Paul

By Erik Stokstad, ScienceNOW------------ Most cases of rabies in Latin America are caused by vampire bats, which bite victims at night and feed on their blood. In addition to infecting humans, the bats also do more than $30 million worth of damage to livestock each year. Governments have typically responded by culling bat colonies, but new research suggests that this approach doesn’t work and might be backfiring. - Paul

Scientists have produced the most precise measurement of a fundamental particle called the W boson. It will help them search for the elusive Higgs boson, the discovery of which would be an epoch-making event. http://bit.ly/ybyqCj - Paul

The sensational result that neutrinos can travel faster than the speed of light may be undone by nothing more than a simple mechanical error. Scientists from the OPERA collaboration at the Gran Sasso National Laboratory in Italy have “identified two issues that could significantly affect the reported result,” wrote OPERA spokesman Antonio Ereditato in an email. The first issue is a faulty connection of the fiber-optic cable bringing the GPS signal to the experiment’s master clock. The experiment’s GPS may also have been providing the wrong timestamps during synchronization between events. “These two issues can modify the neutrino time of flight in opposite directions,” Ereditato wrote. Back in September 2011, OPERA researchers found bunches of neutrinos arriving 60 nanoseconds earlier than should be possible if they were traveling at less-than-light speeds. The neutrinos traveled 450 miles from experiments at CERN near Geneva, Switzerland. The findings seemed to contradict Einstein’s... more... - Paul

Welcome to the new Extremo Files* blog! In this space, I plan to highlight the latest work on the forefront of astrobiology — “the study of the origin, evolution, distribution, and future of life in the universe,” according to NASA — and other extreme feats of scientific exploration. Astrobiology has the “-ology” suffix suggestive of a codified science, but things aren’t quite so black and white. For one thing, it’s tough to study life beyond Earth when we haven’t found it, and because of this inconvenient detail, astrobiology, for all its extraterrestrial grandiosity, is actually a very Earth-centric field. We tend to study other worlds by analogy, using the most extreme sites our planet has to offer as a stunt double for what we think are the most biologically relevant sites in the universe. Through this lens, the dry volcanic hills of the Atacama Desert become Mars and the ice-capped lakes of Antarctica become Europa. After all, the thinking goes, if microbes can survive bone-dry... more... - Paul

There is a great argument to be made for Star Trek's Spock, as series. But he got us thinking about all the other smart, scary, sexy, silly and sinister scientists we love to watch, so we've compiled a list (in no particular order) of our favorites. As always, we trust you'll let us know where we went wrong and whose absence offended you most. The original big-screen mad scientist, Rotwang was the diabolical genius in Fritz Lang's classic 1927 science fiction film Metropolis. Working in an underground lab festooned with Tesla coils, Rotwang creates a C3PO-like fembot in the image of his dead wife. The android goes on to pose as the leader of the city's oppressed working class, and incites a riot that plunges the future-city of Metropolis into darkness and chaos. During a rooftop struggle with the film's protagonist, Rotwang (spoiler warning) falls to his doom in the third act. But elements of his style -- wild shock of hair, insane scheming, black-gloved prosthetic hand --www.wired.com/wiredscience - Paul

Though people like to believe their convictions are purely rational, a growing body of research links political differences to deep-seated physiological traits. The latest such finding comes from a study of people who looked at gross images, such as a man eating earthworms. Viewers who self-identified as conservative, especially those opposing gay marriage, reacted with particularly deep disgust. The study “suggests that people’s physiological predispositions help to shape their political orientations,” wrote the researchers, who were led by University of Nebraska-Lincoln political scientists Kevin Smith and John Hibbing. “Disgust likely has an effect even without registering in conscious beliefs.” - Paul

The New Horizons spacecraft took some stunning images of Jupiter on its way out to Pluto. Famous for its Great Red Spot, Jupiter is also known for its regular, equatorial cloud bands, visible through even modest sized telescopes. The above image, horizontally compressed, was taken in 2007 near Jupiter's terminator and shows the Jovian giant's wide diversity of cloud patterns. On the far left are clouds closest to Jupiter's South Pole. Here turbulent whirlpools and swirls are seen in a dark region, dubbed a belt, that rings the planet. Even light colored regions, called zones, show tremendous structure, complete with complex wave patterns. The energy that drives these waves surely comes from below. New Horizons is the fastest space probe ever launched, has now passed the orbits of Saturn and Uranus and is on track to reach Pluto in 2015. - Paul

tables are turned: It’s the host rather than the parasite—and the things the Xenos vesparum fly larvae inside it lead it to do are at least as odd as any of the above. Brandon Keim at Wired describes the saga in all its bizarre detail. Particularly striking is the fact that the larvae make the wasps they live in disregard their spot in the strict wasp social order. While the infected wasps start out as workers, they spend all winter chowing down and hanging out with the queens of other colonies: - Paul

“The parasite is triggering a queen behavior, but you can’t say they’re really queenlike, because they’re not reproductive,” said [entomologist Fabio] Manfredini. Come spring, the real queens go off to prepare nests, but infected wasps stay behind, waiting. Inside them, gestation is nearly complete. Then, with exquisite timing, the wasps depart. Some search out foraging areas, leaving... more... - Paul

Read more at Discover Magazine - Paul

The iconic DeLorean Motor Company has weathered a stormy past, but it’s coming back with a vengeance by introducing an electric version of it gull-winged masterpiece. The company just rolled out a prototype DMC-12 Ev at the DMC Texas Open House – and it’s a retro-future dream machine. While it doesn’t run on fusion power (yet) it still has some sweet performance statistics like a top speed of 125 mph driven by a 260 horsepower electric motor. Hang on tight, because the first production model is due out in 2013. Read more: All-Electric DeLorean Car To Hit the Streets in 2013! | Inhabitat - Green Design Will Save the World - Paul

No link? - April Russo

Statins are widely prescribed to reduce levels of LDL, the “bad cholesterol,” a vital goal in stemming and preventing cardiovascular disease. But they don’t work for everybody, often for inexplicable reasons. Researchers now think some of the blame rests with gut bacteria, that influential yet mysterious group that occupies our bowels and outnumbers our cells 10 to one. In a study published this month in PLoS One, researchers took blood samples from 944 study participants prior to and after six weeks of treatment with a statin called simvastatin. They measured the levels of various bile acids, many of which are produced by gut bacteria and help metabolize fat by acting like detergents, allowing cholesterol to be dissolved and transported in the blood. The researchers found that people whose LDL levels dropped the most had significant quantities of three bile acids produced by a particular type of gut bacteria. Those who responded least to the statins had significantly higher levels of... more... - Paul

Environmental hazards sicken or kill millions of people — soot or smog in the air, for example, or pollutants in drinking water. But the most dangerous stuff happens where the food is made — in peoples' kitchens. That's according to the World Health Organization, which says that the smoke and gases from cooking fires in the world's poorest countries contribute to nearly two million deaths a year — that's more than malaria. Burning wood, crop waste, charcoal or dung does the damage, filling homes with smoke and blackening walls. It's women and children who suffer the most, because they are the ones tending the fires. But it's not that easy a problem to fix. Several scientists from the National Institutes of Health in Bethesda, Maryland are calling attention to the Global Alliance for Clean Cookstoves. It brings in celebrities, chefs and politicians to help create awareness for the need for cleaner fuels and better cookstoves. The technology is easy, but getting the stoves and cleaner... more... - Paul