Blogs / 80beats

After 15 years of construction, the world’s largest particle accelerator is warmed up, fully tested, and ready to rumble. The Large Hadron Collider will go into operation on September 10th, and researchers are celebrating every step towards that momentous day. Last weekend, physicists popped champagne to toast the results of a test in which beams of protons were sent barreling into a massive block of concrete, causing the protons to fragment into smaller particles. Researchers have also successfully sent test batches of protons part-way around the collider’s 17-mile circular track.

The Large Hadron Collider represents the science world’s latest, greatest attempt to smash its way into the mysteries of the universe: Beams of protons will eventually collide with the energy of two bullet trains - spawning sprays of subatomic debris that are certain to lead to new discoveries…. One experiment at the LHC, known as ALICE, seeks to re-create the conditions that existed just an instant after the big bang that gave rise to the universe as we know it. [The collider’s] researchers want to understand why matter won out over antimatter after the creation of the cosmos [MSNBC].

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The deep furrows carved in the sides of Martian craters were most likely formed by snowmelt in the planet’s recent geological past, according to a new study. The findings indicate that seasonal flows of liquid water may have streamed down the craters’ flanks when Mars was a wetter planet, as recently as a few hundred thousand years ago. Today, the Red Planet is a colder and drier place; although the Mars Phoenix Lander found water ice buried under the dirt near the north pole, no liquid water currently exists on the planet, and any ice exposed to air quickly turns into vapor due to the low atmospheric pressure.

The gullies were first sighted several years ago, but researchers couldn’t immediately determine what had caused them. [S]ome scientists proposed that the features were formed either by dry avalanches or by groundwater pushing up from below the surface and running down the sides of craters [SPACE.com]. But in a new study of crater images taken by the Mars orbiters, researchers found evidence that ice and melting snow were the culprits.

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Cattle and deer grazing in fields tend to align themselves with the Earth’s magnetic field, suggesting that the animals may have a built-in magnetic compass. A new study shows that animals in these herds tend to face towards either magnetic north or south, which has come as a surprise even to those who spend their days with bovines. Asked whether he had ever observed such behavior in cows, dairy farmer Rob Fletcher of Tulare, Calif., said, “Absolutely not.” But, he added, “I don’t spend a lot of time worrying about stuff like that” [Los Angeles Times].

Researchers used satellite imagery from Google Earth to look for patterns in more than 300 cow-filled pastures from every continent except Antarctica, and in more than 250 herds of deer in the Czech Republic. While every individual animal didn’t face the same direction, the herds, on average, pointed towards either magnetic north or south. That orientation didn’t consistently line up with any aspect of the terrain on which they were grazing, the direction from which the wind was blowing or the direction from which the sun was shining, [co-author Hynek] Burda says. In fact, many of these field observations were made at night, he notes [Science News].

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A new study has shown that salmonella bacteria use a surprising tactic when they attack a mammal’s intestinal system. A small percentage of the bacteria mount a kamikaze mission from which they’ll never return, but which helps allows the rest of the salmonella bacteria to thrive, spreading the infection and ultimately benefiting the species.

Researchers found that in the early stage of an infection, about 15 percent of the salmonella go on a suicide mission, invading the intestinal walls. There, the immune system handily wipes them out. But that also sets off a wider immune response that, while attacking the salmonella within the gut, also wipes out many other micro-organisms. “This inflammation removes many of the competitors, so the second group which waited outside can proliferate,” said [lead researcher] Martin Ackerman [The New York Times].

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Wind turbines may be killing bats without touching them: A new study suggests that the localized drop in air pressure caused by the whirling blades is causing the delicate lungs of bats to burst. While environmentalists previously worried about birds getting slashed by the turbines’ blades, researchers realized a year ago that bats are more at risk from the the turbines. In May 2007, the US National Research Council published the results of a survey of US wind farms showing that two bat species accounted for 60% of winged animals killed [New Scientist]. But until now, the bats’ mode of death was unknown.

Because bats navigate using a sophisticated echolocation system, researchers thought it was unlikely that the bats were getting caught in the turbines. Says lead researcher Erin Baerwald: “When people were first starting to talk about the issue, it was ‘bats running into the turbine blades.’ We always said, ‘No, bats don’t run into things.’ Bat’s can detect and avoid all kinds of structures.” In fact, they are even better at detecting moving objects, Baerwald said. “This kind of answers that mystery,” she added. “It was something nobody could have predicted” [Discovery News].

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President Bush has proposed protecting vast swaths of marine territory in the South Pacific from commercial fishing and offshore drilling, in a move that some environmentalists have said could earn him a legacy as the “Teddy Roosevelt of the seas.” This week, Bush is expected to ask his Cabinet for comments on conservation proposals for marine ecosystems around the Northern Mariana islands, the Line Islands, and American Samoa.

While the Bush administration’s environmental record has generally received harsh criticism from environmentalists, these proposals are being seen as a cause for celebration. “We have every expectation that the president will move forward on protecting these places sometime in the fall,” said Diane Regas, ocean program director at Environmental Defense Fund. “Today, we put the champagne on ice, and we will pop it open.” Two years ago, the president made a huge swath of the Northwestern Hawaiian Islands a national monument, barring fishing, oil and gas extraction and tourism from its waters and coral reefs. The area is the single largest conservation area on the planet [AP].

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Ninety years after the discovery of the first antibiotic, penicillin, researchers have found an entirely new tactic in the fight against bacteria that cause infectious diseases. Instead of hunting for new ways to kill bacteria, researchers have developed a drug, called LED209, that disarms them, preventing them from releasing the toxins that cause illness.

“The sensors in bacteria are waiting for the right signal to initiate the expression of virulent genes,” [said lead researcher] Vanessa Sperandio…. “Using LED209, we blocked those sensing mechanisms and basically tricked the bacteria to not recognize that they were within the host” [Reuters]. The new technique, which has only been demonstrated in mice so far, could be a boon for researchers who are worried about creating more antibiotic-resistant “superbugs.”

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An unmanned, solar-powered plane has unofficially broken the record for the longest uninterrupted flight, staying aloft for 82 hours and 37 minutes; it flew through the nights by drawing energy from batteries that it recharged during the day. Engineers for the high-tech aircraft, the Zephyr, say that the three-day flight is just the beginning of what it can do. [T]he aircraft’s designers, at the defence firm QinetiQ, in the UK, think the plane could fly indefinitely. “We think the aircraft, in future, will be capable of weeks or months duration,” said Paul Davey [Guardian].

The flight was a demonstration for the U.S. military, which is interested in using the craft for reconnaissance and battlefield communications. But the Zephyr didn’t officially break the record for the longest flight because representatives from the world air sports federation weren’t on hand to observe the feat. The flight beats the current official world record [for an uncrewed flight] of 30 hours, 24 minutes set by the US robot plane Global Hawk in 2001 [Telegraph].

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Astronomers say they’ve demonstrated how stars can form on the treacherous edge of a supermassive black hole. When a cloud of gas swirls towards a black hole, they say, a combination of complex forces push some parts of the cloud into a disk that orbits the black hole at a safe distance, allowing stars to be born in the gas.

The researchers developed a simulation that demonstrates how clouds of gas can be captured by massive black holes to form eccentric disks, which then fragment to become a necklace of massive stars…. Their findings are in accordance with actual observations in our Milky Way galaxy that indicate the presence of a massive black hole, surrounded by an elliptical necklace of massive stars [Telegraph].

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News of two spectacular failures involving NASA hardware have giving the space agency a bad publicity week. First, the agency quietly released photos of a crash during a test of the parachute landing system for the Orion crew capsule, the next-generation craft that will replace the Space Shuttle. Then, this morning, NASA announced that a suborbital rocket built by the private contractor Alliant Techsystems (ATK) had to be destroyed during a failed launch. The rocket was carrying two NASA hypersonic experiments.

In the first fiasco, the mock-up of the Orion capsule crashed into the Arizona desert because of one faulty parachute. The good news: All but one of 18 parachutes inflated. The bad news: That 18th one was responsible for orienting the mock-up for a safe landing…. The space agency said it was torn and didn’t inflate properly [Scientific American]. This caused the other parachutes to inflate while the mock-up was going too fast; a NASA video shows that they inflated correctly but immediately tore away from the capsule, sending the mock-up tumbling towards the ground. In a classic understatement, NASA declared that the the result was a landing that “severely damaged the mock-up” [Wired News].

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A mouse’s nose has a cluster of specialized cells that respond to the chemical signals sent out by fellow mice that are in distress, researchers report, meaning that mice can literally smell fear. A lump of nerve cells in the nose tip called the Grueneberg ganglion responds to the “fear pheromones” of imperiled creatures, sending a signal straight to the brain. As Grueneberg ganglia are known to exist in rodents, cats, apes, and humans, researchers say it’s likely that the cells perform the same function in all mammals.

In a new study, researchers dosed water dishes with mouse alarm pheromones, and put the dishes in cages with both normal mice and mice whose ganglia had been removed. The contrast was very striking, [lead researcher Marie-Christine] Broillet said. “The normal mouse immediately gets scared and goes to the corner of the box and freezes,” she said. But mice without the ganglia carried on as before, seemingly unaware of the danger signals. Both groups were able to sniff out cookies hidden in their cages, however, suggesting the altered group’s sense of smell was otherwise unaffected [National Geographic News].

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Two years after receiving a dramatic face transplant, a Chinese man who was mauled by bear can eat, drink, and talk normally, doctors reported. Another patient, a Frenchman who suffered from a rare genetic disease that deforms the face, received a similar transplant one year ago and can now smile and blink, proving that the brain is restoring facial nerve connections.

Despite recurrent episodes of tissue rejection in the first year after their transplants, neither man had psychological problems accepting their new faces and have been able to rejoin society [Reuters]. Doctors say that the successes with these two men, who are only the second and third people to ever receive the operation, suggest that the procedure is safe and could one day become routine. “There is no reason to think these face transplants would not be as common as kidney or liver transplants one day,” said Dr. Laurent Lantieri, one of the French doctors [AP].

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People who say they’re undecided on a hot political topic may already have made up their minds; they just haven’t consciously realized it yet. A clever new study that measured unconscious positive and negative associations indicates that most undecided voters have already formed a preference for one position or candidate.

Experts say the findings may help explain why political polls can be so off-base, and why some people make up their minds in the voting booth with little sense of why they pulled the lever yeah or nay, blue or red [The New York Times]. Pollsters and politicians who think that undecided voters can still be swayed either way should take note, says lead researcher Bertram Gawronski.

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Researchers have found specialized receptors on the tongues of mice that detect calcium, leading them to hypothesize that humans have the calcium-dedicated receptors, too. It may be time to add calcium to the types of tastes — sweet, sour, salty, bitter and savory — that can be detected by humans [HealthDay News].

But in another twist, most mice don’t like the taste, lead researcher Michael Tordoff says. Tordoff and his colleagues gave 40 different strains of mice a choice: They could drink water or a calcium-rich liquid. Most preferred water once they tried both. There was, however, one exception—a mouse strain called PWK actually preferred the calcium-enriched liquid. Those mice, it turned out, had a different version of genes that are responsible for taste receptors on the tongue [Scientific American].

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New York City Mayor Mike Bloomberg made news yesterday when he proposed perching windmills on top of the city’s skyscrapers and bridges, and building windfarms off the coasts of Queens and Brooklyn. The move would make the city less dependent on the national energy grid, he said, and would also express the city’s commitment to renewable energy. As Bloomberg put it: “I would think that it would be a thing of beauty if, when Lady Liberty looks out on the horizon, she not only welcomes new immigrants to our shores, but lights their way with a torch powered by an ocean wind farm” [Washington Post].

However, the day after the announcement, experts are expressing numerous doubts over the plan’s feasibility. Skyscrapers would have to be designed — or retrofitted at great cost — to accommodate the extra weight, vibration and swaying of the turbines. Insurers would have to be persuaded that turbines are worth the risk. And New York is not a particularly windy city, so a few buildings facing New York Harbor might be the only sites that make sense [The New York Times]. And while new, smaller, eggbeater-shaped windmills don’t pose the same major construction hurdles, they may not produce enough electricity to make them worth the cost.

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