At a tense congressional hearing yesterday, FBI Director Robert Mueller announced that an independent panel will review the scientific evidence that the FBI says proves government scientist Bruce Ivins’ guilt in the anthrax mailings of 2001. As Ivins killed himself in August before he could be indicted, the FBI has been forced to present much of its evidence to the public and has received criticism from some scientific experts and lawmakers who say the FBI hasn’t proved its case.
At the hearing, Senator Pat Leahy (who was a target of the anthrax attacks) told Mueller categorically that he simply does not believe that Ivins was the prime culprit if he was a participant at all, and said he is absolutely convinced that there were others involved in the preparation and mailing of the anthrax [Salon blog]. Leahy argued that the biodefense facility where Ivins worked, Ft. Detrick, didn’t have the capacity to produce the strain of anthrax found in the letter that was sent to him.
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A new psychological study has found that social exclusion made test subjects feel literally cold, and increased their preference for warm beverages and soup. It’s the latest finding from the field of embodied cognition, in which researchers have shown that the language of metaphor can activate physical sensations, and vice versa…. “We know that being excluded is psychologically painful,” said the lead author, Chen-Bo Zhong… “and here we found that it feels just like it’s described in metaphors,” like icy stare and frosty reception [The New York Times].
Researchers conducted two experiments in the study, which was published in the journal Psychological Science [article not yet online]. In the first, they divided 65 students into two groups. They asked the first group to recall a time when others left them out. The second group recalled a time when they were included by others. In the middle of this, purportedly in response to maintenance staff, they were asked to estimate the temperature of the room [WebMD]. They found that the students who had been remembering an emotionally painful moment of rejection estimated that the room was much colder than the other students.
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The House of Representatives passed an energy bill including a provision that will allow for more oil and gas drilling off U.S. coastlines, but the compromise measure doesn’t go far enough to please Republicans, and doesn’t include enough protections to mollify environmentalists. The bill would allow drilling as close as 50 miles from the coastline if adjacent states agree and 100 miles out no matter a state’s position [The New York Times].
The bill faces significant hurdles to becoming law: The Senate must vote on its own version of the energy bill, which is expected to place much more conservative limits on offshore drilling, then the two bills must be reconciled, and finally the finished product must be sent to the unwelcoming White House. President Bush, who has called for ending the offshore drilling bans, signaled he would veto the legislation if it reached his desk, arguing that it would stifle offshore oil development instead of increasing it [AP]. Lawmakers also have a strict time limit, as Congress is scheduled to adjourn on September 26.
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Our sun, which lies 26,000 light years from the center of the the Milky Way, may have been born in a different part of the galaxy and later migrated to its current position, about halfway towards the galaxy’s outer edge. A new study defies the conventional wisdom that stars spend their entire lifespans in the same galactic region, and calls into question astronomers’ theory that galaxies have certain fixed “habitable zones” where life is more likely to evolve.
“Our view of the extent of the habitable zone is based in part on the idea that certain chemical elements necessary for life are available in some parts of a galaxy’s disk but not others,” said [lead researcher] Rok Roskar…. “If stars migrate, then that zone can’t be a stationary place” [Astrobiology Magazine].
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During a celebration to mark the 100th anniversary of General Motors, the company unveiled a prototype of its long-awaited electric car, the Chevy Volt. Experts say the Volt, which is expected to hit showrooms in late 2010, has the potential to both revitalize the struggling car company and to change American’s expectations of what an automobile can do: GM has said that the Volt should be able to drive 400 miles on a full charge and a full tank. “We’re reinventing the automobile,” [GM executive Rick] Wagoner said…. GM has placed huge bets on the car, reportedly investing at least $500 million in its development [Los Angeles Times blog].
The Volt’s technology differs from the system used in Toyota’s hybrid Prius, which has two motors. The Volt will have only one electric motor, powered by its new battery, and will go up to 40 miles without using a drop of gas. For the nearly 80% of Americans who drive less than 40 miles a day, that would mean they could effectively eliminate gasoline from their lives. After 40 miles, the Volt’s gas engine switches on, but unlike the Prius’s, it doesn’t make the car move so much as an inch [Time]. Instead, the gas engine generates electricity to charge the car’s battery, allowing the driver to go several hundred more miles before either filling up the gas tank or plugging in the car.
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New health concerns have been raised about the plastic chemical bisphenol A (BPA); a study suggests that there is a link between high levels of exposure to BPA and an increased risk of heart disease and diabetes. While the new study doesn’t prove a cause and effect relationship, only a correlation, it is the first human survey to follow up on troubling findings from animal studies.
The chemical, which is often found in baby bottles, sports water bottles, and other non-recyclable containers, has gotten several waves of bad press in the past few months. A recent experiment showed that extremely high doses of the chemical damage monkeys’ brains, and other work in animals has suggested that BPA has the potential to disrupt normal hormone signalling by mimicking the natural hormone, oestrogen. Such studies have linked the chemical to a wide range of conditions, including low sperm count, altered fetal development, behavioural disorders in children and prostate cancer [Nature News].
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The debate over bushmeat, meat from wild animals like gorillas, elephants, and antelope in Central Africa, just got more complicated. While some environmentalists have argued that a strict hunting ban is the only way to save endangered animals, a new report from the non-profit Centre for International Forestry Research (CIFOR) argues that a blanket hunting ban would help neither the animals nor the people who depend on them for food.
However, bushmeat hunting also can’t continue at its current rate, the report states. “If current levels of hunting persist in Central Africa, bush meat protein supplies will fall dramatically, and a significant number of forest mammals will become extinct in less than 50 years” [Telegraph], says report author Robert Nasi. The best solution is to legalize some hunting while enacting tough regulations and enforcement, says CIFOR director Frances Seymour: “Criminalising the whole issue of bushmeat simply drives it underground. We need to decriminalise parts of this hunting and trade and give local communities the rights and incentives to manage these resources sustainably for their own benefit” [BBC News].
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NASA has announced that in 2014 a new spacecraft called MAVEN will settle into orbit around Mars, and will get to work trying to solve the mystery inherent in the thin atmosphere of the Red Planet. Mars once had a much denser atmosphere which allowed liquid water to swill across its surface, but much of the former went awol “as part of a dramatic climate change.” Doug McCuistion, director of the Mars Exploration Program, said: “The loss of Mars’ atmosphere has been an ongoing mystery. MAVEN will help us solve it” [The Register].
The $485 million mission will be led by a team from the University of Colorado. MAVEN (which stands for Mars Atmosphere and Volatile EvolutioN mission), will be the second mission of the space agency’s Mars Scout program, a recent push by the agency for smaller, lower-cost spacecraft. The first, the Phoenix, was launched in 2007 and is operating on the surface of Mars [Denver Post].
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A newly discovered ant from the Amazon rainforest is so strange that researchers have named it “the ant from Mars.” Found in Brazil, the ant has a pale body and no eyes, says [lead researcher] Christian Rabeling…. Its mouthparts stick out like sharp forceps and are longer than the rest of its head. Its DNA may be even more interesting. Genetic analysis puts the new ant so far from other species that it deserves its own subfamily [Science News].
Researchers named the subterranean ant Martialis heureka, which translates to “eureka ant from Mars,” because of the new species‘ odd morphology and because of their own excitement over finding it. Researchers say that a DNA analysis suggests that the M. heureka evolved earlier than any other living ant, and that it has changed little over 50 million years. “This discovery lends support to the idea that blind, subterranean predator ants arose at the dawn of ant evolution,” Rabeling said [LiveScience].
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Methane, a natural gaseous byproduct of both rotting garbage in landfills and raw sewage, is increasingly regarded as being valuable. Instead of allowing methane to float up into the atmosphere, waste companies are increasingly harnessing it for use as heating gas and as a means to produce electricity [San Francisco Chronicle blog]. It seems to be an alternative energy whose time has come: Methane landfill projects are already online in almost every state, and San Antonio has just signed on to become the first city to harvest methane from its sewage treatment facility.
Harvesting methane serves a two-fold purpose: If it is not captured, the E.P.A. says, landfill methane becomes a greenhouse gas at least 20 times more potent than carbon dioxide, the principal greenhouse gas, when it rises into the atmosphere. The agency estimates that landfills account for 25 percent of all methane releases linked to human activity. As a result, capturing methane at former and active landfills is a global housekeeping benefit as well as an important alternative energy niche [The New York Times].
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Astronomers think they have taken the first picture ever of a planet orbiting a star very similar to our own sun. However, the new planet itself appears to be quite different from our Earth. Located around 500 light-years from Earth, the planet in the snapshot is around eight times bigger than Jupiter, the biggest in our solar system and lies more than ten times further from its star than the sun does from Neptune [Telegraph]. Researchers were surprised to discover that the planet orbits at such a distance from its star, and say the discovery could upend accepted theories of planet formation.
The researchers say they’ll keep studying the object they spotted to confirm that the planet is in fact orbiting around the star, as opposed to the possibility, however unlikely, that the two objects just happen to lie in the same area of the sky at roughly the same distance from us. “Of course it would be premature to say that the object is definitely orbiting this star, but the evidence is extremely compelling,” [lead researcher David] Lafrenière said [SPACE.com].
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In an experiment that tested technology that could one day be used to transmit solar energy from satellites to Earth, researchers beamed solar energy from one Hawaiian island to another, across a distance of 92 miles. The $1 million experiment was sponsored by the Discovery Channel, which aired an episode about the technology on its Project Earth show on Friday.
The experiment was intended as a proof of concept for an ambitious proposal that calls for huge arrays of solar panels to orbit the Earth, collecting pristine solar radiation, free from the day/night cycles, weather and atmospheric effects that limit solar radiation down on the ground. The energy collected will be “beamed” down to power stations on the surface, either by microwave (or an alternative system, by laser) — and then distributed as normal power across the grid [Discovery Channel]. Backers of this space-based solar technology say the potential benefits are enormous; the non-profit National Space Society says that the sun puts out billions of times more energy than our planet’s population uses.
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The May earthquake in China‘s Sichuan province that killed 70,000 people may lead to further destruction. According to a new seismic study, the magnitude 7.9 earthquake in May increased the stress on nearby faults, and therefore heightened the risk of further quakes. Stress on the nearby Kunlun, Xianshuihe and Min Jiang faults has increased, they say, doubling the risk that one of them will unleash a magnitude 6.0 or 7.0 tremor in the next decade [Discovery News].
Those three nearby faults are now under more stress because of a domino-like effect where the movement of one piece of Earth’s crust forces another piece to move up, down and away, geophysicists reported. “One great earthquake seems to make the next one more likely, not less,” said [study coauthor] Ross Stein of the U.S. Geological Survey. “We tend to think of earthquakes as relieving stress on a fault. That may be true for the one that ruptured, but not for the adjacent faults” [Reuters].
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Almost 150 years since Charles Darwin published his ideas in The Origin of Species, a senior Anglican clergyman has written that the Church of England owes Darwin an apology for misunderstanding his theories of evolution. The church official, Reverend Malcolm Brown, was writing Monday on a church Web site launched to mark Darwin’s bicentenary next year. The Church of England says his statement reflects its position but does not constitute an official apology [AP].
The apology may be a bit late, but Brown wrote that it’s both relevant and necessary, as some religious groups continue to scoff at evolution. “Charles Darwin – 200 years from your birth (1809) the Church of England owes you an apology for misunderstanding you and, by getting our first reaction wrong, encouraging others to misunderstand you still,” he wrote on the Church of England website. “We try to practise the old virtues of ‘faith seeking understanding’ and hope that makes some amends” [The Independent].
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NASA is hard at work planning a long-term lunar outpost, and the agency now has a potential solution to the energy question: miniature nuclear power systems. This week, NASA announced that it’s planning to build prototypes and simulators that will be ready for testing in 2012 or 2013.
As a lunar settlement draws closer to reality–NASA‘s Constellation Program includes returning to the moon by 2020–is busy thinking through the practical details–like how to keep the generators running and the lights on. During the day, solar power is one obvious solution. But lunar nights can last up to 334 hours in some places, and even at the moon’s south pole, the sun never rises high. A fission surface power system would be able to produce power steadily even in harsh environments such as the Moon, or even Mars, without relying on sunlight [World Nuclear News].
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