Slashdot Mirror
Domain: nature.com
Stories and comments across the archive that link to nature.com.
Stories · 1,757
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Give Your Brain A Boost
jdray writes "This story covers research into increasing cognitive function by passing small currents through the frontal cortex. It won't be long before everyone is wearing little battery-operated headbands to work every day. Maybe the'll be the next great fashion statement in singles bars, where increased cognition would be a welcome change." -
How Infants Crack the Speech Code
scupper writes "Infants learn language with remarkable speed, but how they do it remains a mystery. New data shows that infants use computational strategies to detect patterns in language, according to UW's Dr. Patricia K. Kuhl in the Nature article "Early Language Acquisition: Cracking the Speech Code" [PMID: 15496861] Interesting excerpt from the article: 'There is evidence that infants analyse the statistical distributions of sounds that they hear in ambient language, and use this information to form phonemic categories. They also learn phonotactic rules -- language-specific rules that govern the sequences of phonemes that can be used to compose words.'" -
Stem Cells Treat Spinal Injuries and Brain Tumors
Neil Halelamien writes "At the annual Society for Neuroscience meeting this past weekend, some very exciting results (from experiments on rats and mice) were discussed regarding the potential for human embryonic stem cells to treat injured spinal cords, brain tumors, and Parkinson's. Besides the possible health benefits, this adds fuel to the discussions leading up to the US election and the US's current attempts to have the UN ban therapeutic cloning worldwide." -
Sun's Activity Levels Reconstructed
neutron_p writes "An international team of scientists has reconstructed the Sun's activity over the last 11 millennia and forecasts decreased activity within a few decades. The activity of the Sun over the last 11,400 years, i.e., back to the end of the last ice age on Earth, has now for the first time been reconstructed quantitatively. The scientists have analyzed the radioactive isotopes in trees that lived thousands of years ago. As scientists report in the current issue of the science journal Nature, one needs to go back over 8,000 years in order to find a time when the Sun was, on average, as active as in the last 60 years." -
Boosting Your Brain With Batteries
Bifurcati writes "Running a tiny current acrosss your head increases your verbal skills reports Nature News. 103 nervous volunteers received 2 thousandths of an amp and showed a 20% improval in a simple verbal test, compared to a control group (same setup, just no current in the wires). Somebody better buy the politicians a couple of car batteries..." -
Boosting Your Brain With Batteries
Bifurcati writes "Running a tiny current acrosss your head increases your verbal skills reports Nature News. 103 nervous volunteers received 2 thousandths of an amp and showed a 20% improval in a simple verbal test, compared to a control group (same setup, just no current in the wires). Somebody better buy the politicians a couple of car batteries..." -
A Truly Alive Virus
cyclop writes "Microbiologists are puzzled by the genome sequence of the giant Mimivirus. It seems this virus has even more genes than many bacteria, is able to synthesize its own proteins and therefore is, by definition, alive. 'We are seeing an organism here. There is DNA, RNA and plenty of proteins,' says Didier Raoult, who reports the work in this week's Science." -
Frame Dragging by Earth Reconfirmed
smooth wombat writes "After 11 years of watching the movements of two Earth-orbiting satellites, researchers found each is dragged by about 6 feet (2 meters) every year because the very fabric of space is twisted by our whirling world. The results, announced today, are much more precise than preliminary findings published by the same group in the late 1990s. The researchers say their result is 99 percent of the predicted drag, with an error of up to 10 percent. The details are reported in the Oct. 21 issue of the journal Nature." -
Humans Are Superorganisms
colonist writes "You are not completely human. You are a superorganism made up of human cells, fungi, bacteria and viruses. That's the view of scientists from Imperial College London and Astra Zeneca, published in Nature Biotechnology. Microbes in the gut can weigh up to one kilogram, forming the second largest metabolic 'organ'. Human cells and genes are outnumbered by microbial cells and genes. 'Understanding the man-microbe interaction is likely to be crucial in realising personalised medicine and healthcare in the future,' says the lead researcher." -
Dyslexic in English but not in Chinese
bmsleight writes "Research published in Nature and other sources has found that there is no one cause for dyslexia; rather, the causes vary between languages. The finding explains why one can be dyslexic in one language but not another language. Wow, time for me to learn Chinese." -
Dyslexic in English but not in Chinese
bmsleight writes "Research published in Nature and other sources has found that there is no one cause for dyslexia; rather, the causes vary between languages. The finding explains why one can be dyslexic in one language but not another language. Wow, time for me to learn Chinese." -
Swimming As Easy In Syrup As In Water
chthonicdaemon writes "Nature is running a story about scientists at the University of Minnesota who proved that swimming speed is not a large function of the viscosity of the liquid. To do this, they thickened the water in a pool with guar gum. Fun ensued. This is the type of thing that usually keeps to thought experiments. Interesting to see someone prove it." -
Swimming As Easy In Syrup As In Water
chthonicdaemon writes "Nature is running a story about scientists at the University of Minnesota who proved that swimming speed is not a large function of the viscosity of the liquid. To do this, they thickened the water in a pool with guar gum. Fun ensued. This is the type of thing that usually keeps to thought experiments. Interesting to see someone prove it." -
Online Science Policy Critique Of Kerry And Bush
museumpeace writes "David Appell, one of Techonology Review's bloggers, has posted a quick review of Nature Publishing Group's comparison of candidate positions on Science faulting both for various lame answers. That might save you the trouble of reading all the other coverage at NPG, and the more informative articles published by Science. But if you want a heads-up about which kinds of research will thrive or get the ax in the next four years, you might want to slog through "Kerry and Bush offer their views" . Both publications require registration or payment to access most of their content but the science policy debate is being aired out for free." -
Tuberculosis May Become A Global Threat Again
Iphtashu Fitz writes "The journal Nature Medicine is due to release a report today on how highly drug-resistant strains of tuberculosis are on the verge of becoming a global epidimic. Strains of TB that are highly resistant to antibiotics are becoming increasingly prevalent in places like Russia, eastern Europe, and China, and only small changes are required to make these strains start spreading quickly. Treatment for multiple-drug-resistant strains of TB requires a carefully monitored cocktail of drugs taken for months on end, a regimin that many, especially in poorer countries are unlikely to follow to completion. The strategy used by the World Health Organization to combat TB, the "directly observed treatment, short course" or DOTS, involves using trained health workers to watch patients take their long courses of drugs, since even a little carelessness could result in TB mutating into a more drug resistant form within the patient." Oh, Alexander Fleming ? where art thou now? -
Bush vs. Kerry on Science
chrisspurgeon writes "The science journal Nature put 15 questions to Senator Kerry and President Bush. Read the candidates' responses on topics such as stem cell research, greenhouse emissions, and manned spaceflight to Mars." -
Bush vs. Kerry on Science
chrisspurgeon writes "The science journal Nature put 15 questions to Senator Kerry and President Bush. Read the candidates' responses on topics such as stem cell research, greenhouse emissions, and manned spaceflight to Mars." -
Exceptional Seeing At Dome C in Antarctica
Michael Ashley writes "A paper published in Nature today reports on the exceptional astronomical seeing conditions at Dome C (Coral link) in Antarctica. Obtaining the data posed some significant technological challenges, given that Dome C is uninhabited over winter. The experiment was controlled by a PC/104 computer system that had to survive temperatures down to -85C, and supervise the generation of its own electricity using a jet-fuel powered stirling engine. The computer, running Linux, communicated with the outside world using an Iridium phone. The results are also covered in New Scientist, and the Sydney Morning Herald. Disclaimer: I'm a co-author." -
World Record: Four-Centimeter-Long Carbon Nanotube
colonist writes "University of California scientists at Los Alamos National Laboratory and chemists from Duke University have recently grown a four-centimeter-long, single-wall carbon nanotube (SWNT): a new world record. Previous SWNTs were a few millimeters long. Yuntian Zhu and his colleagues used a process called 'catalytic chemical vapor deposition' from ethanol (alcohol) vapor. From their abstract: 'Our results suggest the possibility of growing SWNTs continuously without any apparent length limitation.' Zhu: 'although this discovery is really only a beginning, the continued development of longer length carbon nanotubes could result in nearly endless applications. Actually, the potential uses for long carbon nanotubes are probably limited only by our imagination.'" -
Inflatable Spaceship Ready for Test
colonist writes "Nature reports that an inflatable re-entry vehicle could one day carry astronauts or robots to the surface of Earth or Mars. The heat shield (that can withstand 900 C) and the parachute are inflatable. The advantage of inflatable structures is weight: a 130 kg vehicle can carry about 200 kg of cargo back from the space station. The vehicle is made by Return and Rescue Space Systems." -
SETI Finds Interesting Signal
Several readers sent in notes about an interesting signal discovered by SETI. No real evidence of Someone Out There, but not fully explainable either. Another reader submits a blurb suggesting that aliens should send spacemail, not signals: "Rutgers electrical engineering professor, Christopher Rose, has an article on Nature magazine's cover today describing the most efficient way for our civilization to be discovered by aliens. On this question of better to 'write or radiate', his conclusions: better not to send radio transmission, when physical media like DNA on an asteroid can declare a terrestrial presence. Similar to what motivated Voyager scientists to attach a plaque for the outbound trip. Rose has some great information payload sizes as examples (like the entire information equivalent for our global genome fitting on a 100 pound laptop!)." -
SETI Finds Interesting Signal
Several readers sent in notes about an interesting signal discovered by SETI. No real evidence of Someone Out There, but not fully explainable either. Another reader submits a blurb suggesting that aliens should send spacemail, not signals: "Rutgers electrical engineering professor, Christopher Rose, has an article on Nature magazine's cover today describing the most efficient way for our civilization to be discovered by aliens. On this question of better to 'write or radiate', his conclusions: better not to send radio transmission, when physical media like DNA on an asteroid can declare a terrestrial presence. Similar to what motivated Voyager scientists to attach a plaque for the outbound trip. Rose has some great information payload sizes as examples (like the entire information equivalent for our global genome fitting on a 100 pound laptop!)." -
Transparent Aluminum Is Here
Alien54 writes "Scientists in the US have developed a novel technique to make bulk quantities of glass from alumina for the first time. (link includes a picture of samples) Anatoly Rosenflanz and colleagues at 3M in Minnesota used a "flame-spray" technique to alloy alumina (aluminium oxide) with rare-earth metal oxides to produce strong glass with good optical properties. The method avoids many of the problems encountered in conventional glass forming and could, say the team, be extended to other oxides (see also: A Rosenflanz et al. 2004 Nature 430 761). Scotty would be pleased." -
Five New Neptunian moons
cyclop writes "It's a new time of discoveries in the Solar System. Just when Cassini discovered two news moons on Saturn, old Earth-based astronomy strikes back by revealing five small bodies around Neptune. The faint moons seem to have eccentric and inclined orbits, and to have been captured by Neptune." -
Prions, Darwin's Friend
blamanj writes "Prions, the recently discovered bits of protein thought to be responsible for mad cow disease are turning up all over. It has been shown that prions change the behavior of yeasts, and may therefore offer a speedy way for yeast to evolve." -
3D Holograms Detect Fake Signatures
Roland Piquepaille writes "Several sources reported last week that a new technique that produces 3D holograms of handwriting could be used to detect fake signatures on checks, credit card receipts or other important handwritten documents. Here are pointers to Nature, Scientific American or BBC News Online. Instead of using 2D techniques to look at the sequence of pen strokes in a signature, this new method is based on 3D micro-profilometry which permits to translate the writing into an image showing dips and furrows of the sample so that anomalies can be detected. If you plan to imitate your spouse's signature, beware! Forensics have a new and very efficient tool. As an example, for the use of ballpoint pens on normal paper, the success rate was 100%. You'll find more details, references and pictures in this overview." -
Corals Adapt to Global Warming
Chuck1318 writes "Articles in Nature and New Scientist indicate that corals are more adaptable to global warming than previously thought. Large areas of coral reefs had been devastated by bleaching due to the loss of the coral animals' algae partner, which is sensitive to changes in water temperature. Some scientists had projected that coral reefs would all be gone in 20 to 30 years. Now it is found that a more heat-resistant strain of algae is able to colonize the bleached coral, returning them to life." -
Gene Therapy Turns Slackers Into Workaholics
DrLudicrous writes "According to a recent Reuters article, scientists have been able to cause monkeys to stop procrastinating by blocking the development of a dopamine receptor in the brain. The net result- the monkeys turned into workaholics. An article has appeared in the online version of Nature. Apparently, monkeys, just like human beings, tend to slack off on tasks until the very last minute. They become quite adept at judging how long they have till they absolutely must complete these tasks. The original article appears in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America. An additional blurb appears here courtesty of Science Blog." NIH has a press release. -
Gene Therapy Turns Slackers Into Workaholics
DrLudicrous writes "According to a recent Reuters article, scientists have been able to cause monkeys to stop procrastinating by blocking the development of a dopamine receptor in the brain. The net result- the monkeys turned into workaholics. An article has appeared in the online version of Nature. Apparently, monkeys, just like human beings, tend to slack off on tasks until the very last minute. They become quite adept at judging how long they have till they absolutely must complete these tasks. The original article appears in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America. An additional blurb appears here courtesty of Science Blog." NIH has a press release. -
Salmon Gives Birth To Trout.
mishmash writes "Researchers in Japan have created trout whose fathers were salmon, 'they implanted tissue from trout embryos into salmon embryos; and when the salmon became adults and mated, they produced trout.' Jurrassic Park just came a step closer. The story is also at Nature, where the scientists actually discuss using the technology for reviving extinct species." -
ESA To Study Human Hibernation
colonist writes "The European Space Agency (ESA) plans to study human hibernation for long-duration space voyages (a la 'Alien', '2001'). Although 'practical hibernation mechanisms are at least a decade away', ESA researchers will make initial inquiries into DADLE (D-Ala,D-Leu-enkephalin), an opium-like drug that triggers hibernation in ground squirrels and human cells. Other subjects of interest include dobutamine, a drug that maintains muscle, and the Madagascan fat-tailed dwarf lemur, the only primate known to hibernate." -
Artificial Prion Created
jabberjaw writes "Nature is reporting that researchers at the University of California San Diego have created a synthetic prion which, when injected into mice will bring about symptoms similar to those displayed by cattle suffering from bovine spongiform encephalopathy, aka mad cow disease. The researchers first crafted healthy prion proteins using bacteria. They then shook these proteins until they resembled the tangled structure of an unhealthy prion. Afterwords, these prions were injected into the brains of mice who fell ill two years later. Perhaps someone who is more familiar with this field of research would care to fill us in on the details as the article was rather light." -
DNA Pioneer Francis Crick Passes Away
Neil Halelamien writes "Francis Crick, who discovered the structure of DNA with James Watson, Rosalind Franklin, and Maurice Wilkins, passed away Wednesday in San Diego. His co-discovery of 'the secret of life' made him one of the most influential scientists of all time. In more recent years, he shifted his research efforts from molecular biology to neuroscience, with a particular interest in the question of the neural basis of consciousness." -
Iceland Discovery Promotes Martian Life Hypotheses
nusratt writes "This nature.com article reports research presented at the Bioastronomy 2004 conference in Reykjavik, Iceland. 'Scientists have discovered a community of bacteria living in the lake beneath an Icelandic glacier. The chilly world provides a model of Martian terrain and may boost speculation about the red planet's potential inhabitants. This is the first unequivocal example of life in a subglacial lake. The bacteria were definitely not introduced from above'." -
Photovoltaic Cell from Plant Proteins
TheSync writes "FuturePundit has a story about work at MIT to develop a photovoltaic cell from spinach chloroplast proteins to generate electricity. These cells convert 12% of the light energy into electricity, and researchers hope to reach 20% efficiency, better than commercial silicon solar cells." -
Do Music and Language Obey the Same Rules?
Emre Sevinc writes "Ever felt as though a piece of music is speaking to you? You could be right: musical notes are strung together in the same patterns as words in a piece of literature, according to an Argentinian physicist. This article in Nature states that Damián H. Zanette's analysis also reveals a key difference between tonal compositions, which are written in a particular key, and atonal ones, which are not. This sheds light on why many people find it so hard to make sense of atonal works. In both written text and speech, the frequency with which different words are used follows a striking pattern. In the 1930s, American social scientist George Kingsley Zipf discovered that if he ranked words in literary texts according to the number of times they appeared, a word's rank was roughly proportional to the inverse of the its frequency squared. Herbert Simon later offered an explanation for this mathematical relationship. He argued that as a text progresses, it creates a meaningful context within which words that have been used already are more likely to appear than other, random words. For example, it is more likely that the rest of this article will contain the word 'music' than the word 'sausage'. Physicist Damian Zanette of the Balseiro Institute in Bariloche, Argentina, used this idea to test whether different types of music create a semantic context in a similar fashion." -
New Details From Cassini's Phoebe Flyby
No_Weak_Heart writes "New details and images of Cassini-Huygens' close encounter with Saturn's moon Phoebe have been released. Much of the data seems to confirm the earlier suspicion that Pheobe was formed in the outer reaches of the solar system and was later captured by Saturn's gravity. More coverage at Nature, NY Timesand the BBC. We covered the flyby here." -
The Millennia After Tomorrow?
frankthechicken writes "Analysis of a three-kilometer-long ice core drilled from the Antarctic, has revealed our planet has had eight ice ages during that period, punctuated by rather brief warm spells - one of which we enjoy today. And fortunately, the end of the world is not the day after tomorrow, instead it may be expected on Sunday, 17000." -
Open Access To Scientific Literature: Can It Work?
evilquaker writes "Nature is running a free web focus on the issue of open access to scientific literature. The current model of scientific publishing dates back to the seventeenth century and -- like the music industry -- is in serious danger of becoming irrelevant because of the rise of the internet. The main issue up for discussion is whether the author-pays/access-is-free model will supplant the author-pays-less/readers-pay-too model. " -
Robotic Space Workers of the Future
Roland Piquepaille writes "In an article named "Puckish robots pull together," Nature describes the work done at the Polymorphic Robotics Laboratory (PRL) of the University of Southern California on self-reconfigurable teams of robots. There, Wei-Min Shen and his colleagues simulate the absence of gravity by creating a 2D representation of space by using an 'air-hockey table.' With jets of air flow blowing on the surface, the 30 cm-wide robots, working in pairs, evolve in a frictionless environment, pick elements such as girders to assemble structures like if they were in space. NASA will use these teams of autonomous robots to build space systems like 10 km-long arrays of solar panels and other huge spatial structures. You'll find more details, illustrations and references in this overview." -
South Korean Cloners In Hot Water Over Donors
Xookliba writes "Last February, South Korean scientists succeeded in the world's first human clone. Read the slashdot article here. As it turns out, they might have not been the best abassadors for this technology as they are currently mired in an ethical scandal over the source of the eggs used in the experiment. The field definitely does not need this type of debacle. No doubt this will fuel the argument of those who oppose all types of cloning, including the beneficial therapeutic cloning that this research was aimed at. Read the story here." -
New Satellite Data Confirms Global Warming
starannihilator writes "Researchers at the University of Washington have analyzed satellite data using a new and more accurate method (using channel 4 on the Microwave Sounding Unit satellite) to show that the troposphere has been warming faster than the Earth's surface for more than two decades. Nature reports that previous interpretations (using MSU channel 2) did not indicate such dramatic tropospheric warming because the data were compromised by stratospheric conditions. For years, the debate over global warming raged largely as a result of an incongruency between trends in surface and tropospheric temperatures. The new data gained by MSU channel 4 are consistent with the surface temperature's rising trends and indicate that global warming is, in fact, occuring in the troposphere. Read the full article in Nature, or similar stories in the Seattle Times and Newswise." -
New Satellite Data Confirms Global Warming
starannihilator writes "Researchers at the University of Washington have analyzed satellite data using a new and more accurate method (using channel 4 on the Microwave Sounding Unit satellite) to show that the troposphere has been warming faster than the Earth's surface for more than two decades. Nature reports that previous interpretations (using MSU channel 2) did not indicate such dramatic tropospheric warming because the data were compromised by stratospheric conditions. For years, the debate over global warming raged largely as a result of an incongruency between trends in surface and tropospheric temperatures. The new data gained by MSU channel 4 are consistent with the surface temperature's rising trends and indicate that global warming is, in fact, occuring in the troposphere. Read the full article in Nature, or similar stories in the Seattle Times and Newswise." -
Missing Matter... Still Missing
squidfrog writes "Nature.com, PhysicsWeb, and the BBC all report on the latest results from the Cryogenic Dark Matter Search. 'The most powerful search yet for the Universe's missing matter has come up empty handed, contradicting an earlier study that claimed to have seen new particles.' 'A favoured theory is that the dark matter consists of Wimps (weakly interacting massive particles) about a thousand times more massive than a proton, one of the particles found in an atom's nucleus... on the rare occasions a Wimp strikes an ordinary atom, the effect should be noticeable.' 'Writing in the Physical Review Letters, the team says that while a detection has yet to occur, there is now a better idea of how much dark matter must exist.' They 'hope to improve the sensitivity of the experiment by another factor of 20 over the next few years.' What's 20 times 0? And don't tell me zero!" -
A Mouse With Two Mothers
jabberjaw writes "Both the BBC and Nature are reporting that scientists at Tokyo University of Agriculture have used two sets of chromosomes belonging to a female mouse to create what are essentially fatherless mice. The process by which this was accomplished (parthenogenesis) does not naturally occur in mammals. The mouse used lacked a gene known as H19 which in turn activated the Igf2 which allowed this process to occur." -
Brain's Cache Memory Found
Shipud writes "Electrical activity in a single section of the brain has been linked to very short-term working memory, as is reported at Nature. Very short-term working memory capacity is thought to be related to intelligence. In the same way that a larger cache speeds processing time, people with a greater capacity for holding images in their heads are expected to have better reasoning and problem-solving skills. The localization of this ability is a surprising finding, as until now it was believed that STWM was diffused throughout the cortex, rather than localized." -
MagLev Trains Annoyingly Loud
crem_d_genes writes "You might hear that whistle blowing from that train coming 'round the bend, but tapes of the sounds produced by magnetically levitated and normal trains produced a result that was something of a surprise: Most people rated maglev trains as more disturbing than standard intercity trains. It had been previously known that the two types were about equally loud, but this study analyzed people's reactions to them. Since the effects on the environment will be part of the feasibilty studies for future development, acoustical engineers will have some new challenges. Some participants in the study said the sound made them 'feel insecure, some found it startling, and disliked the occasional shrill sound the maglevs produced.' The researcher postulated that unfamiliarity with the noise might be part of the problem." -
Forget Mars. Should We Go To The Moon?
me98411 writes "We have discussed earlier about the President's Commission on Moon, Mars and Beyond and about how a direct trip to Mars is the way to go (or way not to). In a BBC article, the division in the astronomers and space geeks community about the use of the Moon as a base to develop ways to travel to Mars is highlighted. Now, Nature is asking: Should we go back to the moon? Is a manned mission to the moon even necessary?" -
Nature Debate on Open Scientific Journals
Declan Butler writes "I thought I'd let you know that the journal Nature is currently running an online special on the debate over access to the electronic scientific literature. It will be updated with two to three new articles each week, and will run until around mid-May. 'The Internet is profoundly changing how scientists work and publish. New business models are being tested by publishers, including open access, in which the author pays and content is free to the user. This ongoing web focus will explore current trends and future possibilities.' Best, Declan Butler, European correspondent, Nature" -
Nature Debate on Open Scientific Journals
Declan Butler writes "I thought I'd let you know that the journal Nature is currently running an online special on the debate over access to the electronic scientific literature. It will be updated with two to three new articles each week, and will run until around mid-May. 'The Internet is profoundly changing how scientists work and publish. New business models are being tested by publishers, including open access, in which the author pays and content is free to the user. This ongoing web focus will explore current trends and future possibilities.' Best, Declan Butler, European correspondent, Nature"
