| Indonesian volcano spews new burst of ash By BINSAR BAKKARA 2010-09-03T14:15:28ZTANAH KARO, Indonesia (AP) -- An Indonesian volcano that was quiet for four centuries shot a new, powerful burst of hot ash more than 10,000 feet (three kilometers) in the air Friday, sending frightened residents fleeing to safety for the second time this week.... hosted.ap.org |
Mystery bird: sedge warbler, Acrocephalus schoenobaenus | GrrlScientist Another mystery bird species demystified, this time, a migratory Old World species that will be familiar to my readers in the European UnionSedge Warbler, Acrocephalus schoenobaenus, photographed on mainland Orkney, Orkney Islands, Scotland, UK. Image: Dave Rintoul, 28 July 2008. [larger view].Question: Females of this Mystery Bird species choose their mates based primarily on one feature, so this creates a selection pressure that strongly influences the evolution of this particular trait. What trait is this? [Extra smug points for those of you who can identify this bird's sex!]Answer: The Sedge Warbler, Acrocephalus schoenobaenus, is a medium-sized migratory Old World songbird that breeds in wetlands throughout Europe and western and central Asia. The females select their mates based on the quality of the territory they possess, and particularly on the quality of the male's song. Interestingly, male Sedge Warblers cease singing shortly after a pair bond has formed, suggesting that this species' song functions solely for attracting a mate rather than serving the dual purpose of keeping other males away from the singer's territory. The male's song, which is often delivered during a parachuting flight display, is described as "loud [with] long sequences of not very varied excited notes now and then relieved by rapid cascades of trills and whistles and occasional interwoven mimicry (e. g. of Coot, Wood Sandpiper, Yellow Wagtail)." [emphasis theirs; p. 290, Collins Bird Guide, by Killian Mullarney, Lars Svensson, Dan Zetterstrom & Peter J. Grant (1999), HarperCollins Publishers, London; ISBN: 002197286; the second edition (2010) is now available] Other sources note that the male's song is a random composition of phrases, so that it is never the same. It is interesting to point out that, even though this species is usually socially monogamous, male Sedge Warblers with the widest song repertoire mate with the largest number of females. This serves to drive the evolution of ever-larger song repertoires in this species. If you have bird images, video or mp3 files that you'd like to share with a large and appreciate audience, feel free to email them to me for consideration.GrrlScientistguardian.co.uk © Guardian News & Media Limited 2010 | Use of this content is subject to our Terms & Conditions | More Feeds guardian.co.uk |
Lunar X teams in $20m race to put robot rover on the moon Lunar X contest sets a private enterprise space mission for 22 companiesDozens of entrepreneurs and space engineers will gather on the Isle of Man tomorrow to finalise plans for one of the world's most technologically ambitious and financially lucrative competitions: the Lunar X prize.The $20m (£12.6m) award, which is being backed by Google, will be given to the first company that builds a robot rover craft, lands it safely on the moon, and directs it on a journey of more than 500 metres. The competition organisers hope to galvanise the exploration of the moon by opening it up to private industry. A deadline of 2012 has been set for all attempts to win the full prize."Nasa currently puts the cost of landing a robot rover on the moon at more than $1bn," said Julian Ranger, the UK financier who is raising cash for Astrobotic, one of the prize's key competitors. "We believe we can get that cost down to less than $50m, a price tag that will transform lunar exploration and make the moon a target for all sorts of commercial operations."The little Astrobotic rover – which resembles a traffic cone on wheels – has also been designed to carry people's ashes to the moon as well as a variety of small experiments. In addition, it is intended to land the probe near the 1969 landing site of Apollo 11 in the Sea of Tranquillity."Part of our business plan will be to get our rover to move round the site and take a 3D high-definition film of it," said Ranger, a former software developer and self-confessed spaceflight fanatic who raised the initial investment that was needed to set up Astrobotic Technology. "If nothing else, it should prove to the doubters that the Apollo missions really took place."The Google Lunar X prize has been created following the success of the Ansari X prize, established in 1996 to inspire private investment in manned space travel. The $10m prize was won by aeronautical engineer Burt Rutan. His SpaceShipOne craft was flown twice within a month to the edge of space in 2004. That technology is now being used to build Richard Branson's Virgin Galactic fleet of spaceships, which are scheduled to start carrying tourists to space by 2012. Tickets are $200,000 each.One of the first customers to fly on the Virgin Galactic will be Ranger. He said Astrobotic Technology hopes to build its lander for $15m to $20m. The company is in negotiation with SpaceX – the private US launch company controlled by software billionaire Elon Musk – which was recently awarded a $1bn contract by Nasa to ferry supplies to the International Space Station."We hope to use SpaceX's Falcon 9 rocket to get to the moon," said Ranger. "The cost would normally be around $100m, but we hope we can negotiate a special deal for this high-profile project."The deadline for a team to make an attempt to win the full $20m Lunar X prize has been set for December 2012. After that, the prize money will drop to $15m. If no project has succeeded by December 2014, the competition will be scrapped – though there is a prospect of an extension, say the organisers.Bonus awards have also been added to the prize. If a rover can not only travel half a kilometre over the lunar terrain, but survive the incredible cold of a 14-day-long lunar night, an extra $4m will be awarded. Another bonus, of $2m, will given if the craft is launched from Florida. There will also be a second prize worth $5m."It is not the technology that is holding us back," said Ranger. "We could be ready in less than a year. Raising the cash will take longer, however."A total of 22 teams have put their names down as competitors for the prize. They include Odyssey Moon, which has employed several former senior staff from Nasa, and which has also held discussions with Colin Pillinger, the UK scientist who designed Beagle 2, Britain's ill-fated attempt to land a probe on Mars in 2003. Other competitors include teams from Spain and Italy, and designs that would see craft hop or crawl across the lunar surface (see graphic)."At present, the exact rules of the competition have not been worked out," said Ranger. "The organisers and competitors need to work out how they share out the revenue generated by the flights. That is what we are going to do this week at our meeting. Then it will be a matter of raising the money – and flying to the moon."The moonSpaceGoogleRobin McKieguardian.co.uk © Guardian News & Media Limited 2010 | Use of this content is subject to our Terms & Conditions | More Feeds guardian.co.uk |
Love really is like a drug Love (or maybe lust) not only blocks pain, it also seems to stimulate the same parts of the brain as cocaineIntense spells of passion are as effective at blocking pain as cocaine and other illicit drugs, a team of neuroscientists say. Tests on 15 American students who admitted to being in the passionate early stages of a relationship showed that feelings for their partner reduced intense pain by 12% and moderate pain by 45%.In the study, researchers at Stanford University showed eight women and seven men photographs of their partners while delivering mild doses of pain to their palms with a hot probe. At the same time, the students had their brains scanned by a functional magnetic resonance imaging machine. At the end of each test, the students were asked to rate how much pain they felt.Feelings of love, triggered by a photo of their partner, acted as a powerful painkiller. Brain scans revealed that these feelings caused more activity in parts of the brain that are also triggered by morphine and cocaine. Looking at an image of an attractive friend rather than their partner had only a mild analgesic effect.The study went on to investigate whether distracting the students also reduced pain by giving them simple mental tasks, such as naming sports that do not involve a ball.The brain scans showed that while both love and distraction reduce pain, they appear to act on different pathways in the brain.Jarred Younger, who led the study published in Plos One, said: "With the distraction test, the brain pathways leading to pain relief were mostly cognitive. The reduction of pain was associated with higher, cortical parts of the brain."Love-induced analgesia is much more associated with the reward centres. It appears to involve more primitive aspects of the brain, activating deep structures that may block pain at a spinal level: similar to how opioid analgesics work."He added, "One of the key sites for love-induced analgesia is the nucleus accumbens, a key reward addiction centre for opioids, cocaine and other drugs of abuse. The region tells the brain that you really need to keep doing this."Younger's team recruited students in the first nine months of a relationship, when feelings of passion are at their most intense."We intentionally focused on this early phase of passionate love. We specifically were not looking for longer-lasting, more mature phases of the relationship. We wanted subjects who were feeling euphoric, energetic, obsessively thinking about their beloved, craving their presence," Sean Mackey, a co-author on the paper, said."When passionate love is described like this, it in some ways sounds like an addiction. We thought, maybe this does involve similar brain systems as those involved in addictions."NeuroscienceDrugsMedical researchPsychologyIan Sampleguardian.co.uk © Guardian News & Media Limited 2010 | Use of this content is subject to our Terms & Conditions | More Feeds guardian.co.uk |
Fuel Lines of Tumors Are New Target Approaches include depriving tumor cells of energy and boosting their energy to enable cell suicide. feeds.nytimes.com |