as the uncertainty of the situation in Syria has led to the cancellation of some of our events there on advice from our regional colleagues and sponsors."

She added: "We are following this advice out of respect for the challenges the Syrian people are facing in the wake of recent amplified attempts to stifle their expressed wishes for greater freedom of expression, movement and of self-determination."

One to exercise the grey cells on a Monday morning.

From the BBC:

Neutrons could test Newton's gravity and string theory

A pioneering technique using subatomic particles known as neutrons could give microscopic hints of extra dimensions or even dark matter, researchers say.

The idea rests on probing any minuscule variations in gravity as it acts on slow-moving neutrons in a tiny cavity.

A Nature Physics report outlines how neutrons were made to hop from one gravitational quantum state to another.

These quantum jumps can test Newton's theory of gravity - and any variations from it - with unprecedented precision.

The "quantum states" of atoms, light particles known as photons, molecules and even objects big enough to be seen have been extensively studied.

They are called quantum because it takes a packet of energy of a very specific size - a quantum - to create the states.

However, of the four fundamental forces, gravity is by far the weakest, and it took until 2002 before gravity's quantum nature was proven.

That work, by a group of researchers at the Institut Laue-Langevin (ILL) and published in a paper in Nature, used slow-moving neutrons falling due to gravity.

The neutrons are created in a fission reactor, and slowed to incredibly low speeds by materials known as moderators.

They are gathered up and injected into the quantum experiment at speeds of around five meters per second - just a hundredth the speed of the molecules flying around in the air.

What is useful about neutrons for these experiments is that they are electrically neutral - within the experiment, they are as isolated from all the forces of nature as they can possibly be, with only gravity to act on them.

The neutrons are shot between two parallel plates, one above another and separated by about 25 micrometres - half a hair's width. The upper plate absorbs neutrons, and the lower plate reflects them.

As they pass through, they trace out an arc, just like a thrown ball falling due to gravity. If they hit the bottom surface before passing through, they are reflected off and absorbed at the top - and thus are not detected at the other end of the plates.

The new work by the ILL team has added what is known as a piezoelectric resonator to the bottom plate; its purpose is to jiggle the bottom plate at a very particular frequency.

The researchers found that as they changed the bottom plate's vibration frequency, there were distinct dips in the number of neutrons detected outside the plates - particular, well-spaced "resonant" frequencies that the neutrons were inclined to absorb.

These frequencies, then, are the gravitational quantum states of neutrons, essentially having energy bounced into them by the bottom plate, and the researchers were able for the first time to force the neutrons from one quantum state to another.

The differences in the frequencies - which are proportional to energy - of each of these transitions will be an incredibly sensitive test of gravity at the microscopic scale.

While it is easy to measure the effects of gravity on grander planetary or even galactic scales, the force's weakness has meant its detailed nature has been difficult to observe up until now. And any variations from the gravity that Newton's theory predicts could be a hint of some new physics.

"With theory you can assume there's only purely Newton's gravity, then to make a transition you need a certain energy," study co-author Peter Geltenbort of the ILL told BBC News.

"Now we can compare this energy with what we've measured and if there is a deviation then it would be a hint that Newton's gravity on these short distances is not 100% valid."

Any such deviations could give hints of the postulated particle known as the axion, which could in turn prove the existence and nature of dark matter.

"The experiments in astrophysics and astronomy give limits [for the axion's existence] over long distances very stringently, but not for the short distances. These are the same theories you would use to describe phenomena on a large length scale, but we have with our method the possibility to look for these axions on this short scale," Dr Geltenbort said.

The same holds true for supersymmetric particles, part of some formulations of string theory that suggest that many extra dimensions exist over tiny length scales, which would require the precision that is only now possible with the team's approach.

"We'll never be as sensitive as the methods on those astronomical scales but we can be far more sensitive on the scale between millimetres and less than micrometres," Dr Geltenbort said.

From the BBC:

Click here to see this article with a photograph of a saoia

'Asian unicorn' to get new Vietnam nature reserve

Vietnam is setting up a nature reserve to protect one of the world's rarest animals - an antelope-like creature called the saola.

It intends to create a 160sq/km (61 sq/mile) area in the central province of Quang Nam for the animal, which is also known as the Asian unicorn.

The existence of the saola was confirmed only two decades ago and sightings are very rare.

Wildlife experts say the reserve could be vital to its survival.

"This decision has brought new hope for the survival of the saola, an animal that is on the brink of extinction in the world," said Vu Ngoc Tram of conservation group WWF.

There are no saola in captivity and no scientist has ever reported seeing one in the wild. Photographs that do exist have been captured by local villagers and automatic cameras.

In August 2010, villagers across the border in the Laos province of Bolikhamxay caught an adult saola, but it died shortly afterwards.

Pham Thanh Lam, director of Quang Nam's forest bureau, said the reserve area was home to an estimated 50-60 of the animals.

He said that education campaigns would be carried out to prevent villagers hunting them. Jobs would also be created for local people in the reserve, he said.

"For ethnic minority people, hunting is a way of earning their living," he told the Associated Press news agency.

"They would not spare the saola, so it's necessary to create conditions for them to earn their living to minimise hunting for wild animals including saola."

The reserve is in the Annamite mountains along the Laos border.

From the BBC:

Badger vaccine pilot planned by National Trust in Devon

By Richard Black Environment correspondent, BBC News

The National Trust is to vaccinate badgers against TB this summer in a bid to curb the disease in cattle - the first UK landowner to do so.

The trust hopes its £320,000, four-year project on Devon's Killerton estate will make the case for vaccination as an alternative to culling.

Cattle (or bovine) tuberculosis costs the UK about £100m each year.

The government is set to approve badger culling in England soon, and the Welsh Assembly Government also plans a cull.

Research published last year showed the vaccine lowers infection in badgers.

Some cattle herds contract TB through contact with badgers, which carry the bacterium, although infection from other cattle is more significant.

Badger culling is a controversial option and although the trust is not opposed to it in principle, it is troubled by research showing it could do more harm than good - hence the vaccination scheme.

"This is a pilot project - it's not research, not a trial - we know the vaccine works, and we're going for it," said David Bullock, the trust's head of nature conservation.

"The driver is that we want to reduce the risk of bovine TB breakdowns in cattle herds belonging to our tenant farmers, 18 of whom are involved in this project - and we also want to see that the vaccine is considered nationwide."

Last December, scientists with the government-owned Food and Environment Research Agency (Fera) published the results of a four-year field trial using an injectable TB vaccine.

It showed that vaccination reduced the incidence of TB in badgers by 74%, but did not look for any impact on infection levels in cattle.

The Labour government had planned five subsequent pilot vaccination projects, but the coalition reduced that to one, and Killerton was among the sites axed.

So at a cost of £80,000 per year, the National Trust is picking up the project, making use of the fact that some of the preliminary research (such as mapping out badger setts) has already been done.

Across about 20 sq km (8 sq miles) of the site, badgers will be lured into cages with bait and trapped.

Trained and licensed Fera staff will then deliver a dose of vaccine and release the badger, first marking it so it does not subsequently receive a second shot.

Dozens of setts have been identified, and the trust believes many hundreds of badgers will be vaccinated.

Promises made

The Conservative Party made badger culling a plank of their general election campaign last year.

While supporting the trust's decision to carry out the pilot programme, the NFU said vaccines formed part of the long-term solution but did not address the "desperate plight" that many farmers currently found themselves in.

"Current vaccination methods of injecting badgers is costly, and practically challenging with the benefits remaining unclear, and unproven," Melanie Hall, the NFU's regional director for South-West England told BBC News.

"As the vaccine is preventative, [it is] unlikely to impact positively on infected badgers."

Nationwide, nearly 35,000 cattle were slaughtered last year and there is no vaccine yet that can be used in cattle.

The government believes a cull would reduce disease incidence in cattle by 16% over nine years.

A spokesman for the Department of Environment, Food and Rural Affair (Defra) welcomed the National Trust's plans to run a vaccine pilot project.

He added: "There's no one solution to tackling TB, and the badger vaccine we developed is one of the tools we have available.

"We will be announcing a comprehensive and balanced TB Eradication Programme for England as soon as possible."

Ministers were expected to publish their plans to deal with bovine TB in the national herd in February; but amid turmoil over the disposal of nationally-owned forests, the announcement was postponed, and is now expected next month.

Meanwhile, the Welsh Assembly Government has announced new plans for a pilot cull in Pembrokeshire this year, after a legal ruling derailed similar plans last year.

Animal rights campaigners are to challenge the new plans in the courts.

Scientific cloud

Behind the issue lie conflicting interpretations of scientific evidence on the effectiveness of culling.

The Westminster and Cardiff governments and the NFU argue that culling can markedly reduce bovine TB incidence in cattle.

But the major UK investigation, the Randomised Badger Culling Trial (also called the Krebs trial), showed culling only produced a benefit if conducted rigorously and systematically over large areas, ideally with hard boundaries that badgers could not cross.

Otherwise, the social structure of badger groups broke down when some were killed, and the animals ranged further afield - infecting more cattle and leading to increased TB incidence.

"We're not against culling badgers if it's going to be effective in curbing bovine TB, but you can't apply the criteria everywhere that would make it effective," Mr Bullock told BBC News.

"Unless you have boundaries, you may have this effect where badgers move around and spread TB - we know from the science that this does happen."

Scientists who ran the Krebs trial have warned the government that its plan to allow shooting of badgers as they roam was likely to be less effective than the trap-and-shoot method deployed during the trial.

On that basis, they said, culling "risks increasing rather than reducing the incidence of cattle TB".

In the Irish Republic, culling has been practised for many years and does appear to have curbed bovine TB; but scientists involved with that programme say the disease will not be eradicated without vaccination.

The National Trust argues that vaccination could prove to be a more effective option than culling, in conjunction with tightened regulations designed to prevent cattle-to-cattle transmission.

This would also, of course, avoid killing badgers, which are a protected species under UK and EU laws.

Eventually, the aim is to have an oral vaccine that badgers would simply eat, avoiding any need for trapping; but that is thought to be five years away.

From the BBC:

GM mosquitoes offer malaria hope

By James Gallagher Health and Science reporter, BBC News

Scientists believe they are closer to being able to change the DNA of wild mosquitoes in order to combat malaria.

In the laboratory, they made a gene spread from a handful of mosquitoes to most of the population in just a few generations, according to a report in Nature.

If the right gene can be made to spread then researchers hope to reduce the number of cases of malaria.

Other academics have described the study as a "major step forward".

The World Health Organisation estimated that malaria caused nearly one million deaths in 2008.

Spreading resistance

Research groups have already created "malaria-resistant mosquitoes" using techniques such as introducing genes to disrupt the malaria parasite's development.

The research, however, has a great challenge - getting those genes to spread from the genetically-modified mosquitoes to the vast number of wild insects across the globe.

Unless the gene gives the mosquito an advantage, the gene will likely disappear.

Scientists at Imperial College London and the University of Washington, in Seattle, believe they have found a solution.

They inserted a gene into the mosquito DNA which is very good at looking after its own interests - a homing endonuclease called I-SceI.

The gene makes an enzyme which cuts the DNA in two. The cell's repair machinery then uses the gene as a template when repairing the cut.

As a result the homing endonuclease gene is copied.

It does this in such a way that all the sperm produced by a male mosquito carry the gene.

So all its offspring have the gene. The process is then repeated so the offspring's offspring have the gene and so on.

In the laboratory experiments, the gene was spread to half the caged mosquitoes in 12 generations.

Defeating malaria

Professor Andrea Crisanti, from the department of life sciences at Imperial College London, said: "This is an exciting technological development, one which I hope will pave the way for solutions to many global health problems.

"At the beginning I was really quite sceptical and thought it probably would not work, but the results are so encouraging that I'm starting to change my mind."

He said the idea had been proved in principle and was now working on getting other genes to spread in the same way.

He believes it could be possible to introduce genes which will make the mosquito target animals rather than humans, stop the parasite from multiplying in the insect or produce all male offspring which do not transmit malaria.

Professor Janet Hemingway, from the Liverpool School of Tropical Medicine, said the work was an "exciting breakthrough".

She cautioned that the technique was still some way off being used against wild mosquitoes and there were social issues around the acceptability of using GM technology.

"This is however a major step forward providing technology that may be used in a cost effective format to drive beneficial genes through mosquito populations from relatively small releases," she added.

Dr Yeya Touré, from the World Health Organisation, said: "This research finding is very important for driving a foreign gene in a mosquito population. However, given that it has been demonstrated in a laboratory cage model, there is the need to conduct further studies before it could be used as a genetic control strategy."

From the BBC:

Lasers could replace spark plugs in car engines

By Jason Palmer Science and technology reporter, BBC News

Car engines could soon be fired by lasers instead of spark plugs, researchers say.

A team at the Conference on Lasers and Electro-Optics will report on 1 May that they have designed lasers that could ignite the fuel/air mixture in combustion engines.

The approach would increase efficiency of engines, and reduce their pollution, by igniting more of the mixture.

The team is in discussions with a spark plug manufacturer.

The idea of replacing spark plugs - a technology that has changed little since their invention 150 years ago - with lasers is not a new one.

Spark plugs only ignite the fuel mixture near the spark gap, reducing the combustion efficiency, and the metal that makes them up is slowly eroded as they age.

Ceramic powders

A team from Romania and Japan has now demonstrated a system that can focus two or three laser beams into an engine's cylinders at variable depths.

That increases the completeness of combustion and neatly avoids the issue of degradation with time.

However, it requires that lasers of high pulse energies are used; just as with spark plugs, a great deal of energy is needed to cause ignition of the fuel.

"In the past, lasers that could meet those requirements were limited to basic research because they were big, inefficient, and unstable," said Takunori Taira of the National Institutes of Natural Sciences in Okazaki, Japan.

"Nor could they be located away from the engine, because their powerful beams would destroy any optical fibres that delivered light to the cylinders."

The team has been developing a new approach to the problem: lasers made of ceramic powders that are pressed into spark-plug sized cylinders.

These ceramic devices are lasers in their own right, gathering energy from compact, lower-power lasers that are sent in via optical fibre and releasing it in pulses just 800 trillionths of a second long.

Unlike the delicate crystals typically used in high-power lasers, the ceramics are more robust and can better handle the heat within combustion engines.

The team is in discussions to commercialise the technology with Denso, a major automobile component manufacturer.

From the BBC:

Click here to see this article with pictures including a map of the "ring of fire" region

Quake research mission to 'ring of fire'

By David Shukman Environment & science correspondent, BBC News

An expedition is getting under way in the South Pacific to investigate one of the most seismically-active fault lines in the world.

Researchers are planning to study the Tonga Trench - a deep feature where the Pacific tectonic plate is being forced under the Indo-Australian plate.

The island nation of Tonga is regularly hit by tremors - most recently a 6.4 magnitude quake offshore last month.

The research expedition will last about one month.

The focus of the study will be an unusual zone on the seabed where undersea volcanoes are being dragged into the fault.

Scientists want a better understanding of how the submarine mountains affect the likelihood of earthquakes.

The volcanoes lie on the 4,000km-long Louisville Ridge and either act as a brake on the Pacific plate - or intensify the quakes which follow.

The area where they are pulled into the seabed suffers relatively fewer tremors than other stretches of the fault line.

The study - funded by Britain's Natural Environment Research Council (Nerc) - will carry out surveys and develop 3D models during seven transits of the region.

One of the lead scientists on the expedition, Professor Tony Watts of Oxford University, told BBC News:

"We want to know whether subducted seamounts are holding up earthquakes or whether they cause earthquakes.

"This is important to find out so that we can learn what controls earthquakes and make better assessments about where they may occur in the future."

Subduction zones like the Tonga Trench can trigger tsunamis - as happened off Japan last month and off Sumatra on Boxing Day 2004.

One recent study of an earthquake in Peru in 2001 showed that underwater mountains may have held up the quake for 40 seconds before rupturing.

A study of the Nankaido earthquake in Japan in 1946 successfully imaged a seamount that had been dragged 10km deep - and apparently limited the scale of the rupture and the tsunami risk.

According to Professor Watts, more data is needed on the deep structure of the Tonga Trench to understand the forces at work.

"We need to know whether the seamounts are more or less intact as they are carried into the trench or have been damaged or decapitated.

"If we find that there is a link between seamounts and earthquakes then imaging of the seafloor will put us in a much better position to understand future quakes and tsunamis."

From the BBC:

Switzerland: Smelly corpse flower draws thousands

Thousands of people are flocking to the northern Swiss city of Basel to see a giant, stinky flower bloom for the first time.

The amorphophallus titanum - known as corpse flower because it exudes a smell of rotting flesh - is the first to blossom in Switzerland in 75 years.

The Basel Botanical Gardens expects the 6.6ft (2m) plant to attract 10,000 people whilst in bloom.

The bloom is set to wilt late Saturday or Sunday.

Worldwide, there have been only 134 recorded blooms from artificial cultivation, according to AP news agency.

The flower first began to poke out of the soil in March, and in the past few days it had been growing at about six centimetres a day, according to Swissinfo news website.

Its mother plant last bloomed in the Frankfurt Palm Garden in 1992.

Originally native to the tropical rainforests on the Indonesian island of Sumatra, the plant requires a humid climate to grow and rarely blossoms, even in the wild.

The flower's smell, said to be a cross between burnt sugar and rotting flesh, is designed to attract insects for pollination.

I found this clip on Youtube:

From the BBC:

Higgs speculation is 'premature'

By Paul Rincon Science reporter, BBC News

Speculation about a dramatic finding in the search for the elusive Higgs boson particle is premature, experts say.

An internal note leaked on the web reveals that a group of researchers at the Large Hadron Collider (LHC) has detected a signal compatible with the sought-after particle.

A spokesman for Cern, which runs the LHC, confirmed the note was authentic.

But he told the BBC it had not been held up to proper scientific scrutiny and could turn out to be a false alarm.

The Higgs boson is of huge importance to the widely accepted theory of physics, known as the Standard Model.

It is the sub-atomic particle which explains why all other particles have mass.

However, despite decades trying, no-one, so far, has detected it.

The result under discussion originates from four members of the Atlas collaboration. Atlas is one of two "multi-purpose" experiments at the LHC designed to search for the Higgs, and some 3,000 physicists are working on the project.

'First stage'

Some observers have argued that the note could be a hoax, but Dr James Gillies, director of communications at Cern in Geneva, told BBC News: "It's genuine, but what it comes from is a note written by a very small group of people in a large collaboration.

"There will be working groups for individual physics topics... within those working groups small teams of people will write notes for scrutiny by their colleagues.

"If those notes survive scrutiny, which is often not the case... then the next stage in the peer review process is for them to go out to the collaboration as a whole. If they survive that, then the collaboration will say: 'we've got something to go out to external peer review'."

Dr Gillies added: "What was leaked was the first stage in that process... at this stage we can't take it seriously and these things do come and go quite often."

The LHC is designed to smash together proton particles at close to light-speed in a bid to uncover new physics. Experiments such as Atlas look for "events" that could be associated with the production of new particles.

The Atlas researchers targeted a mass region of 115 gigaelectronvolts (GeV), where Higgs candidates had previously been observed by the LHC's predecessor - the Large Electron Positron (LEP) collider.

They observed a so-called "resonance", an effect which can be associated with the presence of sub-atomic particles.

But the number of events seen by the researchers was about 30 times greater than would be expected.

The note was originally posted on the Not Even Wrong physics blog by an anonymous user.

Another anonymous user on the blog commented: "Anything, especially garbage, can be published as a 'com' note. It's internal to the Atlas collaboration, not reviewed by anyone, not approved."

From the BBC:

Click here to see this article with video clip and pictures

'Neglected' current could keep Europe warm

By Richard Black Environment correspondent, BBC News

Changes to a "neglected" ocean current near the southern tip of Africa could keep Europe warm even if the Gulf Stream switches off, scientists say.

Warm water in the Agulhas Current flows from the Indian Ocean into the Atlantic where it brings changes further north.

Researchers say this could compensate if the main northwards flow of heat, carried by the Gulf Stream, drops.

Writing in the journal Nature, they say this effect has largely been overlooked as a factor affecting climate change.

The Agulhas Current flows southwards down the eastern coast of Africa.

When it reaches the continent's southern tip - Cape Agulhas - most of the water swings eastward and back into the Indian Ocean.

But some of it forms giant eddies and rings, up to 300km (200 miles) across and extending from the top of the ocean to the bottom, that go in the other direction - rounding the cape and flowing into the Atlantic.

This bit is known as the Agulhas Leakage.

Exactly how much water travels in this direction is not known, and is thought to vary markedly from year to year.

But this team of scientists - drawn from the US and Europe - say wind shifts further south make it likely that leakage is increasing.

"This prediction comes from a [computer] model - the leakage itself is very difficult to measure because it happens over a wide corridor of ocean and because of its eddying nature," said Lisa Beal from the Rosen School of Marine and Atmospheric Science in Miami, US.

She told BBC News that research on the current had been sparse mainly because it is remote from Western research centres, making studies expensive and difficult.

Salty whirls

Once in the Atlantic, the warm and salty Agulhas water acts to strengthen the main current system, the Atlantic Meridional Overturning Circulation (AMOC).

Part of this circulation is the Gulf Stream, which brings hot water northwards, keeping parts of Western Europe and eastern North America several degrees Celsius warmer than they would otherwise be.

Thanks largely to the 2004 movie The Day After Tomorrow, the possibility that this would "switch off" in a warmer world is one of the best-known potential climate change impacts, even though there is a lot of uncertainty about whether it will happen.

The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) said in its landmark 2007 report: "Most [computer] models suggest increased greenhouse gas concentrations will lead to a weakening of the [A]MOC, which will act to reduce the warming in Europe".

But the scientists behind the Nature article say an increase in Agulhas Leakage could compensate.

"This could mean that current IPCC model predictions for the next century are wrong and there will be no cooling in the North Atlantic to partially offset the effects of global climate change over North America and Europe," said Dr Beal.

"Instead, increasing Agulhas Leakage could stabilise the oceanic heat transport carried by the Atlantic overturning circulation."

Unsteady eddies

Analysis of sediments shows the Agulhas Leakage has varied hugely in the past, notably at transitions between Ice Ages and the warm periods in between.

Its modern behaviour is being studied by satellites and by instruments in the sea; but still, the record is short and much clearly remains to be discovered.

Further north in the Atlantic, UK scientists said last year that the amount of water being carried in the AMOC varies, naturally, by almost a factor of 10; so discerning a long-term trend becomes very difficult. Autonomous underwater gliders are among the tools gathering data on Atlantic currents

The same appears to be true with the Agulhas circulation.

"The main thing this shows to me is how complicated the region is; it's a very complex situation," said Harry Bryden from the UK's National Oceanography Centre in Southampton.

"How to find out how much of this water goes into the South Atlantic and stays there is the critical question - and as a research scientist, I'm not sure how you would go about it."

Professor Bryden is part of a UK-US project deploying measuring equipment in the northern Atlantic in a bid to understand AMOC behaviour and variability.

Last year, Lisa Beal's group put an array into the Agulhas Current that may provide some answers.

If better measurements are one aim of scientists in the field, better computer models are another, with existing global models not able to replicate the circular eddies typical of the Agulhas system.

In the long term, putting all of this together should lead to much better understanding of how the AMOC behaves - in particular, whether it can shut down stably for long periods, and what that would mean for Europe.

"If you think about evaporation over the Atlantic, the ocean is clearly losing water, so the circulation system brings new water in to balance that," said Richard Wood, a climate scientist from the UK Met Office who studies ocean currents.

"There are two pathways - warm, salty water from the Indian Ocean and colder, fresher water from the Drake Passage [between the southern tip of South America and Antarctica].

"And there's pretty strong evidence that the balance between those pathways indicates whether or not the Gulf Stream is safe".

This is one for the Waking the Dead team (apart from the fact that the series has ended). From the BBC:

Girl 'murdered' by Roman soldiers in north Kent

The body of a girl thought to have been murdered by Roman soldiers has been discovered in north Kent.

Archaeologists working on the site of a Roman settlement near the A2 uncovered the girl who died almost 2,000 years ago.

"She was killed by a Roman sword stabbing her in the back of the head," said Dr Paul Wilkinson, director of the excavation.

"By the position of the entry wound she would have been kneeling at the time."

The Roman conquest of Britain began in AD43, and the construction of Watling Street started soon afterwards linking Canterbury to St Albans.

A small Roman town was built on the route, near present-day Faversham.

'Dumped' in a shallow grave

Dr Wilkinson is the director of SWAT Archaeology - a company which carries out digs before major building work takes place on sites which may hold historical interest.

He was in charge of a training dig excavating Roman ditches when they made the shocking find.

Dr Wilkinson said that she had been between 16 and 20 years old when she was killed, and her bones suggested that she had been in good health.

He also believes the body had then been dumped in what looked like a hastily dug grave.

"She was lying face down and her body was twisted with one arm underneath her body. One of her feet was even left outside the grave," he said.

The burial site was just outside the Roman town, with cemeteries close by.

Dr Wilkinson said the body was found with some fragments of iron age pottery which would date the grave to about AD50, and suggest that she was part of the indigenous population.

Another indication of her origin, according to Dr Wilkinson, is the orientation of the body.

Romans buried their bodies lying east-west, whereas this body was buried north-south, as was the custom for pagan graves.

'Local populations were killed'

Many people have a romantic view of the Roman invasion, Dr Wilkinson said.

"Now, for the first time, we have an indication of how the Roman armies treated people, and that large numbers of the local populations were killed.

"It shows how all invading armies act the same throughout history. One can only imagine what trauma this poor girl had to suffer before she was killed," he said.

She will be re-buried at the site.

From the BBC:

Superman 'may end US citizenship', says Action Comics

Superman intends to give up his US citizenship, a story in the new issue of Action Comics declares.

"I'm tired of having my actions construed as instruments of US policy," the character says in a story that sees him flying to a Tehran protest.

Adopted by an American family, Superman decides he is better-off serving the world.

Though he only talks about his plans to give up citizenship, the story has been criticised by commentators worldwide.

The superhero, originally from the fictional planet Krypton, does not clearly renounce his citizenship in the issue.

Action Comics co-publishers Jim Lee and Dan DiDio said: "Superman announces his intention to put a global focus on his never ending battle, but he remains, as always, committed to his adopted home and his roots as a Kansas farm boy from Smallville."

The disputed story sees the hero standing silently at the protest, wanting to show demonstrators that they are not alone.

Superman's announcement comes after accusations from Iran's government that he has caused an international incident, in the nine-page story written by David Goyer.

"'Truth, justice and the American way' - it's not enough anymore," Superman says, "The world is too small, too connected."

This is not the first time a comic character has distanced himself from US policy.

In the 1970s, Marvel Comics' Captain America swapped his identity for that of the character Nomad at the time of the Watergate scandal.

From the BBC:

Click here to see this article with pictures

It is a true picture of contentment, and now a scientist is suggesting that a pig's love of mud is more than just a way to keep cool.

A researcher in the Netherlands has looked at wallowing behaviour in pigs' wild relatives to find out more about what motivates the animals to luxuriate in sludge.

His conclusions suggest that wallowing is vital for the animals' well-being.

The study is published in the journal Applied Animal Behaviour Science.

It is already well accepted that pigs use wallows to keep cool. The animals do not have normal sweat glands, so they are unable, otherwise, to regulate their body temperature.

Liking shallow water could have been a point in the evolution of whales from land-dwelling mammals Marc Bracke Wageningen University

The scientist who carried out the study, Marc Bracke from Wageningen University and Research Centre, trawled the scientific literature for evidence of what motivates other animals to carry out similar behaviours.

He examined closely related "wallowers", including hippos, which spend their time in water to keep cool.

Dr Bracke also looked at other hoofed animals, such as deer. Although these animals do not wallow, they roll on the ground in order to "scent mark", which has an important role in attracting a mate.

That analysis has led Dr Bracke to propose that mud wallowing, like rolling, could play a role in reproduction in pigs.

But more fundamentally, Dr Bracke suggests the behaviour could have evolved in pigs' most ancient relatives.

"We all evolved from fish, so it could be that this motivation to be in water could be something that was preserved in animals that are able to do so."

For many animals, this would be too dangerous, because watering holes are ideal places for predators to ambush their prey.

"But pigs, like many carnivores, are relatively large animals with enlarged canine teeth, so they would be better able to fend off an attack."

So rather than pigs needing to cool down in mud because they do not have [functional] sweat glands, Dr Bracke thinks that they "did not evolve functional sweat glands like other ungulates because they liked wallowing so much".

 

Part whale?

"Pigs are genetically related to particularly water-loving animals such as hippos and whales," Dr Bracke said.

He explained: "It seems to me that this preference to be in shallow water could have been a turning point in the evolution of whales from land-dwelling mammals."

He concludes that the desire to wallow is probably hardwired and rewarding in itself.

"If so, wallowing could be an important element of a good life in pigs," said Dr Bracke.

From the BBC:

Stradivarius to be sold to raise money for Japan quake

An exceptionally well-preserved Stradivarius violin, the Lady Blunt, which fetched $10m at its last sale in 2008, is to be auctioned for charity.

The 1721 violin is being sold by the Nippon Music Foundation, with the entire proceeds going to their Northeastern Japan Earthquake and Tsunami Relief Fund.

The Lady Blunt set a record price every time it was sold last century.

Auctioneers Tarisio said they will sell the instrument online on 20 June.

Christopher Reuning, of Reuning & Son Violins in Boston, which sells and certifies instruments, said: "Rarely does a Stradivarius of this quality in such pristine condition and with such significant historical provenance come up for sale.

"It still shows the tool-marks and brushstrokes of Stradivari. The Lady Blunt is perhaps the best-preserved Stradivarius to be offered for sale in the past century."

Tarisio described the foundation's decision to sell "what is considered the finest violin of their collection" as "a gesture of profound generosity".

Japan's latest police figures stated that 14,704 people are known to have died and another 10,969 remain missing following the earthquake and tsunami in March.

The violin was named after one of its owners, Lady Anne Blunt, the granddaughter of the poet Lord Byron.

It has also been owned by several well-known collectors and experts including WE Hill & Son, Jean Baptiste Vuillaume, the Baron Johann Knoop and Sam Bloomfield.

The Nippon Music Foundation owns some of the world's finest Stradivari and Guarneri instruments.

Its president, Kazuko Shiomi, said: "Each of the instruments in our collection is very dear to us.

"However, the extent of the devastation facing Japan is very serious and we feel that everyone and every organisation should make some sacrifice for those affected by this tragedy."

A photo of the violin found on the net:

From the BBC:

Rice crops 'have single origin'

Scientists have shed new light on the origins of rice, one of the most important staple foods today.

A study of the rice genome suggests that the crop was domesticated only once, rather than at multiple times in different places.

Tens of thousands of varieties of rice are known, but these are represented by two distinct sub-species.

The work published in PNAS journal proposes that rice was first cultivated in China some 9,000 years ago.

Another theory proposes that the two major sub-species of rice - Oryza sativa japonica and O. sativa indica - were domesticated separately and in different parts of Asia.

This view has gained strong support from observations of large genetic differences between the two sub-species, as well as from several efforts to reconstruct the evolutionary history of the crop.

The japonica type is sticky and short-grained, while indica rice is non-sticky and long-grained.

In the latest research, an international team re-examined this evolutionary history, by using genetic data.

Using computer algorithms, the researchers came to the conclusion that japonica and indica had a single origin because they had a closer genetic relationship to one other than to any wild rice species found in China or India.

They then used a so-called "molecular clock" technique to put dates on the evolutionary story of rice.

Depending on how the researchers calibrated their clock, the data point to an origin of domesticated rice around 8,200 years ago. The study indicates that the japonica and indica sub-species split apart from each other about 3,900 years ago.

The team says this is consistent with archaeological evidence for rice domestication in China's Yangtze Valley about 8,000 to 9,000 years ago and the domestication of rice in India's Ganges region about 4,000 years ago.

"As rice was brought in from China to India by traders and migrant farmers, it likely hybridised extensively with local wild rice," said co-author Michael Purugganan, from New York University (NYU).

"So domesticated rice that we may have once thought originated in India actually has its beginnings in China."

The single-origin model suggests that indica and japonica were both domesticated from the wild rice O. rufipogon.

Several years ago, researchers said they had found evidence for 15,000-year-old burnt rice grains at a site in South Korea, challenging the idea that rice was first cultivated in China. However, the evidence remains controversial in the academic community.

From the BBC:

Scientists turn 'bad fat' into 'good fat'

By Michelle Roberts Health reporter, BBC News

Scientists say they have found a way to turn body fat into a better type of fat that burns off calories and weight.

The US Johns Hopkins team made the breakthrough in rats but believe the same could be done in humans, offering the hope of a new way to treat obesity.

Modifying the expression of a protein linked to appetite not only reduced the animals' calorie intake and weight, but also transformed their fat composition.

"Bad" white fat became "good" brown fat, Cell Metabolism journal reports.

Brown fat is abundant in babies, which they use as a power source to generate body heat, expending calories at the same time.

But as we age our brown fat largely disappears and gets replaced by "bad" white fat, which typically sits as a spare tyre around the waist.

Experts have reasoned that stimulating the body to make more brown fat rather than white fat could be a helpful way to control weight and prevent obesity and its related health problems like type 2 diabetes.

Novel approach

Various teams have been searching for a way to do this, and Dr Sheng Bi and colleagues at the Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine believe they may have cracked it.

They designed an experiment to see if suppressing an appetite-stimulating protein called NPY would decrease body weight in rats.

When they silenced NPY in the brains of the rodents they found their appetite and food intake decreased.

Even when the rats were fed a very rich, high-fat diet they still managed to keep more weight off than rats who had fully functioning NPY.

The scientists then checked the fat composition of the rats and found an interesting change had occurred.

In the rats with silenced NPY expression, some of the bad white fat had been replaced with good brown fat.

The researchers are hopeful that it may be possible to achieve the same effect in people by injecting brown fat stem cells under the skin to burn white fat and stimulate weight loss.

Dr Bi said: "If we could get the human body to turn bad fat into good fat that burns calories instead of storing them, we could add a serious new tool to tackle the obesity epidemic.

"Only future research will tell us if that is possible."

Dr Jeremy Tomlinson, an expert at the University of Birmingham's Centre for Obesity Research, said: "This is exciting, novel and interesting.

"We will need a lot more work to tease this out, but it could offer a feasible way to develop new treatments for obesity."

From the BBC:

Aerial photo survey shows England's orchards 'neglect'

Nearly half of England's traditional orchards are in a neglected condition, a study of aerial photographs suggests.

Some 35,378 orchards - home to wide varieties of apples and pears, as well as wildlife - were identified by the People's Trust for Endangered Species.

Researchers say 9% are in pristine condition, 46% were in a good state and 45% were in a poor condition.

The five-year project aims to map sites that are in decline to provide a basis for future work to protect them.

The trust said traditional orchards were increasingly at risk because of neglect, intensification of agriculture and pressure from land development.

Anita Burrough, orchard officer for the trust, said: "The mosaic of habitats that comprise a traditional orchard provide food and shelter for at least 1,800 species of wildlife, including the rare noble chafer beetle which relies on the decaying wood of old fruit trees.

'Biodiversity hot spots'

The first ever survey of orchards from the air started with conservationists from the trust searching photographs. Orchards can be identified because of the planting patterns which sees the trees growing in evenly spaced lines.

A fifth of the orchards discovered were then surveyed by volunteers, to record species, age and condition of the fruit trees.

The trust hopes its work will be used to monitor targets to restore sites, while working with owners to provide advice and inform local planning policies and development.

Traditional orchards - home to apple varieties such as Peasgood's Nonsuch and Sheep's Snout - tend to be cultivated without pesticides and use animals for grazing instead of mowing.

But numbers are said to have declined by 63% since 1950.

Peter Brotherton, head of biodiversity for government agency Natural England, which part funded the study, said: "Traditional orchards can be biodiversity hot spots, but without proper protection and sensitive management, they can easily slip into decline."

There are a series of photographs which can be seen from this link.

From the BBC:

Click here to see this article with pictures

Intel unveils 22nm 3D Ivy Bridge processor

Intel has unveiled its next generation of microprocessor technology, code named Ivy Bridge.

The upcoming chips will be the first to use a 22 nanometre manufacturing process, which packs transistors more densely than the current 32nm system.

Intel said it would also be using new Tri-Gate "3D" transistors, which are less power hungry.

Rival chip manufacturers including AMD and IBM are understood to be planning similar designs.

Tri-Gate

The announcement marks a significant step forward in the commercial processor industry, which is constantly striving to build more transistors onto silicon chips.

One of the main measures of its progress is the length of the transistor "gate", measured in nanometres (1nm = 1 billionth of a meter).

A human hair is around 60,000 nm wide. Current best microchip technology features a 32nm gate.

It has been known for a long time that 22nm technology would form the next stage in the evolution of microprocessors.

However, the exact nature of Intel's offering has been a closely guarded secret, until now.

The company expects to begin commercial production later this year.

Kaizad Mistry, Intel's 22nm program manager, said that the arrival of Tri-Gate transistors would make a big difference to consumer products.

"What it enables in the market is improved power efficiency - so better performance for the same battery life or longer battery life for the same performance," said Mr Mistry.

In microprocessor design, a conducting channel passes through a switching gate which opens or closes - changing the output from 0 to 1.

Until now, those channels have been "planar" or flat on the silicon wafer.

Intel's Tri-Gate system replaces the channels with 3D "fins". Mr Mistry explained that the extra surface area made them more conductive, and able to work better on lower power.

Semiconductor industry analyst Dan Hutcheson from VLSI research told BBC News that the new process would secure Intel's market dominance.

"It leaves them in a very powerful position," he said.

Mr Hutcheson added that the innovation in 3D architecture would not only benefit Intel's desktop processors, but the chips it manufactures for mobile devices.

"This is going to make their Atom line a lot more competitive with ARM."

UK-based ARM Holdings is the leading designer of low-powered mobile processors.

Ian Drew, a spokesman for ARM, said it was not surprised by the announcement but added: "Improvements to process technology for chips is ongoing. It's not just from Intel but across the whole industry."

ARM had already produced test chips using 22nm features and had signed a deal with IBM to go to 14nm.

Moore's law

The Ivy Bridge design allows approximately twice as many transistors to be crammed into the same space as on 32nm chips.

That improvement is consistent with Moore's Law - the observation made by Intel co-founder Gordon Moore that chip density would double every two years.

However, Intel, like other chip manufacturers, is getting closer and closer to certain physical limits which may prevent that from continuing.

Atoms are typically around 0.5nm wide.

Kaizad Mistry believes that the current rate of growth will continue for some time.

"Gordon Moore himself said that no exponential is forever, but he would like us to delay that for as long as possible," said Mr Mistry.

"I have been in this industry since the mid-80s. At that time people were talking about the sub-micron barrier. There is always talk of a barrier."

Mr Mistry said that new innovations would keep processor design moving forward.

Rival systems

Intel currently accounts for around 80% of global microprocessor sales, according to market analysts IDC.

Its nearest rival, Advanced Micro Devices (AMD) has a 19% share.

AMD was the first to produce a prototype 22nm chip in 2008.

It is widely expected to pursue a similar fin-based system to Intel, known as FinFET.

However, the company has yet to announce its plans for a commercial product.

AMD spun off its chip fabrication arm in 2009, creating GlobalFoundries.

Mr Hutcheson said that the separation of design and manufacture had damaged AMD's ability to innovate.

"There is a huge competitor advantage to having your own fab [fabrication facility] and being able to tune the process.

"This is Intel pulling away," he said.

From the BBC:

Tiger find prompts WWF pressure against planned logging

The conservation charity, WWF, has recorded images of 12 rare Sumatran tigers, including a mother playing with cubs, in an Indonesian forest.

The area is reportedly due to be cleared by loggers - a process which the WWF says must be stopped.

WWF captured the images with concealed cameras in the Bukit Tigapuluh forest and is trying to determine the reasons for the rich showing of tigers.

There are around 400 Sumatran tigers left in the wild.

The video was recorded in March and April.

"What's unclear is whether we found so many tigers because we're getting better at locating our cameras or because the tiger's habitat is shrinking so rapidly here that they are being forced into sharing smaller and smaller bits of forests," said Karmila Parakkasi, leader of WWF's tiger research team in Sumatra.

"That was the highest number of tigers and tiger images obtained... we've ever experienced," the researcher added.

Campaign fodder

The area in which the tigers were found includes natural forest inside a land concession belonging to Barito Pacific Timber, wood supplier to regional giant Asia Pulp and Paper (APP), the WWF said.

WWF is one of several environmental groups campaigning actively to curtail what they see as rampant incursions into rapidly diminishing forests.

"This video confirms the extreme importance of these forests in the Bukit Tigapuluh ecosystem and its wildlife corridor," the WWF's forest and species programme director Anwar Purwoto said.

"WWF calls for all concessions operating in this area to abandon plans to clear this forest and protect areas with high conservation value," he added.

"We also urge the local, provincial and central government to take into consideration the importance of this corridor and manage it as part of Indonesia's commitments to protecting biodiversity," he said.

Barito Pacific could not be reached for comment.

Indonesia has agreed to implement a two-year moratorium on new forest clearance, but the deal has not yet been signed into law.

Although this article was posted on the BBC website today, the video was posted on Youtube over a year ago:

From the BBC:

Electric car charging points 'shortfall'

Just over a tenth of electric car charging points needed in the UK have been built so far, the BBC has learned.

Only 704 of the 4,700 expected by the end of the year are in place and two-thirds of towns with a population of over 150,000 do not have any public charging infrastructure.

David Martell, of charging supplier Chargemaster, said the lack of points can be very stressful for drivers.

The Department of Transport said it plans to install 9,000 points by 2013.

Experts expect that 8,600 electric cars will be sold by the end of this year and set a target ratio of 1.8 cars for every publicly available charging point.

By that reckoning, there would need to be more than 4,700 recharging facilities before 2012.

'Range anxiety'

However, research conducted for the BBC has shown that there are currently only 704 publicly available charging points.

Delays in the creation of a public charging infrastructure have been caused at a local level by difficulties in laying power cables.

The Department of Transport said it had provided up to £30m to kick-start installation in 'test-bed' areas.

There are about 30 million vehicles on British roads - 3,000 of which are electric vehicles.

Mr Martell said many electric vehicle drivers suffer from "range anxiety", which concerns their fear that they run the risk of running out of power due to a lack of charging points.

"It's a concern. It's a barrier to some people," he said.

Experts say that nearly two million of the cars on Britain's roads will be electric powered by 2020.

From the BBC:

Click here to see this article with pictures

Ship sails in search of sustainable tuna

By Richard Black Environment correspondent, BBC News

Scientists are embarking on a two-month expedition in the Pacific aimed at finding ways to reduce the damaging accidental toll of tuna fishing.

They want to find techniques that help fishermen find the abundant skipjack tuna without also catching sharks, turtles, or threatened tuna species.

The scientists will sail on board a tuna purse-seine vessel from Ecuador.

Knowledge gained on the trip will be used to develop fishing techniques or new gear that are much more selective.

This could entail fishing at different times of day, at specific depths under the waves, or by more targeted use of fish aggregating devices (FADs).

"The overall objective is to explore some potential options for reducing the mortality of bigeye tunas and other 'undesirable' species while maximising catches of skipjack," said research leader Kurt Schaefer.

"We're looking for ways in which we can learn to harvest the skipjack without impacting other species such as bigeye and yellowfin - we're not yet testing what we consider to be practical solutions," he told BBC News.

Dr Schaefer has been a research scientist with the Inter-American Tropical Tuna Commission (IATTC) - one of the bodies charged with regulating tuna fishing in the open sea - for more than 30 years.

While the small, fecund skipjack (Katsuwonus pelamis) forms the basis of the canned tuna industry, the bigeye (Thunnus obesus) is an endangered species in the Pacific, primarily because of fishing.

The cruise departs from Ecuador on Tuesday, using the chartered commercial fishing vessel Yolanda L.

Modern FADs

For reasons that are not entirely clear, fish and other marine creatures tend to congregate around floating objects such as logs.

Fishermen have learned to take advantage of this, deploying buoys - FADs - equipped with GPS and sonar.

An underwater ROV (here being tested) will be deployed to film tuna in the nets

When the sonar senses that fish have gathered, the buoy signals the parent vessel, which steams alongside to collect its haul.

Using a purse seine net, the boat can encircle and capture the entire shoal.

The scientists hope that understanding what makes various species move towards the FAD and then leave it again could open doors to fishing selectively.

"One of the things we're doing is behavioural studies using acoustic tags and telemetry," said Dr Schaefer.

"We'll be tagging these species, and trying to see whether there are times when you see separation eithed horizontally or vertically in the water, and whether you could use this to separate out catches.

"We'll also be looking for times of day at which the species might naturally separate - times when the skipjack, for example, might move away from the FAD."

Smaller species may be trying to shelter from predators, while bigger ones may see it as an easy source of food.

The various species may also be attracted away by different signals, such as water temperatures.

A remotely operated underwater vehicle (ROV) will be deployed to film fish behaviour around the FAD, and after entrapment in the purse seine net.

If different tuna species separate inside the net - some swimming high and others low, for example - that could also form the basis of a separation method.

Local knowledge

Having spent long periods at sea on fishing vessels, Kurt Schaefer believes experienced skippers may already know ways of targeting skipjack.

The scientists will analyse how well the Yolanda L's skipper is able to predict catches.

This research cruise is an initiative of the International Seafood Sustainability Foundation (ISSF), which brings scientists together with people from the seafood industry and from environmental groups.

It is the first of a number of cruises planned for different parts of the world's oceans.

Whereas some environmental groups argue for the abandonment of FADs, the ISSF believes this is neither feasible nor desirable.

"It's the philosophy of ISSF and our partners that abandoning a fishery will not help to improve it," said ISSF president Susan Jackson, previously of food giants Del Monte and Heinz.

"We must help to improve practices that make fishing for tuna more sustainable."

The bluefin - the most talked about tuna species recently, and the most prized for sushi - is not a factor in this cruise.

From the BBC:

Click here to see this article with pictures

Harbour seals can detect the fattest fish using just their whiskers, according to research.

Tests with a trained seal have revealed that the animals can sense underwater objects, even with their hearing and sight restricted.

The seal detected objects' sizes and shapes by sensing differences in the trail of disturbance they made in the water.

Scientists suggest that seals use this ability to identify the best prey.

WHISKER FACTS Harbour seals have 40 to 50 whiskers on each side of their snout There are around 1,500 nerves at the base of each whisker, ten times that found in rats or cats The whiskers simultaneously pick up on any displacements in the water, providing seals with quick information about their surroundings Watch Bill Oddie relaxing with seals on Orkney aka "seal island"

Dr Wolf Hanke and scientists from the Marine Science Centre at the University of Rostock, Germany, first showed how sensitive seals' whiskers were last year.

They reported that a trained seal, Henry, was able to sense an artificial fish up to 100m (328ft) away using just his whiskers.

The researchers then focused their investigation on whether seals used their whiskers to discern size and shape.

Their findings have been published in the Journal of Experimental Biology.

In an open-air pool in Cologne zoo, the team set up a box with a series of rotating paddles inside. These paddles created trails similar to those made by swimming fish.

Wearing a mask and headphones to restrict his other senses, Henry swam through the box to hit one of two targets on the other side and get a fish reward.

The seal seems to be able to discriminate fish of different size and shape, which can help to save time and energy when hunting underwater Dr Wolf Hanke

Comparing a control paddle and one that varied in thickness or shape, scientists found that the seal could tell the difference between the trails left in the water.

For trails made by the control paddle, Henry selected a target to the right, and for anything thicker, thinner or of a different shape, he touched the target above the exit gate.

"Seals can tell the size and shapes of objects that have been moved through the water by reading the water movements that the objects leave behind, the so-called hydrodynamic trail, using their whiskers," said Dr Hanke.

"Hydrodynamic wakes are of major importance to harbour seals because vision is often very limited under water, and hearing is often rendered useless because the seals do possess acute hearing, but swimming fish are often quite silent."

Although they only tested one trained animal, the research team say their evidence proves that the ability is present in all harbour seals.

They suggest that sensitive whiskers are of huge benefit to the species, allowing them to hunt fish with the highest calorific reward.

"The significance of these abilities to the seal is that it seems to be able to discriminate fish of different size and shape, which can help to save time and energy when hunting underwater," said Dr Hanke.

The researchers believe whiskers could allow foraging seals to optimise their hunting behaviour to suit the size and shape of their prey.

Harbour seals (Phoca vitulina) are also known as common seals and are abundant in the waters of the north Atlantic and north Pacific Oceans.

The species are considered highly adaptable for their ability to live in both the turbid North Sea and clear Pacific Ocean.

Almost 5% of the world's population live off the UK's coast.

From the BBC:

Click here to see this article with pictures and audio clip

Jupiter moon 'holds magma ocean'

By Jonathan Amos Science correspondent, BBC News

Io is the most volcanic world in the Solar System and scientists think they now have a better idea of why that is.

The moon of Jupiter erupts about 100 times more lava on to its surface each year than does Earth.

A re-assessment of data from Nasa's Galileo probe suggests all this activity is being fed from a giant magma ocean under Io's crust.

Researchers tell Science magazine that this blisteringly hot reservoir is probably some 50km (30 miles) thick.

And that figure is a minimum. It could be much, much thicker, says the study's lead author, Krishan Khurana, who is affiliated to UCLA's Institute of Geophysics and Planetary Physics.

"When scientists first started looking at the images of Io from the Pioneer and Voyager spacecraft in the late 70s, the moon appeared so alien," he told the BBC.

"Right away, the scientists were asking questions; and one of them questions was, 'why are volcanoes present all over the surface?' Well, it's because there's a giant aquifer of magma present right beneath the crust. That's what our study is telling us."

Io's volcanism is driven by its parent planet - Jupiter. The great gas giant's enormous bulk produces colossal tides on the moon that squeeze and pull its body, melting its rocks.

The distribution of volcanoes on Io is quite different to that on Earth, however. They are everywhere, whereas on Earth the volcanoes tend to be collected at the boundaries of tectonic plates, the huge slabs of cold rock that cover our planet's surface.

Nasa's Galileo probe, following up the observations of the Pioneer and Voyager spacecraft, made seven close passes of the moon.

Readings from its magnetometer instrument indicated the moon was dramatically distorting Jupiter's magnetic field - but what was going on inside Io to produce the effect was not clear.

It has taken several years to work through the problem and identify the solution, and it comes down to the nature of the rock in the moon and how it behaves when it melts.

Dr Khurana explained: "The data was available almost seven or eight years ago. However, we could not at that time explain what we were seeing.

"Later experiments in mineral physics found out that when ultramafic rocks, which are rocks very high in magnesium and iron - when those are melted, their conductivity shoots up by orders or magnitude. And it is that very high conductivity that can create the type of signature we have seen. So, we needed mineral physics to catch up with our data."

Tests have shown that the signatures detected by Galileo are consistent with a rock like lherzolite, an igneous rock rich in silicates of magnesium and iron. You find this rock, for example, in Scandinavia.

The picture emerging of Io is of a world that apes a body considerably bigger in size.

Its magma ocean layer is at least 50km thick, and probably makes up at least 10% of the moon's mantle by volume. Its temperature probably exceeds 1,200C.

This aquifer sits under the crust, some 50km down. The mantle - the moon's interior mid-layer - probably extends for a further 700-800km. And at the core? Gravity measurements suggest it is made of iron and possibly liquid - much like the Earth.

"The moon in size is only about one-fortieth the volume of the Earth; in mass it's only one-sixtieth," said Dr Khurana.

"And yet because of the tremendous amount of heat generated by tides that Jupiter raises on this very small moon, its internal structure is very similar to the Earth or a bigger planet that has a lot of tectonics on it."

From the BBC:

Click here to see this article with pictures

Fermi gamma-ray image updates 'extreme Universe' view

By Jason Palmer Science and technology reporter, BBC News, Rome

The full sky is seen in the map from the Fermi telescope; gamma-ray sources abound along the galactic plane (central bar) but are scattered throughout the cosmos

The Fermi space telescope has yielded the most detailed gamma ray map of the sky - representing the Universe's most violent and extreme processes.

The telescope's newest results, as well as the map, were described at the Third Fermi Symposium in Rome this week.

Gamma rays are the highest-energy light we know of, many millions of times more energetic than visible light.

The Fermi collaboration will soon release a full catalogue of all the gamma ray sources discovered so far.

The space telescope was launched in 2008, and the Rome meeting gathered together the hundreds of scientists who worked with the data it produces.

Every three hours, the telescope gathers up a full scan of the sky, spitting out 40 million bits of information each second that it beams back to the Earth.

One of its two instruments, the Large Area Telescope (Fermi-Lat), has already identified some 1,400 gamma ray sources - a number that will jump significantly with the publication of the next catalogue.

Meanwhile, its Gamma Ray Burst Monitor has caught hundreds of the bursts - occasional outpourings of gamma ray energy that can release in hours more energy than our Sun will ever produce.

"When you look at the Universe with gamma-ray eyes what you're seeing is the 'extreme Universe'," said Julie McEnery, Fermi project scientist.

"You're looking at things where there's enormous acceleration, enormous energy. We see neutron stars, we see supermassive black holes, we see particles moving at close to the speed of light smashing into gas in our galaxy," she told BBC News.

One topic of discussion at the meeting is the classification of various gamma ray sources. These can be so-called active galactic nuclei whose centres can contain black holes that spew out threads of gamma rays, sometimes pointing at the Earth.

Similarly, they can be pulsars, the rapidly spinning neutron stars that rhythmically flash their radiation toward the Earth.

"We've seen a lot of what we expected to see, and some things we didn't expect to see," Dr McEnery said.

"We didn't expect that we'd see as many pulsars shining only in gamma rays, and we've been stunned to discover dozens of millisecond pulsars, that's been really astounding.

"And in some cases we haven't seen things we did expect to see, and that's interesting too. For example we haven't seen clusters of galaxies; you'd expect them to be gamma ray sources and by not seeing them, that means that some of the ideas people had about high-energy particles in galaxy clusters must not be true."

But lurking among the data Fermi has collected is the promise of new physics - there are certainly unidentified gamma ray sources that may represent new kinds of celestial objects.

And yet to come may be hints of the dark matter that is believed to make up the majority of the mass of the Universe.

"Dark matter is an excellent example of the kind of new physics that Fermi is sensitive to," said Steven Ritz, deputy principal investigator for Fermi-Lat.

"We know it must be a form of matter that is unlike the stuff we know about in our theories of particle physics - it must have different properties," he explained to BBC News.

"Theories that go beyond what we currently see tend very neatly to predict the existence of particles that... when they meet each other can undergo a process that generates gamma rays."

Dr Ritz said that such "indirect" dark matter detections in far-flung parts of the cosmos could complement the kind of searches for never-before-seen particles that are going on at facilities such as the Large Hadron Collider.

In fact, the motions of charged particles in extreme magnetic fields that give rise to many of the gamma rays that Fermi sees are just like particle accelerators.

"It's one of the things I like about this field - the biggest things and the smallest things in the Universe are neatly tied together in surprising ways."

'Youthful exuberance'

Fermi can lend its expert view to physics closer to home; several presentations at the meeting focused on gamma rays from the Sun that could shed light on events such as solar flares and coronal mass ejections.

The shock wave that propagates outward from the Sun during such outbursts can also accelerate particles that can potentially endanger satellites and astronauts - but the details of such processes remain poorly understood.

"The point with Fermi is that it's so sensitive it's likely going to pick up events never seen before," said Gerald Share, a high-energy astrophysicist from the University of Maryland.

"It's just opening up a whole new window to monitor the flares and solar energetic particles at a weaker level than we normally see," he told BBC News.

What is clear is that the scientists working on the project believe that the best is yet to come from Fermi.

"I think we're entering an adolescence," said Dr Ritz. "We've had a youthful exuberance, and it's been a fantastic time - a tremendous amount of new results, hundreds of papers, more productive than we had hoped.

"I think the next period is one of increased depth where we'll be working hard to pull out even more interesting signals and more challenging analyses, and that just comes with more data and a better understanding of the instrument."

Just seen this thread .. brilliant!Be back later for a good prowl through it! Thanks El Loro! 

El, what a wonderful video of the Sumatran tiger and her two cubs.

I wish the WWF every success in their fight to protect these beautiful creatures.

From the BBC:

Click here to see this article with picture and video clip

Memristors' current carves protected channels

By Jason Palmer Science and technology reporter, BBC News

A circuit component touted as the "missing link" of electronics is starting to give up the secrets of how it works.

Memristors resist the passage of electric current, "remembering" how much current passed previously.

Researchers reporting in the journal Nanotechnology have now studied their nanoscale makeup using X-rays.

They show for the first time where the current switching process happens in the devices, and how heat affects it.

First predicted theoretically in the early 1970s, the first prototype memristor was realised by researchers at Hewlett-Packard in 2008.

They are considered to be the fourth fundamental component of electronics, joining the well-established resistor, capacitor, and inductor.

Because their resistance at any time is a function of the amount of current that has passed before, they are particularly attractive as potential memory devices.

What is more, this history-dependent resistance is reminiscent of the function of the brain cells called neurons, whose propensity to pass electrical signals depends crucially on the signals that have recently passed.

The earliest implementations of the idea have been materially quite simple - a piece of titanium dioxide between two electrodes, for example.

What is going on at the microscopic and nanoscopic level, in terms of the movement of electric charges and the structure of the material, has remained something of a mystery.

Now, researchers at Hewlett-Packard including the memristor's discoverer Stan Williams, have analysed the devices using X-rays and tracked how heat builds up in them as current passes through.

The team discovered that the current in the devices flowed in a 100-nanometre channel within the device. The passage of current caused heat deposition, such that the titanium dioxide surrounding the conducting channel actually changed its structure to a non-conducting state.

A number of different theories had been posited to explain the switching behaviour, and the team was able to use the results of their X-ray experiments to determine which was correct.

The detailed knowledge of the nanometre-scale structure of memristors and precisely where heat is deposited will help to inform future engineering efforts, said Dr Williams.

He recounted the story of Thomas Edison, who said that it took him over 1,000 attempts before arriving at a working light bulb.

"Without this key information [about memristors], we are in 'Edison mode', where we just guess and modify the device at random," he told BBC News.

"With key information, we can be much more efficient in designing devices and planning experiments to improve them - as well as understand the behavior that we see."

Once these precise engineering details are used to optimise memristors' performance, they can be integrated - as memory storage components, computational devices, or even "computer neurons" - into the existing large-scale manufacturing base that currently provides computer chips.

"With the information that we gained from the present study, we now know that we can design memristors that can be used for multi-level storage - that is, instead of just storing one bit in one device, we may be able to store as many as four bits," Dr Williams said.

"The bottom line is that this is still a very young technology, but we are making very rapid progress."

From the BBC:

Plant clinics scheme to boost food security

By Mark Kinver Science and environment reporter, BBC News

A "plant clinic" scheme to improve food security in developing nations has received a £6.8m boost from the UK and Swiss governments.

The clinics, similar to human doctors' surgeries, offer local farmers advice on how to treat pests and diseases.

Organisers hope to collate the data by front-line "plant doctors" in order to provide an early warning system.

It is hoped that more than 400 clinics will be established in 40 countries over the next five years.

Trevor Nicholls, CEO of Cabi (Centre for Agriculture Bioscience International) - a not-for-profit science body - said the investment of £1m from the UK government and £5.8m from Swiss ministers was a "significant endorsement for the initiative".

Dr Nicholls said the "plant clinics" operated in a similar way to doctors' surgeries in human health.

"So far, there has not been a service like that or plants, but that is what we are looking to do," he explained.

"The farmers come to the plant doctors with whatever problem they are experiencing in their crops. As a result of that, it is very much more responsive to what is causing trouble for the farmers at that particular point.

"The clinic goes back to the same place week in and week out so it is a regular fixture that the farmers know that they go to."

Early warning system

Dr Nicholls said that, at present, there were clinics operating in 15 countries across Africa, Asia and Latin America.

"Each clinic, over time, serves a huge number of farmers in the local area. We find that farmers are travelling anything up to 50 miles to attend these clinics, so certainly the advice the "doctors" are giving seem to be highly valued."

The clinics will operate as part of a "Plantwise knowledge bank", which is set to begin in June and act as a bio-security early warning system.

"In exactly the same way that a GP might pick up the first signs of an outbreak of bird flu etc, so the plant doctors can be there on the ground to pick up the first signs of a new pest, or something that has not been picked up previously," Dr Nicholls explained.

"The knowledge bank will be a valuable tool for plant doctors within a country to communicate with each other. Often, countries do not have the resources to set up a website so we are fufilling that function by allowing one person to to see what another person is doing in another part of the country.

"If you begin to see the spread of a pest, you can begin to ask questions about how it correlates to weather patterns, trade or people movements etc.

"This means that you might be able to identify areas that are at risk in the future, allowing you to take preventative measures."

On the BBC radio news this morning:

Hargreaves review gives copyright law digital makeover

A review of the UK's copyright laws offers reforms but not the radical overhaul demanded by some.

It was requested by the prime minister following concerns that they were outdated for the internet age.

The review, led by Professor Ian Hargreaves, recommends legalising the practice of copying music and films.

It also seeks to relax the rules around so-called transformative works - parodies or other reworkings of existing content.

And it calls for the setting up of a new agency to mediate between those wanting to license music, film and other digital content and rights owners.

Prof Hargreaves, of Cardiff University, said: "My recommendations set out how the intellectual property framework can promote innovation and economic growth in the UK economy.

"They are designed to enhance the economic potential of the UK's creative industries and to ensure that the emergence of high technology businesses, especially smaller businesses, in other sectors are not impeded by our IP laws," he added.

Overdue

One of the key changes will be the recommendation to legalise format shifting for personal use - the copying of CDs or DVDs onto digital music players or computers.

Although no individual has been prosecuted for ripping music, having an outdated legal framework has stifled some innovations, the report said.

Some think the change is overdue.

"Format shifting has been implemented in all European countries apart from the UK, the Republic of Ireland and Malta," said Susan Hall, media specialist at law firm Cobbetts LLP.

"In today's world, this doesn't reflect consumer behaviour. The new regulations will allow more flexibility for consumers to enjoy content they have paid for in the way they want to," she added.

Newport rap

Another big idea in the report is the creation of a Digital Copyright Exchange. It will be responsible for so-called orphaned works, content that does not have an identifiable author.

The report recommends a "senior figure" be appointed to oversee its design by the end of next year.

"The proposal will allow organisations, such as the BBC and British Film Institute, to use archive material that would previously not have been permitted to be shown because of doubt about ownership and will allow much freer creation of parodies, remixes and other spin-off works," said Ms Hall.

She also welcomed the decision to relax the laws on parody.

It will allow YouTube clips such as Newport State of Mind new breathing space, she said.

The song performed by a Welsh rap duo became an internet hit when it replaced the Jay Z hit about New York with lyrics about Newport.

But it was taken down following a copyright claim by EMI.

The creative industries will be heaving a collective sigh of relief that the review did not implement more radical reform.

It has been referred to as the 'Google review', after the search giant claimed that it could never have been founded in the UK because of outdated copyright laws.

While the Hargreaves panel accepted that US laws were friendlier towards innovation, it decided that it would not work in the UK because it would require copyright changes across Europe.

Many of the reforms recommended in the report had already been suggested in the 2006 Gowers Review of Intellectual Property but never implemented.

From the BBC:

Click here to see this article with video clip and picture

'Free-floating' planets found with no star in sight

By Neil Bowdler Science reporter, BBC News

Japanese astronomers claim to have found free-floating "planets" which do not seem to orbit a star.

Writing in Nature, they say they have found 10 Jupiter-sized objects which they could not connect to any solar system. They also believe such objects could be as common as stars are throughout the Milky Way.

The objects revealed themselves by bending the light of more distant stars, an effect called "gravitational microlensing".

Objects of large enough mass can bend light, as Albert Einstein predicted. If a large object passes in front of a more distant background star, it may act as a lens, bending and distorting the light of that star so that it may appear to brighten significantly.

The researchers examined data collected from microlensing surveys of what is called the Galactic Bulge, the central area of our own Milky Way.

They detected evidence of 10 Jupiter-sized objects with no parent star found within 10 Astronomical Units (AU). One AU is equivalent to the distance between our Earth and Sun. Further analysis led them to the conclusion that most of these objects did not have parent stars.

'Common' objects

Based on the number of such bodies in the area surveyed, the astronomers then extrapolated that such objects could be extremely common.

They calculated that they could be almost twice as common as "main-sequence stars" - such as our own Sun - which are still burning through their hydrogen fuel stock.

Co-author Takahiro Sumi, an associate professor at Osaka University in Japan, said these free-floating planets were "very common, as common as a regular star".

"The existence of free-floating planets like this is expected from planetary formation theory. What is surprising is how common they seem to be."

According to astronomical convention, planets orbit a star or stellar remnant, so if these objects do not have a host star, then they are not technically planets, even if they may have formed in the same way as what we call planets.

Indeed, the researchers hypothesise these objects were formed in a planetary disc, like the planets in our own Solar System, before gravitational forces ejected them from these systems.

Professor Joachim Wambsganss of the University of Heidelberg in Germany, who reviewed the study for Nature, said this was the "most plausible theory". However, he added there was a minority view that planets could form the same way that stars do, but fail to reach the critical point of thermonuclear ignition.

He too agreed the most "shocking" element of the data was the projected frequency of such objects.

Dr Martin Dominik of the University of St Andrews in Scotland agreed, and said he would be "a bit cautious" about the results.

"There is this theory that planets formed around a star and due to the gravitational effects between planets, one of them gets ejected from the system, so people have predicted that there are planets out there that are no longer bound to stars," he said.

"But they don't predict this number of them."

From the BBC:

New method 'confirms dark energy'

By Paul Rincon Science reporter, BBC News

First results from a major astronomical survey using a cutting-edge technique appear to have confirmed the existence of mysterious dark energy.

Dark energy makes up some 74% of the Universe and its existence would explain why the Universe appears to be expanding at an accelerating rate.

The finding was based on studies of more than 200,000 galaxies.

Scientists used two separate kinds of observation to provide an independent check on previous dark energy results.

Two papers by an international team of researchers have been accepted for publication in the Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society journal.

One type of observation used by the astronomers involves measuring a pattern in how galaxies are distributed in space. This pattern is known by the term "baryon acoustic oscillations".

The second type of observation involves measuring how quickly clusters of galaxies have formed over time. Both of these techniques confirmed the existence of dark energy and the acceleration in the expansion of the Universe.

The concept of dark energy was first invoked in the late 1990s by studying the brightness of distant supernovas - exploding stars.

Einstein was right

To explain why the expansion of the Universe was speeding up, astronomers had to either rewrite Albert Einstein's theory of gravity or accept that the cosmos was filled with a novel type of energy.

"The action of dark energy is as if you threw a ball up in the air, and it kept speeding upward into the sky faster and faster," said co-author Dr Chris Blake of the Swinburne University of Technology in Melbourne, Australia.

"The results tell us that dark energy is a cosmological constant, as Einstein proposed. If gravity were the culprit, then we wouldn't be seeing these constant effects of dark energy throughout time."

The latest findings have come from a galaxy survey project called WiggleZ, which began in 2006 and finished this year. WiggleZ used data from Nasa's Galaxy Evolution Explorer (Galex) space telescope and the Anglo-Australian Telescope on Siding Spring Mountain in Australia.

The survey mapped the distribution of galaxies in an unprecedented volume of the Universe, looking eight billion years back in time - more than half the age of the Universe.

Cosmologist Bob Nicholl, who was not involved with the research, told BBC News: "This is a major step forward. These guys are serious, major scientists and we've been waiting for this result for some time.

The professor of astrophysics at Portsmouth University, UK, added: "It's re-confirmation of dark energy, it gives us another data point to fit our theories around and it shows us the way to the future. More astronomers are going to be doing this in years to come."

While dark energy makes up about 74% of the Universe, dark matter - which does not reflect or emit detectable light - accounts for 22%. Ordinary matter - gas, stars, planets and galaxies - makes up just 4% of the cosmos.

However, despite scientists being able to infer the existence of dark energy and dark matter, these phenomena still elude a full explanation.

From the BBC:

Land 'scams' techniques revealed

By Bob Howard Reporter, Money Box

The strategies used by a landbanking brokerage to sell strips of land to unwary investors have been outlined to the BBC by a former employee.

The man worked for the Property Partnership, which sold virtually worthless plots across the UK.

Many were persuaded to pay tens of thousands of pounds for land that is unlikely ever to be built on.

The firm, believed to be ultimately controlled by Kent businessman Scott Assemakis, is now in liquidation.

Pressure selling

William McNaught, from Yorkshire, was contacted by the Property Partnership three years ago, and persuaded to pay £101,000 in order to buy eight strips of land in different locations around the UK.

He said he was taken in by the high returns that were promised.

"They were so convincing. The broker told me the investment would achieve a profit of 100-130% in a period of 12 to 18 months," he said.

Recruitment tactics

"Gareth", whose name has been changed, worked for the firm for three months in 2007, after being recruited while he was working as a salesman in Spain. He told Money Box brokers were tempted with huge rewards.

"You are told that if you just stick with the company for 12 months they guarantee you will be a millionaire. It was very easy for me to go with them," he said.

Gareth sold plots of land to eight clients, charging them £10,000 for each. He said the brokers were given scripts to persuade people to part with their cash.

"As long as that cheque came in, then the management were not bothered."

Big returns

Gareth said they were told to offer the prospect of fantastic profits to their clients.

"We were saying that to make 100% on top of your investment should be the very least that we are looking at," he said.

Gareth and other credible sources Money Box has spoken to say the Property Partnership was run by Scott Assemakis.

"It was well known, told from other managers, told from other brokers, it was just common knowledge," said Gareth.

"Guilt was heavily upon my shoulders. I knew I had to get out," he said.

Shareholders in the Property Partnership have been keen to hide their identity. The shares for the parent company - known as Ultraclass - are held anonymously by a third party. Only a court order or demand from the police or the regulator can reveal who the real owner is.

Money Box investigated the Property Partnership in March. The firm was put into liquidation in April.

The documents held at Companies House concerning the liquidation confirm that Mr Assemakis had a major interest in the firm: they show him as the individual owed most money by the Property Partnership, over £53,000.

Similar operations

Money Box understands Mr Assemakis has also sold land through another company called Burnhill Land Investments Limited, and is involved with a third company which has just been launched to do the same thing, called Complete Building Systems Limited.

The similarities between the Complete Buildings Systems Limited website and the websites for the Property Partnership and Burnhill Land Investments Limited are striking.

Money Box invited Mr Assemakis to comment but he did not respond to the programme's requests.

The Financial Services Authority (FSA) said it had closed down five land investment schemes in the past year, in which £42m had been invested. However it can only act if it is able to prove that a firm is effectively running a collective investment scheme in which it promises to liaise with potential developers on behalf of clients.

"Where you have a collective investment scheme, we can get involved. We would estimate it to be around a £200m problem. We have got 20 firms under inquiry," he said.

He urged anyone who believed they had been a victim to come forward.

"Please, do come to us because there are a dozen, a hundred, a thousand people who are going to come after you and lose similar amounts of money. We really need you to tell us," he said.

From the BBC:

Laser puts record data rate through fibre

Researchers have set a new record for the rate of data transfer using a single laser: 26 terabits per second.

At those speeds, the entire Library of Congress collections could be sent down an optical fibre in 10 seconds.

The trick is to use what is known as a "fast Fourier transform" to unpick more than 300 separate colours of light in a laser beam, each encoded with its own string of information.

The technique is described in the journal Nature Photonics.

The push for higher data rates in light-based telecommunications technologies has seen a number of significant leaps in recent years.

While the earliest optical fibre technologies encoded a string of data as "wiggles" within a single colour of light sent down a fibre, newer approaches have used a number of tricks to increase data rates.

Among them is what is known as "orthogonal frequency division multiplexing", which uses a number of lasers to encode different strings of data on different colours of light, all sent through the fibre together.

At the receiving end, another set of laser oscillators can be used to pick up these light signals, reversing the process.

Check the pulse

While the total data rate possible using such schemes is limited only by the number of lasers available, there are costs, says Wolfgang Freude, a co-author of the current paper from the Karlsruhe Institute of Technology in Germany.

"Already a 100 terabits per second experiment has been demonstrated," he told BBC News.

"The problem was they didn't have just one laser, they had something like 500 lasers, which is an incredibly expensive thing. If you can imagine 500 lasers, they fill racks and consume tens of kilowatts of power."

Professor Freude and his colleagues have instead worked out how to create comparable data rates using just one laser with exceedingly short pulses.

Within these pulses are a number of discrete colours of light in what is known as a "frequency comb".

When these pulses are sent into an optical fibre, the different colours can add or subtract, mixing together and creating about 350 different colours in total, each of which can be encoded with its own data stream.

Last year, Professor Freude and his collaborators first demonstrated how to use all of these colours to transmit over 10 terabits per second.

At the receiving end, traditional methods to separate the different colours will not work. Here, the researchers have implemented what is known as an optical fast Fourier transform to unpick the data streams.

Colours everywhere

The Fourier transform is a well-known mathematical trick that can in essence extract the different colours from an input beam, based solely on the times that the different parts of the beam arrive.

The team does this optically - rather than mathematically, which at these data rates would be impossible - by splitting the incoming beam into different paths that arrive at different times, recombining them on a detector.

In this way, stringing together all the data in the different colours turns into the simpler problem of organising data that essentially arrives at different times.

Professor Freude said that the current design outperforms earlier approaches simply by moving all the time delays further apart, and that it is a technology that could be integrated onto a silicon chip - making it a better candidate for scaling up to commercial use.

He concedes that the idea is a complex one, but is convinced that it will come into its own as the demand for ever-higher data rates drives innovation.

"Think of all the tremendous progress in silicon photonics," he said. "Nobody could have imagined 10 years ago that nowadays it would be so common to integrate relatively complicated optical circuits on to a silicon chip."

From the BBC:

Sat nav-style technology used to track UK seabirds

Tiny trackers are being fitted to the backs of seabirds in the UK as part of a Europe-wide effort to better understand their behaviour.

Scientists are tagging birds on the Fair Isle, Orkney and Colonsay in the Hebrides.

The project called Future of the Atlantic Marine Environment (Fame) also includes species on Bardsey Island in Wales and the Isles of Scilly.

The RSPB said Fame used technology similar to car sat nav systems.

Trackers are also being fitted to birds in Ireland, France, Spain and Portugal.

Dr Ellie Owen, a scientist working on a European Union-funded project, said very little was known about the movements of birds as they hunted at sea.

She said: "We know more about the journeys of albatrosses in the Southern Ocean than we do about some of the seabirds around our own shores.

"For example, we know how many kittiwakes there are in the UK, and we know they've declined by 30% between 2000 and 2010.

"But we don't know where these ocean travellers are going to fish for their chicks' suppers. But now, just when these birds need our help, we're on the cusp of filling this information void with vitally-important data."

'Dwindling food'

The tracking devices take a reading every 100 seconds, allowing the scientists to accurately pinpoint birds' movements between nesting colonies and the areas of sea the birds use to find food.

The RSPB said the technology was accurate to within a few metres.

In the UK, the Fame project has been tagging fulmar, shag, kittiwake, guillemot and razorbill.

Elsewhere, scientists are involved with other seabirds such as gannet, European storm petrel, Madeiran storm petrel and Balearic and Cory's shearwaters.

Dr Owen, who has fitted trackers to birds on Colonsay, said: "European seabirds face a variety of threats from dwindling food supplies, climate change, entanglement with fishing gear and pollution.

"By recording these birds' movements we are building a greater understanding of their requirements so we can begin to give these species the protection they need."

From the BBC:

Bacteria-rich hailstones add to 'bioprecipitation' idea

A study of hailstones has found large numbers of bacteria at their cores.

The find lends credence to the "bio-precipitation" idea, which suggests that bacteria are actively involved in stimulating precipitation.

The bacteria have protein coatings that cause water to freeze at relatively warm temperatures.

Researchers at the American Society for Microbiology meeting suggest bacteria may have evolved to use the water cycle to facilitate their own dispersal.

The micro-organisms that can be found in precipitation such as snow have been studied since the 1960s.

One bacterium that has appeared in many contexts is Pseudomonas syringae, which expresses a protein on its surface that encourages an orderly arrangement of water molecules.

That in turn acts as a "nucleation" site, stimulating the formation of ice at temperatures far higher than those normally required.

So effective is P. syringae at the task that it is used in a commercially-available mixture for snow machines.

In nature, the ice that P. syringae stimulates can damage the walls of plant cells, allowing the bacterium to feed on the cells' interiors.

Only in recent years, however, has a wider role for the bacterium's strategy started to become more clear.

In 2008, Brent Christner of Louisiana State University reported finding significant numbers of bacteria in snow found around the world.

'Intriguing'

Now, Alexander Michaud of Montana State University has added to the idea, having collected hailstones on the university campus following a major hailstorm in 2010.

He analysed the hailstones' multi-layer structure, finding that while their outer layers had relatively few bacteria, the cores contained high concentrations.

"You have a high concentration of 'culturable' bacteria in the centres, on the order of thousands of per milliliter of meltwater," he told the meeting.

The bacteria are known to gather together in "biofilms" on the plant surfaces and can form bacteria-rich aerosols in forest canopies - aerosols that can rise on up-drafts, eventually stimulating precipitation in clouds at temperatures far higher than would be required if soot or dust served as the nucleation sites.

Dr Christner, also present at the meeting, said the result was another in favour of the bio-precipitation idea - that the bacteria's rise into clouds, stimulation of precipitation, and return to ground level may have evolved as a dispersal mechanism.

"It's an interesting idea that's been thrown around for decades but only recently has the data accumulated to support it," he told the meeting.

"As a microbiologist, this idea that... an organism could piggy-back on the water cycle I find just intriguing.

"We know that biology influcences climate in some way, but directly in such a way as this is not only fascinating but also very important."

From the BBC:

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Cosmic distance record 'broken'

By Jonathan Amos Science correspondent, BBC News

A cataclysmic explosion of a huge star near the edge of the observable Universe may be the most distant single object yet spied by a telescope.

Scientists believe the blast, which was detected by Nasa's Swift space observatory, occurred a mere 520 million years after the Big Bang.

This means its light has taken a staggering 13.14 billion years to reach Earth.

Details of the discovery will appear shortly in the Astrophysical Journal.

The event, which was picked up by Swift in April 2009, is referred to by astronomers using the designation GRB 090429B.

The "GRB" stands for "gamma-ray burst" - a sudden pulse of very high-energy light that the telescope is tuned to find on the sky.

These bursts are usually associated with extremely violent processes, such as the end-of-life collapse of giant stars.

"It would have been a huge star, perhaps 30 times the mass of our Sun," said lead researcher Dr Antonino Cucchiara from the University of California, Berkeley.

"We do not have enough information to claim this was one of the so-called 'Population III" stars, which are the very first generation of stars in the Universe. But certainly we are in the earliest phases of star formation," he told BBC News.

Swift, as its name implies, has to act quickly to catch gamma-ray flashes because they will register for only a few minutes.

Record breaker

Fortunately, an afterglow at longer wavelengths will persist sometimes for days, which allows follow-up observations by other telescopes that can then determine distance.

It was this afterglow analysis that established another burst in the week previous to GRB 090429B to be at a separation from Earth of 13.04 billion light-years, making it temporarily the "most distant object in the Universe".

There are other competing candidates for the title of "most distant object". Hubble, for example, was given much more powerful instruments during its final astronaut servicing mission in 2009, and teams working on new images from the famous space telescope have seen galaxies that look not far short of GRB 090429B - and potentially even further out.

It should be stated, of course, that in these sorts of observations, there is always a degree of uncertainty.

Hubble's targets were galaxies - collections of stars; and GRB 090429B is the signature of a single event, a single star. So, in that sense, it might be considered apart.

Scientists are very keen to probe these great distances because they will learn how the early Universe evolved, and that will help them explain why the cosmos looks the way it does now.

They are particularly keen to trace the very first populations of stars. These hot, blue giants would have grown out of the cold neutral gas that pervaded the young cosmos.

Brilliant but brief

These behemoths would have burnt brilliant but brief lives, producing the very first heavy elements.

Their intense ultra-violet light would also have "fried" the neutral gas around them - ripping electrons off atoms - to produce the diffuse intergalactic plasma we still detect between nearby stars today.

So, apart from its status as a potential record-breaker, GRB 090429B is of intense interest because it is embedded directly in this time period - the "epoch of re-ionisation", as astronomers call it.

Whether GRB 090429B was one of the very first stars to shine in the Universe is doubtful, as Dr Cucchiara states. There may be several generations before it.

But Swift will keep looking, and it is ideally suited for the purpose, explains co-researcher Dr Paul O'Brien from the University of Leicester, UK.

"By finding the most distant objects we get an estimate, of course, of when the first objects formed," he told BBC News. "But then if you can find a location on the sky - in this case of a single star - you can go and look for the galaxy this object is presumably in, and you can start to study the very first galaxies.

"Because gamma-rays can get right through dust, this gives you a good, unbiased way of finding those first galaxies. One could just find very bright galaxies, whereas Swift means we can find the smaller galaxies, too. It was all of these objects that grew up to form the Universe we see around us today. If you think in terms of a human lifespan, it's about understanding what the Universe was like as a toddler."

The Swift mission was launched in 2004. It is a US space agency-managed venture but has a big UK and Italian contribution.

Britain's major input has been to provide an X-ray camera and elements of the satellite's Ultraviolet/Optical Telescope.A cataclysmic explosion of a huge star near the edge of the observable Universe may be the most distant single object yet spied by a telescope.

From the BBC:

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Moon's interior water casts doubt on formation theory

By Jason Palmer Science and technology reporter, BBC News

An analysis of sediments brought back by the Apollo 17 mission has shown that the Moon's interior holds far more water than previously thought.

The analysis, reported in Science, has looked at pockets of volcanic material locked within tiny glass beads.

It found 100 times more water in the beads than has been measured before, and suggests that the Moon once held a Caribbean Sea-sized volume of water.

The find also casts doubt on aspects of theories of how the Moon first formed.

A series of studies in recent years has only served to increase the amount of water thought to be on the Moon.

The predominant theory holds that much of the water seen on the lunar surface arrived via impacts by icy comets or watery meteorites.