Science & TechnologyS


Blackbox

"Cough detectors"? Can airport technology really halt a pandemic?

Paul Marks
New Scientist
Mon, 25 May 2009 20:26 UTC
Image
© Sinopix / Rex FeaturesAt Hong Kong airport, a screen shows the location of a person in the airport, while immigration and health inspectors check the temperature and travel routes of visitors to see if they have the H1N1 virus.
When aviation officials chose Mexico City for a meeting to discuss their response to pandemic outbreaks, they could scarcely have predicted swine flu would intervene. "The irony was amazing," says Tony Evans of the International Civil Aviation Organization (ICAO) in Montreal, Canada. "The meeting will probably go ahead in June unless we get another wave of H1N1."

Future pandemics will almost certainly be spread via air travel, with flights capable of carrying a pathogen across the world in hours. The UN's Convention on International Civil Aviation requires nations to "prevent the spread of communicable diseases by means of air navigation". That is easier said than done, especially in poorer regions.

Enter CAPSCA - the Cooperative Arrangement for the Prevention of the Spread of Communicable diseases by Air travel. CAPSCA aims to help airports in developing nations prepare for a pandemic, and its schemes are now getting off the ground in the Americas, Asia-Pacific and Africa.
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Robot

Mars robots may have destroyed evidence of life

David Shiga
New Scientist
Mon, 25 May 2009 20:13 UTC
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© NASA / JPL-Caltech / University of Arizona / Texas A&M UniversityThis image was taken by NASA's Phoenix Mars Lander's Surface Stereo Imager on June 5, 2008, the eleventh day after landing. It shows the robotic arm scoop, with a soil sample, poised over the partially open door of the lander's oven
Have Mars landers been destroying signs of life? Instead of identifying chemicals that could point to life, NASA's robot explorers may have been toasting them by mistake.

In 1976, many people's hopes of finding life on Mars collapsed when the twin Viking landers failed to detect even minute quantities of organic compounds - the complex, carbon-containing molecules that are central to life as we know it. "It contributed, in my opinion, to the fact that there were no additional [US lander] missions to Mars for 20 years," says Jeff Moore of NASA's Ames Research Center in Moffett Field, California.

The result also created a puzzle. Even if Mars has never had life, comets and asteroids that have struck the planet should have scattered at least some organic molecules - though not produced by life - over its surface.

Some have suggested that organics were cleansed from the surface by naturally occurring, highly reactive chemicals such as hydrogen peroxide. Then last year, NASA's Phoenix lander, which also failed to detect organics on Mars, stumbled on something in the Martian soil that may have, in effect, been hiding the organics: a class of chemicals called perchlorates.
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Sherlock

Probing Antarctica's Lake Bonney

Henry Bortman
Space Daily / Astrobiology Magazine
Mon, 25 May 2009 18:48 UTC
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© Vickie SiegelThe 16-foot-tall frame of the Bot House nears completion on the ice-covered surface of Lake Bonney.
Jupiter's giant moon Europa is one of the few places in our solar system where scientists believe there is a reasonable chance that life has made a home. An ice-covered world with a vast frigid ocean beneath, Europa will not be an easy place to explore.

If there is life there, it's likely to be in the ocean, and although the moon's surface may hold clues to what lies below, making a comprehensive plan to search for life on Europa means figuring out how to probe its watery depths.

NASA's ENDURANCE project - the acronym stands for Environmentally Non-Disturbing Underwater Robotic Antarctic Explorer - is a step in that direction.

Funded by the agency's ASTEP (Astrobiology Science and Technology for Exploring Planets) program and headed by Peter Doran, a professor of earth and environmental sciences at the University of Illinois at Chicago, ENDURANCE has completed the first of two field seasons exploring the ice-covered Lake Bonney in Antarctica's McMurdo Dry Valleys. Antarctica's ice-covered lakes, said Doran, "can be used as models of an ice-covered ocean on Europa on a much smaller scale."
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Key

Middle East oldest village found in Iran


Press TV
Mon, 25 May 2009 17:11 UTC
Kermanshah
© UnknownKermanshah houses various ancient artifacts
Iranian and English archeologists have discovered the Middle East's oldest village which dates back to at least 9800 BC in western Iran.

The unique archeological discovery reveals Iran was the main Neolithic center of the Middle East.

"The historical site dates back to 9800 BC and evidence suggest inhabitance in the site continued until 7400 BC," said Hassan Fazeli, the director of Iran's Archeology Research Center.

Archeologists believe such findings prove that Iran's dwellers moved out of caves around 11,800 years ago and settled in plains.
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Hourglass

Rare Avicenna manuscript recovered in Iran


Press TV
Sun, 24 May 2009 17:10 UTC
Canon of Medicine
© UnknownA manuscript of Avicenna's seminal 'Canon of Medicine'
Police have recovered a rare manuscript of the Persian polymath Avicenna's The Canon of Medicine which was recently stolen from his mausoleum in Hamadan.

The Protection Unit of Iran's Cultural Heritage, Handicrafts and Tourism Organization found the manuscript which dates from the Safavid era (1501-1736) in Iran's western province of Hamadan.

"Police forces in Hamadan recovered the manuscript, which was pilfered on May 18, this morning," said Colonel Nazari, the head of the protection unit.

"Cultural heritage experts confirmed the text is the original manuscript stolen from the museum adjacent to Avicenna's mausoleum," Nazari added.

No details about the robbery or the perpetrators was released.
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Frog

Why NASA Astrobiologists are Studying a Remote Canadian Lake

Rebecca Sato
Daily Galaxy
Mon, 25 May 2009 15:44 UTC
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© Unknown
Pavilion Lake in Marble Canyon, British Columbia, is considered a "spiritual place" by the native Tskwaylaxw people of Pavilion. Overlooking the lake is a limestone formation that they believe is a "Transformer Stone" meaning that in First Nations legend it was created by the actions of the "Transformers", a group of supernatural beings who traveled around the country putting things to right by changing things into stone.

They call the formation "K'lpalekw", which means in their tongue of Secwepemc'tsn "Coyote's Penis". The lake, the canyon and this structure all have special spiritual significance to the nearby native communities, but NASA isn't interested in the spiritually of the place, they believe that what lies under the lake could help answer the question of the origins of life itself.
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Info

4,000-year-old road found in city


British Broadcasting Corporation
Mon, 25 May 2009 00:31 UTC
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© BBCThe short section of hurdle trackway had eroded out of the marine clay on the Swansea foreshore.
A Bronze Age road has been found below Swansea's shifting foreshore.

The short section of track was discovered by a metal detector enthusiast and archaeologists have now dated it to around 4,000 years ago.

Woven from narrow branches of oak and alder the structure was covered in a thin layer of brushwood to provide a level walking-surface.
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Info

Body burners: The forensics of fire

Linda Geddes
New Scientist
Sun, 24 May 2009 18:45 UTC
setting fire to corpses
© sulaco229, stock.xchngElayne Pope's group spends its time setting fire to corpses in a range of different circumstances, to work out exactly how the human body burns
The fire started with a match held under a cotton blanket close to the man's waist. Within 2 minutes, the flames had spread across the single bed he was lying on and were consuming his cotton sweatshirt and trousers.

Around a dozen onlookers were at the scene - including police, fire investigators and death investigators - yet all they did was watch. That was, after all, their job. The "victim" had in fact died some time ago, having previously donated his remains to medical research.

His body had reached a unique team led by Elayne Pope, a forensic scientist at the University of West Florida in Pensacola. Her group spends its time setting fire to corpses in a range of different circumstances, to work out exactly how the human body burns. They seem to be the only group carrying out such systematic studies in this area, and are certainly the only ones publishing their work.
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Info

Ancient teeth hint that right-handedness is nothing new

Ewen Callaway
New Scientist
Sun, 24 May 2009 18:38 UTC
Ancient bones suggest "lefties" have been coping with a right-handed world for more than half a million years. A study of Homo heidelbergensis, an ancestor of Neanderthals, seems to show that the ancient humans were predominately right-handed.

"Finding that a hominin species as old as Homo heidelbergensis is already right-handed helps to trace back the chain of modernity concerning hand laterality," says Marina Mosquera, a paleoanthropologist at Universitat Rovira i Virgili in Tarragona, Spain, who was involved in the study.

Humans are the only animal believed to show a strong preference for performing tasks with one hand or the other. Determining when right-handedness first evolved could shed light on traits linked to lateralised brains, such as language and technology, Mosquera says. Efforts to solve this mystery have looked to ancient human skulls and marks left on tools.
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Info

Human pathogens threaten ancient cave art

Andy Coghlan
New Scientist
Sun, 24 May 2009 18:27 UTC
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© LABAT Jean Michel / Sunset / Rex FeaturesAccording to the researchers' analysis, Lascaux's management history is a catalogue of errors
Historic cave paintings in France partially saved from attack by a black fungus face a new threat: bacteria that moved in following four years of spraying with fungicide.

The Lascaux cave in south-west France houses invaluable animal paintings that are between 16,000 and 17,000 years old, making them among the oldest examples of cave art ever found. Now conservationists must deal with the twin threats of the Fusarium solani fungus and the new bacterial populations.

The latest invasion came to light when a team of Spanish and French microbiologists analysed 11 swabs from the cave walls, comparing the profile of species found in Lascaux with those in undisturbed caves in Spain. Almost all the bacteria and protozoa found in Lascaux were associated with human activity.
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