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Scientists Studying Wasps Discover Being Social is Better for Fighting Disease


PhysOrg
Tue, 19 Jul 2011 10:00 UTC
Image
© Paul Edward Duckett
In a paper release today, a group of scientists from Macquarie University studying the evolution of disease resistance in insects have found evidence that social species of wasps show significantly higher antimicrobial activity than solitary species.

The research, which was attempting to explain what allowed such complex societies to evolve, found that the origin of antimicrobial defenses in wasps is strongly linked to the species group size and social complexity.

According to one of the lead researchers Mr Stephen Hoggard, "The result provides evidence for the origin of antimicrobial defenses in wasps and increases our understanding of trends in disease resistance strategies in all social insects."

The findings suggest that wasps originally developed specialized antibiotic defenses to cope with living in the ground in solitary conditions but these then evolved and became much stronger to cope with disease risks associated with living in large groups.

These initial findings could have much further reaching applications. "Being able to understand what is driving the evolution of these antibiotic compounds may help scientists isolate naturally occurring antibiotics in the future and may eventually lead to the location of natural antibiotics for human use", say Hoggard.
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Telescope

Neighbor Galaxy Caught Stealing Stars


PhysOrg
Tue, 19 Jul 2011 00:00 UTC
Astronomers from the National Optical Astronomy Observatory (NOAO) and their collaborators have found that hundreds of the stars found in the Large Magellanic Cloud (LMC) were stolen from another nearby galaxy - the Small Magellanic Cloud (SMC). The Large and Small Magellanic Clouds are both neighbor galaxies to our Milky Way Galaxy and easily visible to the unaided eye from the southern hemisphere.

Image
© Karl Gordon/Margaret Meixner/AURA/NASAThe Milky Way’s near neighbor, the Large Magellanic Cloud (LMC), has accreted a smattering of stars from its smaller neighbor, the Small Magellanic Cloud (SMC). In this image, the LMC is shown as it appears in observations by the Spitzer Space Telescope at 3.6, 8.0, and 24 microns. Overlaid in red and blue, with colors representing the light of sight velocities (red = away, blue = towards) are the locations of stars whose origin has been traced to the SMC. These stars were discovered by a team led by NOAO astronomer Knut Olsen, through analysis of spectra obtained at the CTIO 4-m Blanco telescope.
By analyzing the spectra of 5900 giant and supergiant stars in the Large Magellanic Cloud galaxy, NOAO astronomers Knut Olsen and Bob Blum, and their collaborators Dennis Zaritsky (University of Arizona), and Martha Boyer and Karl Gordon (Space Telescope Science Institute) found that over 5% of the stars they observed in the LMC are rotating counter to the direction of the majority of LMC stars, or perhaps in a plane that is greatly inclined to the rotation of the LMC. An ambiguity remains in the result, because the astronomers were only able to measure the projection of the stellar velocities into the line of sight, and not their full velocity vectors. In either case, these peculiar orbits indicate that these stars probably did not form from the rotating and collapsing cloud of gas that formed the LMC, a galaxy located about 160,000 light years away.

Further examination of these counter-rotating stars revealed another anomaly. The chemical composition of these stars is different. They have fewer heavy elements such as iron and calcium than typical stars in the Large Magellanic Cloud. However, their composition closely matches that of stars in another nearby galaxy, the Small Magellanic Cloud, whose stars are also depleted in these "metals".
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Magic Wand

US: Explorers discover 3 billion-year-old life forms off the coast of Michigan

Annalee Newitz
IO9
Mon, 18 Jul 2011 04:54 UTC
In mysterious sinkholes beneath the waters of Lake Huron, scientists have been exploring strange pockets of life that shouldn't exist on present-day Earth. The microbes researchers have found would have been perfectly comfortable on the Earth of 3 billion years ago, before we had oxygen in the atmosphere.

Image
© Grand Valley State University
How did the bottom of Lake Huron get riddled with sinkholes that time forgot? Find out, and see a video of life that hasn't existed for billions of years.

The sinkholes at the bottom of the lake are pockets of de-oxygenated water that have pooled beneath the fresh waters above. So all the creatures who live in the sinkholes might have evolved at a time on Earth when no oxygen was available. In a recent Earth magazine article about the ongoing exploration of these sinkholes, first discovered a little over a decade ago, Lindsey Doermann writes:
These pockets of water teem with microbial life similar to that found around deep ocean hydrothermal vents or beneath ice-covered Antarctic lakes, not the kinds of microorganisms normally found in our own backyards . . . Before long, the true importance of these oddities became apparent: "These ecosystems in Lake Huron are analogs of the Proterozoic," says Bopi Biddanda, a microbial ecologist at Grand Valley State University in Michigan and one of the leaders of the sinkhole science team. "They could be windows into communities that existed 3 billion years ago."
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Info

Lingering Lies: The Persistent Influence of Misinformation

Valerie Ross
Scientific American
Mon, 18 Jul 2011 15:44 UTC
Lies
© Scientific American

After people realize the facts have been fudged, they do their best to set the record straight: judges tell juries to forget misleading testimony; newspapers publish errata. But even explicit warnings to ignore misinformation cannot erase the damage done, according to a new study from the University of Western Australia.

Psychologists asked college stu­dents to read an account of an ac­cident involving a busload of elderly passengers. The students were then told that, actually, those on the bus were not elderly. For some students, the information ended there. Others were told the bus had in fact been transporting a college hockey team. And still others were warned about what psychologists call the continued influence of misinformation - that people tend to have a hard time ig­noring what they first heard, even if they know it is wrong - and that they should be extra vigilant about getting the story straight.

Students who had been warned about misinformation or given the alternative story were less likely than control subjects to make inferences using the old information later - but they still erred sometimes, agreeing with statements such as "the pas­sengers found it difficult to exit the bus because they were frail."
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Info

Manufacturers Turn to 3-D Printing

Lauren Cox
Technology Review, MIT
Mon, 18 Jul 2011 15:25 UTC
3D Printing
© Materialise Future factory: Machines stand ready to produce products through additive manufacturing techniques.

Hobbyists may have provided the first demand for 3-D printing, but while DIY enthusiasts were creating online communities to make their own action figures and knickknacks out of plastic, industrial manufacturers were discovering how new materials and techniques in 3-D printing could change the way they make commercial products.

A 3-D printer deposits a string of hot plastic, lets it cool, and moves on to the next plane to build a three-dimensional object slice by slice. Using the same principles of layering, additive manufacturing can build objects out of metals, plastics, and ceramics in geometric shapes that are impossible to achieve with other manufacturing techniques. Because the design is digital, businesses can order the resulting products from any available 3-D printer.

This May, General Electric announced that it would "intensify focus" on additive manufacturing to develop a variety of products, from aircraft engine components to parts for ultrasound machines. Other large manufacturers have used the technique to make industrial scanners, furniture, and medical equipment.
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Blackbox

Eqypt's Antiquities Boss Zahi Hawass Is Sacked?

Ansrew Lawler
Science Insider
Mon, 18 Jul 2011 15:22 UTC
Image
© UnknownZahi Hawass
After nearly a decade as chief of Egypt's antiquities, Zahi Hawass is now out of a job.

The 64-year-old archaeologist was fired yesterday by Prime Minister Essam Sharaf as part of a wider shakeup of his cabinet. Protestors at Cairo's Tahrir Square had been calling for his ouster as minister of antiquities for months. "All the devils united against me," Hawass told Science Insider.

The country's most prominent figure in archaeology, Hawass was instrumental in sending large blockbuster exhibits abroad, creating a host of new museums and secure storerooms, and pressuring foreign excavators to publish their finds more quickly. But he was also criticized for his portrayal on American television of archaeology as treasure hunting, excoriated for his dictatorial management style, and accused of shoddy research in carrying out his own digs. Sharaf is said to have appointed Abdel-Fattah El-Banna as Hawass' replacement, but there are reports that protestors have rejected that nomination, and that Sharaf might reverse his decision and name someone else.
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Info

How a Mission to Mars Could Kill You

Eric Niiler
Discovery News
Mon, 18 Jul 2011 06:00 UTC
Mars Colonisation
© NASAA manned mission to Mars will push human ingenuity into the next frontier of space exploration, but are the health risks worth it?
Will bootprints in the Martian soil be a part of our future, or will the interplanetary trip prove too hazardous for humans?

When NASA's 30-year Space Shuttle Program ends on Thursday as Atlantis touches down for the last time, space-watchers will be looking toward our next step into space.

We've already 'done' the moon, but Mars still beckons like some interplanetary Brigadoon; visible through the eyes of clever little rovers and orbiters, but just beyond the reach of human footsteps.

Despite several decades of research and development, a long-duration voyage to Mars is still on the drawing board. Putting aside the enormous financial costs of an interplanetary mission, there are still major engineering and physiological hurdles to overcome.
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Question

All Non-Africans Part Neanderthal, Genetics Confirm

Jennifer Viegas
Discovery News
Mon, 18 Jul 2011 11:25 UTC
Neanderthal Reconstruction
© iStockPhotoA museum reconstruction of a Neanderthal.

If your heritage is non-African, you are part Neanderthal, according to a new study in the July issue of Molecular Biology and Evolution. Discovery News has been reporting on human/Neanderthal interbreeding for some time now, so this latest research confirms earlier findings.

Damian Labuda of the University of Montreal's Department of Pediatrics and the CHU Sainte-Justine Research Center conducted the study with his colleagues. They determined some of the human X chromosome originates from Neanderthals, but only in people of non-African heritage.

"This confirms recent findings suggesting that the two populations interbred," Labuda was quoted as saying in a press release. His team believes most, if not all, of the interbreeding took place in the Middle East, while modern humans were migrating out of Africa and spreading to other regions.

The ancestors of Neanderthals left Africa about 400,000 to 800,000 years ago. They evolved over the millennia mostly in what are now France, Spain, Germany and Russia. They went extinct, or were simply absorbed into the modern human population, about 30,000 years ago.

Neanderthals possessed the gene for language and had sophisticated music, art and tool craftsmanship skills, so they must have not been all that unattractive to modern humans at the time.
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Gear

CERN 'Gags' Physicists in Cosmic Ray Climate Experiment

Andrew Orlowski
The Register, UK
Mon, 18 Jul 2011 10:01 UTC
Cosmic rays
© The Register, UK12m muons pass through your body every 24 hours.

The chief of the world's leading physics lab at CERN in Geneva has prohibited scientists from drawing conclusions from a major experiment. The CLOUD ("Cosmics Leaving Outdoor Droplets") experiment examines the role that energetic particles from deep space play in cloud formation. CLOUD uses CERN's proton synchrotron to examine nucleation.

CERN Director General Rolf-Dieter Heuer told Welt Online that the scientists should refrain from drawing conclusions from the latest experiment.

"I have asked the colleagues to present the results clearly, but not to interpret them," reports veteran science editor Nigel Calder on his blog. Why?

Because, Heuer says, "That would go immediately into the highly political arena of the climate change debate. One has to make clear that cosmic radiation is only one of many parameters."
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Bizarro Earth

Volcanic Eruptions Long Overdue Down Under

Katherine Tweed
OurAmazingPlanet
Mon, 18 Jul 2011 13:26 UTC
Mt.Gambier
© NASASitting near Australia’s rugged southern coast, the South Australian town of Mount Gambier is built on the side of an extinct volcano that last erupted between 4,300 and 28,000 years ago. Since that time, the caldera of the volcano has filled with rainwater, forming a very deep lake that provides the town with water. The large caldera lake is called Blue Lake due to a rather peculiar characteristic: the water turns a brilliant cobalt blue during the summer and early fall (approximately November-March).

Australia is often called the oldest continent on Earth because of the lack of historic geologic upheaval that marks other areas of the world. But its hushed tectonic activity doesn't mean Australia is asleep.

There are various volcanic clusters Down Under and new research suggests that some of the youngest volcanoes are long overdue for an eruption.

The Newer Volcanics Province (NVP), located in Western Victoria and southeastern South Australia, is a 5,800-square-mile (15,000 square kilometer) area that consists of hundreds of small cones, lava shields and craters that have been mapped in detail over the years. Research from the University of Melbourne's School of Earth Sciences and the Melbourne School of Engineering has found that volcanoes in the NVP were fairly active in the last 20,000 to 30,000 years, with an eruption frequency about every 2,000 years.

The volcanic area is what is termed monogenetic, meaning that when one of the volcanoes blows, it does so only once, so the older cones that have erupted aren't a worry; it is the youngest, new volcanoes that are a threat. The last eruption, at Mount Gambier in South Australia, was about 5,500 years ago, suggesting that the region is overdue for an eruption.
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