By Smitha Mundasad

Sensors that could be implanted in the body to collect data about fracture healing are being developed by Turkish and American researchers.

“More than 10 per cent of fractures do not heal properly, but doctors are not able to see the bones healing, instead they have to make educated guesses,” said Emre Unal, a nanotechnologist at Bilkent University in Turkey.

X-ray of fractured femur. Image credit: Smitha Mundasad

In experimental models, sensors are applied to metal plates, similar to ones used by surgeons to fix fractures in place. The wireless sensors can then pick up information on the strain applied to them.

The nanotechnologists hypothesise that, over time, as bones heal and patients start to become mobile, less strain will be detected by the sensors as more will be taken up by the healing bone. When fully developed, they suggest, a doctor could monitor strain data over time to check whether a fracture is healing as expected. This important information could be obtained without scans and invasive procedures.

Experiments are currently taking place on sheep metatarsals in the US, which show promising results.

There are still, however, many barriers that need to be overcome if this is to become a clinically useful tool. “Sensors will need to be made of biocompatible material, and tests will have to take place on human bones,” explained Unal.

“Nanotechnological advances are set to make a huge contribution to medicine,” said Mohan, a Bristol surgeon.

Related posts:

1. Hold homeopaths to account
2. Pensioners defend their health and welfare state

By Tushna Commissariat

The illustrious Hubble Space Telescope (HST) recently celebrated its 20th anniversary, bringing to light one of the most celebrated and accomplished man-made scientific instruments. On April 24 this year, the HST officially completed 20 years in orbit, making it the most successful venture that NASA and the ESA have embarked upon.

The iconic Hubble image: the Pillars of Creation. Image credit: NASA, ESA, M. Livio and the Hubble 20th Anniversary Team (STScI)

On 24 April 1990, the Space Shuttle and crew of STS-31 launched the NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope into a low-Earth orbit. What followed was an epic era of the HST collecting some of the most fantastic images ever seen of the entire universe. Its many discoveries have aided and abetted astronomy, astrophysics and cosmology over the years, giving us visual proof for many things that were merely theoretical in the past. It wasn’t always a smooth curve, with the primary mirror being out of focus within a few weeks from launch, broken equipment, and a Space Shuttle rescue/repair mission that was cancelled. There was even talk of not reparing equipment a few times but the Hubble team of engineers, scientists and astronauts from NASA and ESA both proved time and time again that the HST had a lot more to give. To date, Hubble has looked at over 30,000 celestial objects. Its vast archives include over half a million pictures. The most recent renovation was carried out in May 2009, making the telescope 100 times more powerful than when it was launched.

Image celebrating HST 20th Anniversary: Image of the Carina Nebula. Image credit: NASA, ESA, M. Livio and the Hubble 20th Anniversary Team (STScI)

As a part of the celebrations, NASA, ESA and the Space Telescope Science Institute (STScI) decided on commemorating the date with a stunning new image. The Hubble anniversary image highlights a small portion of one of the largest observable regions of starbirth in the Galaxy, the Carina Nebula. Towers of cool hydrogen interwoven with dust ascend from the wall of the nebula. The scene is rather evocative of Hubble’s 1995 iconic image – “Pillars of Creation” taken by Jeff Hester and Paul Scowen .This image captures the top of a pillar of gas and dust, three light-years tall, which is being eaten away by the brilliant light from nearby bright stars. The pillar is also being pushed apart from within, as infant stars buried inside it fire off jets of gas that can be seen streaming from towering peaks like arrows sailing through the air.

Another very interesting aspect of the celebration is the Hubble Pop Culture contest, being conducted by the spanking new European website for HST. It calls to people from all over the world who have enjoyed Hubble images over the years to search for the images that have made their way into culture and arts, as seen in everyday life.

Further shots of the Carina Nebula; details of the 'Cosmic Pinnacle' shown. Image credit: NASA, ESA, M. Livio and the Hubble 20th Anniversary Team (STScI)

Also, Hubble fans can post a Facebook message or use the Twitter hashtag #hst20 or get onto the Hubble website and go to the “Messages to Hubble” page. There they can add their own messages or read selections from other messages. Fan messages will be stored in the Hubble data archive along with the telescope’s many terabytes of science data. The Hubble team hope to show future scientists just how much the telescope impacted our world and showed us, with extreme clarity, the awesome beauty of our universe.

Related posts:

1. How to build a star
2. Spying on the neighbours
3. Physics Round up

By Paul Rodgers

“What do you think the impact of the internet will be?” asked the editor of New Scientist during a job interview I had there in the mid-1990s. It was my cue to expound on Marshall McLuhan’s theories about “the media is the message” and my own about how the internet would change the way we work. When I paused for breath, the editor said: “It’s just a fad.” So much for that job.

It isn’t a fad, and it has changed the way we work. This was drilled home today (18 May ’10) in a seminar with blogger Ed Yong, author of Not Exactly Rocket Science. Yong was talking about the use of links and their importance in modern journalism, providing transparency and ensuring accuracy. It got me thinking.

Ed Yong: Not hyperlinking produces a strawman fallacy. Picture credit: The people from the Tango! Project

When I started as a journalist, almost all of the information that went into my stories came from interviewing people, with perhaps a bit of background from the cuttings file (a physical folder with cut out bits of the newspaper stuck to sheets of A4). Of the information I collected during a day, I would discard 80 per cent because it was irrelevant, repeated or just didn’t fit the story I was writing.

Now when I start to work on a story, my first stop is Google, and I’m quickly wallowing in thousands of times as much information as I could possibly use. Gathering information is easier, filtering it harder. When you’re interviewing someone, you can ask specific questions and interrupt them if they meander. If you get much of your information online, you have to be good at refining your search terms, fast at skim reading or both.

Among other techniques I’ve tried to manage this flood with are printing out documents and using a highlighter or copying long web pages into Word so that I can search them for keywords. But I almost invariably end up with a couple of dozen tabs open on my desktop by the time I start writing. Wading through all this material leaves me less time to write, and less time to check.

The last piece I co-wrote, about the WHO reaction to swine flu, was almost immediately attacked online by Gimpy for not providing evidence to back up its assertions. My initial reaction to this was: “Tough, it’s a newspaper article not an academic journal. We don’t do footnotes and we don’t have the blogger’s luxury of links. And we’re under much greater pressure to make our body text interesting.”

But then Yong chose an Indy story to illustrate his point about old-journalism’s lack of links. Tim Luckhurst began his piece by setting out his unnamed opponents’ argument. I saw this as a rhetorical device, common among the commentariat. Yong saw it as a straw man fallacy. Either way, it was weaker than if the writer had been specific.

What hit me, though, was that the piece Yong showed us was the online version. So was the version of the WHO article attacked by Gimpy. Why don’t the web versions of these articles have links? One of my fellow students said that at the Financial Times, where he’s doing an internship, all stories are written as if for the internet, with links. This makes sense.

I’ve resolved that from now on this is how I’m going to work too, even for stories that never make it online. It will at least help me deal with the flood, if not the critics.

Related posts:

1. Hijackers can frame the innocent in Digital Economy Act

By Gulnura Toralieva

Science in Kyrgyzstan will soon die, because of a corruptive system, lack of financial support and poor coverage of science, says Dmitry Milko, a scientist and member of the Academy of Sciences of Kyrgyzstan.

The rush for fake degrees, and the corrupt schemes for obtaining them, has made Kyrgyz science be represented by people who do not know a school programme, according to Milko. “If you ask today’s people that have a doctorate in biology a question from elementary school, they will not know the answer because they bought their degree. Everyday I see white envelopes with money giving to people who can give you such a degree. It is a reason why the quantity of people with doctorates has raised more that three times since the collapse of the Soviet Union. One might think that it is because more people start to do science but it is a ridiculous suggestion”.

Coat of arms of the Soviet Union, after it collapsed the number of doctorate degrees increased rapidly.

Most of the scientists in Kyrgyzstan have come to a very elderly age. They used to do science 25-30 years ago, and now they do not read books and magazines, only rest on the laurels, Milko says. “Very old academics create a very bad image of science in Kyrgyzstan. People think we do nothing and can not even move. Science is perceived as something stagnant and regressive and even dying. Most of them only think about their children and grandchildren to obtain degrees thankful to their authority.” Also, today’s scientists often plagiarise the works of scientists made many years ago.

Another problem is the lack of financing of science. The laboratories of the Academy of Science in Kyrgyzstan have no electronic microscope. “We haven’t done scientific expeditions for a long time in our laboratories. Our library is so poor that we can not afford to subscribe to scientific journals. We used to read them with three-year delays. Our technical equipment is outdated. Most of the scientists in the country work only for their ideas, not for money. Here we are all enthusiasts who do whatever they can do working in such conditions”.

The journalists are also not interested in reporting on science, and if they do, it is usually very unprofessional, Milko says. “The journalists have no skills to adapt scientific language; they mostly use press releases and report on events rather than analysing results of research we’ve made. Scientists give approximately five interviews per year. They think science is boring, not interesting and not important for the public. The journalists also neglect provinces and focus only on the capital,” Milko added.

Related posts:

1. Lack of climate change media coverage in Kyrgyzstan
2. Indira Zhakipova on the environment: it is up to journalists to make things happen
3. Environmental coverage not priority, says leading Kyrgyz journalist

By Aine Gormley

The Digital Economy Act (DEA), which will come into effect over the next 12 months, will make the targeting of internet users who breach copyright laws more likely. But flaws in technology that allow criminals to hijack Internet connections may wrongly force service suspensions and fines on innocent users.

Currently, it is the copyright holders who must uncover the identity of those who breach their copyrights. If a user offers a song or film for free, through peer-to-peer file sharing, the unique address of their Internet connection, or Internet provider (IP) address, is visible. The copyright holders then have to obtain a court order for the Internet service provider (ISP) to identify the customer.

A peer-to-peer system of nodes

Under the DEA, an ISP must issue warning letters to suspected infringers, suspend Internet connection to repeat infringers, and may be criminally liable to a maximum of £50,000.

BitTorrent, one of the most common peer-to-peer file sharing protocols, said: “As a result [of the DEA] everybody will have to stop online sharing, providing the entertainment industry with the possibility to net billions.”

Andrew Heaney, telecommunications provider TalkTalk’s director of strategy, said: “What the Digital Economy Bill proposes is to place a burden of responsibility on the person owning the internet connection.”

Despite the fact that often more than one person uses the same IP address; the most computer savvy copyright thieves can cover their tracks by hijacking other connections. This has wrongly identified hundreds of people, according to Deborah Prince, the head of Legal Affairs at Which?, a consumer advocacy organisation.

File sharing has become a serious problem for the music and film industry. The new act will ensure the ISP takes responsibility to stop copyright theft, and aims to stimulate the UK’s digital economy. Thus 189 out of 236 MPs passed the bill on 8 April .

It has been dubbed as the right idea, but wrong approach. “You have to prove it wasn’t you who pirated that film, otherwise you risk being disconnected,” Heaney told the Guardian.

Prince added, “We urge the estimated five million people in the UK who have unsecured wireless networks to secure their connections immediately. This will stop them from being wrongly blamed for any illegal activity.”

Related posts:

1. Linking of the future
2. Birds on film – the unlikely new Internet superstars!

By Tiffany Stecker

Linking offshore wind turbines together could help make wind energy more reliable, says a study published in the 5 April issue of the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.

Despite abundant wind power resources offshore, wind turbines cannot provide a steady stream of power, due to changes and fluctuations in wind direction and strength. However, wind power output can be made more consistent if turbines are located in places that take advantage of regional weather patterns. Connecting wind power generators on a common power line also helps with regularity, researchers found.

Wind Turbine

“Making wind-generated electricity more steady will enable wind power to become a much larger fraction of our electric sources,” said lead author Willett Kempton, professor of marine policy at the University of Delaware in the US, and director of the Center for Carbon-free Power Integration.

The researchers studied five years of wind monitoring data from 11 stations along the American East Coast.They estimated output from a hypothetical five-megawatt offshore turbine. The team also explored the seasonal effects on power output.

“A north-south transmission geometry fits nicely with the storm track that shifts northward or southward along the U.S. East Coast on a weekly or seasonal time scale,” said researcher Brian Colle.

The researchers found that when a power line connected each site, the overall power output was evened out. Maximum or minimum output was rare.

Currently, no wind turbines are located in U.S. waters, although projects have been proposed.¹

Value of species status gauged with ‘biodiversity barometer’

Scientists have calculated that it would cost US$60m (£39m) to learn about the conservation status of millions of species, some that have not yet been identified.

Experts from the International Union for the Conservation of Nature and Conservation International published their article “The Barometer of Life” in Science. “Our knowledge about species and extinction rates remains very poor, and this has negative consequences for our environment and economy,” said Simon Stuart, chair of IUCN’s Species Survival Commission.

Almost 48,000 species have been assessed on the IUCN Red List, costing about $4m (£2.6m) each year.

Only 1.9 million species have been identified in the world, though the estimated number of species is believed to be between 10 and 20 million.²

Climate funding tripled before financial crisis hit

Philanthropic donations for climate change initiatives grew threefold in 2008 from the previous year, according to a study conducted by the Foundation Center in New York.

Donations jumped from US$240m (£155.2m) in 2007 to $897m (£580m). The  top donor was the William and Flora Hewlett Foundation, of printer manufacturer fame. The foundation gave almost $550m (£355.7m) to the ClimateWorks Foundation, which seeks to reduce emissions in the sectors with the highest carbon footprints.

The remaining 267 foundations gave a total of $348.7m (£225.6m)– a 45 per cent increase over the total value of donations in 2007.

The 2007 Design To Win report issued by California Environmental Associates states that charities will need to provide approximately $800m (£517.8m) annually to implement the necessary strategies to address climate change.  Since the financial crisis hit in late 2008, overall foundation funding has been strained, a trend the Foundation Center expects to continue through 2010.

Tortoises in trouble

Madagascar’s radiated tortoise may become extinct in the next 20 years, say biologists, due to exploitation for food and animal trafficking.

A team of biologists from the Turtle Survival Alliance (TSA) and Wildlife Conservation Society (WCS) surveyed the country’s southern spiny forest. These surveys showed areas once abundant with tortoises now devoid of the species. Local residents also spoke of poachers taking away truckloads of tortoises for meat markets. Poaching camps, with the remains of thousands of radiated tortoises, were also found.

“The rate of hunting of radiated tortoises is similar to the hunting pressure on American bison during the early 19th century, where they were nearly hunted to extinction when they once numbered in the tens of millions,” said Brian D. Horne, turtle conservation coordinator for the Wildlife Conservation Society’s Species Program.

1. Kempton, W., Pimenta, F., Veron, D., & Colle, B. (2010). Electric power from offshore wind via synoptic-scale interconnection Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, 107 (16), 7240-7245 DOI: 10.1073/pnas.0909075107
2. Stuart, S., Wilson, E., McNeely, J., Mittermeier, R., & Rodriguez, J. (2010). The Barometer of Life Science, 328 (5975), 177-177 DOI: 10.1126/science.1188606

Related posts:

1. Want to discover a new species? Try your local pond
2. Industrial agriculture one of main causes for biodiversity loss
3. Holiday cruises are secret weapon against climate change

By Ian Randall

An emergency helicopter is being made that will be able to explore American cities in the wake of potential nuclear attacks.

The automated aircraft, developed by engineering students at Virginia Tech University in the US, will be capable of recording radioactivity levels and surveying damage.

Kevin Kochersberger, a research associate professor with the Virginia Tech College of Engineering and director of the Virginia Tech Unmanned Systems Laboratory, and the autonomous helicopter. Picture credit - Virginia Tech

The team hopes that the device will never be needed. “It’s for a worst-case scenario,” said the leader of the project at the Virginia Tech Unmanned Systems Laboratory, Kevin Kochersberger.

The device, which developers expect will be ready for use in the next three years, is intended to aid military investigators in the potential event of a nuclear attack on a city.

Capable of being directed to radioactive sources of its own accord by specially written flight-control software, the helicopter can be easily outfitted with one of a number of “plug-and-play” devices to perform specific functions. For example it can be set up to detect radiation levels or film footage of the disaster area.

One of the devices is a stereo camera that is capable of creating three-dimensional images of the terrain beneath the helicopter. This could be used to interpret the exact nature of a detonation.

The navigation systems have already been tested in the field. The aircraft has successfully located a planted source of radiation at Kentland Farm, a few miles from the Virginia Tech campus. The trials were overseen by representatives from the Department of Defense, who came to see the craft being put through it’s paces.

Another package that can be attached to the helicopter is quite unique: a small, retractable robot can be lowered to the ground to collect evidence from the danger area. The robot, which is designed to be completely waterproof, will also have a small vacuum device to collect dust, in addition to the ability to recover larger objects.

A mechanical engineering student who is working on the team, Michael Rose said: “The robot is expected to easily manoeuvre any terrain, including expected bomb craters, as part of its investigation.”

The machine, which is a re-engineered Yamaha unmanned RMAX helicopter, is around 1.8 metres (6 feet) long and weighs around 90 kilograms (200 pounds).

By Aine Gormley

The border between Shoreditch and the City of London was showered with ash this morning after a fire took hold of a restaurant and office block at about 0400 GMT.

More than 100 fire-fighters arrived in 20 fire engines to tackle the flames at the four-storey building on Tabernacle Street in London’s financial district. The thick smoke could be seen as far away as Liverpool Street Station and Hackney.

London Fire Commissioner, Ron Dobson said, “This was a complicated fire, spreading rapidly through different premises and onto a bitumen-covered roof, creating huge plumes of smoke across the city and presenting very difficult firefighting conditions for the crews attending.”

Bitumen, used in roofing tar, is mostly composed of polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons (PAHs). Some of the PAHs emitted from buring bitumen are carcinogenic to humans. Research has further shown that exposure to bitumen fumes and aerosols may contribute to DNA damage.

“This incident yet again highlights the need for our fire safety work to prevent the fire risk and disruption these incidents have on our capital,” Mr Dobson added.

By Joseph Milton

That’s not fair

Overt inequality is distasteful to most of us and social scientists have long suggested that humans dislike perceived unfairness, based on behavioural and anthropological evidence. Now, for the first time, research published in Nature shows that neurons – brain cells- involved in the brain’s reward circuitry directly respond to the fairness of a situation.

John O’Doherty’s team at the California Institute of Technology monitored neural responses in the striatum and prefrontal cortex of participants who were paired up to take part in a monetary game.
One participant in each pair was given more money than the other. Both were aware of the disparity.

The team then selectively handed out more money, and found that neuronal activity was greater in the ‘high-pay’ people when money was given to the ‘low-pay’ person rather than to themselves. The opposite pattern of activity was seen in the low-pay participants.

Scent hormone vital for bonding identified

A key hormone which allows animals to form bonds with others through smell has been identified by researchers at The University of Edinburgh.

Vasopressin helps the brain differentiate between familiar and new scents, allowing animals to establish strong bonds. Many scientists think a failure in this recognition system in humans may prevent people from developing deep emotional bonds with others. A lack of scent based bonding could be at the root of conditions in humans such as some forms of autism and social phobia.

The study, published in the journal Nature, suggests that when the hormone fails to function, animals are unable to recognise other individuals from their scent.

The researchers reached their conclusion by studying rats. They placed an adult rat in an enclosure with a baby rat and left them to sniff each other.

After a short separation, they placed the baby back in the adult’s enclosure, together with an unknown baby. Adult rats which lacked vasopressin failed to recognise the familiar baby.

Google take-away

In the wake of Google’s spat with the Chinese government, Nature’s news team surveyed scientists in China to find out how much they rely on Google – and what the consequences would be if they lost access to the search engine.

More than three-quarters of the scientists quizzed said they use Google as the primary search engine for their research. Over 80 per cent use the search engine to find academic papers; close to 60 per cent use it to get information about scientific discoveries or other scientists’ research programmes; and more than half use the literature search Google Scholar.

Eighty four per cent of the scientists who responded to Nature’s survey said their research would be “somewhat or significantly” hampered by losing access to Google and 78 per cent said that international collaborations would be affected to the same degree.

One Chinese scientist said: “Research without Google would be like life without electricity.”

The full survey results are online at www.go.nature.com/FJ6QTm

Gas-giant losing atmosphere to star

A recently discovered extrasolar planet is losing its atmosphere to its host star, according to a paper published in Nature this week.
A team at Peking University in Beijing analysed WASP-12b, a gas-giant planet larger than Jupiter. The planet is orbiting very close to its star, and has a surprisingly large radius. Although WASP-12b is strongly heated by its host star, this energy source is not sufficient to explain the planet’s inflated size.

The team, led by Shu-lin Li, suggest that WASP-12b’s close orbit subjects it to extremely large tidal forces. These forces are spread throughout the body of the planet, providing an energy source for the planet’s large volume. The authors infer that WASP-12b’s atmosphere is escaping the planet’s gravitational field, and flowing towards the host star.

Clipping the wings of dengue and malaria

An estimated 50–100 million new dengue fever infections occur each year in tropical countries, and improved control of the mosquito species which carries the disease could save many lives.

Now a team of scientists have developed genetically modified strains of Aedes aegypti, the mosquito which carries dengue. The modified male mosquitoes carry a gene which interferes with wing growth.

Research led by Guoliang Fu of the University of Oxford, and published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (PNAS), suggests releasing the GM male mosquitoes to mate with females. The resulting female offspring would then be born with the gene limiting wing growth.

The team estimates the new breed could sustainably suppress the native mosquito population in six to nine months.

The same technique could be used in the future to tackle mosquitoes that spread malaria.

Related posts:

1. Accidental discovery could help eradicate malaria

By Tiffany Stecker

The launch of CryoSat-2 , the first ever satellite designed to measure the thickness of polar ice sheets, did not happen.

This news comes as a particular disappointment. The European Space Agency (ESA) -backed mission follows a failed attempt to launch the original CryoSat mission in 2005.

Photo credit: ESA/W. Simpson

But just six days before the 25 February launch date, the reins were pulled once again. Technicians from Yuzhnoye, the manufacturer of CryoSat-2, decided that the fuel tank capacity and fuel gauge margins were not optimal for launching the satellite 700km into space.

“You know when you’re driving, and the fuel gauge shows that you are running out, but there is still enough fuel left, you’re touching in the red zone?” asked Dr Richard Francis, project manager for the mission. In this case, the crew deemed that fuel margin, or “red zone”, too narrow.

To create a larger margin, technicians will change the fuel mixture to a leaner formula to run more efficiently, said Dr Francis.

“The satellite is still safe, this is the important factor,” he said.

CryoSat-2 is designed to emit radar beams that ricochet off the surface of the ice, as well as ocean water surface. The difference in echo between the two is used to assess the thickness of the ice. While the ESA has mapped the extent of ice sheets for more than 15 years, the thickness of ice has never been mapped from space. Data on thickness would further understanding of changes in ice structure in relation to climate change.

On site in Baikonur, Kazakhstan, and at the ESA’s European Spacecraft Operations Centre in Darmstadt, Germany, the mood was somber.

“As you can imagine, the news went down like a lead balloon here,” stated CryoSat campaign manager Bill Simpson on the ESA’s online launch diary.

The ESA hopes to finally launch the satellite four weeks from the original launch date, although no official announcement has been made. A team of experts will meet this week in Ukraine, where Yuzhnoye is based, to discuss the course of action to repair the satellite.

The 2005 failure was caused by a missing command from the onboard flight control system. When the main engine cut-off was to occur, the command was lost as the engine continued to operate until it ran out of fuel. Thus, the two parts of the satellite did not separate as planned, and the entire satellite crashed close to the North Pole.

More than four years later, the project has bloated to approximately €250m (£220m), according to Dr Duncan Wingham, lead investigator for the mission and professor of climate physics at University College London.

Yuzhnoye is unable to give a figure on the cost of reformulating CryoSat-2 before the next planned launch, said Oleg Ventskovsky, a representative from the company’s Brussels, Belgium office. He assured that the company would absorb all costs incurred. ESA is funded by European Union member states who contribute a percentage of their Gross Domestic Product (GDP) to the agency.

CryoSat was the first mission in the ESA’s Earth Explorers programme to be selected in 1999. Two other satellites have already been launched as part of the programme: the Gravity field and steady-state Ocean Circulation Explorer (GOCE) mission [ GOCE] to improve models of the Earth’s gravity fields was launched on 17 March last year, and the Soil Moisture and Ocean Salinity (SMOS) mission to measure moisture and salinity levels was launched on 2 November.

“Those of us who went through the failure the first time around are feeling a little bit nervous this time,” said Dr Wingham in an interview before the delay. “But I do hope that we don’t have to wait another five years to get this mission into space.”

Related posts:

1. Eye in the sky
2. Hitchhiker’s Guide to the X-Ray Galaxy