Javelin-Hurling Scientists Measure Antarctic Glacier Melt

How quickly are glaciers in Antarctica melting? Researchers are launching javelin-shaped devices out of airplanes to help answer that question and find out what's going on in some of the frozen continent's most inaccessible places.

So far, scientists have deployed about 25 of these GPS-equipped javelins in Antarctica's Pine Island Glacier, and another four on the Antarctic Peninsula, said Hilmar Gudmundsson, a researcher at the British Antarctic Survey (BAS). The javelins will automatically record and relay their positions for two to three years, allowing researchers to figure out how quickly the glacier is flowing into the ocean. Preliminary measurements show that the Pine Island Glacier's march to the sea is speeding up, Gudmundsson told OurAmazingPlanet.

The Pine Island Glacier is thinning faster than any other glacier in Antarctica, and it's important to find out why and exactly how fast, Gudmundsson said. By some estimates, this glacier alone could be responsible for about 5 percent of global sea level rise, although that is a rough calculation and varies by year, he added.

The javelins are designed to only partially embed into the ice, so that they are still able to communicate with satellites. To that end the devices are equipped with small parachutes and "ice brake" fins to keep them from disappearing beneath the ice sheet when they crash land, Gudmundsson said.

Like many glaciers in polar regions, the Pine Island Glacier's expanse of ice doesn't stop when it reaches the ocean. Instead, the ice flows into the sea, where it floats atop the water, forming a platform of ice called an ice shelf. Measurements have shown that the Antarctic Ocean is warmer than it used to be, and is melting the bottom of this ice shelf. That produces less resistance for the glacier on land, which, as a result, slides toward the ocean faster than before, Gudmundsson said.

And behind the Pine Island Glacier is an even larger section of the West Antarctic Ice Sheet, one of the largest in the world. The glacier acts like a plug in a leaky dam, and if it collapses, it could have devastating consequences for global sea levels, he added.

The javelins Gudmundsson and his team have deployed allow researchers to measure areas, like this one, that are difficult to access over land. "This opens up new possibilities. We can instrument areas that were previously out of reach," he said. "These data will give us a clear picture of what's going on but will also give us a valuable data set to test our [computer] models."

Email Douglas Main or follow him @Douglas_Main. Follow us @OAPlanet, Facebook or  Google+. Original article on LiveScience's OurAmazingPlanet.

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Planetary Scientists Protest 'Disastrous' NASA Budget Cuts Proposed for 2014

Supporters of planetary science are rallying against NASA's proposed 2014 budget, which they say unfairly guts funding for solar system research and exploration.

The Obama administration unveiled the budget plan April 10, requesting $17.7 billion for NASA — $50 million less than the agency got in 2012. The budget must be approved by Congress before it becomes official. Under the budget proposal, planetary science would receive $1.217 billion in 2014. Discounting the $50 million earmarked for producing plutonium-238, which fuels deep space vehicles (this used to be paid for by the Department of Energy), and $20 million for asteroid detection in service of a future manned asteroid mission, this represents a $268 million cut from planetary science funding levels approved by Congress for 2013, advocates said.

"The Planetary Society has deep concerns about the continued effort to defund planetary science in NASA's 2014 budget proposal," wrote officials from the society, which was founded by astronomer Carl Sagan to promote solar-system exploration, in testimony submitted to the U.S. House of Representatives Committee on Science, Space and Technology April 24. "Without immediate investment in technology and mission development — not possible under the FY14 proposal — the United States will go 'radio dark' in almost all regions of the solar system by the end of the decade." [NASA's 2014 Space Goals Explained in Pictures]

The proposed budget would include $105 million in funds to support an asteroid-capture mission and other asteroid studies, but eliminate a planned robotic mission to Jupiter's intriguing moon Europa, which harbors an ocean buried beneath its icy surface that may support microbial life. And current missions, such as NASA's Cassini spacecraft orbiting Saturn and the Messenger orbiter around Mercury, may come to premature ends.

Bill Nye, chief executive officer of the Planetary Society, called the budget "shortsighted and disastrous" in a letter urging supporters to write their Congressional representatives in support of planetary science. The organization aims to send 25,000 messages to Capitol Hill by April 28.

A group of lawmakers also joined in the campaign, penning a letter to NASA administrator Charles Bolden on April 19 asking that he and the Obama administration rethink their 2013 NASA budget, which is still unfinalized.

"We write to express opposition to any Fiscal Year 2013 NASA Operating Plan that disproportionately applies sequester and across-the-board cuts to the science budget," wrote Representative Adam Schiff (D-CA) and Senator Dianne Feinstein (D-CA) in a letter signed by Senator Barbara Boxer (D-CA) and Representative John Culberson (R-TX). "While we fully understand that the funding levels enumerated in the bill and report are subject to change to reflect the across the board and sequester cuts, we expect that the balance among programs will remain consistent with the structure directed by Congress."

Follow Clara Moskowitz on Twitter and Google+. Follow us @Spacedotcom, Facebook and Google+. Original article on SPACE.com.

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Iranian scientist freed by U.S. returns home - local media

DUBAI (Reuters) - An Iranian scientist held for more than a year in California on charges of violating U.S. sanctions arrived in Iran on Saturday, Iranian media reported, after being freed in what the Omani foreign ministry said was a humanitarian gesture.

Mojtaba Atarodi, 55, an assistant professor of electrical engineering at Iran's Sharif University of Technology, had been detained on suspicion of buying high-tech U.S. laboratory equipment, previous Iranian media reports said.

The trade sanctions were imposed over Iran's nuclear programme, which Iranian officials say is for peaceful energy purposes only but Washington says is secretly geared to developing the capability to produce nuclear weapons.

Iran's semi-official Mehr news agency said Atarodi arrived in Tehran on Saturday, after a stopover in Muscat on Friday.

Upon arriving at Tehran's Imam Khomeini airport on Saturday, Atarodi told reporters that he had tried to buy simple equipment for his personal lab to conduct academic research when he was detained by U.S. authorities, according to state-run Press TV.

There was no immediate U.S. comment on Atarodi's case.

Oman, a U.S.-allied Gulf Arab state which also enjoys good relations with Tehran, has previously helped mediate the release of Western prisoners held by the Islamic Republic.

Omani authorities had worked with U.S. officials to speed up Atarodi's case and return him home, the foreign ministry in Muscat said in a statement carried by local media.

He was released after follow-up approaches by Iran's foreign ministry, its spokesman Ramin Mehmanparast was quoted as saying by the Iranian Students' News Agency (ISNA).

In a report on its website dated January 7, 2012, Press TV said Atarodi was taken into custody on his arrival in Los Angeles on December 7, 2011, accused of buying advanced lab equipment.

Iran and the United States severed relations after the 1979 Islamic Revolution that overthrew the pro-Western monarchy in Tehran.

In 2011, Iran freed into Omani custody two U.S. citizens who had been sentenced to eight years in jail for spying.

Josh Fattal and Shane Bauer, among three people arrested while hiking along the Iraq-Iran border in 2009, were flown to Oman after officials there helped secure their release by posting bail of $1 million. They denied being spies.

The third detainee, Sarah Shourd, had been freed in September 2010, also by way of Oman.

(Reporting by Saleh al-Shaybani and Sami Aboudi; additional reporting by Zahra Hosseinian in Zurich and Yeganeh Torbati in Dubai; Editing by Mark Heinrich)

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Experts: Media May Be Second Prison for Cleveland Abductees

Three women kept captive in a boarded-up Cleveland house for between nine and 11 years will likely face a long road to recovery after their nightmarish ordeal.

The women, Amanda Berry, Gina DeJesus and Michelle Knight, all went missing between 2002 and 2004, when they were teens, or in Knight's case, 20 years old. The women managed to escape on Monday (May 6). Police told reporters this week that they had found chains and ropes in the house, and that the women were very rarely allowed outside into the backyard. Berry's 6-year-old daughter also escaped from the house. 

Former school bus driver Ariel Castro has been charged with kidnapping and rape in the case.

The women's families told CNN that they were in good spirits upon being reunited with their families, but social scientists warn that the trauma of captivity is not likely to fade overnight — especially as they will have to recover in the public eye, under media pressure. [Understanding the 10 Most Destructive Human Behaviors]

"The big challenge that they face is the anticipation that everything is going to be perfect once family members are back together again," said Geoffrey Greif, a professor of social work at the University of Maryland who has studied missing and exploited children.

Recovering from trauma

In fact, Greif said, the women's families have changed in the decades they have been gone. Berry's mother, Louwana Miller, died in 2006 without ever finding out what had happened to her daughter.

 "The family grows, changes in one direction," Greif told LiveScience. "The women change in a different direction, and the issue is to accept the fact that their life trajectories have been very different."

At the same time, the abducted women are likely to suffer with the aftereffects of trauma, said pediatric and adolescent psychologist Carolyn Landis of University Hospitals Rainbow Babies & Children's Hospital in Cleveland. This could include post-traumatic stress disorder, or PTSD.

"I think of it as somebody who has been through a war," Landis told LiveScience. Symptoms of PTSD could include re-experiencing the trauma, anxiety, nightmares, insomnia and even physical ailments.

Coping in the aftermath

Therapy and possibly medications could help ease PTSD symptoms, Landis said. It's also important that the women face their recoveries individually. The three might face different struggles and different paths despite sharing similar traumas.

Abduction victims often feel guilt and shame, questioning themselves about whether they did enough to escape, Greif said. They might also compare themselves with individuals from other high-profile cases.

"From talking to other people who have been kidnapped and recovered, they sometimes measure themselves against the perception of how high-profile former abducted people do," Greif said. "It can set a bar that may have worked for Elizabeth Smart and Jaycee Dugard, but may not work for someone else."

Elizabeth Smart was kidnapped at age 14 from her bedroom in Salt Lake City, Utah, and held for nine months. Jaycee Lee Dugard was abducted at age 11 in South Lake Tahoe, Calif., and was kept in captivity for 18 years.

Like Berry, Dugard had children in captivity. Berry's child may need psychological help as well, Landis said.

"I would expect that it probably wasn't a wonderful atmosphere, so I'm sure she might have heard or seen things that would not be typical for your normal child," she said. "I would expect she might have symptoms of PTSD as well."

The women's sudden celebrity may also complicate their recovery, Landis said. Dugard's memoir, "A Stolen Life" (Simon & Schuster, 2011) discusses not being able to go out with her daughters in public, lest they be recognized.

"I hope that people will give them their space and their privacy so they can live normal lives, because if not it's almost like they're still in a prison," Landis said.

Follow Stephanie Pappas on Twitter and Google+. Follow us @livescience, Facebook & Google+. Original article on LiveScience.com.

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Wanted: Citizen Scientists to Hunt 'Space Warp' Galaxies

Astronomers are calling for volunteers to help them search for "space warps," rare and distant galaxies that bend light around them like enormous lenses.

Citizen scientists participating in the Space Warps project, which launches Wednesday (May 8), could help shed light on the mysterious dark matter pervading the universe and aid research into a number of other cosmic phenomena, organizers said.

"Not only do space warps act like lenses, magnifying the distant galaxies behind them, but we can also use the light they distort to weigh them, helping us to figure out how much dark matter they contain and how it’s distributed," Phil Marshall, a physicist at Oxford University in England and one of Space Warps' leaders, said in a statement. [Gallery: Dark Matter Throughout the Universe]

"Gravitational lenses help us to answer all kinds of questions about galaxies, including how many very-low-mass stars, such as brown dwarfs — which aren’t bright enough to detect directly in many observations — are lurking in distant galaxies," Marshall added.

The Space Warps project asks armchair astronomers to spot gravitational lenses in hundreds of thousands of deep-sky images. The human brain is more adept than computers at picking out patterns, and amateurs can do it about as well as professional astronomers can, organizers said.

Participants don't have to spend hours peering at their computers to make a meaningful contribution, Space Warps leaders said.

"Even if individual visitors only spend a few minutes glancing over 40 or so images each, that’s really helpful to our research — we only need a handful of people to spot something in an image for us to say that it’s worth investigating," Oxford's Aprajita Verma, another of Space Warps' principal investigators, said in a statement.

Space Warps is affiliated with the Zooniverse, a broad citizen-science website that helps connect the public with projects in a wide range of fields. The Zooniverse began in July 2007 with the launch of Galaxy Zoo, which asks participants to classify galaxies according to their shape.

"The Zooniverse has always been about connecting people with the biggest questions, and now, with Space Warps, we're taking our first trip to the early universe," team member Arfon Smith, director of citizen science at Chicago's Adler Planetarium, said in a statement. "We're excited to let participants and planetarium visitors be the first to see some of the rarest astronomical objects of all."

You can join the Space Warps project starting on Wednesday by going to www.spacewarps.org. Visitors to the site will get a quick tutorial on what to look for, and then the hunt will be on.

Follow Mike Wall on Twitter @michaeldwall and Google+. Follow us @Spacedotcom, Facebookor Google+. Originally published on SPACE.com.

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Grocery Shopping While Hungry Not Good Idea, Science Confirms

If you've ever gone grocery shopping while you're hungry, you know the task can be a challenge: Everything looks good.

Now new research confirms that grocery shopping when your stomach is rumbling is probably not a good idea.

To hungry shoppers, high-calorie foods may be more tempting than usual, the researchers said.

In the study, researchers asked 68 people to come to their lab and to avoid eating for five hours before they came. Upon arrival, half of the participants were told they could eat as many wheat crackers as they wanted, while the other half were not given any food.

Both groups of participants were then asked to grocery shop in an online store that offered high-calorie foods, such as candy, salty snacks and red meat, as well as low-calorie foods, such as fruits, vegetable and chicken breasts.

Participants who were hungry purchased more high-calorie products, the researchers found. On average, hungry people purchased 5.7 high-calorie products, while the group that ate before shopping bought 3.9 high-calorie products.

In a second experiment, the researchers, led by Brian Wansink, director of the Food and Brand Lab at Cornell University, analyzed purchases of 82 people in a real-world grocery store. They compared the purchases of those who went shopping between 1 p.m. and 4 p.m. (an "after lunch" period when people are less likely to be hungry) to those who went shopping between 4 and 7 p.m. (when people are more likely to be hungry).

Those who shopped between 4 p.m. and 7 p.m. bought fewer low-calorie products compared with those who shopped between 1 p.m. and 4 p.m. (buying eight products versus 11 products).

"Even short-term food deprivation can lead to a shift in choices such that people choose less low-calorie, and relatively more high-calorie, food options," the researchers wrote in the May 6 issue of the Journal for the American Medical Association.

The findings suggest "people should be more careful about their choices when food-deprived and possibly avoid choice situations when hungry by making choices while in less hungry states," the researchers said.

Pass it on: Grocery shopping while hungry may lead to unhealthy food choices.

Follow Rachael Rettner @RachaelRettner. Follow MyHealthNewsDaily @MyHealth_MHND, Facebook & Google+. Originally published on MyHealthNewsDaily .

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Moonwalker Buzz Aldrin Launches 'Mission to Mars' Book Tour

Buzz Aldrin, the second person to set foot on the moon during humanity's first lunar landing, has launched on a nationwide book tour to promote his "Mission to Mars."

The Apollo 11 moonwalker outlines his case for launching humans to the Red Planet by 2035 in "Mission to Mars: My Vision for Space Exploration," released Tuesday (May 7) by National Geographic Books.

Together with co-author Leonard David, a veteran space journalist, Aldrin presents his "unified space vision," a blueprint for maintaining the United States' leadership in human spaceflight while at the same time avoiding a space race with China to be second back to the moon. [Buzz Aldrin Discusses Missions to Mars (Exclusive SPACE.com Video)]

Ultimately, Buzz Aldrin proposes establishing a permanent U.S.-led human presence on Mars 66 years after the first moon landing — the same amount of time that passed between the Wright brothers' first powered flight and he and Neil Armstrong touching down at Tranquility Base.

To further his vision and promote the book, Aldrin, 83, has embarked on a coast-to-coast (and back again) tour, kicking off Tuesday in New York City. His first "Mission to Mars" book signing was at a Barnes & Noble in Manhattan.

Aldrin will then travel to Washington, D.C., where he will meet up with his co-author David for back-to-back evening presentations at National Geographic's museum.

While in the nation's capital, Aldrin will also speak at the "Humans2Mars Summit" being held at George Washington University and discuss the book during a Friday (May 10) event at the National Press Club.

Aldrin will then rocket back to the Big Apple, where he will be interviewed by adventurer and journalist Jim Clash as part of The Explorers Club's "Exploring Legends" series. While in New York, Aldrin will also drop by the Cradle of Aviation Museum in Garden City, near where the "Eagle," the lunar module he and Armstrong landed on the moon, was built.

Returning to his current home city of Los Angeles, Aldrin will speak at the annual awards dinner for the American Institute of Aeronautics and Astronautics (AIAA) on May 15. He is then scheduled to sign books at the San Diego Air and Space Museum and speak at the National Space Society's International Space Development Conference at the nearby Hyatt Regency La Jolla.

Crossing the United States again, Aldrin will land on June 1 at the National Air and Space Museum in Washington, D.C. for a public book signing and then participate in "The Future is Here," a Smithsonian conference to be held at the National Museum of the American Indian that same day.

Aldrin will visit his hometown on June 2, speaking at the Montclair Public Library in New Jersey. The talk and book signing will then lead into a trio of visits to the presidential libraries of Ronald Reagan and Richard Nixon in California and the William J. Clinton Presidential Center in Arkansas.

The book tour, which includes other stops at bookstores and expos, as well as media appearances including BBC America's "The Nerdist" and Discovery Channel's "The Big Brain Theory," stretches through the summer.

"Mission to Mars" is Aldrin's eighth book. He has also written three autobiographies, two science fiction novels and two books for children. Aldrin will autograph copies of the latter, titled "Reaching for the Moon" (Harper Collins, 2005) and "Look to the Stars" (Putnam, 2009) during his current tour, but will sign no other books or memorabilia, according to his website.

For those who cannot attend the scheduled book signings, National Geographic Books is hosting a sweepstakes on Facebook to give away autographed copies of "Mission To Mars," as well as "Destination Mars" maps. The contest is open to U.S. citizens only now through May 31.

For more about these events, as well as an up-to-date list of where Buzz Aldrin will be signing copies of "Mission to Mars," see collectSPACE.com's astronaut and cosmonaut appearance calendar.

Follow collectSPACE.com on Facebook and on Twitter at @collectSPACE. Copyright 2013 collectSPACE.com. All rights reserved.

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How Much Say Should Congress Have in Science Funding?

A battle over science is under way in the halls of the Capitol, with some in Congress calling for more say in which research projects receive federal dollars.

Political science studies funded this year must show their results will benefit U.S. economic or security interests, and another proposal imposes similar new criteria on other scientific studies.

In response, critics have charged lawmakers with intruding into the National Science Foundation’s approval process.

“Every scientific discipline has a stake in undoing the damage inflicted on political science, and, in fact, to the national interest,” by the new criteria, writes Kenneth Prewitt of Columbia University, in a commentary published in tomorrow’s (May 3) issue of the journal Science. “Every scientist should vigorously contest any effort to apply those criteria more broadly.”

Congress and science

The new rule for political science comes from legislation passed in March, which denies the National Science Foundation (NSF) the ability to fund political science studies unless the research will promote national security or the economic interests of the United States. A proposal by Rep. Lamar Smith (R-Texas) would expand that requirement to all NSF-funded studies.

Smith’s draft bill, obtained by Science Insider, would require the NSF to certify that any project it funds meets new criteria, including being “in the interests of the United States to advance the national health, prosperity, or welfare and to secure the national defense by promoting the progress of science.” [7 Great Dramas in Congressional History]

During a hearing in April, presidential science adviser John Holdren objected to applying new criteria to funding proposals: "I think it's a dangerous thing for Congress, or anybody else, to be trying to specify in detail what types of fundamental research NSF should be funding,” Holdren said, according to a Science Insider report.

Prewitt and others say these efforts by lawmakers bring a number of risks, including valuing short-term pay off at the expense of long-term, and often unanticipated, benefits. For instance, narrowly targeted criteria would have prevented the funding of the defense research that led to the Internet, Prewitt says.

“Today, we cannot know how and when the science of the Higgs boson sub-atomic particle will prove useful. But conditions will change; the knowledge will be used,”writes Prewitt, referring to a newly discovered particle thought to explain how other particles get their mass.

Congressional criteria also put agencies in a situation where they must consider whether or not a project is politically feasible, on top of reviewing its scientific merits, said Robert Cook-Deegan, a research professor at the Duke Institute for Genome Sciences and Policy.

Currently, the NSF awards grants based on intellectual merit and the broader impacts of the research. Decisions are made by peer review, a process in which experts in a particular field evaluate a proposal. New criteria threaten this process, and as a result, politically controversial science, such as climate change and stem cell research, could be stifled, Prewitt argues.

In a statement, Smith defended his proposal, writing: “The draft bill maintains the current peer review process and improves on it by adding a layer of accountability.” 

Constitutional privilege?

Proponents of more oversight do have a strong argument, Cook-Deegan said, because the U.S. Constitution gives Congress oversight over executive branch agencies, including the NSF. (Congress, as part of the federal budget, approves the NSF’s budget.)

Both Smith and Sen. Tom Coburn (R-Okla.), who proposed the criteria for political science studies, have questioned the merits of individual, NSF-funded studies. Their lists have included studies on the evolving depiction of animals in the magazine National Geographic; on attitudes toward majority rule and minority rights focusing on the Senate filibuster; and on the International Criminal Court and the African Union Commission’s interpretation of international justice and human rights.

These lists are the latest in a well-established history of singling out individual research projects for criticism. Beginning in March 1975, Wisconsin Sen. William Proxmire began issuing “Golden Fleece Awards,” highlighting what he considered wasteful government spending. His research picks included studies to determine why people fall in love, and under what conditions people, monkeys and rats bite and clench their jaws, according to the Wisconsin Historical Society.

It is unlikely to be a coincidence that social science research, including political science, has been a particular target for Republican lawmakers. Historically, conservatives have perceived social science as a tool to advance the liberal agenda, Cook-Deegan said.

This perception has created political conflict over research in a number of topics, including gun violence, he said. Gun violence research, stymied for many years by congressional decree, received a boost from President Barack Obama earlier this year as part of his response to the shootings in Newtown, Conn. 

Follow LiveScience on Twitter @livescience. We're also on Facebook & Google+. Original article on LiveScience.com.

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NY group buys Tesla property, plans science center

MINEOLA, N.Y. (AP) — A New York community group that raised $1.3 million in a six-week online fundraising effort has purchased a laboratory once used by visionary scientist Nikola Tesla.

"We're feeling very excited and gratified that we've reached this milestone," said Jane Alcorn, president of the Tesla Science Center at Wardenclyffe, on Long Island. Her group announced last week that it had finalized the purchase of the Tesla lab and property for $850,000.

Tesla was a rival of Thomas Edison who imagined a world of free electricity. He conducted experiments in the early 20th century at his laboratory in Shoreham, about 65 miles east of New York City.

Volunteers struggled for nearly two decades to raise money to acquire the property with limited success.

Their effort got a jolt of support last summer from Seattle cartoonist Matthew Inman, a Tesla fan who started promoting the fundraising effort on his website, theoatmeal.com.

Within six weeks, more than $1.3 million had been raised from 33,000 donors in the U.S. and 108 countries.

Tesla abandoned the lab in 1917. For many years it was a photo chemical processing plant; in 1993, officials determined that the property's groundwater had been polluted with cadmium and silver. A remediation effort overseen by state environmental regulators was completed last year.

Alcorn said that the purchase of the property was a key first step but noted much work needs to be done before the group can realize its goal: "to create a fitting memorial to Tesla and a science center to benefit the entire world."

She estimated another $10 million will be required to renovate the property, which is overrun with brush and includes several dilapidated buildings in the complex that will likely need to be demolished.

Alcorn said her group's first priority is to secure the property from further vandalism. Additional fundraisers are being discussed, but Alcorn had no specific details.

Among Tesla's accomplishments were developments in alternating current and research in the creation of wireless communication and radio. He died in New York City in 1943.

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New bird flu poses 'serious threat' - scientists

By Kate Kelland

LONDON (Reuters) - A new strain of bird flu that is causing a deadly outbreak among people in China is a threat to world health and should be taken seriously, scientists said on Wednesday.

The H7N9 strain has killed 24 people and infected more than 125, according to the Geneva-based World Health Organization (WHO), which has described it as "one of the most lethal" flu viruses.

The high mortality rate, together with relatively large numbers of cases in a short period and the possibility it might acquire the ability to transmit between people, make H7N9 a pandemic risk, experts said.

"The WHO considers this a serious threat," said John McCauley, director of the WHO Collaborating Centre for Influenza at Britain's National Institute for Medical Research.

Speaking at a briefing in London, experts in virology said initial studies suggest the virus has several worrisome characteristics, including two genetic mutations that make it more likely to eventually spread from person to person.

"The longer the virus is unchecked in circulation, the higher the probability that this virus will start transmitting from person to person," Colin Butte, an expert in avian viruses at Britain's Pirbright Institute, said.

Of the some 125 people infected with H7N9 so far, around 20 percent have died, approximately 20 percent have recovered and the remainder are still sick. The infection can lead to severe pneumonia, blood poisoning and organ failure.

"This is a very, very serious disease in those who have been infected. So if this were to become more widespread it would be an extraordinarily devastating outbreak," Peter Openshaw, director of the centre for respiratory infection at Imperial College London, told the briefing.

Scientists who have analysed genetic sequence data from samples from three H7N9 victims say the strain is a so-called "triple reassortant" virus with a mixture of genes from three other flu strains found in birds in Asia.

Recent pandemic viruses, including the H1N1 "swine flu" of 2009/2010, have been mixtures of mammal and bird flu - hybrids that are likely to be milder because mammalian flu tends to make people less severely ill than bird flu.

Pure bird-flu strains, such as the new H7N9 strain and the H5N1 flu, which has killed about 371 of 622 the people it has infected since 2003, are generally more deadly for people.

Human cases of the H7N9 flu have been found in several new parts of China in recent days and have now been recorded in all of its provinces.

Last week a man in Taiwan became the first case of the flu outside mainland China, though he was infected while travelling there.

The H7N9 strain was unknown in humans until it was identified in sick people in China in March.

Scientists say it is jumping from birds - most probably chickens - to people, and there is no evidence yet of the virus passing from person to person.

Jeremy Farrar, a leading expert on infectious diseases and director of Oxford University's research unit in Vietnam, said the age range of those infected so far stretched from toddlers to people in their late 80s - a range that appeared to confirm the virus is completely new to the human population.

"That suggests there truly is no immunity across all ages, and that as humans we have not seen this virus before," he said.

"The response has to be calm and measured, but it cannot be taken lightly," he said.

(Reporting by Kate Kelland; Editing by Michael Roddy)

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Obama Champions Science Research in Address

President Barack Obama expressed his unequivocal support for the science industry in a public address today (April 29), saying the nation cannot afford to make sweeping budget cuts that threaten to stall the depth and pace of research.

Obama spoke before an audience of scientists, engineers and doctors this morning to mark the 150th anniversary of the National Academy of Sciences.

"What I want to communicate to all of you is that as long as I'm president, we're going to be committed to investing in promising ideas that are generated by you and your institutions, because they lead to innovative products, they help boost our economy, but also because that's who we are," Obama said. "I'm committed to it because that's what makes us special, and ultimately what makes life worth living." [25 Amazing Facts About Science]

After policymakers failed to reach an agreement to avoid government-wide spending cuts earlier this year, $85 billion in across-the-board cuts — referred to as "the sequester" — was signed into law on March 1.

Making deep cuts to research and development programs could jeopardize the country's competitive edge, and it hinders the widespread benefits that these efforts could have, Obama said.

"What we produce here ends up having benefits worldwide," he explained. "We should be reaching for a level of private and public research and development investment that we haven't seen since the height of the space race, that's my goal."

The sequester is expected to take a significant toll on scientific research, with numerous federal agencies and organizations now facing the possibility of huge cuts to their budgets. In particular, the National Institutes of Health is expecting to face $1.5 billion in cuts; the National Science Foundation is estimating its budget could shrink by $283 million; and the American Association for the Advancement of Science is estimating an $8.6 billion cut in 2013.

Obama called the fallout from the sequester a product of "misguided priorities" in the nation's capital, adding that the country cannot afford to gut programs that are on the brink of important discoveries.

"It's hitting our scientific research," Obama said. "Instead of racing ahead … our scientists are left wondering if they'll be able to start any new research projects at all, which means we could lose a year, two years, of scientific research."

In his address, the president reaffirmed his commitment to "grand challenges," such as solar energy projects, NASA's Curiosity rover mission on Mars, and initiatives to better understand how the human brain processes information and memories.

Furthermore, he stated the government should continue to invest in the projects that promise the most return on taxpayer investment, without being influenced by politics.

"In all the sciences, we've got to make sure that we are supporting the idea that they're not subject to politics, that they're not skewed by an agenda," Obama said.

The president added that his administration will continue to focus on promoting science, technology, engineering and math — the so-called STEM subjects — to the next generation of Americans.

"We want to make sure we're exciting young people around math and science and technology," Obama said. "We don't want our kids to just be consumers of the amazing things that science generates. We want them to be producers as well."

Follow Denise Chow on Twitter @denisechow. Follow LiveScience @livescience, Facebook & Google+. Original article on LiveScience.com.

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'Space Hackers' Take On Citizen Science for Suborbital Spaceflight

MOUNTAIN VIEW, Calif. — The increasing demand for flying experiments in space was clearly in evidence over the weekend as a standing room only crowd of 100 people packed into a room here at the Hacker Dojo to hear about a new era of citizen science.

The attendees came to the first-ever Space Hacker Workshop on Saturday and Sunday (May 4 and 5) to learn about how they could build and fly experiments on a new generation of manned suborbital vehicles such as XCOR Aerospace's Lynx space plane.

The event, which was sponsored by the Silicon Valley Space Center and Citizens in Space, attracted high-school and college students, university professors, space professionals, scientists, technology experts and others interested in this emerging field. [The Top 10 Private Spaceships]

New reusable vehicles slated to come online soon will provide affordable and repeated access to space for professional and amateur scientists and help to revolutionize microgravity research and science education, said Citizens in Space founder Ed Wright.

"With the suborbital vehicles being developed...there's going to be an opportunity to fly many thousands of small payloads on suborbital vehicles every year," Wright said.

Citizen space scientists

Citizens in Space is a program run by Wright's Texas-based organization, the U.S. Rocket Academy, which has purchased 10 flights aboard the two-seat Lynx just for research. Ten lucky citizen scientists will get to fly in the passenger seat of the vehicle and operate the experiments that they have designed and built. Five of those slots already have been filled.

So, just how cheap will it be to fly experiments in space? Wright said that while a typical tiny CubeSat might cost between $3,000 and $5,000 to build and another $100,000 or more to launch into orbit, developing and flying scientific payloads aboard the Lynx will be many orders of magnitude cheaper.

"At the base level, you're going to have people who are able to build an experiment for $200 or less and have an opportunity to fly in space through programs such as Citizens in Space, and I think this is just going to change everything," Wright said.

"We may reach the point in five or 10 years where every high school science major will have the opportunity to build and fly a payload in space during the course of his academic career before he graduates,” he added.

The development of suborbital vehicles such as the Lynx and Virgin Galactic's SpaceShipTwo is coming at a time when maker spaces are popping up all over the country. Wright said these joint work spaces are perfect places for people to build the types of do-it-yourself science experiments that Citizens in Space wants to fly.

Wright's academy is developing the Lynx Cub Payload Carrier, a unit that can hold up to a dozen small experiments in a space behind the pilot's seat. The carrier will give XCOR the ability to fly space tourists in the passenger's seat while also carrying scientific experiments as secondary payloads.

A seat on Lynx costs $95,000, while a ticket to fly on SpaceShipTwo — which last week made its first-ever powered test flight — will set you back $200,000 at the moment. (Virgin Galactic founder Sir Richard Branson said recently that ticket prices would soon temporarily rise to $250,000.) [Photos of SpaceShipTwo's Test Flights]

A range of experiments

Four XCOR employees traveled 300 miles (500 kilometers) north from the town of Mojave, where they are building the first Lynx, to address the Space Hacker audience and answer questions.

Khaki Rodway, XCOR's director of payload sales and operations, gave an overview of Lynx's capabilities and a progress update on the assembly of the first vehicle, which could fly by the end of this year.

"We're doing it because there's lots of stuff to do," Rodway said of the emerging market for experiments.

During the two-day workshop, participants heard talks about the experiments that will be carried out in the microgravity environment and vacuum of space. These experiments will range across many different fields, including materials processing, fluid dynamics, life sciences, protein crystal growth and technology demonstrations.

NASA astronaut Yvonne Cagle talked about sending odd "water bears" into space. Water bears, also known as tardigrades, are tiny organisms that are virtually impervious to heat, radiation and vacuum conditions. Cagle believes that by studying water bears, scientists can learn a great deal about how to help humans adapt to space.

Jason Reimuller, president of the company Integrated Spaceflight Services, told the audience about his Polar Suborbital Science in the Upper Mesosphere (PoSSUM) campaign, which will use a Lynx to study the dynamics of clouds over the North Pole. The vehicle will operate out of a high-altitude spaceport in either Alaska or Sweden, Reimuller said.

Ryan Gillespie, an aerospace engineer from Sunnyvale, Calif., said he is interested in pursuing Citizens in Space's High Altitude Astrobiology Challenge, which is offering cash prizes of up to $10,000 for the development of a device that will collect micro-organisms living at the edge of space.

“I'm not so much interested in the $10,000 — it's more the fact that when you come up with anything, it needs a purpose," Gillespie said. "Here's something that actually has a purpose for mankind."

Driving technology forward

Richard Mains of Mains Associates, who works with the NASA Flight Opportunities Program that funds experiments on suborbital vehicles, said these new spaceships are driving technology development at a much faster rate than traditional NASA programs tend to do.

"I think what's actually going on here with these reusable suborbital launch vehicles is kind of a whole new paradigm where you're not putting a payload up on the space station for six months," Mains said.  "And these vehicles aren't that big. But they are flying very often, So these payloads now have to be small, smart, autonomous — very very easy to kind of activate and deactivate, reprogram, get data out of."

 "I see all of that driving technology in a very, very interesting fashion," Mains added, mentioning the emergence of open-source platforms as another powerful driver. "So I'm very excited about what I've heard here."

Silicon Valley was a perfect location to hold the workshop given that it's at the leading edge of technology development, Mains said.

Wright said he was extremely pleased with the workshop, which sold all of its 95 tickets and had a waiting list on Saturday morning.

"I think it's gone very well," Wright said. "It's really been a great turnout. It's been very exciting for everyone here. The people from the NASA Flight Opportunities program were very excited about this. XCOR was very excited about this."

Wright says he hopes to conduct five or six additional workshops in cities across the country over the next year.

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U.S. returning looted Tyrannosaurus skeleton to Mongolia

By Deborah Zabarenko

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - A 70-million-year-old dinosaur skeleton from the Gobi Desert that was smuggled to the United States in pieces and auctioned for more than $1 million was returned on Monday by the U.S. government to Mongolia.

The huge Tyrannosaurus bataar's skull was on display at a repatriation ceremony near the United Nations in New York, where officials of the U.S. Attorney's Office in Manhattan and the U.S. Immigration and Customers Enforcement (ICE) formally turned over the nearly complete skeleton to Mongolian officials.

Mongolia demanded the return of the 8-foot-tall (2.4 meter), 24-foot-long (7.3 meter), mostly reconstructed cousin of the Tyrannosaurus rex last year after commercial paleontologist Eric Prokopi sold it at a Manhattan auction last spring for $1.05 million.

Prokopi, based in Gainesville, Florida, bought and sold whole and partial fossilized dinosaur skeletons.

U.S. authorities filed charges against Prokopi in October and seized the skeleton, which is comprised of fossilized bones welded to a metal frame.

"This is one of the most important repatriations of fossils in recent years," ICE Director John Morton said in a statement. "We cannot allow the greed of a few looters and schemers to trump the cultural interests of an entire nation."

Morton said the repatriation would "undo a great wrong by returning this priceless dinosaur skeleton to the people of Mongolia."

Mongolian President Tsakhia Elbegdorj thanked U.S. prosecutors, judges, investigators and paleontologists in a statement: "Our two countries are separated by many miles, but share a passion for justice and a commitment to putting an end to illegal smuggling."

In addition to the skeleton, the United States is also helping to return more fossils to Mongolia, Manhattan U.S. Attorney Preet Bharara said.

The Tyrannosaurus bataar lived some 70 million years ago in what is now Mongolia, and its skeleton was discovered in 1946 in a joint Soviet-Mongolian expedition to the Gobi Desert, according to court and federal documents.

It was imported to the United States in 2010 from Great Britain, with customs documents that falsely claimed it originated in Great Britain and was valued at $15,000, far below its auction price.

(Reporting by Deborah Zabarenko; editing by Ros Krasny and Cynthia Osterman)

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Scientists Bounce Laser Beams Off Old Soviet Moon Rover

Scientists have successfully bounced a laser off the Soviet Union's old Lunokhod 1 rover, which trekked across the moon's landscape more than four decades ago.

Lunokhod 1 was the first remote-controlled rover ever to land on another celestial body. The wheeled vehicle was carried to the lunar surface by a spacecraft called Luna 17, touching down in the Sea of Rains on Nov. 17, 1970.

Among its instruments, the rover toted a French-built laser retroreflector consisting of 14 corner cubes that can reflect laser light beamed from Earth. [The Moon: A Space Dumping Ground (Infographic)]

Attempts to contact the rover after the lunar night that began on Sept. 14, 1971, were unsuccessful, apparently due to a component failure on the rover. Lunokhod 1's days of rambling around the moon formally ended on Oct. 4, 1971, after 11 lunar day-night cycles (322 Earth days).

Laser ranging observations

For the most part, those working in the laser ranging field have cautioned over the years not to spend time on Lunokhod 1, calling the rover a nearly impossible target.

"And during 30 years, nobody tried to range on Lunokhod 1," Jean-Marie Torre, research engineer at the Côte d'Azur Observatory in France, told SPACE.com.

But Torre and his colleagues tried anyway, using the Grasse (MéO) laser-ranging station in Calern, France, which is run by the Côte d’Azur Observatory. In March, they received return signals from the Lunokhod 1 reflector for the first time since the start of their lunar laser ranging observation campaigns in the early 1980s.

The results were obtained over three nights, using a new instrumental configuration at the MéO station.

The historical difficulty of ranging on Lunokhod 1 may have been due to a number of factors. The reflector may have been dusty, or its cover could have closed. Or the rover may not have been parked in view of Earth, Torre said.

In the end, however, "it was more a problem of lack of confidence than to a technical difficulty," Torre said.

Poor weather conditions prevented the scientists from getting a good determination of the Lunokhod 1 reflector's efficiency. Still, the results have buoyed the interest of Earth-based scientists to continue beaming their lasers at the long-dead rover.

A retroreflector array was also left on the moon by the landing crew of NASA's Apollo 11 mission in 1969, while two more retroreflector arrays were set up by Apollo 14 and Apollo 15 moonwalkers.

In fact, Torre and a colleague were ranging successfully the Apollo 15 site when Torre suggested trying Lunokhod 1. [NASA's Apollo Moon Missions in Pictures]

"Fortunately, we had immediate echoes ... and if not, we might not have tried again for one or many years!"

Pinpointing Lunokhod's locale

The final end-of-mission location of Lunokhod 1 was uncertain until 2010. But thanks to images snapped by NASA’s Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter (LRO), both the Luna 17 lander and Lunokhod 1 were spotted.

Lunokhod 1 came to its final stop on a site situated around 1.4 miles (2.3 kilometers) north of its point of landing.

The success last month by the Grasse station was not the first laser ranging effort targeting the "lost" Lunokhod 1 reflector.

In April 2010, specialists at the Apache Point Observatory Lunar Laser-ranging Operation (APOLLO) in southern New Mexico used the LRO images to first pinpoint the locale of Lunokhod 1, closely enough for laser range measurements.

Surprisingly, the APOLLO researchers reported that the craft’s retroreflector was returning much more light than other reflectors on the moon.

"In normal conditions, the difficulty to range this [Lunokhod 1] reflector is the making of the corner cube [which is] silver coated. They are very good in the dark, from a few days after the new moon to the quarter. It is better to range the reflector from March to May," when the on-the moon reflector is the highest in the sky, Torre said.

A better understanding of the moon

Lunar laser ranging has been made possible by combining advances in laser technology, data processing and precision timing via atomic clocks, according to the International Laser Ranging Service, a service of the International Association of Geodesy.

Lunar laser ranging uses short-pulse lasers and state-of-the-art optical receivers and timing electronics to measure how long it takes light beamed from ground stations to travel to retroreflector arrays on the moon and back again.

It takes just two and a half seconds for light to make this roundtrip trek, requiring use of an atomic clock.

Because the reflectors on the moon are relatively small and a laser beam naturally loses its intensity with distance, only a tiny fraction of the signal makes it back. However, the information is sufficient for precise calculation of the Earth and moon's movement: speed of rotation, axial variation and orbital deviation (taking into account, of course, the influence of other celestial bodies such as the sun).

Torre said that thanks to Lunokhod 1's position on the moon -- closer to the moon’s limb than any other reflectors — it allows researchers to detect more precisely small libration effects. Laser ranging on the rover can improve researchers' understanding of the moon's internal structure and rotation, he added.

Leonard David has been reporting on the space industry for more than five decades. He is former director of research for the National Commission on Space and is co-author of Buzz Aldrin’s new book “Mission to Mars — My Vision for Space Exploration” out in May from National Geographic. Follow us @Spacedotcom, Facebook or Google+. Originally published on SPACE.com.

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Buzz Aldrin Has New Yorkers Buzzing About Mars

NEW YORK — When Buzz Aldrin's new book landed in stores Tuesday (May 7), starstruck fans turned out in droves to see the legendary Apollo 11 astronaut talk about his vision for creating the first permanent human colony on Mars.

At least 300 people packed into the Barnes & Noble bookstore in Union Square, some carrying stacks of Aldrin's  "Mission to Mars: My Vision for Space Exploration" (National Geographic Books) to be signed, while others just tried to catch a glimpse of the second man ever to walk on the moon.

In the audience, one boy with an Apollo pen made rocket ship noises and at least one baby and one teenage girl separately were dressed in mock NASA astronaut flight suits. Nearly everyone rose to their feet to snap pictures when Aldrin made his entrance. [Buzz Aldrin's Visions for Mars Missions & More (Video)]

"I think it's pretty awesome that he's probably one of the only people in the city right now who has been off this planet," said Philip Gazzara, a Queens man who was excited to stumble on the event on his way to Trader Joe's.

Buzz Aldrin became a household name his star power when he set foot on the moon on July 20, 1969, bounding off the lunar module just after his crewmate, the late Neil Armstrong. But today Aldrin is firmly against sending humans back to the place he famously explored, for now at least.

He thinks the U.S. and a group of international partners need to set their sights on Mars, and ultimately he doesn't want to send astronauts there only to bring them back home. Aldrin envisions sending space pilgrims to colonize the forbidding planet, and his book he lays out a plan to get there, which includes an initial expedition to Mars' largest moon Phobos followed by deep-space cruisers that could ferry people from Earth to Mars.

In a Q&A session with co-author, Leonard David, a veteran space journalist and frequent contributor toSPACE.com, Aldrin touched on the historical implications of putting bootprints on the Red Planet.

"History, hundreds and thousands of years in the future, will observe that moment of making that commitment to do that," Aldrin said. Whichever leader decides to do so, Aldrin added, would exceed Alexander the Great, Genghis Kahn and Christopher Columbus in solar system fame.

Aldrin hopes to have an American president commit to continuous manned Mars exploration by 2019, and he is confident that space officials will have no trouble finding willing pioneers. The astronaut pointed to the 78,000 people who have already applied to become Red Planet colonists with the nonprofit organization Mars One.

Not everyone in the audience was as optomistic about Aldrin's vision. Tom Marshall, who came in from New Jersey, had serious doubts about the plan, hinging on U.S. partnership with other countries like China. "If we don't get along down here, we can't make it up there."

Asked why he came out to see Aldrin, Marshall simply said, "He landed on the moon."

That stark fact proves endlessly captivating to Aldrin's fans and the astronaut handles the inevitable flurry of questions about his Apollo 11 lunar landing with wit. One young boy in the audience asked Aldrin what he did during his trip to the moon, to which the astronaut replied, "We waited until it was time to come home." Another kid asked what it first felt like to step on the moon, and Aldrin answered shortly, "It felt good," teasing that "fighter pilots don't have feelings; we have ice water running through our veins."

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Dark and Dirty: The Cutthroat Side of Science

NEW YORK — Being a scientist is a noble profession, but it has its darker side. From fierce competition to plagiarism to outright scientific fraud, scientists are far from immune to the sordid.

A panel of experts discussed the slimy side of science at an event held here on April 30 at the New York Academy of Sciences and moderated by "Scientific American" Editor-in-Chief Mariette DiChristina.

Dr. Morton Meyers, professor and emeritus chairman of the department of radiology at the State University of New York (SUNY) at Stony Brook, recounted historical conflicts over the Nobel Prize; Harold "Skip" Garner, a professor at Virginia Bioinformatics Institute at Virginia Tech, described wholesale plagiarism in scientific literature; and Dr. Ivan Oransky, executive editor of Reuters Health, delved into the slippery world of retracted studies. 

Scientists "are people who have ambition and envy and jealousy, just as you and I do," Meyers said at the event. It's "interesting to lift the veil on scientific discovery to trace the human elements that underlie many of these things." [7 Personality Traits You Should Change]

Battle for recognition

As most humans do, scientists seek recognition for their efforts, and nowhere are the stakes higher than for that pinnacle of scientific honor: the Nobel Prize. Meyers' new book, "Prize Fight: The Race and the Rivalry to be the First in Science" (Palgrave Macmillan, 2012) deals with some of the great conflicts over priority and credit in the Nobels.

One such conflict involved the inventor and biochemist Selman Waksman and his then-graduate student Albert Schatz. Waksman and Schatz were studying antibiotics found in the soil when they came across streptomycin, the first antibiotic effective against tuberculosis. The two patented and published their research. Schatz was listed as first author on the paper but second on the patent.

Waksman was awarded a Nobel Prize for the discovery of streptomycin in 1952, prompting Schatz to sue Waksman for a share of the credit and the patent royalties. Schatz won a settlement, but was blacklisted from getting a job and faced major struggles for the rest of his career. [Top 10 Mad Scientists]

"Both were right, and both were wrong," Meyers said. The story illustrates the gray area of apportioning credit in a supervisor-graduate-student collaboration. But in other cases, it is more black and white who deserves the credit.

'Borrowed' work

Scientists are usually fastidious about citing their work, but sometimes the pressures to publish become too great. With success in academia tied to scientific output, it's not surprising that some researchers stray into plagiarism.

Garner found such plagiarism while developing software to search the Web for paragraphs of text in order to track down scientific studies. In doing so, he inadvertently stumbled upon a plethora of results that "were virtually identical but had author sets that were nonoverlapping," Garner said. In other words, the papers were "borrowed" and republished by other scientists without the correct attribution.

Garner ran his program on a supercomputer, comparing the texts of tens of millions of scientific articles. From the results, he created the "Déjà Vu Database," containing about 80,000 pairs of papers that were more similar than mere chance would allow. About 10 percent of these appeared to have two sets of authors, so Garner sent questionnaires to the authors, asking them to explain the duplication.

"Ninety-five percent of the original authors were unaware of being ripped off," Garner said. About one-third of the copiers said they didn't think the practice was wrong, another third apologized and the rest made excuses, such as not knowing they were an author.

Some pretty prominent people were among the copiers, including the chairman of the clinical department of a prominent university in Boston, and a former vice president of Iran, Garner said. He even received mortal threats from the Iranian VP.

Garner has developed similar technology to detect instances of fraud, such as applying for multiple grants for one study. In biomedicine, such "double-dipping" accounts for $200 million to $300 million in government spending, Garner estimated. Ultimately, Garner hopes the government will make use of this software to prevent this kind of malfeasance.

Retract that

But it doesn't always stop with copying. In some cases, individuals stray into the realm of fabrication.

The number of scientific retractions — statements that a scientific study should not have been published because its data or conclusions are erroneous, plagiarized or made up —  has been growing steadily in recent years, at a rate that outstrips the increase in studies.

Oransky and Adam Marcus, managing editor of "Anethesiology News," run a blog called Retraction Watch. They started the blog because they wanted to shine a light on retractions. Some retractions are the result of minor mistakes, but all too frequently, foul play is involved.

Some scientists are repeat offenders. Take the Dutch psychologist Diederik Stapel, who has been in the news recently for committing academic fraud in several dozen published papers.

Then there's the Japanese scientist Yoshitaka Fujii, who has had 183 papers retracted, Oransky said. Or the South Korean plant scientist Hyung-In Moon, who faked other scientists' email addresses so he could review his own papers.

It was once thought that misconduct was behind fewer than half of retractions, but it turns out to be responsible for two-thirds of them, Oransky said. The problem is compounded by the fact that retracted papers remain in scientific-article databases, so people continue to read and cite them.

In light of all these problems, science loses some of its luster. But as in any profession, it's important to remember that "scientists are humans, too," Garner said.

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Eating Peppers May Lower Parkinson's Risk

Regularly eating peppers may lower the risk of Parkinson's disease, a new study suggests.

The researchers said the benefit may be due to a substance in the vegetable that we've been advised to avoid: nicotine.

People in the study who ate peppers two times per week were 30 percent less likely to develop Parkinson's disease than people who ate peppers less than once a week.

Peppers and tobacco both belong to a family of plants called Solanaceae. As a result, peppers — be they red, yellow or green — contain tiny amounts of nicotine. Previous research has suggested that the nicotine in cigarettes and secondhand smoke may protect certain brain cells, or neurons, from the damage associated with Parkinson's.

In Parkinson's disease, up to 80 percent of the neurons that produce a chemical called dopamine, which controls muscle function, are damaged, according to the National Parkinson Foundation.

A neurodegenerative disease, Parkinson's causes a range of symptoms. The hallmark signs are tremors, slowness of movement, stiffness of the arms, legs or trunk and problems with balance. Approximately 1 million Americans have Parkinson's disease, reports the National Parkinson Foundation. Each year, 50,000 to 60,000 new cases are diagnosed in the United States.

 The pepper advantage

In the study, the researchers looked at 490 people who had been newly diagnosed with Parkinson's disease, and compared them with 644 people who did not have the condition. Participants answered a detailed questionnaire about their lifetime dietary habits and tobacco use.

Just 11 percent of those with the disease and 5 percent of people in the control grouphad a family history of the disease, which can raise risk.

People reported how often they ate certain vegetables, and their history of tobacco use.

The researchers found that not only were peppers associated with a reduced risk of Parkinson's, but also that the more peppers people consumed, the greater the apparent benefit. People who ate peppers five to six times a week or more slashed their Parkinson's risk by about 50 percent compared with those who ate them less than once a week.

Other vegetables didn't seem to have this effect. "Benefits associated with vegetables from the Solanaceae family seemed to be fairly specific," said study researcher Susan Searles Nielsen, an environmental and occupational health researcher at the University of Washington in Seattle.

"While there was some suggestion that tomatoes might also be associated with a reduced risk of Parkinson's, it was not clear," Searles Nielsen said.

Peppers' good-for-neuron powers were much "clearer in people who had never used tobacco regularly," Searles Nielsen added. Exposure to nicotine from tobacco use "is likely going to overshadow what people would get in their diet," she explained.

While the study findings are promising, Searles Nielsen stressed that they show an association and not necessarily a cause and effect.

"While it is certainly intriguing to think that eating peppers may protect against Parkinson's disease, we have to consider that there are other explanations," she said. "With further research, hopefully that can be learned."

Dr. Michael Okun, national medical director for the National Parkinson Foundation, who was not involved in the study, called the findings "interesting," but cautioned that that they are far from conclusive. 

"It is not clear from this study that family members at risk (those with a family history of Parkinson's) should rush out and start eating red peppers," Okun said. "Much work will need to be done to understand the mechanism and to establish potential benefits in the Parkinson's 'at risk' population."

Still, it can't hurt to include peppers in your diet, Searles Nielsen said. "If you happen to like peppers, fine," she added. Just don’t overdo it. "Keep in mind that too much of a good thing may not be a good thing," Searles Nielsen said.

The study is published today (May 9) in the journal Annals of Neurology.

Pass It On: Eating peppers may lower the risk of Parkinson's disease.

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Boeing demonstrator breaks hypersonic flight record

By Andrea Shalal-Esa

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Boeing Co's X-51A Waverider made history this week when it achieved the longest hypersonic flight by a jet-fuel powered aircraft, flying for 3-1/2 minutes at five times the speed of sound, the U.S. Air Force said on Friday.

The last of four unmanned experimental military aircraft built by Boeing flew for at a top speed of Mach 5.1 over the Pacific Ocean on May 1, the Air Force said. The total flight covered 230 nautical miles in just over six minutes before the hypersonic cruiser plunged into the ocean.

"It was a full mission success," said Charlie Brink, who runs the X-51A program for the Air Force Research Laboratory Aerospace Systems Directorate.

The Air Force said it was the longest of the four X-51A test flights and the longest air-breathing hypersonic flight ever. The technology opens the door to future practical uses for hypersonic jet-fueled aircraft.

A hypersonic aircraft developed by NASA used hydrogen as a fuel to fly briefly at even higher speeds in 2004, but it would take a giant fuel tank to fly for longer periods.

"All we have learned from the X-51A Waverider will serve as the bedrock for future hypersonics research and ultimately the practical application of hypersonic flight," Brink said.

A video released by the Air Force showed the Waverider dropping down from under the left wing of a B-52 bomber at an altitude of about 50,000 feet and then accelerating away at great speed, leaving behind a long vapor trail.

The cruiser accelerated to March 4.8 in about 26 seconds, powered by a solid rocket booster built by Pratt & Whitney Rocketdyne, a unit of United Technologies. After separating from the booster, the cruiser's scramjet engine lit and accelerated the vehicle to Mach 5.1 at 60,000 feet.

The vehicle continued to send back data to the control station at Edwards Air Force Base in California until it made a controlled dive into the Pacific Ocean.

"This demonstration of a practical hypersonic scramjet engine is a historic achievement that has been years in the making," said Darryl Davis, president of Boeing Phantom Works, the company's advanced research and prototyping arm.

"This test proves the technology has matured to the point that it opens the door to practical applications, such as advanced defense systems and more cost-effective access to space," Davis said.

The first of the four X-51A vehicles flew in May 2010, hitting nearly Mach 5 for nearly two and a half minutes.

The nearly wingless X-51 was made using mostly standard aerospace materials such as aluminum, steel and titanium, although some carbon composites were used in the fins. For heat protection, the vehicle used insulation tiles similar to those used on board the NASA Space Shuttle orbiters.

The Air Force said the four X-51As were built to demonstrate the new technology, not as a prototype for a new weapon system. The program is aimed at paving the way to future hypersonic weapons, hypersonic intelligence, surveillance and reconnaissance, and future access to space, it said.

Since scramjets are able to burn atmospheric oxygen, they can be made lighter than conventional rockets, which may allow satellites to be launched into orbit more efficiently and cheaply.

(Reporting by Andrea Shalal-Esa; Additional reporting by Don Pessin; Editing by Tim Dobbyn)

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How Plants May Help Offset Global Warming

Could plants help to slow the march of global warming?

It's possible, suggests a new study, which finds that as climates warm around the world, plants may respond by releasing more aerosol particles into the atmosphere.

The research, published online April 28 in the journal Nature Geoscience, finds that these natural aerosols can fuel cloud formation, which may help cool a warming climate. [The Reality of Climate Change: 10 Myths Busted]

Aerosols are fine particles of solid or liquid matter, suspended in air. Most of the aerosol particles in Earth's atmosphere come from human activities such as vehicle exhaust, according to the environmental blog The Carbon Brief. Volcanic eruptions also contribute some aerosols to the atmosphere.

But a small percentage of atmospheric aerosols come from living plants, according to a news release from the International Institute for Applied Systems Analysis (IIASA), which co-sponsored the study.

Plants release gases such as water vapor and oxygen; these combine with the aerosols released from plants to form larger airborne particles that reflect sunlight and form cloud droplets.

"Everyone knows the scent of the forest," Ari Asmi, University of Helsinki researcher and co-author of the study, said in a statement. "That scent is made up of these gases."

To measure the cooling effect, researchers collected data from 11 sites around the world, measuring aerosol particle concentrations, plant gases and temperatures.

In warmer temperatures, it was revealed, plants emit more of the gases that stick to aerosol particles. These can lead to cloud formation and, as a result of cloud cover, cooler temperatures.

Other natural phenomenon may help to cool the planet: Some researchers believe that phytoplankton — microscopic plants that drift on ocean currents — may reduce carbon dioxide levels in the atmosphere and lower the atmosphere's temperature.

Other research finds that tropical rainforests, which also absorb massive amounts of carbon dioxide and release water vapor that forms clouds, are critical to stabilizing atmospheric temperatures.

It's unclear how much cooling might actually occur as a result of so-called "biogenic" aerosols.

"This does not save us from climate warming," Pauli Paasonen, lead author of the study, said in the release.

Though in some areas, such as the forests of Finland and Canada, the cooling effect can be as large as 30 percent, the overall global effect is very small, offsetting only about 1 percent of global warming, according to the study.

Nonetheless, the impact of plant-based aerosol formation is an important element in fine-tuning climate forecast models, the researchers believe.

"Aerosol effects on climate are one of the main uncertainties in climate models," Paasonen said in the release. "Understanding this mechanism could help us reduce those uncertainties and make the models better."

Follow Marc Lallanilla on Twitter and Google+. Follow us @livescience, Facebook & Google+. Original article on LiveScience.com.

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Alan Alda wants scientists to cut out the jargon

STONY BROOK, N.Y. (AP) — Among the procedures Army surgeon Hawkeye Pierce performed on "M.A.S.H." was an end-to-end anastomosis.

Most of the viewers, actor Alan Alda concedes, had no idea he was talking about removing a damaged piece of intestine and reconnecting the healthy pieces.

Today, the award-winning film and television star is on a mission to teach physicians, physicists and scientists of all types to ditch the jargon and get their points across in clear, simple language.

The former host of the long-running PBS series "Scientific American Frontiers" is a founder and visiting professor of journalism at the Stony Brook University Center for Communicating Science, which has just been named in his honor.

"There's no reason for the jargon when you're trying to communicate the essence of the science to the public because you're talking what amounts to gibberish to them," Alda said in a recent interview with The Associated Press.

A better understanding of science, Alda said, can benefit society in ways great and small. Physicians can more clearly explain treatments to patients. Consumers can decipher what chemicals may be in their food. And lawmakers can make better decisions on funding scientific research.

"They're not going to ask the right questions if science doesn't explain to them what's going on in the most honest and objective way," said Alda, 77. "You can't blame them for not knowing the jargon — it's not their job. Why would anybody put up money for something they don't understand?"

Alda, who lives in New York City and has a home on eastern Long Island, said that as his 12-year tenure as host of "Scientific American Frontiers" was ending in 2005, he began seeking out a university interested in his idea for a center for communicating science. He described himself as a "Johnny Appleseed" going from university to university shopping his idea.

Stony Brook, a 24,000-student state university about 70 miles east of Manhattan, "was the only place that understood what I was trying to say and thought it was possible," he said.

The center launched in 2009. At a gala last week, the Long Island school officially renamed it the Alan Alda Center for Communicating Science.

"Alan did not casually lend his celebrity to this effort," said Stony Brook President Dr. Samuel Stanley. "He has been a tireless and full partner in the center since its inception. During the past four years, he has traveled thousands of miles championing its activities. ... He has helped train our faculty and develop our curriculum, and he personally teaches some workshops."

Alda has also helped publicize a contest the center sponsored the past two years asking students and scientists around the country to find simple ways to explain such concepts as "What is a flame?" or "What is time?"

Among the courses taught by the center is an improvisational acting class that teaches scientists ways of communicating their thoughts clearly to others.

"We've learned it's important to set up vivid analogies," said Lyl Tomlinson, a 24-year-old neuroscience graduate student from Brooklyn who's working as a teaching assistant, noting he used the effects of caffeine in a morning cup of coffee to begin a discussion on the nervous system.

Rep. Steven Israel, a supporter of the Stony Brook program, said educating people on the importance of science is key to America's competitiveness in the 21st century economy.

He recalled watching a congressional hearing on climate change in which, he said, "a bunch of scientists were trying to teach congressmen about the science of climate change and the congressmen were trying to teach the scientists about politics. It was as if both sides were speaking alien languages."

Alda shared what he called his best examples of clear communication with Tomlinson and his fellow teaching assistants.

About a decade ago, Alda said, he was in Chile filming a segment for "Scientific American Frontiers" when he was stricken with sharp stomach pains. He was evacuated from an 8,000-foot observatory and taken in an old rickety ambulance to a small, dimly lit clinic, where a doctor examined him and said he would require life-saving surgery.

"Some of your intestine has gone bad, and we have to cut out the bad part and sew the two good ends together," the physician explained.

"And I said, 'You're going to do an end-to-end anastamosis.' He said, 'How do you know that?' And I said, 'Oh, I did many of them on 'M.A.S.H.' That was the first operation I learned about on M.A.S.H.'"

After the classroom erupted in laughter, Alda concluded:

"He didn't waste any time on me trying to figure what he was talking about. He said it in the clearest terms possible. He didn't sacrifice any accuracy by making it clear."

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Science of 'Protein Origami' Unfolds

There's now a way to make "protein origami" — self-assembling shapes made of twisted molecular strands— a new study reveals.

The technology builds upon the advances of DNA origami, a technique that has been used to build box shapes, DNA scissors and other materials. Now, bioengineers have produced a single-stranded coil of protein that spontaneously sprang into a pyramid shape. While just an early demonstration, the technique could someday be used to make vehicles for drug delivery or to catalyze reactions.

"It is a piece of great work in the field of programmed biomacromolecular self-assembly," said chemist Chengde Mao of Purdue University in Indiana, who was not involved in the study. "The beauty of the strategy is its simplicity." [Biomimicry: 7 Clever Technologies Inspired by Nature]

Proteins are the molecular building blocks that carry out a host of vital functions in cells. They are composed of long chains known as polypeptides, which coil and fold to form complex 3D structures.

The idea with protein origami is to create rigid segments that can self-assemble in a modular fashion, like LEGO bricks. The segments are "smart" materials, because they contain all the information for the final structure inside them.

For the bricks, researchers designed well-studied structures called "coiled-coil segments" — a combination of two or more helices that intertwine. They then made a chain of 12 of these segments stitched together on flexible hinges, which self-assembled into a pyramidlike shape known as a tetrahedron. Each edge of the tetrahedron was bounded by two of the segments.

"The shape is completely different from anything natural," said senior study author Roman Jerala, a synthetic biologist at the National Institute of Chemistry in Ljubljana, Slovenia.

Jerala and his colleagues confirmed the tetrahedron's formation using several kinds of microscopy. Each tetrahedron was only about 5 nanometers on an edge, about one ten-thousandth the width of a human hair.

Right now, it's just a proof of principle, Jerala told LiveScience. But ultimately, protein origami could be used to encapsulate drugs, for instance, to allow their controlled release. Or these structures could act as catalysts for reactions, much like enzymes in living cells.

Creating similar shapes using DNA origami is cheaper and easier to handle than proteins, said Paul Rothemund of Caltech, who was not involved in the study. But protein origami lets you make them much finer. "Making structures out of DNA is like building molecular structures out of DUPLO blocks [giant LEGOs]," Rothemund said, but  "working with proteins, on the other hand, is sort of like working with adult LEGOs — they have a much smaller intrinsic resolution."

Scientists have created small objects out of proteins before, but these had to be symmetrical shapes, Jerala said. Using protein origami, "we can take natural elements and do something completely different that does not exist in nature," Jerala said. "Nature just didn’t explore all the possibilities."

The findings were detailed today (April 28) in the journal Nature Chemical Biology.

Follow Tanya Lewis on Twitterand Google+. Follow us @livescience, Facebook& Google+. Original article on LiveScience.com.

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Scientists Make World's Smallest Movie

An ensemble cast of carbon atoms stars in the world's smallest stop-motion movie created by researchers at IBM.

The video "A Boy and His Atom" features thousands of atoms that have been carefully arranged into nearly 250 frames with a scanning tunneling microscope (STM), a Nobel Prize-winning tool invented by scientists at IBM three decades ago. The tool first allowed scientists to visualize single atoms.

"It weighs two tons, operates at a temperature of negative 268 degrees Celsius [minus 450 degrees Fahrenheit] and magnifies the atomic surface over 100 million times," Christopher Lutz, an IBM research scientist, said of the machine.

To position the atoms, the team used the microscope to drag a super-sharp needle along a copper surface. This needle, positioned just a nanometer away from the surface, attracted the atoms and pulled them into place so that the scientists could take still images for each movie frame. The film shows a boy playing with a single atom, dancing and jumping on a trampoline. It was verified as the world's smallest stop-motion movie by Guinness World Records.

The moviemakers say there's more to their work than mere novelty. Atoms are the smallest raw materials for data storage devices, and the same researchers who made the stop-motion film also made the world's smallest magnetic bit using just 12 atoms, according to IBM. That's astoundingly small considering a bit of data on the average computer or electronic device today is made up of roughly 1 million atoms. A chip the size of a fingernail using the researchers' 12-atom bits would be able to store all of the movies ever made, IBM researchers say.

"As data creation and consumption continue to get bigger, data storage needs to get smaller, all the way down to the atomic level," IBM researcher Andreas Heinrich said. "We're applying the same techniques used to come up with new computing architectures and alternative ways to store data to making this movie."

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Scientists confirm new H7N9 bird flu has come from chickens

By Kate Kelland

LONDON (Reuters) - Chinese scientists have confirmed for the first time that a new strain of bird flu that has killed 23 people in China has been transmitted to humans from chickens.

In a study published online in the Lancet medical journal, the scientists echoed previous statements from the World Health Organization (WHO) and Chinese officials that there is as yet no evidence of human-to-human transmission of this virus.

The H7N9 strain has infected 109 people in China since it was first detected in March. The WHO warned on Wednesday that this strain is "one of the most lethal" flu viruses and is transmitted more easily than the H5N1 strain of bird flu, which has killed hundreds around the world since 2003.

Kwok-Yung Yuen of the University of Hong Kong, who led the study, said its findings that chickens in poultry markets were a source of human infections meant that controlling the disease in these places and in these birds should be a priority.

"Aggressive intervention to block further animal-to-person transmission in live poultry markets, as has previously been done in Hong Kong, should be considered," he told the Lancet.

He added that temporary closure of live bird markets and comprehensive programmes of surveillance, culling, biosecurity and segregation of different poultry species may also be needed "to halt evolution of the virus into a pandemic agent".

"The evidence ... suggests it is a pure poultry-to-human transmission and that controlling (infections in people) will therefore depend on controlling the epidemic in poultry," he said.

Yuen's findings do not mean all cases of human H7N9 infection come from chickens, or from poultry, but they do confirm chickens as one source.

The WHO has said 40 percent of people infected with H7N9 appear to have had no contact with poultry.

Other so called "reservoirs" of the flu virus may be circulating in other types of birds or mammals, and investigators in China are working hard to try find out.

CASE STUDIES

Yuen's team conducted detailed cases studies on four H7N9 flu patients from Zhejiang, an eastern coastal province south of the commercial hub Shanghai.

All four patients had been exposed to poultry, either through their work or through visiting poultry markets.

To find out whether there was transmission of the virus from poultry to humans, the researchers took swabs from 20 chickens, four quails, five pigeons and 57 ducks, all from six markets likely to have been visited by the patients.

Two of the five pigeons and four of the 20 chickens tested positive for H7N9, but none of the ducks or quails.

After analysing the genetic makeup of H7N9 virus in a sample isolated from one patient and comparing it to a sample from one of the chickens, the researchers said similarities suggest the virus is being transmitted directly to humans from poultry.

The team also checked more than 300 people who had had close contact with the four patients and found that none showed any symptoms of H7N9 infection within 14 days from the beginning of surveillance. This suggests the virus is not currently able to transmit between people, they said.

But they noted that previous genetic analysis shows H7N9 has already acquired some gene mutations that adapt it specifically to being more able to infect mammals - raising the risk that it could one day cause a human pandemic.

"Further adaptation of the virus could lead to infections with less severe symptoms and more efficient person-to-person transmission," the scientists wrote. (Editing by Kevin Liffey)

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Big drugmakers think small with nanomedicine deals

By Ben Hirschler

LONDON (Reuters) - Is nanomedicine the next big thing? A growing number of top drug companies seem to think so.

The ability to encapsulate potent drugs in tiny particles measuring billionths of a meter in diameter is opening up new options for super-accurate drug delivery, increasing precision hits at the site of disease with, hopefully, fewer side effects.

Three deals struck this year by privately held Bind Therapeutics, together worth nearly $1 billion if experiments are successful, highlight a new interest in using such tiny carriers to deliver drug payloads to specific locations in the body.

U.S.-based Bind is one of several biotechnology firms that are luring large pharmaceutical makers with a range of smart drug nanotechnologies, notably against cancer.

And nanomedicine is also being put to work in diagnosis, with tiny particles used to improve imaging in scanners, as well as rapidly detecting some serious infections.

In future, researchers hope to combine both treatment and diagnostics in a new approach dubbed "theranostics" that would allow doctors to monitor patients via their medicines.

After much hype but limited clinical success, scientists in the nanotechnology field finally see a turning point.

"We have been hearing about the promise of nanomedicine for a long time, but it is now really starting to move," said Dan Peer, who runs a nanomedicine laboratory at Tel Aviv University.

"There is a new level of confidence in this approach among the big pharmaceutical companies ... We will see more and more products in clinical testing over the next few years and I think that is very exciting."

Nanoparticles made of polymers, gold and even graphene - a newly-discovered form of carbon - are now in various stages of development. In cancer alone, 117 drugs are being assessed using nanoparticle formulations, though most have yet to be tried on patients, according to Thomson Reuters Pharma data.

Other potential applications include treatments for inflammatory disorders, heart and brain diseases, and pain.

COLLATERAL DAMAGE

Companies are increasingly focused on better drug targeting to increase efficacy and lessen the collateral damage caused by medicinal "carpet bombing" - a particular problem in cancer, where toxic compounds are needed to kill tumors.

The work on drug-carrying nanoparticles parallels advances in using so-called "armed antibodies" to deliver drugs direct to cancer cells - an approach championed by Roche.

The Swiss group won U.S. approval in February for Kadcyla, its first such antibody-drug conjugate, which treats breast cancer with fewer side effects like hair loss.

"All these developments have prompted companies to look at new avenues because the older ways of using drugs haven't worked so well," said Robert Langer, a pioneer of nanomedicine who runs the world's largest biomedical engineering laboratory at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.

Having worked on drug delivery since the 1970s, Langer has seen plenty of ups and downs.

The world's first nanomedicine was actually approved back in 1995 when U.S. regulators gave a green light to Doxil for treating Kaposi's sarcoma, a cancer often associated with AIDS.

Doxil - a hollow fatty ball known as a liposome with a cancer-killing drug inside it - was a breakthrough. Yet few other nanomedicines have followed.

Recent scientific advances have changed the game, however. Bind's nanoparticles, for example, are programmed to reach the right spot using targeting molecules that recognize specific proteins linked to disease on the surface of cells.

They also have a stealth covering that shields them from the immune system, in order to minimize adverse reactions.

Since January, Amgen, Pfizer and AstraZeneca have all signed up to use Bind's technology, which comes from work originally carried out in Langer's lab.

And Bind is not the only game in town. Another approach, using tiny particles of gold as drug carriers, is being explored in a deal that AstraZeneca signed in December with CytImmune.

"Anything you can do to improve targeting of tumors rather than normal tissue - whether that is through an armed antibody or nanoparticle approach - increases the chance of success," said Susan Galbraith, who leads AstraZeneca's oncology research.

PARALLEL APPROACHES

The work remains early stage and Peer of Tel Aviv University says all the novel carriers will have to be studied closely for potential toxicity. However, experience with liposomes is good and versions of gold nanoparticles have also been used safely for many years to treat rheumatoid arthritis.

Injecting patients with gold may sound like a pricey option but with thousands of nanoparticles fitting into the width of a human hair, the amount of metal used is tiny. Gold, unlike some other metals, is not toxic and has been used in various medical treatments for many years without harmful effects.

Bind CEO Scott Minick also thinks his polymer technology will have cost advantages over expensive antibody drugs.

Further out, Kostas Kostarelos, professor of nanomedicine at University College London, has high hopes for graphene - a one-atom-thick form of carbon. His team is currently working with graphene nanomaterials in pre-clinical experiments.

"We will see parallel development of different materials, each offering something different therapeutically," he said.

Other venture-backed nanomedicine firms include Cerulean Pharma, whose technology has made a highly potent cancer drug tolerable but which recently had disappointing results in a clinical study, and two companies looking at new vaccines.

Selecta Biosciences has a deal on food allergy vaccines with Sanofi, while Liquidia Technologies is allied with GlaxoSmithKline on vaccines and inhaled products.

MIT's Langer is convinced more Big Pharma companies will think small in future.

"You can be sure others will jump on the bandwagon sooner or later. That doesn't mean they might not jump off for a little bit too - but they will jump back on. These technologies are here to stay," he said.

(Editing by Peter Graff)

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