From the BBC:

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Tests show Arctic reindeer 'see in UV'

By Neil Bowdler Science reporter, BBC News

Arctic reindeer can see beyond the "visible" light spectrum into the ultra-violet region, according to new research by an international team.

They say tests on reindeer showed that the animal does respond to UV stimuli, unlike humans.

The ability might enable them to pick out food and predators in the "UV-rich" Arctic atmosphere, and to retain visibility in low light.

Details are published in the The Journal of Experimental Biology.

Seeing predators

UV light is invisible to humans. It has a wavelength which is shorter (and more energised) than "visible" light, ranging from 400 nanometres down to 10nm in wavelength.

The researchers first established that UV light was able to pass through the lens and cornea of the reindeer eye by firing light through a dissected sample. The tests showed that light down to a wavelength of about 350nm passed into the eye.

They then sought to prove that the animals could "see" the light, by testing the electrical response of the retina of anaesthetised reindeer to UV light.

"We used what is called an ERG (electroretinography), whereby we record the electrical response to light by the retina by putting a little piece of gold foil on the inside of the eyelid," co-author Professor Glen Jeffery of University College London told BBC News.

The tests showed that photoreceptor cells or "cones" in the retina did respond to UV light.

"If you're a bumblebee, you wouldn't think much of what this animal is doing because it's seeing in what's called 'near UV' (about 320 to 400nm), but that's still very high energy stuff."

The researchers believe UV vision could enable the reindeer to distinguish food and predators in the "white-out" of the Arctic winter and the twilight of spring and autumn.

Lichen, on which the animal feeds, would appear black to reindeer eyes, they say, because it absorbs UV light. The animal's traditional predator, wolves, would also appear darker against the snow, as their fur absorbs UV light.

Urine in the snow would also be more discernable in UV vision, which might alert reindeer to the scent of predators or other reindeer.

Neither did the animal appear to suffer any damage as a result of seeing in UV, say the researchers, or suffer the "snow blindness" humans can experience in the UV-rich Arctic environment.

Polar vision

Professor Lars Chittka of Queen Mary University London, who has explored the UV capabilities of bees, said the study showed what we call the "visible" spectrum did not apply to most of the animal kingdom.

"It's further evidence that UV sensitivity across animals is the rule rather than the exception, and that humans and some other mammals are actually a minority in not having UV sensitivity," he said.

Professor Chittka was not surprised the UV light appeared to do no damage to the reindeer retina. He said the tests suggested the eye would only admit lower-frequency UV light ("UV-A light") rather than more damaging higher-frequency light ("UV-B").

Further modelling and behavioural tests would also be needed to verify that reindeer's apparent capacity to detect UV light really did result in "better detection of predators and arctic lichens", he said.

The same research team which conducted the reindeer tests will soon repeat the same experiments on seals to see whether they can see into the UV region. Professor Jeffery believes many Arctic animals are likely to have the capacity.

"There's no evidence that Arctic foxes or polar bears suffer from snow blindness, so I bet you that most of the Arctic animals up there are seeing into UV."

From the BBC:

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Acid oceans turn 'Finding Nemo' fish deaf

By Richard Black Environment correspondent, BBC News

Clownfish, the spectacular tropical species feted in the movie Finding Nemo, appear to lose their hearing in water slightly more acidic than normal.

At levels of acidity that may be common by the end of the century, the fish did not respond to the sounds of predators.

The oceans are becoming more acidic because they absorb much of the CO2 that humanity puts into the atmosphere.

Scientists write in the journal Biology Letters that failing to move away from danger would hurt the fish's survival.

"Avoiding coral reefs during the day is very typical behaviour of fish in open water," said research leader Steve Simpson from the School of Biological Sciences at the UK's Bristol University.

"They do this by monitoring the sounds of animals on the reef, most of which are predators to something just a centimetre in length.

"But sounds are also important for mate detection, pack hunting, foraging - so if any or all of those capacities are gone, you'd have a very lost fish," he told BBC News.

Previous research has shown that fish also lose their capacity to scent danger in slightly more acidic seawater.

The team raised baby clownfish in tanks containing water at different levels of acidity.

One resembled the seawater of today, with the atmosphere containing about 390 parts per million (ppm) of carbon dioxide.

The other tanks were set at levels that could be reached later this century - 600, 700 and 900 ppm.

The more CO2 there is in the atmosphere, the more the oceans absorb - and the more they absorb, the more acidic the water becomes.

In this experiment, the fish could decide whether to swim towards or away from an underwater loudspeaker replaying the sounds of predators recorded on a reef, with shrimps and fish that would take a small clownfish.

In water with today's levels of CO2, the fish spent three-quarters of the time at the opposite end of the tube from the loudspeaker.

But at higher concentrations, they showed no preference. This suggests they could not hear, could not decipher or did not act on the warning signals.

"The reef has been described as 'a wall of mouths' waiting to receive the clownfish," said Dr Simpson.

"What we have done here is put today's fish in tomorrow's environment, and the effects are potentially devastating."

If it takes several decades for the oceans to reach these more acidic levels, there is a chance, the team says, that fish could adapt.

Whether that can happen is one of the outstanding questions from this research. Another is whether other species are similarly affected.

A third question is why the fish are affected by these slight changes in acidity.

There appears to be no physical damage to their ears; the team suggests there could be some effect on nerves, or maybe they are stressed by the higher acidity and do not behave as they otherwise would.

Further experiments are in train that may answer those questions.

Concern about ocean acidification has arisen considerably more recently than alarm over global warming; but already there is ample evidence that it could bring significant changes to ocean life.

The organisms most directly affected appear to be corals and those that make shells, such as snails.

Just this weekend, another team of researchers published findings from a "natural laboratory" in the seas off Papua New Guinea, where carbon dioxide bubbles into the water from the slopes of a dormant volcano.

This local acidity is too much for most corals; instead, an alternative ecosystem based on seagrasses thrives.

With carbon emissions continuing to rise, researchers predicted most reefs around the world would be in serious trouble before the end of the century.

From the BBC:

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Ancient cave women 'left childhood homes'

By Neil Bowdler Science reporter, BBC News

Analysis of early human-like populations in southern Africa suggests females left their childhood homes, while males stayed at home.

An international team examined tooth samples for metallic traces which can be linked to the geological areas in which individuals grew up.

The conclusion was that while most the males lived and died around the same river valley, the females moved on.

Similar patterns have been observed in chimpanzees, bonobos and modern humans.

Details of the study are published in a letter in Nature.

Isotopic test

The researchers looked at the Sterkfontein and Swartkrans cave sites, north-west of the South African city of Johannesburg.

The sites contain specimens of two distinct early "hominin" species, Australopithecus africanus, a possible direct ancestor of modern humans who lived around 2-3 million years ago, and Paranthropus robustus, who lived some 1.2-2 million years ago, but who is not believed to be our direct ancestor.

They took teeth from eight A.africanus and 11 P.robustus individuals from the cave sites, and removed tiny enamel fragments by laser, to minimise damage.

These fragments were then analysed to test for particular isotopes, or forms, of the metallic element strontium, which can reveal the geological region where individuals were raised.

This is because particular isotopes of strontium dominant within a geological region are digested by individuals living there and incorporated into their tooth enamel.

The results showed that the larger teeth, presumed to belong to males, showed most of these individuals lived and died in the region where the Sterkfontein and Swartkrans cave sites are located.

Most of the smaller teeth, presumed to be female, showed that these individuals grew up outside the region.

"What we were trying to do was to find out how these two hominins - two different species living in different time periods - were ranging around and using the landscape in the Sterkfontein valley and beyond," Professor Julia Lee-Thorp of Oxford University told BBC News.

While initial research was aimed at looking at seasonal variations in diet, the isotopic tests pointed them instead to apparent gender variations.

"What [the results] show was that the females were more likely to come from outside the dolomite valley region than the males. It wasn't too far away but it wasn't the same natal group in which they grew up.

"We don't know whether they drifted, or they went across deliberately, or they were abducted; we have no way of knowing that kind of detail, but on the whole most of the females came from somewhere else."

Professor Lee-Thorp said the patterns resemble those seen in chimpanzees, where males tend to stay within the extended family group, hunting together within a single territory, whereas females are forced to leave, possibly to avoid inter-breeding.

But that pattern differs from the one observed in gorillas, where a dominant "silverback" male usually mates with multiple females, and other males are forced to leave the group.

This does not mean, she believes, that the males within these hominin groups were necessarily taking any great role in child-rearing.

"I think that's taking the information too far, quite frankly," she said. "In chimpanzees that doesn't happen. In that case the females are leaving, but the males take little interest in nurturing the children."

Small sample

The sample size is of course very small, with specimens rare and samples for experimentation rarer. The researchers also admit that data from these two separate species living at two separate times was pooled to provide results which were statistically significant.

"We're very obviously constrained by the amount of material we have for destructive analysis," said researcher Professor Darryl de Ruiter of Texas A&M University, during a telephone conference dedicated to the Nature paper.

"In terms of comparing the two species themselves, we did analyse them separately but [the] sample size was so small within these individuals that they were not robust statistics... and we did have to combine these samples in order to get a valid statistical result."

Professor Peter Wheeler of Liverpool John Moores University said that both sample size and methodology were issues to consider.

"You've got to be cautious when drawing conclusions from a relatively small sample. You've got even greater concerns when combining data from more than one species," he said.

However, he said, "if the differences are consistent, then it's extremely interesting and worthy of further work".

He added: "Isotopic work is providing a lot of information about the movement of modern humans in the archaeological record and if people are able to get consistent results further back into prehistory, it could provide information which is potentially useful."

From the BBC:

Bid to save sandpiper at risk of extinction in Russia

By Matt Walker Editor, BBC Nature

Conservationists have embarked on a mission to save one of the world's rarest birds, the spoon-billed sandpiper, from extinction.

Fewer than 200 pairs of spoon-billed sandpipers were thought to exist in 2009, and since then, the population has thought to have declined by a quarter each year.

So a specialist team of bird experts are flying to the sandpiper's home in northeast Russia to collect and incubate eggs and set up a captive breeding population.

The emergency mission is being undertaken by the WWT and Birds Russia, working with colleagues from the Royal Society for the Protection of Birds, British Trust for Ornithology (BTO), BirdLife International, ArcCona, the Spoon-billed Sandpiper Task Force and Moscow Zoo.

Experts fear that, without intervention, the spoon-billed sandpiper could be extinct within ten years.

The count of 200 pairs in 2009 is an upper estimate and there may have been as few as 120 pairs at that time.

Surveys since suggest that the counted population is falling by 26% a year, with juveniles having a particularly low rate of survival.

Spoon-billed sandpipers (Eurynorhynchus pygmeus) are a small Arctic wading bird, sporting a bill shaped like a spoon.

"This adaptation, entirely unique to its family, makes it one of the most weird and wonderful bird species on the planet," says Dr Geoff Hilton, Head of Species Research at the WWT.

The BTO's shorebird expert, Dr Nigel Clark, agrees: "There is only one wader that eats with a spoon and we need to try everything we can to save it from extinction."

Travelling between, they migrate over 8,000km (4,970 miles) on a journey that may pass through Japan, North Korea, the Republic of Korea, China, Vietnam, Thailand, Myanmar, Bangladesh and India.

Unsustainable levels of subsistence hunting, particularly within the wintering areas in Myanmar and Bangladesh, are thought to be driving the species's decline.

Degradation and reclamation of the inter-tidal mudflats along many countries in Asia is exacerbating the problem.

No spoon-billed sandpipers currently exist in captivity.

Currently the team are in Russia waiting to locate and collect eggs from the breeding grounds.

They will construct an incubation facility out on the tundra where they will hatch the chicks before transferring the fledged young via sea and air back to Moscow Zoo for quarantine.

"It is absolutely clear that the spoon-billed sandpiper cannot be saved without action to reduce the threats to the wild population, but it is going to be difficult to achieve a turnaround quickly enough to avert extinction. Creating a captive population now may buy us some time," says Dr Hilton.

And a Youtube clip showing sandpipers set to the music "Flight of the Bumblebee"

From the BBC:

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Moons like Earth's could be more common than we thought

By Jason Palmer Science and technology reporter, BBC News

About one in 10 rocky planets around stars like our Sun may host a moon proportionally as large as Earth's, researchers say.

Our Moon is disproportionately large - more than a quarter of Earth's diameter - a situation once thought to be rare.

Using computer simulations of planet formation, researchers have now shown that the grand impacts that resulted in our Moon may in fact be common.

The result may also help identify other planets that are hospitable to life.

A report outlining the results will be published in Icarus.

Last year, researchers from the University of Zurich's Institute of Theoretical Physics in Switzerland and Ryuja Morishima of the Laboratory for Atmospheric and Space Physics at the University of Colorado in the US undertook a series of simulations to look at the way planets form from gas and smaller chunks of rock called planetesimals.

Our own moon is widely thought to have formed early in the Earth's history when a Mars-sized planet slammed into the Earth, resulting in a disc of molten material encircling the Earth which in time coalesced into the Moon as we know it.

The team used the results from their initial study as the input to a further "N-body simulation" to find out the likelihood that large-scale impact events could form large satellites in the same way.

Their results showed that there is about a one in 12 chance of generating a system comprising a planet more than half the Earth's mass and a moon with more than half that of our Moon (taking into account the errors in the simulation, the full range of probabilities was between one in 45 and one in four).

Stabilising influence

Sebastian Elser of the University of Zurich said the new estimates for the likelihood of Moon-sized satellites could inform the hunt for extrasolar planets.

Such large moons can confuse the measurements that spot the planets, and knowing that large satellites may be common could make the measurements easier.

Also, our Moon has served to stabilise the tilt of the Earth's axis - or its obliquity - which could otherwise have varied drastically over relatively short time scales. That in turn would wreak drastic changes to the way heat from the Sun is distributed around the planet.

It thus can be said that the Moon's presence made a more stable environment in which life could evolve, Mr Elser said.

"Checking for the possibility of an obliquity-stabilising moon is a good thing if you're trying to find out how many habitable worlds are out there in the galaxy," he told BBC News. "But it's surely not the only one and not the most important."

Eiichiro Kokubo is a planet formation expert who has published widely on the mechanics behind the development of both the planets in our Solar System and the Moon.

He called the result an "interesting estimate" but cautioned that there are several as-yet unknown parameters "which greatly affect lunar formation and evolution and thus the probability of hosting a large moon".

He told BBC News that, for example, it is still impossible to put numbers to the effects of a planet's initial spin before impact, or how the disc of material is formed and evolves after it.

"I think we should take the paper as a trial calculation based on what we know about formation of terrestrial planets and moons today," he said.

From the BBC:

First Conan Doyle novel to be published

By Emma Saunders Arts reporter, BBC News

Sir Arthur Conan Doyle's first novel, The Narrative of John Smith, is to be published for the first time.

The book, about a man's reflections on life after he finds himself confined to his room with gout, was written between 1883 and 1884.

Conan Doyle sent it to a publisher but it was lost in the post and he then had to reconstruct it from memory.

It was never finished. The first Sherlock Holmes novel, A Study in Scarlet, was printed three years later.

Rachel Foss, lead curator of modern literary manuscripts at the British Library, is set to publish The Narrative of John Smith this autumn.

She said it had been part of the British Library's Conan Doyle collection since 2007 and realised it would make a good publishing project.

The Arthur Conan Doyle Literary Estate gave their consent to the plan.

Foss told the BBC the novel is "loose in plot and characterisation", as it was his first full-length effort, having written many successful short stories previously.

Although the writer made references suggesting he was embarrassed of this early work, Ms Foss says he worked on it again later in life suggesting he must have seen something worthy in the concept.

The novel sees John Smith ruminate on topics including politics and religion and also features several conversations with his boarding house landlady, Mrs Rundle.

"She is a Mrs Hudson in the making," Ms Foss says, referring to Sherlock Holmes's landlady.

The novel was written while Conan Doyle was in his early 20s, just after he had moved to Southsea, near Portsmouth.

Mentioned a few times on the BBC news:

Antimatter atoms are corralled even longer

By Jonathan Amos Science correspondent, BBC News

Scientists have succeeded in trapping atoms of anti-hydrogen for more than 15 minutes.

The feat is a big improvement on efforts reported last year that could corral this mirror of normal hydrogen for just fractions of a second at best.

The researchers tell Nature Physics journal that they can now probe the properties of antimatter in detail.

This will help them understand why the Universe is composed of normal matter rather than its opposite.

Matter and antimatter are identical except for opposite charge, and destroy each other when they meet. Theory holds they should have been produced in equal amounts at the Big Bang - and yet the cosmos favoured matter over its mirror.

"We have improved the efficiency of trapping compared with what we published last November," said Jeffrey Hangst, who works on the Alpha collaboration at the Cern particle physics laboratory in Switzerland.

"In order to make these studies, it surely helps to have more atoms and we've made an improvement of about a factor of five. We announced 38 trapped atoms [last year]; we've now studied about 300 which have been held for varying amounts of time."

In normal matter, a hydrogen atom comprises an electron bound to a proton. In the anti-form, the mirror of an electron - a positron - is bound to an antiproton. Together, these two particles make a neutral anti-atom.

Particle physics labs such as Cern can make antimatter particles routinely but until now they have had great difficulty in retaining this material because it will instantly annihilate on contact with conventional containers made of normal matter.

The Alpha collaboration, however, has developed a frigid, evacuated, "magnetic bottle" that allows its scientists to enclose anti-hydrogen particles and draw out the time before they are destroyed. Initially this was a mere two-tenths of a second but the team says it has increased this period more than 5,000-fold.

The significance is that it allows the antiparticles to relax to their ground state.

"If you think of an atom as a little planetary system with the electron orbiting the nucleus - or in our case, a positron orbiting the anti-proton - the ground state is the one where the electron or positron is closest to the nucleus," explained Dr Hangst.

"We think we make our anti-hydrogen in excited states; in other words the positron is at a larger distance from the nucleus. It has more energy. That's not the state we want to study. It takes some fraction of a second for these atoms, once they're produced, to get to the ground state.

"If you hold them 1,000 seconds, you can be quite sure they're in the state you want to study; and this is the first time that anyone can make that claim."

The Alpha team now plans to use microwaves to probe the anti-hydrogen atoms' internal structure.

They would also like to see how these particles behave in the gravitational fields that exist in our "normal Universe".

This latter experiment will require laser manipulation and even colder conditions. At the moment, the anti-hydrogen atoms are held in their bottle at just half a degree above absolute zero. For the gravity experiments, conditions would need to be a few thousandths of a degree above the theoretically coldest achievable temperature.

"The question is very simple: do matter and antimatter obey the same laws of physics? That's a very simple question, but a very profound one," Professor Hangst told BBC News.

"The Big Bang theory says there should have been equal amounts of matter and antimatter at the beginning of the Universe. Nature kinda 'took a left turn' and chose matter.

"We know that we're missing something from the current model of how the Universe works; we just don't know what that is. So, anytime you get your hands on antimatter you should look very carefully to see if you can find something different."

One task is to increase the number of anti-atoms in the trap. The team says this is more useful now than trying to increase the anti-atoms' longevity which is ample for the planned experiments.

But collaborator Dr Makoto Fujiwara says this could change: "Our current apparatus is not optimised in fact for even longer life-time.

"It's possible that we have them much longer already but it will be limited by the vacuum - the residual gas in the system - and in the future I think we want to optimise that for even better life-times because in some cases we may want to hang on to the antimatter longer."

The Alpha collaboration originally posted news of its 1,000-second confinement earlier this year on the Arxiv repository. The research has now been formally published in Nature Physics.

From the BBC:

Web giants promote new IPv6 internet address system

The biggest ever test of the internet's new address system is taking place.

Google, Yahoo, Microsoft Bing and Facebook are among the companies switching-on IPv6 versions of their websites for the one day trial.

The technology is gradually being introduced because the world is running out of older IPv4 addresses as more devices come online.

Companies and home users may need new networking equipment, however the transition is likely to take years.

World IPv6 day is partly a technical exercise by internet companies to see how the technology works, and partly an awareness-raising initiative.

For the small percentage of users already set up to access IPv6, they will be able to connect through the usual URLs - such as Google.com or Yahoo.com.

Behind the scenes, their browsers will be pointed to the new, much longer IP address.

New equipment

Groups involved in IPv6 day say that everyone will have to make the change eventually, but users should not worry at this stage if they are not switched over.

"This is not a year 2000 thing. Planes are not going to start falling out of the sky," said Philip Sheldrake, a board member at non-profit group 6UK, which is helping to promote the system.

"The web will continue to work, but future growth would be stymied. It is just like when we used up the phone numbers in London."

For users with an ordinary domestic internet connection, the changeover may involve upgrading their hardware.

"A lot of routers at the moment are already capable of supporting IPv6. What they need is a firmware update," explained Richard Fletcher, chief operating officer at Plusnet, a UK internet service provider (ISP)

"ISPs should ship new routers or offer those updates. We are making sure all our fibre routers are ready for IPv6."

Mr Fletcher said that the long term nature of the changeover meant that customers of most ISPs would receive compatible equipment through the natural cycle of upgrades.

The business end

Becoming IPv6 compatible is a slightly more complicated task for corporate internet users.

Bringing their systems up to standard will typically involve investing in and installing new networking systems.

As with home users, for many this will form part of the normal cycle of upgrading and replacing.

However, the lack of any firm deadline, combined with the hefty price tag, means that some are dragging their heels.

"Corporates are probably quite far behind," said Sebastien Lahtinen from Thinkbroadband.com.

"They are trying to put off the expense and there are a lot of technologies that they can use to do that."

However, Mr Lahtinen said that the leaders of those businesses should realise that this change was going to happen and that they needed to make the investment.

Even though IPv4 will continue working for at least the next decade, there is value in changing early according to Philip Sheldrake.

"You have to make the transition. It is better to do that sooner than later because it demonstrates that you are a modern, well organised company that is visible on the modern infrastructure of the internet."

From the BBC:

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Diving bell spiders use bubble webs "like gills"

Diving bell spiders only need to come up for air once a day, according to researchers.

The spiders are named for their sub aqua webs which they fill with air in order to breathe underwater.

Scientists studying the European arachnids measured oxygen levels inside and around an air bubble web.

They found that the bubble acts like a gill, extracting dissolved oxygen from the water and dispersing carbon dioxide.

The study is published in the Journal of Experimental Biology.

Argyroneta aquatica live in ponds, pools and slow-moving streams across Europe and northern Asia.

They are the only spiders that live their entire lives underwater: mating, laying eggs and catching prey from their webs.

The silk webs are constructed amongst vegetation beneath the surface of the water.

To fill the "diving-bell" webs with air so they can breathe, the spiders use fine hairs on their abdomen to transport bubbles from above the water surface.

Scientists previously debated whether the spiders had to return to the surface regularly to replenish their air supply.

To settle the argument, inverterbrate experts Professor Roger Seymour and Dr Stefan Hetz collected specimens from Germany's Eider River.

In the lab they simulated a stagnant, weedy pond on a hot summer day and tested how the spiders fared in the challenging conditions with a device called an optode.

"The previous literature suggested they had to come to the surface as often as every twenty to forty minutes throughout the day," said Prof Seymour.

"It required the tiny, oxygen-sensitive optodes to do what we did. These have only been available during the last 5-10 years," he said.

By measuring the differences in oxygen levels inside the bubble and in the surrounding water, the scientists identified a gas exchange similar to that performed by the gills of animals that breathe underwater.

"The carbon dioxide that the spider produces is not a problem at all, because it is readily dissolved in the water and it never builds up."

Unlike animals that exchange oxygen and carbon dioxide across gills however, the spiders have to contend with the other gases in the air they transport.

"If you absorb one gas from a gas mixture in a collapsible bubble, the remaining gases must increase in concentration," explained Prof Seymour.

"Because oxygen is taken from the bubble air, and CO2 does not build up, it causes the nitrogen in the bubble to rise in concentration," he said.

As the nitrogen disperses from the bubble, the bubble collapses but it does so slowly, roughly over the course of a day according to the scientists' results.

"The spider is able to remain in the diving bell on very hot days, when its metabolic rate is higher than normal, if the water is well oxygenated," said Prof Seymour.

This means the spiders can return to the surface infrequently, avoiding the risk of being caught by predators such as birds.

The extended dive times also allow the spiders to wait undisturbed for prey to pass.

From the BBC:

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Voyagers ride 'magnetic bubbles'

By Jonathan Amos Science correspondent, BBC News

The domain of the Sun's influence is called the heliosphere: The Voyagers are approaching the edge of this enormous balloon of charged particles thrown out into space by our star

Humankind's most distant emissaries are flying through a turbulent sea of magnetism as they seek to break free of our Solar System.

Nasa's Voyager probes, which were launched in 1977, are now approaching the very edge of our Sun's influence, more than 14 billion km from Earth; and they are still returning data.

That information has allowed scientists to build a better picture of what conditions are like in the zone where matter blown out from our star pushes up against interstellar space.

Computer modelling based on the Voyager insights suggests the edge of our Solar System is a froth of activity, like "an agitated jacuzzi", said Eugene Parker from the University of Chicago, US.

Magnetic field lines carried in the "wind" of material coming off our star are breaking and reconnecting.

This process is sculpting the wind into discrete bubbles that are many tens of millions of kilometres wide.

Researchers say this assessment has implications for our understanding of cosmic rays - the storm of high-energy particles that are accelerated in Earth's direction by exploded stars, black holes and other exotic locations in the galaxy.

Ray effects

It is highly likely the mass of individual magnetic structures actually makes the Solar System more porous to cosmic rays.

"It's more like a membrane that is permeable to the galactic cosmic rays, so we expect the galactic cosmic rays to enter and slowly wander through this sea of magnetic bubbles until they can access field lines that connect back to the Sun and quickly escape," explained Professor Parker.

The observation is of interest not just to physicists but also to astronauts, who must protect themselves from the damaging health effects of cosmic rays, and to spacecraft engineers who have to "harden" the electronic circuitry in satellites against the impacts from high-energy particles.

The modelling results will make no difference to their predicament; but it does say something about why the cosmic ray issue takes on such importance.

Researchers confess to being surprised; they thought the outskirts of our solar neighbourhood would be more sedate - that the Sun's field lines would simply turn around and reconnect with the Sun.

"The findings are significant as we will have to change our view on how the Sun interacts with particles, fields and gases from other stars, and this has consequences that reach down to Earth," commented Arik Posner, Nasa's Voyager programme scientist.

It is a demonstration once again of the extraordinary capabilities of the Voyagers, which continue to excite and intrigue more than three decades on from their launch.

Voyager 1 was put in space on 5 September 1977, and its sister spacecraft, Voyager 2, lifted off on 20 August 1977.

The Nasa probes' initial goal was to survey the outer planets Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus and Neptune, a task completed in 1989.

They were then despatched towards deep space, in the general direction of the centre of our Milky Way Galaxy.

Sustained by their radioactive power packs, the probes' instruments continue to function well and return data to Earth, although the vast distance between them and controllers in California means a radio message now has a travel time of about 16 hours (in the case of Voyager 1).

The primary task of the spacecraft currently is to define our Sun's limits - to map the extent of its heliosphere, as scientists call it.

Our star blows out huge volumes of excited particles. This wind, laced with a magnetic field, travels out at high speed until it crashes into the interstellar magnetic field, at which point the Sun's outpouring abruptly slows and begins to move sideways.

It is at this boundary - the heliopause - where the Voyagers find themselves today, and where the Sun's magnetic field lines are snapping and reconnecting to produce the structures reported by scientists.

No-one is quite sure where our Solar System ends and interstellar space begins, but the expectation is that the probes will break through soon - perhaps in the next three or four years.

A couple of months ago I made a posting about the possibility of a new particle having been found.

However subsequent tests to back this up have not supported those findings per this article from the BBC:

Click here to see this article with pictures

Tests 'reject new particle claim'

By Paul Rincon Science reporter, BBC News

Cross-checks on data that hinted at the discovery of a new sub-atomic particle have failed to find support for the observation.

In May, researchers working on the CDF experiment at the US Tevatron "atom smasher" announced they had detected tantalising hints of an unanticipated particle.

But independent checks using a separate experiment called DZero have not been able to corroborate the findings - dealing a blow to the idea.

A confirmation would have heralded one of the most radical changes to physics in years.

The DZero result comes several days after a CDF team member presented updated results showing the signal had strengthened - not disappeared - after analysing about double the amount of data.

Scientists from both Tevatron experiments will now have to "compare notes" with the aim of reaching a consensus.

The Tevatron is the only major competition to Europe's Large Hadron Collider machine. It is operated by the Fermi National Accelerator Laboratory (Fermilab), based in Batavia, Illinois.

Independent working

The independent check by DZero is revealed in a seminar at Fermilab on Friday. A paper describing the findings is set to be published on the Arxiv repository, and has been submitted to the Physical Review Letters journal for review.

Professor Stefan Soldner-Rembold, spokesperson for the DZero collaboration, told BBC News: "We looked at the data-set that CDF originally published... We inject a signal in our simulation which looks like what we would have observed if CDF had seen the real thing.

"We analysed the data accordingly and, as observed, there is no enhancement. We can exclude something like what CDF observed to a relatively high probability."

Dr Giovanni Punzi, co-spokesperson for the CDF collaboration at Fermilab, told BBC News: "It has taken a step forward and a step back. But [DZero] has used only half of the data we currently have. So they are now showing a result with our old sample size."

When BBC News spoke to Dr Punzi, who is from the University of Pisa, Italy, he was responding to rumours that DZero had seen a "smaller excess" and had not yet seen DZero's results.

The CDF team was analysing data from collisions between protons and their anti-matter counterparts antiprotons. In these collisions, particles known as W bosons are produced, along with a pair of "jets" of other particles.

It was in these jets that the unexpected "bump" in the team's data came to light, potentially representing a particle that the widely accepted theory of particle physics - known as the Standard Model - does not anticipate.

As such, confirmation of the CDF results would have signalled a radical change in physics. But researchers stress the finding is definitely not the elusive Higgs boson - which explains why other particles have mass. The Higgs is the last missing "jigsaw piece" needed to complete the Standard Model.

At a conference at Blois, France, on 30 May, Dr Punzi, announced that after analysing much more data, the "excess" was just below a five sigma level of certainty.

Five sigma means there is about a one-in-one-million chance that the "bump" is just a fluke and is the level generally required for a formal discovery.

Theorists have already weighed in on the CDF data peak. According to one school of thought, it could have provided support for a fifth fundamental force of nature known as "technicolour".

Technicolour is similar to the "strong force", which binds particles known as quarks together inside the nuclei of atoms. It could also give particles their mass - making the Higgs boson unnecessary.

Top stuff?

Other researchers suggested an effect called "top background" could explain away the "bump" seen by CDF.

They suggested that researchers might have underestimated the number of top quarks - a fundamental heavy particle - being produced at the Tevatron and that this could have yielded the data peak. But Dr Punzi said this idea had now been tested and ruled out.

Professor Soldner-Rembold, from the University of Manchester, UK, explained: "This is why it is good to have two experiments [at the Tevatron].

"What we see here is the scientific process at work. If one experiment sees something, another one has to verify it, and currently, we cannot verify it."

US Department of Energy budget cuts are forcing the Tevatron to shut in September this year; by the time the machine accelerates its last particles, it will have been operating for some 28 years.

The decision to close the facility was taken despite the recommendations of a scientific panel that the Tevatron's lifetime be extended by three years in order to continue hunting for the Higgs boson.

From the BBC:

Click here to see this article with picture

Laser is produced by a living cell

By Jason Palmer Science and technology reporter, BBC News

A single living cell has been coaxed into producing laser light, researchers report in Nature Photonics.

The technique starts by engineering a cell that can produce a light-emitting protein that was first obtained from glowing jellyfish.

Flooding the resulting cells with weak blue light causes them to emit directed, green laser light.

The work may have applications in improved microscope imaging and light-based therapies.

Laser light differs from normal light in that it is of a narrow band of colours, with the light waves all oscillating together in synchrony.

Most modern forms use carefully engineered solid materials to produce lasers in everything from supermarket scanners to DVD players to industrial robots.

The new work, by Malte Gather and Seok Hyun Yun at the Wellman Center for Photomedicine at Massachusetts General Hospital in the US, marks the first time the phenomenon has been seen in a living system.

The pair used green fluorescent protein (GFP) as the laser's "gain medium", where light amplification takes place.

GFP is a well-studied molecule, first isolated from jellyfish, that has revolutionised biology by acting as a custom-made "torch" that can light up living systems on command.

In the new work, cells derived from human kidney cells were genetically engineered to produce GFP.

Bathed in light

The cells were then placed one at a time between two tiny mirrors, just 20 millionths of a metre across, which acted as the "laser cavity" in which light could bounce many times through the cell.

Upon bathing the cell with blue light, it could be seen to emit directed and intense green laser light.

The cells remained alive throughout and after the process. The authors note in an accompanying interview in the journal that the living system is a "self-healing" laser; if the light-emitting proteins are destroyed in the process, the cell will simply produce more.

"In cellular sensing, we may be able to detect intracellular processes with unprecedented sensitivity," they said.

"For light-based therapeutics, diagnosis and imaging, people think about how to deliver emission from an external laser source deep into tissue. Now we can approach this problem in another way: by amplifying light in the tissue (itself)."

From the BBC:

Click here to see this article with video clip

Images capture moment brain goes unconscious

By Jennifer Carpenter Science reporter, BBC News

For the first time researchers have monitored the brain as it slips into unconsciousness.

The new imaging method detects the waxing and waning of electrical activity in the brain moments after an anaesthetic injection is administered.

As the patient goes under, different parts of the brain seem to be "talking" to each other, a team told the European Anaesthesiology Congress in Amsterdam.

But they caution that more work is needed to understand what is going on.

The technique could ultimately help doctors pinpoint damage in the brains of people suffering from stroke and head injury.

"Our jaws just hit the ground," said anaesthesiologist Professor Brian Pollard from Manchester Royal Infirmary on seeing the images for the first time.

"I can't tell you the words we used as it wouldn't be polite over the phone."

Cross talk

Although regions of the brain seem to be communicating as "consciousness fades", Professor Pollard cautions that it is early days and that he and his team from the University of Manchester still have many brain scans to analyse before they can say anything conclusive about what is happening.

The finding supports a theory put forward by Professor Susan Greenfield, from the University of Oxford, that unconsciousness is a process by which different areas of the brain inhibit each other as the brain shuts down.

Fully operable

The new technique, called Functional Electrical Impedance Tomography by Evoke Response (fEITER), is more compact than other brain imaging techniques, such as functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI), and so is easily transported into the operating theatre.

It involves attaching tens of electrodes to the patient's head, which send low electrical currents through the skull. The currents are interrupted by the brain's tissues and electrical signals.

Professor Pollard explained that the brain's structures should not change over a minute-long scan, and so any differences that he and his team see as the patient falls asleep must therefore be due to changes in their brain's activity.

It is hoped that this technique could be used to learn about the nature of consciousness, but it is also likely to help doctors make headway in monitoring the health of a person's grey matter after they have suffered a head injury or stroke.

From the BBC:

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Australian dinosaur had UK double

By Jonathan Amos Science correspondent, BBC News

A 5cm-wide (2in) fossil may have something big to say about how dinosaurs ranged across the Earth.

The 125-million-year-old neck vertebra belonged to a spinosaurid - an animal with a crocodile-like snout that it probably used to prey on fish.

The specimen is the first such dinosaur identified in Australia but one that is nearly identical to a UK creature.

This suggests northern and southern hemisphere dinos had a lot more in common than previously thought.

The traditional idea has been that these ancient animals could be placed into distinctive, geographically separated, groups. This small vertebra undermines that view, says Dr Paul Barrett from London's Natural History Museum.

"After looking at this specimen and having been forced to re-assess the distribution of spinosaurids, we took a look at other dinosaur groups from Australia, including the Tyrannosaur our team announced last year," he told BBC News.

"Taking all this evidence into account, we started to realise that a lot of dinosaur groups we'd thought of as either northern specialists or southern specialists actually had more cosmopolitan distributions."

It may be just one bone, but the team says it displays features that are unmistakably those of a spinosaurid.

It is hugely reminiscent of the neck bones in the well-known British dinosaur Baryonyx walkeri.

The remains of this UK creature were found in southern England, which in Cretaceous times was a lot warmer and covered by lagoons.

It had the classic crocodile-like skull with conical teeth that were ideally suited for catching fishy prey in the expanses of shallow water.

The assumption is that the Australian version pursued a very similar lifestyle.

Its discovery location was probably a flood plain in a rift valley created as Australia and Antarctica were breaking apart.

The dinosaur's Baryonyx-style snout would have been ideal for pulling fish out of the waters on this plain.

"The evidence is very limited - we'd be the first to admit that, but we're very confident that this Australian specimen belongs to the spinosaurids," Dr Barrett told BBC News.

"And because all the other members of this group share the same skull features we're pretty sure this dinosaur behaved in much the same way."

From the BBC:

Iron-Age brewing evidence found in southeastern France

Archaeologists have uncovered evidence that the occupants of southeastern France were brewing beer during the Iron Age, some 2,500 years ago.

A paper in Human Ecology outlines the discovery of barley grains that had been sprouted in a process known as malting; an oven found nearby may have been used to regulate the process.

Beer brewing's heritage stretches back to the Bronze Age in China and the Middle East, but this is the earliest sign of the practice in France, where wine-making had already taken hold.

The recent find was in Roquepertuse, close to modern Aix-en-Provence, and was excavated in the 1990s.

Archaeologist Laurent Bouby from France's National Centre for Scientific Research has been studying "archaeobotany" - preserved plant remains - in the region around Roquepertuse for more than a decade.

Wine not

Dr Bouby and his colleagues have now analysed the "macrobotanical" remains found at three sites during those digs: a paved floor near an oven and hearth of a home dated to the 5th Century BC, and a ceramic vessel and a pit that were near storage containers.

Ninety percent of the barley grains that were recovered from these locations had been induced to sprout.

The malted grains and the arrangement of the finds led the team to surmise a "home-brew" scenario, which they note requires no specialised equipment.

"All that is needed is an amount of grain, some water, containers (commonly pottery vessels) in which to soak the grain, a flat paved area - possibly the floor - to spread out and turn the grain during germination, an oven to dry it in order to stop germination, domestic grindstones to grind the malted grain, hearths and again containers for fermentation and storage," they wrote.

"Evidence for all of these sorts of equipment is reported from the Roquepertuse dwelling."

Prior studies suggest that a variant of the barley plant known as six-row barley was the primary cultivated plant in the region at the time; the authors of the study now suggest that beer production may have been one of the principal reasons for this.

From the BBC:

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Powerful cosmic blast as black hole shreds star

By Jennifer Carpenter Science reporter, BBC News

Astronomers have spied a star's swan song as it is shredded by a black hole.

Researchers suspect that the star wandered too close to the black hole and got sucked in by the huge gravitational forces.

The star's final moments sent a flash of radiation hurtling towards Earth.

The energy burst is still visible by telescope more than two-and-a-half months later, the researchers report in the journal Science.

The Swift spacecraft constantly scans the skies for bursts of radiation, notifying astronomers when it locates a potential flare.

These bursts usually indicate the implosion of an aging star, which produces a single, quick blast of energy.

But this event, first spotted on 28 March 2011 and designated Sw 1644+57, does not have the marks of an imploding sun.

What intrigued the researchers about this gamma ray burst is that it flared up four times over a period of four hours.

Astrophysicist Dr Andrew Levan from the University of Warwick, and his colleagues suspected that they were looking at a very different sort of galactic event; one where a passing star got sucked into a black hole.

The energy bursts matched nicely with what you might expect when you "throw a star into a black hole", Dr Levan told BBC News.

Gasless centres

Black holes are thought to reside at the centres of most major galaxies. Some black holes are surrounded by matter in the form of gas; light is emitted when the gas is dragged into the hole. However, the centres of most galaxies are devoid of gas and so are invisible from Earth.

These black holes only become visible when an object such as a star is pulled in. If this happens, the star becomes elongated, first spreading out to form a "banana shape" before its inner edge - orbiting faster than the outer edge - pulls the star into a disc-shape that wraps itself around the hole.

As material drops into the black hole it becomes compressed and releases radiation that is usually visible from Earth for a month or so.

Events like these, termed mini-quasars, are incredibly rare - researchers expect one every hundred million years in any one galaxy.

The researchers used some of most powerful ground-based and space-based observatories - the Hubble Space Telescope, the Chandra X-ray Observatory and the Gemini and Keck Telescopes.

From the BBC:

Scientists to sequence thousands of insect genomes

By Jennifer Carpenter Science reporter, BBC News

Thousands of insects are being lined up to have their genomes sequenced.

The five-year project will help researchers pinpoint vulnerable regions of insects' genomes, which could be targeted with pesticides.

The project's leaders hope the initiative will make a dent in the $50bn spent globally each year to control diseases transmitted by insects.

The final list of six-legged critters has yet to be finalised.

The project, called the 5000 Insect and Other Arthropod Genome Initiative, comes at a time when the costs of genome sequencing have fallen substantially and it is feasible to cheaply sequence large numbers of animals and plants.

Handfuls of bugs

Among the list of agriculturally important insects and other arthropods - animals with exoskeletons - to be sequenced are handfuls of bugs that act as disease vectors.

By comparing the genomes of these insects with those of their close relatives that don't carry pathogens, researchers hope to pinpoint the genes that make one insect a disease-vector and another not.

What's more, knowing the genes involved will help researchers better predict how insect immune systems will evolve in response to biopesticide control measures, such as Beauveria bassiana, a fungus used to control mosquitoes in malaria-ridden countries in Africa.

It is also hoped that the project will aid the search for suitable compounds for use as pesticides; ones that kill a targeted pest but leave the beneficial pollinating insects that also visit the crop plants unharmed.

From the BBC:

Parkinson's artificial brain bank

By Pallab Ghosh Science correspondent, BBC News

Researchers in Oxford have begun creating a bank of artificially grown brain cells from Parkinson's patients, BBC news has learned.

They are using a new stem cell technique that allows them to turn a small piece of skin from the patient into a small piece of brain.

This is the first time this has been done in a large-scale study aimed at finding cures for the disease.

Researchers say they can analyse nerve cells as they start to deteriorate.

The first batch of nerve cells have been grown from a 56-year-old Oxfordshire man, Derek Underwood.

He had to take early retirement because of the progression of the disease.

Mr Underwood will be the first of 50 patients whose skin cells will be grown into brain cells as part of a five year study.

According Dr Richard Wade Martins of Oxford University, who is leading the study, the aim is to build up a "brain bank" which will enable researchers to study how the disease develops in unprecedented detail.

"The brain is an inaccessible organ and you can't get bits of people's brain to study very easily," he said.

"But what we have here is a disease in a dish, that are just like Derek's brain cells but are accessible and can be produced in unlimited quantities"

Lab brain

The first step, according to Dr Michelle Hu of the John Radcliffe Hospital in Oxford, is to compare the brain cells grown from Parkinson's patients, with those grown from healthy volunteers and see how they differ.

"For the first time we can look at the cells before they deteriorate and look at the earliest changes," she said.

"We can look at what cellular processes are happening that make the cells die and learn why it is that the cells get sick. And we want to see if there are any treatments we can offer to reverse that process and help patients regain normal function."

This is the first large scale clinical study to use a technique which was developed by Japanese scientists three years ago, called "induced pluripotent stem cell" or IPS for short.

Genes are inserted into the skin cells, reprogramming them to become something else.

IPS is similar to the embryonic stem cell technique which was used to create Dolly the Sheep, but IPS does not result in the creation of an embryo and so is regarded by some as an ethically more acceptable approach.

On the BBC news today:

Icann increases web domain suffixes

A global internet body has voted to allow the creation of new website domain suffixes, the biggest change for the online world in years.

The Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (Icann) plans to dramatically increase the number of domain endings from the current 22.

Internet address names will end with almost any word and be in any language.

Icann will begin taking applications next year, with corporations and cities expected to be among the first.

"Icann has opened the internet's addressing system to the limitless possibilities of the human imagination," said Rod Beckstrom, president and chief executive officer for Icann.

"No one can predict where this historic decision will take us."

There will be several hundred new generic top-level domain names (gTLDs), which could include such addresses as .google, .coke, or even .BBC.

There are currently 22 gTLDs, as well as about 250 country-level domain names such as .uk or .de.

It will cost $185,000 (£114,000) to apply for the suffixes, and companies would need to show they have a legitimate claim to the name they are buying.

Analysts say it is a price that global giants might be willing to pay - in order to maximise their internet presence.

The vote completes a six-year negotiation process and is the biggest change to the system since .com was first introduced 26 years ago.

Icann said it was beginning a global communications programme to raise awareness of the new domain names.

Applications will start on 12 January.

I posted an article in early May about the intended sale of a Stradivarious violin to raise money for the Japanese disaster appeal fund.

This is an update on the BBC website:

A well-preserved Stradivarius violin has been sold in an online auction for £9.8m ($15.9m) to raise money for disaster relief in Japan.

The violin was made in 1721 and is known as the Lady Blunt after Lord Byron's granddaughter Lady Anne Blunt who owned it for 30 years.

It was sold by a music foundation in Japan for victims of the earthquake and tsunami in March.

The price is more than four times the previous record for a Stradivarius.

Proceeds will go to the Nippon Foundation's Northeastern Japan Earthquake and Tsunami Relief Fund.

The violin was offered for sale by the Nippon Music Foundation, owner of some of the world's finest Stradivari and Guarneri instruments.

'Profound generosity'

Foundation president Kazuko Shiomi said: "While this violin was very important to our collection, the needs of our fellow Japanese people after the March 11th tragedy have proven that we all need to help, in any way we can.

"The donation will be put to immediate use on the ground in Japan."

London auction house Tarisio, who organised the sale, described the foundation's decision to sell "what is considered the finest violin of their collection" as a "gesture of profound generosity".

The violin is one about 600 instruments made by Italian Antonio Stradivari still in existence.

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 identity of its new owner has not been revealed.

The Lady Blunt fetched a then-record £84,000 when it was last auctioned at Sotheby's in 1971.

From the BBC:

Human eye protein senses Earth's magnetism

A light-sensitive protein in the human eye has been shown to act as a "compass" in a magnetic field, when it is present in flies' eyes.

The study in Nature Communications showed that without their natural "magnetoreception" protein, the flies did not respond to a magnetic field - but replacing the protein with the human version restored the ability.

Despite much controversy, no conclusive evidence exists that humans can sense the Earth's magnetic field, and the find may revive interest in the idea.

Although humans, like migratory birds, are known to have cryptochrome in their eyes, the idea of human magnetoreception has remained largely unexplored since pioneering experiments by Robin Baker of the University of Manchester in the 1980s.

Dr Baker used a long series of experiments on thousands of volunteers that suggested humans could indirectly sense magnetic fields, though he never definitively identified the mechanism. In subsequent years, several groups attempted to repeat those experiments, claiming opposing results.

Time, flies

At the heart of the current study is a molecule called cryptochrome - an ancient protein present, in one of its two major forms, in every animal on Earth.

The protein is implicated in the regulation of circadian rhythms - the "body clocks" of humans and other animals - and in the navigational skills of several species including migratory birds, monarch butterflies, and the fruit fly Drosophila melanogaster.

The exact mechanism behind animals' navigational abilities remains a mystery, however, and an active area of research.

Steven Reppert of the University of Massachusetts Medical School and his colleagues have been following the roles that cryptochrome plays in some of these species for a number of years.

D. melanogaster flies can be genetically engineered to produce cryptochrome-2, the version of the protein present in monarch butterflies and in vertebrate animals including humans.

Last year, Dr Reppert's team showed in a Nature paper that flies without either cryptochrome were unable to align themselves with magnetic fields, but that the magnetoreception ability was recovered when the flies produced the non-native cryptochrome-2.

"We developed a system to study the real mechanism of magnetosensing in fruit flies... we can put these proteins from other animals into the fly and ask, 'do these proteins in their different forms actually function as magnetoreceptors?'," Dr Reppert told BBC News.

"Of all the vertebrates, the one that seemed to make the most sense was trying to put in the cryptochrome from humans."

The results mirrored the experiments with monarch butterflies. D. melanogaster flies with no cryptochrome showed no evidence of magnetoreception, but when genetically engineered to produce the human version, they recovered their abilities.

Dr Reppert said that the difficulty in unpicking the nature of human magnetosensing - if it exists - was that, like the circadian rhythms that cryptochromes are also implicated in, we react to it without knowing that we are.

"I would be very surprised if we don't have this sense; it's used in a variety of other animals. I think that the issue is to figure out how we use it."

Dr Baker, who maintains his results proving human magnetoreception were "overwhelming", hopes that the find re-invigorates the pursuit of a final word on the matter.

"I think one of the things that put people off accepting the reality of human magnetoreception 20 years ago was the lack of an obvious receptor," he told BBC News.

"So these new results might actually be enough to tip the balance of credibility. I shall be fascinated to see."

From the BBC:

Click here to see this article with picture

'Pandora' galaxy cluster crash yields dark matter clues

By Jason Palmer Science and technology reporter, BBC News

A slow-motion cosmic "car crash" of immense proportions has come into sharp focus for astronomers.

The Pandora cluster - so named because it comprises so many unusual phenomena - is a mess of four galaxy clusters that have collided over the course of 350 million years.

The "crash investigation" should yield clues about the nature of dark matter.

A report to be published in Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society outlines the unique find.

Galaxy clusters are the largest structures we know of in the Universe, comprising hundreds of galaxies and trillions of stars - along with huge amounts of hot gas - and dark matter..

Very few galaxy cluster collisions have been caught in the act. Most notably, the Bullet Cluster made its name as the site of a collision between two clusters in a crash that should in time help unravel some of dark matter's secrets.

Richard Massey of the Royal Observatory Edinburgh said that to learn as much as is possible from these crash scenes, the collisions have to be captured at just the right time.

"If you catch it just before the collision, they're just two ordinary-looking clusters," he told BBC News.

"All the gas and galaxies and dark matter are attracted to each other under their own gravity, so over a very long period of time, they'll fall back together again and end up one big cluster, where everything is in one place. You have to catch it at just the right time, just after the impact where everything is temporarily separated out."

Dark and alone

The Pandora cluster - known officially as Abell 2744 - has been spotted by astronomers at just such a moment; the galaxies and vast amounts of hot gas have splayed out in all directions.

Until recently, Abell 2744 existed as just another galaxy cluster in a catalogue, one among thousands.

But Dr Massey said that what made it stand out was data from the Chandra space telescope - X-rays emitted by the clusters' phenomenally hot gas.

The team, comprising Dr Massey and 17 researchers from around the world, then secured time on the Hubble space telescope to get a closer look.

Hubble's sharp view allowed the team to map out the dark matter in the cluster through the effect of gravitational lensing - a phenomenon in which the heavy-but-invisible matter can bend light passing by it, creating multiple images of stars and galaxies behind it.

"Now we've got a combined picture of the galaxies, the gas and the dark matter, and we can put together the full picture with all three ingredients."

That full picture is an extraordinarily rare collision - and a rare opportunity to learn more about dark matter.

It remains enigmatic not least because it interacts very little - if at all - with normal matter, so the dark matter of the Pandora cluster has careered through the crash scene, emerging on the other side.

The galaxies and hot gas have lagged behind somewhat, and Dr Massey said that leaves huge swathes of dark matter exposed to further study.

"All the galaxies and gas do lots of complicated things and they just sort of confuse us if they're happening in the same place as the dark matter," he said.

"When the dark matter is on its own we can step back and study it while it's not obscured by everything else, sat there doing its own thing - and we can figure out what that thing is."

From the BBC:

FBI targets cyber security scammers

A gang that made more than $72m (£45m) peddling fake security software has been shut down in a series of raids.

Co-ordinated by the FBI, the raids were carried out in the US, UK and six other countries.

The money was made by selling software that claimed to find security risks on PCs and then asked for cash to fix the non-existent problems.

The raids seized 40 computers used to do fake scans and host webpages that tricked people into using the software.

Account closed

About one million people are thought to have installed the fake security software, also known as scareware, and handed over up to $129 for their copy. Anyone who did not pay but had downloaded the code was bombarded with pop-ups warning them about the supposed security issues.

Raids conducted in Latvia as part of the attack on the gang allowed police to gain control of five bank accounts used to funnel cash to the group's ringleaders.

Although no arrests are believed to have been made during the raids, the FBI said the computers seized would be analysed and its investigation would continue.

The raids on the gang were part of an international effort dubbed Operation Trident Tribunal. In total, raids in 12 nations were carried out to thwart two separate gangs peddling scareware.

The second gang used booby-trapped adverts to trick victims. Raids by Latvian police on this gang led to the arrest of Peteris Sahurovs and Marina Maslobojeva who are alleged to be its operators.

According to the FBI, the pair worked their scam by pretending to be an advertising agency that wanted to put ads on the website of the Minneapolis Star Tribune newspaper.

Once the ads started running, the pair are alleged to have changed them to install fake security software on victims' machines that mimicked infection by a virus. On payment of a fee the so-called infection was cured. Those that did not pay found their machine was unusable until they handed over cash.

This ruse is believed to have generated a return of about $2m.

"Scareware is just another tactic that cyber criminals are using to take money from citizens and businesses around the world," said assistant director Gordon Snow of the FBI's Cyber Division in a statement

From the BBC:

'Super sand' to help clean up dirty drinking water

Contaminated water can be cleaned much more effectively using a novel, cheap material, say researchers.

Dubbed "super sand", it could become a low-cost way to purify water in the developing world.

The technology involves coating grains of sand in an oxide of a widely available material called graphite - commonly used as lead in pencils.

The team describes the work in the American Chemical Society journal Applied Materials and Interfaces.

In many countries around the world, access to clean drinking water and sanitation facilities is still limited.

The World Health Organization states that "just 60% of the population in Sub-Saharan African and 50% of the population in Oceania [islands in the tropical Pacific Ocean] use improved sources of drinking-water."

The graphite-coated sand grains might be a solution - especially as people have already used sand to purify water since ancient times.

Coating the sand

But with ordinary sand, filtering techniques can be tricky.

Dr Wei Gao from Rice university in Texas, US, told BBC News that regular coarse sand was a lot less effective than fine sand when water was contaminated with pathogens, organic contaminants and heavy metal ions.

While fine sand is slightly better, water drains through it very slowly.

"Our product combines coarse sand with functional carbon material that could offer higher retention for those pollutants, and at the same time gives good throughput," explained Dr Gao.

She said that the technique the team has developed to make the sand involves dispersing graphite oxide into water and mixing it with regular sand.

"We then heat the whole mixture up to 105C for a couple of hours to evaporate the water, and use the final product - 'coated sand' - to purify polluted water."

Cost-efficient

The lead scientist of the study, Professor Pulickel Ajayan, said it was possible to modify the graphite oxide in order to make it more selective and sensitive to certain pollutants - such as organic contaminants or specific metals in dirty water.

Another team member, Dr Mainak Majumder from Monash University in Melbourne, Australia, said it had another advantage - it was cheap.

"This material demonstrates comparable performance to some commercially available activated carbon materials," he said.

"But given that this can be synthesized using room temperature processes and also from cheap graphite sources, it is likely to be cost-efficient."

He pointed out that in Australia many mining companies extract graphite and they produce a lot of graphite-rich waste.

"This waste can be harnessed for water purification," he said.

From the BBC:

Researchers switch on genes with blue pulse

By Jennifer Carpenter Science reporter, BBC News

Scientists have developed a technique that could be used to deliver precise doses of hormones to people who don't make them naturally.

To do this, they rewired kidney cells with light-sensitive molecules from the eye, they reported in the journal Science.

When pulsed with blue light, these cells churned out proteins on demand.

Ultimately, this technique could avoid the need for people with diabetes to inject themselves regularly.

"When I speak to diabetes patients they say that if you could take away always having to inject themselves it would really increase their quality of life," said lead author Martin Fussenegger, a bioengineer of the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology, Zurich.

Dr Fussenegger thought he saw a solution in his own field of optogenetics. Optogenetics, as the name suggests, uses light to control the behaviour cells.

To get a cell to respond to light you first have to rejigger it so it has a light-sensitive molecule on its surface. Dr Fussenegger coaxed kidney cells to express melanopsin, a molecule usually found in animals' eyes.

Blue genes

He then placed these cells into diabetic mice. Along with the cells he placed an optic fibre, down which he could pulse blue light to expose the cells at his command.

In the dark, these cells behaved as usual; In the light, however, genes in the cell were switched on and the cell pumped out a protein required for the breakdown of sugars in the blood, helping the mice to control their glucose levels.

He hopes that cells like these could ultimately be implanted into people, and exposed to light - either through the skin or down a optic fibre - to release proteins that would help treat diabetes.

The new technique is a proof of principle. He told BBC News that it was not limited to treating diabetes; this technology could be usedto switch on genes to produce many different proteins in people who do not make them naturally, or are not making enough of them to be healthy.

Light switch

"I think this is a phenomenal research tool," said James Collins, a synthetic biologist at Howard Hughes Medical Institute, Maryland, US, who was not involved in the work.

Dr Collins explained that as we move into an age of regenerative medicine, and begin to think of how we use stem cells to produce different tissues in the body, one of the challenges will be to work out which genes are needed to produce certain tissues and cells.

This new technique allows researchers to switch genes on and off to determine which are essential to make a specific tissues.

From the BBC:

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Acoustic 'cloaking device' shields objects from sound

By Jason Palmer Science and technology reporter, BBC News

Scientists have shown off a "cloaking device" that makes objects invisible - to sound waves.

Such acoustic cloaking was proposed theoretically in 2008 but has only this year been put into practice.

Described in Physical Review Letters, the approach borrows many ideas from attempts to "cloak" objects from light.

It uses simple plastic sheets with arrays of holes, and could be put to use in making ships invisible to sonar or in acoustic design of concert halls.

Much research has been undertaken toward creating Harry Potter-style "invisibility cloaks" since the feasibility of the idea was first put forward in 2006.

Those approaches are mostly based on so-called metamaterials, man-made materials with properties that do not occur in nature. The metamaterials are designed such that they force light waves to travel around an object; to an observer, it is as if the object were not there.

But researchers quickly found out that the mathematics behind bending these light waves, called transformation optics, could also be applied to sound waves.

"Fundamentally, in terms of hiding objects, it's the same - how anything is sensed is with some kind of wave and you either hear or see the effect of it," said Steven Cummer of Duke University. "But when it comes to building the materials, things are very different between acoustics and electromagnetics.

"The thing you need to engineer into the materials is very different behaviour in different directions that the wave travels through it," he told BBC News.

In 2008, Dr Cummer first described the theory of acoustic cloaking in an article in Physical Review Letters, and earlier this year a group from the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign demonstrated the first practical use of the theory in an article in the same journal.

That work showed acoustic invisibility in a shallow layer of water, at ultrasound frequencies above those we can hear.

Now, Dr Cummer and his colleagues have shown off an acoustic cloaking technique that works in air, for audible frequencies between one and four kilohertz - corresponding to two octaves on the higher half of a piano.

It works by using stacked sheets of plastic with regular arrays of holes through them. The exact size and placement of the holes on each sheet, and the spacing between the sheets, has a predictable effect on incoming sound waves.

When placed on a flat surface, the stack redirects the waves such that reflected waves are exactly as they would be if the stack were not there at all.

That means that an object under the stack - in the team's experiments, a block of wood about 10cm long - would not "hear" the sound, and any attempts to locate the object using sound waves would not find it.

"How the sound reflects off this reflecting surface with this composite object on it - which is pretty big and has a cloaking shell on it - really reflects... just like a flat surface does," Dr Cummer said.

Hole poking

Ortwin Hess, a director of Imperial College London's Centre for Plasmonics and Metamaterials, called the work "a really remarkable experimental demonstration".

"It shows very nicely that although acoustic and electromagnetic waves are very different in nature, the powers of transformation optics and transformation acoustics are [similar] - I'm quite pleased that there's activity on both ends."

Professor Hess pointed out that the demonstration was for very directed sound waves, and only in two dimensions, but the most notable aspect of the approach was its simplicity.

"It's almost like someone could take a pencil and poke holes in a particular way in the plastic," he told BBC News.

"It's a bit more challenging for three dimensions. I don't see any reason why it shouldn't be possible but it won't be just an afternoon's work."

The work shows that an object can be hidden from sonar, and protected from incoming sound, but the same principles could be applied in the other direction - that is, containing or directing the sound within a space, for instance in soundproofing a studio or fine-tuning the acoustics of a concert hall.

From the BBC:

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Video camera reveals secrets of ancient Mayan tomb

The inside of a Mayan tomb thought to be 1,500 years old has been filmed by archaeologists for the first time.

Using a tiny video camera, the researchers were able to capture images of the burial chamber in Palenque in south-eastern Mexico.

As the device was lowered 16ft (5m) down into the tomb, they saw red paint and black figures emblazoned on its walls.

The scientists say the images will shed new light on the Mayan civilisation.

Royal necropolis?

The tomb in Palenque was discovered in 1999, but archaeologists have not been able to excavate for fear of undermining the pyramid.

Palenque was a Mayan city-state in what is now Mexico's Chiapas state, but after its decline during the 8th Century AD it was absorbed into the jungle.

It has been extensively excavated, in particular over the past two decades, but much of it remains to be uncovered.

Mexico's National Institute of Anthropology and History (Inah) said its archaeologists had been aware of the tomb for more than a decade, but had not been able to examine it.

"Its difficult location and the work to consolidate the plinth had until now impeded penetration into the enclosure, which jealously guards the remains of a very important person from this ancient Mayan city," the Inah said in a statement.

It said that the researchers overcame the difficulties by lowering the remote-controlled camera the size of a matchbox down along a narrow shaft into the largely intact chamber.

Inside, the camera revealed nine black figures painted on blood-red walls, along with jade and shell fragments, which are believed to be part of a funerary costume.

But unlike in other tombs in Palenque, no sarcophagus has been found. "It is very probable that the fragmented bones are lying directly on the stones of the floor," Inah said.

Experts say the tomb probably dates to between AD431 and 550, and could belong to the first ruler of Palenque - K'uk Bahlam I.

Another theory is that it could even belong to Ix Yohl Ik'nal, the city's early female ruler.

Archaeologist Martha Cuevas said the tomb's proximity to other burial sites suggested it may be part of a royal necropolis.

From the BBC:

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'Tau day' marked by opponents of maths constant pi

By Jason Palmer Science and technology reporter, BBC News

The mathematical constant pi is under threat from a group of detractors who will be marking "Tau Day" on Tuesday.

Tau Day revellers suggest a constant called tau should take its place: twice as large as pi, or about 6.28 - hence the 28 June celebration.

Tau proponents say that for many problems in maths, tau makes more sense and makes calculations easier.

Not all fans of maths agree, however, and pi's rich history means it will be a difficult number to unseat.

"I like to describe myself as the world's leading anti-pi propagandist," said Michael Hartl, an educator and former theoretical physicist.

"When I say pi is wrong, it doesn't have any flaws in its definition - it is what you think it is, a ratio of circumference to diameter. But circles are not about diameters, they're about radii; circles are the set of all the points a given distance - a radius - from the centre," Dr Hartl explained to BBC News.

By defining pi in terms of diameter, he said, "what you're really doing is defining it as the ratio of the circumference to twice the radius, and that factor of two haunts you throughout mathematics."

The discrepancy is most noticeable when circles are defined not as a number of degrees, but as what are known as radians - of which there are two times pi in a full circle. With tau, half a circle is one-half tau.

He credits Bob Palais of the University of Utah with first pointing out that "pi is wrong", in a 2001 article in the Mathematical Intelligencer.

But it is Dr Hartl who is responsible for the Tau Manifesto - calling tau the more convenient formulation and instituting Tau Day to celebrate it.

Kevin Houston, a mathematician from the University of Leeds, counts himself as a convert.

"It was one of the weirdest things I'd come across, but it makes sense," he told BBC News.

"It's surprising people haven't changed before. Almost anything you can do in maths with pi you can do with tau anyway, but when it comes to using pi versus tau, tau wins - it's much more natural."

Dr Hartl is passionate about the effort, but even he is surprised by the fervent nature of some tau adherents.

"What's amazing is the 'conversion experience': people find themselves almost violently angry at pi. They feel like they've been lied to their whole lives, so it's amazing how many people express their displeasure with pi in the strongest possible terms - often involving profanity.

"I don't condone any actual violence - that would be really bizarre, wouldn't it?"

(as a side comment, Dr Harti conveniently forgets to mention that the area of a circle is pi times the square of the radiis, but he would change this to half of tau times the square of the radius)

From the BBC:

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Dark matter may solve 'radio filaments' mystery

By Jason Palmer Science and technology reporter, BBC News

Unexplained "filaments" of radio-wave emission close to our galaxy's centre may hold proof of the existence of dark matter, researchers have said.

Dark matter is believed to make up most of the mass of our Universe, but it has yet to be definitively spotted.

A report now suggests the filaments' emission arises from dark matter particles crashing into each other.

However, the work, posted to the Arxiv repository, requires extensive further experiments to support or refute it.

The filaments have been something of a mystery to astronomers since they were first discovered in the 1980s.

They are known to be regions of high magnetic fields, and they emit radio waves of high frequency - some of them with striking intensity.

"There's a long literature about these objects, and there have been some ideas as to what might generate their emission - but frankly no one really knows," said Dan Hooper, an astrophysicist at the Fermi National Accelerator Laboratory (Fermilab) in the US and co-author of the paper, which is still under review by academics.

One explanation for this emission would be what is called synchrotron radiation, which arises when charged particles are accelerated in a magnetic field. There are several ideas that could account for the emission which do not invoke dark matter - so called "astrophysical" mechanisms.

'Natural explanation'

Now, Dan Hooper and his colleagues suggest that electrons - created when high-energy dark matter particles smash into each other - could be the what gives rise to the synchrotron radiation detected here on Earth.

He credits co-author Tim Linden for coming up with the idea, which he said "can explain a lot of the different features that are observed" in the filaments' emission - something he said more prosaic "astrophysical" explanations could not claim.

"One thing it explains that the astrophysical possibilities don't is that the filaments that are closer to the galactic centre are brighter than those that are farther away," Dr Hooper told BBC News. "We would say that's because there's more dark matter as you come closer to the galactic centre - it provides a natural explanation for that."

In the model that the team has developed, the electrons in all the filaments that were studied should have a high energy - between five and 10 billion electron volts (GeV).

Dr Hooper said:"The question is: why would all of these filaments which are different astrophysically, contain different stuff, located in different places - all sorts of different properties - all have electrons with that much energy?

"In the dark matter explanation, that's easy - dark matter is the same everywhere."

'Severe conflict'

Dr Hooper has also published papers recently suggesting that dark matter particles of the same energies fit with recent results from the Fermi space telescope (in an article in Physics Letters B) and with efforts to detect dark matter on Earth in so-called "direct detection" experiments (in an as-yet unpublished paper on Arxiv).

"That's definitely one of the strengths of this model; the results seem promising," said Sukanya Chakrabarti, an astrophysicist from the University of California, Berkeley.

However, theoretical models of a substance that has never been detected necessarily require a number of educated guesses and estimates - guesses that could radically affect whether or not a given theory stands up.

"When you do these kind of 'indirect detection' experiments, there are many parameters that go into your model," Dr Chakrabarti told BBC News. "All that stuff that's not known - it's hard to do a study of all these and convince yourself of all mechanisms [that lead to the emission]."

Troy Porter, an astrophysicist from Stanford University, said that dark matter particles of energies as high as 10 GeV are "already in severe conflict with the recent [preliminary and as-yet unpublished] results reported by the Fermi-LAT collaboration at the Rome Fermi symposium for an analysis of nearby dwarf spheroidal galaxies".

The results from detections in underground experiments on Earth are also not widely agreed to point to a dark matter explanation, but Dr Hooper said forthcoming results from the Cresst experiment in Italy will lend further credence to his team's theory.

What will resolve these issues in the case of the filaments are simply more observations using more radio telescopes.

"Many of these filaments have only limited data available about them," said Dr Hooper. "I hope this paper inspires radio astronomers to look more carefully at these objects."

From the BBC:

Security researchers discover 'indestructible' botnet

More than four million PCs have been enrolled in a botnet security experts say is almost 'indestructible'

The botnet, known as TDL, targets Windows PCs and tries hard to avoid detection and even harder to shut down.

Code that hijacks a PC hides in places security software rarely looks and the botnet is controlled using custom-made encryption.

Security researchers said recent botnet shutdowns had made TDL's controllers harden it against investigation.

The 4.5 million PCs have become victims over the last three months following the appearance of the fourth version of the TDL virus.

The changes introduced in TDL-4 made it the "most sophisticated threat today," wrote Kaspersky Labs security researchers Sergey Golovanov and Igor Soumenkov in a detailed analysis of the virus.

"The owners of TDL are essentially trying to create an 'indestructible' botnet that is protected against attacks, competitors, and anti-virus companies," wrote the researchers.

Recent successes by security companies and law enforcement against botnets have led to spam levels dropping to about 75% of all e-mail sent, shows analysis by Symantec.

A botnet is a network of home computers that have been infected by a virus that allows a hi-tech criminal to use them remotely. Often botnet controllers steal data from victims' PCs or use the machines to send out spam or carry out other attacks.

The TDL virus spreads via booby-trapped websites and infects a machine by exploiting unpatched vulnerabilities. The virus has been found lurking on sites offering porn and pirated movies as well as those that let people store video and image files.

The virus installs itself in a Windows system file known as the master boot record. This file holds the list of instructions to get a computer started and is a good place to hide because it is rarely scanned by standard anti-virus programs.

The majority of victims, 28%, are in the US but significant numbers are in India (7%) and the UK (5%). Smaller numbers, 3%, are found in France, Germany and Canada.

However, wrote the researchers, it is the way the botnet operates that makes it so hard to tackle and shut down.

The makers of TDL-4 have cooked up their own encryption system to protect communication between those controlling the botnet. This makes it hard to do any significant analysis of traffic between hijacked PCs and the botnet's controllers.

In addition, TDL-4 sends out instructions to infected machines using a public peer-to-peer network rather than centralised command systems. This foils analysis because it removes the need for command servers that regularly communicate with infected machines.

"For all intents and purposes, [TDL-4] is very tough to remove," said Joe Stewart, director of malware research at Dell SecureWorks to Computerworld. "It's definitely one of the most sophisticated botnets out there."

However, the sophistication of TDL-4 might aid in its downfall, said the Kaspersky researchers who found bugs in the complex code. This let them pry on databases logging how many infections TDL-4 had racked up and was aiding their investigation into its creators.

From the BBC:

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Scientists use inkjet printing to produce solar cells

Solar energy may soon become easier to capture, say researchers who have developed a novel method to produce solar cells using inkjet printing.

Oregon State University researchers have come up with a technology similar to that commonly used to print documents and photos.

They say their method is quicker and less expensive than traditional solar cell manufacturing techniques.

It could also reduce raw material waste by 90%, they add.

As people move away from conventional combustion-type technologies, more attention is paid to renewable energy types, and solar energy is one of them.

It is known as a clean and sustainable form of energy, but this is offset by the manufacture of solar panels which is an expensive and complicated process.

Finding a balance between costs of production and efficiency could become key to future manufacture of solar cells, and many scientists around the world have been concentrating on developing new materials and methods to do that.

The recent inkjet approach is one of those novel methods.

"This is very promising and could be an important new technology to add to the solar energy field," said Professor Chih-hung Chang, the lead author of the study, which appeared in Solar Energy Materials and Solar Cells journal.

"Solar energy is the most abundant and clean energy source on Earth.

"Considering the high price of petroleum and other fossil fuels, solar cells will definitely have a bright future."

Crucial issue

The team used chalcopyrite - a material composed of copper, indium, gallium and selenium and also known as CIGS. It has a much greater solar efficiency than silicon, currently used to manufacture solar panels.

The researchers then printed chalcopyrite onto the surface of the cell, applying a technique similar to a common inkjet approach, but with a special type of ink.

They managed to produce solar cells of 5% efficiency - and say that in future, they will aim to increase this figure to about 12% to make the product commercially viable.

Wei Wang, one of the scientists, told BBC News that the main advantages of the method were the ease of manufacturing and low cost.

"We produced CIGS solar cells using cheap inkjet printing under normal conditions," he said.

Also, she added, there was almost no waste in the process - unlike with a more expensive method of vapour phase deposition.

Professor Chang agreed that the waste issue was crucial.

"Some of the materials we want to work with for the most advanced solar cells, such as indium, are relatively expensive," he said.

"If that's what you're using you can't really afford to waste it, and the inkjet approach almost eliminates the waste."

Efficiency and cost

CIGS cells produced by conventional means typically have an efficiency of 15-18%, but the methods of manufacturing are known to be a lot more time-consuming, or involve expensive vacuum systems or toxic chemicals.

An alternative to CIGS is silicon panels.

"The best cells that we put on house roofs at the moment are conventional silicon cells and those have an efficiency from 20 to 25% routinely, but the manufacturing costs and materials costs are extremely high," said Dr Martyn McLachlan from Imperial College, London.

He thinks that, although it is less efficent, the cheap manufacturing costs of the inkjet approach means it is a "significant development".

"If efficiency and costs can be balanced, then lower efficiency cells become attractive," he said.

From the BBC:

Antimatter Tevatron mystery gains ground

US particle physicists are inching closer to determining why the Universe exists in its current form, made overwhelmingly of matter.

Physics suggests equal amounts of matter and antimatter should have been made in the Big Bang.

In 2010, researchers at the Tevatron accelerator claimed preliminary results showing a small excess of matter over antimatter as particles decayed.

The team has submitted a paper showing those results are on a firmer footing.

Each of the fundamental particles known has an antimatter cousin, with identical properties but opposite electric charge.

When a particle encounters its antiparticle, they "annihilate" each other, disappearing in a high-energy flash of light.

The question remains: why did this not occur in the early Universe with the equal amounts of matter and antimatter, resulting in a Universe devoid of both?

New physics?

The Tevatron results come from a shower of particles produced at the facility when smashing protons into their antimatter counterparts, antiprotons.

The proton-antiproton collisions in turn create a number of different particles, and the team operating the Tevatron's DZero detector first noticed a discrepancy in the decay of particles called B mesons.

These decayed into pairs of particles called muons alongside pairs of their antimatter versions, antimuons. But, as the team reported in May 2010 in a paper published in Physical Review Letters, there was a notable 1% excess of the matter particles.

However, unpicking important events in the soup of interactions created in particle physics experiments meant that those measurements were associated with a level of uncertainty - reflecting the probability that the effect they see is a random statistical occurrence, rather than new physics.

The researchers now have 50% more data to work with, and have tried to establish that their earlier result in fact came from the particle decays that they first proposed.

As they reported this Thursday, they have now reduced the uncertainty in their experiment to a level of 3.9 sigma - equivalent to a 0.005% probability that the effect is a fluke.

But particle physics has a strict definition for what may be called a discovery - the "five sigma" level of certainty, or about a 0.00003% chance that the effect is not real - which the team must show before they can claim to have solved the long-standing matter/antimatter mystery.

From the BBC:

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Japan finds rare earths in Pacific seabed

Japanese researchers say they have discovered vast deposits of rare earth minerals, used in many hi-tech appliances, in the seabed.

The geologists estimate that there are about a 100bn tons of the rare elements in the mud of the Pacific Ocean floor.

At present, China produces 97% of the world's rare earth metals.

Analysts say the Pacific discovery could challenge China's dominance, if recovering the minerals from the seabed proves commercially viable.

The British journal Nature Geoscience reported that a team of scientists led by Yasuhiro Kato, an associate professor of earth science at the University of Tokyo, found the minerals in sea mud at 78 locations.

"The deposits have a heavy concentration of rare earths. Just one square kilometre (0.4 square mile) of deposits will be able to provide one-fifth of the current global annual consumption," said Yasuhiro Kato, an associate professor of earth science at the University of Tokyo.

The minerals were found at depths of 3,500 to 6,000 metres (11,500-20,000 ft) below the ocean surface.

Environmental fears

One-third of the sites yielded rich contents of rare earths and the metal yttrium, Mr Kato said.

The deposits are in international waters east and west of Hawaii, and east of Tahiti in French Polynesia.

Mr Kato estimated that rare earths contained in the deposits amounted to 80 to 100 billion tonnes.

The US Geological Survey has estimated that global reserves are just 110 million tonnes, found mainly in China, Russia and other former Soviet countries, and the United States.

China's apparent monopoly of rare earth production enabled it to restrain supply last year during a territorial dispute with Japan.

Japan has since sought new sources of the rare earth minerals.

The Malaysian government is considering whether to allow the construction of an Australian-financed project to mine rare earths, in the face of local opposition focused on the fear of radioactive waste.

The number of firms seeking licences to dig through the Pacific Ocean floor is growing rapidly.

The listed mining company Nautilus has the first licence to mine the floor of the Bismarck and Solomon oceans around Papua New Guinea.

It will be recovering what is called seafloor massive sulphide, for its copper and gold content.

The prospect of deep sea mining for precious metals - and the damage that could do to marine ecosystems - is worrying environmentalists.

From the BBC:

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Tibetan singing bowls give up their chaotic secrets

By Jason Palmer Science and technology reporter, BBC News

Ceremonial Tibetan "singing bowls" are beginning to give up their secrets.

The water-filled bowls, when rubbed with a leather-wrapped mallet, exhibit a lively dance of water droplets as they emit a haunting sound.

Now slow-motion video has unveiled just what occurs in the bowls; droplets can actually bounce on the water's surface.

A report in the journal Nonlinearity mathematically analyses the effect and could shed light on other fluid processes, such as fuel injection.

At the heart of the phenomenon are what are known as Faraday waves, which arise when a fluid such as water vibrates, constrained by a closed boundary such as the edge of a singing bowl.

As the frequency of the rubbing reaches that at which the bowl naturally vibrates, the bowl's edge begins rhythmically to change shape, from one slightly oval shape into another.

The energy of this shape-shifting partly transfers to the water, in which a range of interesting patterns can arise as the intensity of the rubbing increases.

But at a certain point the water becomes unstable - and a fizzing display of droplets and chaotic waves results.

Slow-motion video of that transition now demonstrates how the irregular patterns of waves build up, the way that they crash into one another, and how that frees droplets that fly into the air.

What is more, under certain conditions, droplets can actually bounce repeatedly and skip on the surface of the water.

This "Faraday instability" behaviour and the bouncing drops are familiar from scientific contexts; in 2009, John Bush from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology used a range of fluids to demonstrate the effect in videos on a Discovery Channel programme called Time Warp.

"A woman named Rosie Warburton saw these and sent me an email saying that she had seen the same behaviour in her Tibetan singing bowls," Professor Bush told BBC News. "It was this email that inspired the study."

However, the bowls exhibited Faraday wave behaviour that Professor Bush called "odd by any standards, even to specialists in fluid dynamics such as ourselves".

Professor Bush and his co-author Denis Terwagne from the University of Liege in Belgium have now developed a mathematical model for how the water behaves in the bowls.

Studies of this sort are potentially of broader interest for applications in which the development of tiny fluid droplets is a concern, such as fuel injectors or perfume atomisers - or they may simply be a matter of irresistible intrigue.

"Deducing robust criteria for droplet break-up is important in a number of engineering applications," Professor Bush said. "This study was, however, purely curiosity-driven."

From the BBC:

Printer produces personalised 3D chocolate

Chocolate lovers may soon be able to print their own 3D creations thanks to work by UK scientists.

A 3D printer that uses chocolate has been developed by University of Exeter researchers - and it prints layers of chocolate instead of ink or plastic.

Although still a prototype, several retailers have already expressed interest in taking on the device.

3D printing using plastic and metal is already widely used in industry to speed up design work.

Lead scientist Dr Liang Hao told BBC News that chocolate printing, just like any other 3D printing technique, starts with a flat cross-section image - similar to that produced by ordinary printers turning out images.

"Then you do a 3D shape - layer by layer, printing chocolate instead of ink, like if you were layering 2D paper to form a 3D shape," he said.

Once a layer is completed, it solidifies, and the machine moves on to the next layer.

Shape and taste

There have been other attempts to develop so-called "food printers" - in 2010, researchers from Cornell University in the US used liquefied foods as inks in a specially designed machine.

Dr Richard Hague from Loughborough University told BBC News that the Exeter creation is a step towards manufacturing a device able to print flawless 3D objects that taste good.

Getting the printing process right involves careful control of key parameters, such as temperature.

Once the prototype becomes a finished product, it may find a role in the restaurant and food preparation industry.

And some companies are already expressing interest.

"Obviously, it's chocolate, so it is hugely appealing," said Joanna Grant from UK online gift retailer findmeagift.co.uk.

But what is even more appealing, she added, is that customers will be able to design any object on a computer before hitting the print button.

"We could do things like 3D faces, for instance - the possibilities are enormous on a commercial aspect."

Social networks

Besides producing 3D chocolate, Dr Hao's team wants to go a step further - and take their printer into cyberspace.

He said the next step would be creating a chocolate-oriented website.

"Now we have an opportunity to combine chocolate with digital technology, including the design, digital manufacturing and social networking.

"Chocolate has a lot of social purpose, so our intention is to develop a community and share the designs, ideas and experience about it."

And on Youtube:

 yummmmm

From the BBC:

New solution can help 'permanently get rid of germs'

A new anti-microbial treatment that can make clothing - including smelly socks - permanently germ-free has been developed by US scientists.

The spray-on solution can be applied to existing garments, according to the team from the University of Georgia.

It is designed to offer low cost protection for healthcare facilities, such as hospitals.

Chemical impregnated materials already exist, but have to be added during the manufacturing process.

The new solution can be applied to natural and synthetic textiles including clothes, home carpets, shoes and even plastics.

In a paper published in the American Chemical Society journal Applied Materials and Interfaces, Dr Jason Locklin and his colleagues state that the treatment kills a wide range of dangerous pathogens, including staph, strep, E. coli, pseudomonas and acetinobacter.

Many of these can cause disease, break down fabrics, create stains and produce odours.

When the scientists tested the product, they found that a single application was enough to stop all further bacterial growth at up to 37 degrees Celsius.

And the solution did not degrade even after multiple hot water laundry cycles.

Medical field

Although it could potentially be used in a number of fields, its primary application is expected to be in healthcare.

According to the US federal agency Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, approximately one in every 20 hospitalised patients contracts a healthcare-associated infection.

Lab coats, scrub suits, uniforms, gowns, gloves and linens are all known to be breeding grounds for harmful microbes.

"The spread of pathogens on textiles and plastics is a growing concern, especially in healthcare facilities and hotels, which are ideal environments for the proliferation and spread of very harmful micro-organisms," said Dr Locklin.

People are also trying to get rid of dangerous microbes at home, especially when it comes to food packaging, plastic furniture and their children's bath toys.

But not all anti-bacterial products are cheap or effective.

"Similar technologies are limited by cost of materials, use of noxious chemicals in the application or loss of effectiveness after a few washings," said Gennaro Gama from the University of Georgia Research Foundation (UGARF).

"Locklin's technology uses ingeniously simple, inexpensive and scalable chemistry."

Hi El, that sounds like it could be very useful in healthcare situations.

I do worry about making our homes "sterile environments". We need to be exposed to some degree of germs, in order to build up our resistence to infection.

From the BBC:

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Polar bears have maternal Irish brown bear ancestors

By Steven McKenzie BBC Scotland Highlands and Islands reporter

The maternal ancestors of modern polar bears were from Ireland, according to a DNA study of ancient brown bear bones.

Scientists in the UK, Ireland and the US analysed the teeth and skeletons of 17 brown bears that were found at eight cave sites across Ireland.

The new research has been reported in the latest edition of Current Biology.

Previously, it was believed that today's polar bears were most closely related to brown bears living on islands off the coast of Alaska.

However, analysis of mitochondrial DNA - which is passed from mother to child - has shown the extinct Irish brown bears are the descendants of all today's polar bears, the scientists said.

Their work provides evidence of the two species mating opportunistically during the past 100,000 years or more.

Hybridisation has been recorded recently in the wild where grizzly bears have encroached on polar bear territories.

The bears split from a common ancestor to become separate species between two million to 400,000 years ago.

However, just before or during the last Ice Age the two species came together and polar bears mated with female Irish brown bears, the scientists said.

The maternal lineage can still be traced to all polar bears today, they added.

Prof Daniel Bradley, of Trinity College Dublin (TCD) and Dr Ceiridwen Edwards, formerly of TCD and now at Oxford University, collaborated with Prof Beth Shapiro, of Pennsylvania State University, in the study.

Previously, Dr Edwards attempted to carry out DNA analysis of a sample taken from bones of a polar bear washed into caves in north west Scotland 18,000 years ago.

However, DNA had not survived in the remains from the Bone Caves at Inchnadamph in Sutherland.

'Environmental stresses'

Brown bear bones have been found across Ireland, with some of the best preserved examples recovered by cavers at Poll na mBear - Cave of the Bears - in County Leitrim, in May 1997.

Eoghan Lynch and Barry Keenan made the first finds, followed by later discoveries by other speleologists.

An adult bear's skull with the teeth still in place and the bones of young bears were among the finds made.

These have since been dated and are the last recorded bears in Ireland.

The scientists who carried out the DNA analysis said the caves' constant and cool temperatures protected genetic material within the bones.

Dr Edwards, the research paper's lead author, sequenced the mitochondrial DNA from different time depths and from bones recovered from the eight sites.

She found that the older bears in Ireland - from between 43,000 and 38,000 years ago and before the last Ice Age arrived - had the same genetic signature as brown bears living today in eastern Europe.

But DNA from bears that roamed Ireland in cooler times, 38,000 to 10,000 years ago, have sequences that are the closest match yet to modern polar bears.

Bone isotope analysis revealed that despite the maternal genetic link, the Irish ice bears did not share the polar bears' marine diet.

Prof Bradley said ancient samples offered a means of going back in time and measuring the movement of species in response to past climate change.

Dr Edwards added: "It's amazing to think that Irish brown bears are the ancestors of the modern maternal polar bear lineage.

"As the hybridisation between the two species occurred at a time when their home ranges overlapped, most likely during environmental stress, this has implications for polar bears in today's climate."

Prof Shapiro said the results of their research pointed to the bears hybridizing opportunistically throughout the past 100,000 years and probably longer.

She said: "While brown bears and polar bears are hybridizing today, our results suggest that a recent hybridisation led to the capture of a mitochondrial DNA sequence that was present in the population of brown bears that were living in Ireland before the peak of the last ice age.

"That mitochondrial sequence replaced the previous sequence across the entire polar bear population."

Previously it was thought modern polar bears were most closely related to brown bears living on the islands of Admiralty, Baranof and Chichagof in Alaska's Alexander archipelago.

Scottish site

What are believed to be the only polar bear remains to have been found in Britain were in caves in Inchnadamph in Sutherland.

The bear's skull was found in 1927 and is held in the collections of the National Museum of Scotland.

An almost complete skeleton of another bear was recovered after years of work from the same Scottish site and later confirmed as that of a male brown bear.

The first pieces were discovered in 1995 by cavers exploring a network of caves.

But it was only in 2008 that Edinburgh-based caving club, Grampian Speleological Group, reached some of the final fragments.