Science & TechnologyS


Question

Immoral advances: Is science out of control?

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© Ray Tang/Rex FeaturesUK protesters demonstrate in a field of genetically modified oilseed rape

What would our forebears have made of test-tube babies, microwave ovens, organ transplants, CCTV and iPhones? Could they have believed that one day people might jet to another continent for a weekend break, meet their future spouse on the internet, have their genome sequenced and live to a private soundtrack from an MP3 player? Science and technology have changed our world dramatically, and, for the most part, we take them in our stride. Nevertheless, there are certain innovations that many people find unpalatable.

Leaving aside special-interest attitudes such as the fundamentalist Christian denial of evolution, many controversies over scientific advances are based on ethical concerns. In the past, the main areas of contention have included nuclear weapons, eugenics and experiments on animals, but in recent years the list of "immoral" research areas has grown exponentially. In particular, reproductive biology and medicine have become ripe for moral outrage: think cloning, designer babies, stem-cell research, human-animal hybrids, and so on. Other troublesome areas include nanotechnology, synthetic biology, genomics and genetically modified organisms or so-called "Frankenfoods".

To many scientists, moral objections to their work are not valid: science, by definition, is morally neutral, so any moral judgement on it simply reflects scientific illiteracy. That, however, is an abdication of responsibility. Some moral reactions are irrational, but if scientists are serious about tackling them - and the bad decisions, harm, suffering and barriers to progress that flow from them - they need to understand a little more and condemn a little less.

Saturn

Jupiter-like Planets Could Form Around Twin Suns

Jupiter
© Jet Propulsion Laboratory, NASAJupiter-like planets could form around twin suns.
Life on a planet ruled by two suns might be a little complicated. Two sunrises, two sunsets. Twice the radiation field.

In a paper published in the December 2008 issue of Astronomy and Astrophysics, astronomer Joel Kastner and his team suggest that planets may easily form around certain types of twin (or "binary") star systems. A disk of molecules discovered orbiting a pair of twin young suns in the constellation Sagittarius strongly suggests that many such binary systems also host planets.

"We think the molecular gas orbiting these two stars almost literally represents 'smoking gun' evidence of recent or possibly ongoing 'giant' (Jupiter-like) planet formation around the binary star system," says Kastner, professor at Rochester Institute of Technology's Chester F. Carlson Center for Imaging Science.

Bell

Archaeological Discovery Opens Window To Illyrians

The discovery of an Illyrian trading post gives insight into the ancient peoples of the Balkan Peninsula.

BETIM
© University of MostarArchaeologists found many artefacts, including more than 30 Illyrian boats fully laden with Roman amphorae.
After several weeks of intense digging, an archaeological team from the University of Oslo reported a find last month that could change the written history of Illyrians for a period of their existence.

An Illyrian trading post in the border area between Croatia and Bosnia and Herzegovina (BiH) throws light on an unknown aspect of the life of these ancient people of the Balkan Peninsula.

The head of the archaeological team who discovered the traces of the trading post was Associate Professor Marina Prusac. "Our discovery is important for understanding cultural identities in the Balkans in ancient times," she said.

Bug

Mosquitoes Make Sweet Love Music

Amorous mosquitoes "sing" a mating duet by beating their wings together in harmony, US scientists have discovered.

They eavesdropped on a male Aedes aegypti mosquito pursuing a female in mating flight, and recorded the couple's courtship "love song".

The insects spread diseases like yellow fever and dengue, so scientists are seeking ways to control their numbers.

Understanding their mating habits could open up new avenues, says a team from Cornell University, writing in Science.

Pharoah

Mummy Of Female Pharaoh Uncovered

Dig
© BBC NewsThe discovery of such an old mummy is extremely rare, Egyptologists say.
Egyptologists have discovered the remains of a mummy thought to belong to a queen who ruled 4,300 years ago, Egypt's antiquities chief has said.

The body of Queen Seshestet was found in a recently-discovered pyramid in Saqqara, Zahi Hawass announced.

She was mother of King Teti, founder of the Sixth Dynasty of pharaonic Egypt. Her name was not found but "all the signs indicate that she is Seshestet".

Info

Inside the mind of an autistic savant

Daniel Tammet
© Toby Madden/EyevineDaniel Tammet

Autistic savant Daniel Tammet shot to fame when he set a European record for the number of digits of pi he recited from memory (22,514). For afters, he learned Icelandic in a week. But unlike many savants, he's able to tell us how he does it. We could all unleash extraordinary mental abilities by getting inside the savant mind, he tells Celeste Biever:

Do you think savants have been misunderstood - and perhaps dehumanised - in the past?

Very often the analogy has been that a savant is like a computer, but what I do is about as far from what a computer does as you can imagine. This distinction hasn't been made before, because savants haven't been able to articulate how their minds work. I am lucky that the autism I have is mild, and that I was born into a large family and had to learn social skills, so I am able to speak up.

Wine

A good night out began at home in ancient Greece

greek dish
© The Bridgeman Art Library / GettyThis red-figure ceramic dish depicts an old man and a young man drinking. It can be seen in the Museum Schloss Hohentubingen, Tubingen, Germany.

It's a wonder the Greeks accomplished as much as they did, as many of their homes seem to have doubled as pubs and brothels. This finding, from new analyses of archaeological remains, could explain why previous hunts for evidence of ancient Greek taverns have been fruitless.

Plays from classical Greece describe lively taverns, but no one has ever unearthed their real-life versions. Clare Kelly Blazeby at the University of Leeds, UK, suspected that archaeologists were missing something, so she took a new look at artefacts from several houses dotted around ancient Greece, dating from 475 to 323 BC.

These had all yielded the remains of numerous drinking cups, and so had been assumed to be wealthy residences. Kelly Blazeby now believes a more likely explanation is that the residents regularly sold wine. Her analysis suggests that many of the houses had hundreds of cups - far too many for a building used only as a residence, she says. Other archaeological artefacts suggest the houses were used for other functions too.

"This blows apart everything that people think about drinking in classical Greece," says Kelly Blazeby, who is presenting her findings on 10 January at the annual meeting of the Archaeological Institute of America in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. She is not alone. Allison Glazebrook of Brock University in St Catharines, Ontario, Canada, will tell the same conference that some of the houses doubled as brothels. Telltale signs that Glazebrook found include erotic graffiti and objects, and clusters of clay drinking cups.

Info

Ten extinct beasts that could walk the Earth again

dodo
© Photo Researchers / SPLThe Dodo, Raphus cucullatus, is one of the most well-known extinct animals.

The recipe for making any creature is written in its DNA. So last November, when geneticists published the near-complete DNA sequence of the long-extinct woolly mammoth, there was much speculation about whether we could bring this behemoth back to life.

Creating a living, breathing creature from a genome sequence that exists only in a computer's memory is not possible right now. But someone someday is sure to try it, predicts Stephan Schuster, a molecular biologist at Pennsylvania State University, University Park, and a driving force behind the mammoth genome project.

So besides the mammoth, what other extinct beasts might we coax back to life? Well, it is only going to be possible with creatures for which we can retrieve a complete genome sequence. Without one, there is no chance. And usually when a creature dies, the DNA in any flesh left untouched is soon destroyed as it is attacked by sunshine and bacteria.

There are, however, some circumstances in which DNA can be preserved. If your specimen froze to death in an icy wasteland such as Siberia, or snuffed it in a dark cave or a really dry region, for instance, then the probability of finding some intact stretches of DNA is much higher.

Sun

Danger ahead as the Sun goes quiet

Solar prominence
© SOHO / ESA / NASA / SPLA huge, twisted solar prominence (lower left) in the corona of the Sun. The prominence is a massive cloud of plasma confined by powerful magnetic fields. If it breaks free of the Sun's atmosphere, such an event can cause electrical blackouts and auroral storms, if directed towards Earth. This image was taken in the light of ionised helium (30.4 nanometres), which corresponds to a temperature of around 60,000 Kelvin. It was taken on 18th January 2000 by the Extreme Ultraviolet Imaging Telescope (EIT) on board the SOHO (Solar and Heliospheric Observatory) spacecraft.

The sun's ability to shield the solar system from harmful cosmic rays could falter in the early 2020s, just in time to threaten the health of NASA astronauts as they return to the moon.

As well as the 11-year cycle of sunspots and solar flares, the sun's activity experiences longer-term shifts lasting several decades. The sun is currently in a long-term high, having been relatively active for nearly a century, but it is not known when this will end.

To find out, a team led by Jose Abreu of the Swiss Federal Institute of Aquatic Science and Technology in Duebendorf analysed 66 long-term highs from the past 10,000 years, as recorded in fluctuating levels of rare isotopes such as beryllium-10 in ice cores from Greenland. These are produced when cosmic rays break down the nuclei of oxygen and nitrogen atoms in the Earth's atmosphere. Production of these isotopes peaks when the sun is inactive, as the weaker solar wind lets more cosmic rays enter the solar system, which hit the Earth.

Based on the duration of past highs, and the fact that the current one has already lasted 80 years, the team has calculated that its most likely total lifetime is between 95 and 116 years, and they suspect the high will probably end at the shorter end of this range (Geophysical Research Letters, DOI: link).

Magnify

Hubble Finds Stars That Go 'Ballistic'

Glowing Gas
© NASA, ESA, and R. Sahai (NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory)Resembling comets streaking across the sky, these four speedy stars are plowing through regions of dense interstellar gas and creating brilliant arrowhead structures and trailing tails of glowing gas.
Even some stars go ballistic, racing through interstellar space like bullets and tearing through clouds of gas.

Images from NASA's Hubble Space Telescope reveal 14 young, runaway stars plowing through regions of dense interstellar gas, creating brilliant arrowhead structures and trailing tails of glowing gas. These arrowheads, or bow shocks, form when the stars' powerful stellar winds, streams of matter flowing from the stars, slam into surrounding dense gas. The phenomenon is similar to that seen when a speeding boat pushes through water on a lake.