Scientists's; mistake uncovers 'impossible material': - USA TODAY

Sometimes screwing up a science experiment isn't such a bad thing. Case in point: Researchers in Sweden accidentally left their equipment running on an experiment over a weekend, and ended up creating something awesome — Upsalite, the world's most efficient water absorber, reports The Independent.

This substance, prohibitively expensive and difficult to produce until now, can potentially do everything from controlling moisture on a hockey rink to cleaning up toxic waste and oil spills, reports Science Blog.

This "is expected to pave the way for new sustainable products in a number of industrial applications," says nanotechnology professor Maria Stromme.

NEWSER: Female frog favors mates who multitask

Scientists have been trying — and failing — to cheaply create a dry, powdered form of magnesium carbonate since the early 1900s, earning it the nickname the "impossible material."

Turns out, all they needed to do was use the same process they've been attempting for more than 100 years, but at three times the atmospheric pressure.

When the scientists at the University of Uppsala inadvertently did this, they returned to the lab Monday morning to find a gel had formed.

When heated to more than 158 degrees, that gel "solidifies and collapses into a white and coarse powder," they report, per Phys.org. "It became clear that we had indeed synthesized the material that previously had been claimed impossible to make," Stromme says.

Find more amazing discoveries at Newser, a USA TODAY content partner providing general news, commentary and coverage from around the Web. Its content is produced independently of USA TODAY.

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The cultural challenge to climate science writing - PLoS Blogs (blog)

Credit: woodleywonderworks, via Flickr (CC-BY)

My previous posts on the inevitable politics of climate science, I was flattered to see, figured into a terrific article this week by David Roberts of Grist about the futility of “just the facts” approaches to explaining that science to the public. Read his whole post for the thoughtfully developed argument, but these paragraphs offer the gist of it:

… [A] democratic public does not want bare facts. It wants meaning. It wants to know why climate science matters and what can be done about it. More fundamentally, it’s not just that people want meaning, it’s that they only absorb facts through meaning. Our identities are how we make sense of information. This is the whole point of cultural cognition research: We seek out information that reinforces our identities.

Scientists, at their best, avoid this kind of blinkered, identity-reinforcing cognition, at least when they’re engaged in scientific work. They struggle to unearth their own assumptions and subject them to testing, to render them falsifiable. It’s a kind of mental self-discipline that requires considerable training. Scientists should not imagine that members of the general public do or could or should share that same self-discipline. If they want the information they convey to be understood and absorbed, they will have to speak as humans speak, from within a cultural identity and a set of values, not hovering above such mortal concerns.

Roberts notes my “morose conclusion” that scientists should advocate for whatever they want because nobody seems to care what they think, then makes the case that by building bridges to cultural groups with whom they can find real affinities, scientists can become more persuasive. (He cites climate scientist Katharine Hayhoe as a success at this.)

He and I are actually not far apart in our optimism. My remark was perhaps a little too flip: I was only trying to say that I think the potential harm from scientists discussing policy intelligently can get overstated. The kind of engagement that Hayhoe has managed seems like a wonderful example for at least some others to follow, and it should be an inspiration to anyone who wants to help build the democratic consensus that real progress on climate policy will need.

Cultural cognition—people’s universal tendency to screen their perception and acceptance of facts through cultural attitudes—gets a lot of attention from science writers these days, as it should. Walk into a meeting of science writers and talk about the need to better educate climate deniers and a fluttery squawk of scolding about “information deficit models” will erupt from every corner. I mostly agree with this, but will also confess to being frustrated for two reasons at how unproductive the recognition of cultural cognition typically becomes.

My first, lesser reason is that on the face of it, cultural cognition often seems to explain too much. It seems like such a potent force in shaping attitudes that I’m left wondering how anyone ever gets persuaded of ideas at odds with their social groups’ values, even though this clearly must happen all the time. Plenty of Americans haven’t been culturally comfortable with fighting wars, accepting tax hikes, abiding by environmental regulations, or accepting legalized abortions and gay marriages, and yet somehow those things happened through a political process anyway. No doubt the lesson is that in those cases, ways of making those propositions culturally tolerable were found, which makes sense—but it also suggests that instances of cultural cognition only get defined by failure in retrospect, which makes me suspicious.

My other, bigger reason is that in practice, people often treat cultural cognition as a showstopper, and a justification for haughtily criticizing certain communication efforts without offering meaningful alternatives. It’s easy to chide science writers for pointlessly throwing more scary climate facts at a public that doesn’t want to hear them, or for tut-tutting that some climate news will sound like the same old doom-saying hysterics unless it’s been watered down to pabulum. But what exactly are the bridges to those people’s realities we should be using instead? And what do we do if the value frameworks within which they define the world don’t allow meaningful policy responses and their intransigence carries consequences for everyone else?

(Here I should also acknowledge a third reason, which is more of a bias: I’m all for reaching out to others’ cultures with understanding and respect, but if somebody’s culture shows a deep, committed refusal to at least acknowledge empirical physical reality, then it’s hard for me personally to maintain that respect.)

Yet I could be very wrong on these points, which is why I’m glad that some people in science communications are trying to engage with the significance of cultural cognition more meaningfully. It’s why I’ve always been impressed by something that Dan Kahan, cultural cognition’s most prominent investigator, posted this past February, which I’ve called the most edifying and useful thing I’ve read about cultural cognition because it carries a clear message for communicators. Rather than deploring how some unscientific ideas come to be bound up within certain cultural sets, Kahan writes, science journalists need to be more attentive to how these mistaken notions become rallying cries in the first place.

The entanglement of facts that admit of scientific investigation—e.g., “carbon emissions are heating the planet”; “deep geologic isolation of nuclear wastes is safe”—with antagonistic meanings occurs by a mixture of influences, including strategic behavior, poor institutional design, and sheer misadventure. In no such case was the problem inevitable; indeed, in most, such entanglement could easily have been avoided.

These antagonistic meanings, then, are a kind of pollution in the science communication environment.  They disable the normal and normally reliable faculties of rational discernment by which ordinary individuals recognize what is collectively known.

One of the central missions of the science of science communication in a liberal democratic state is to protect the science communication environment from such contamination, and to develop means for detoxifying that environment when preventive or protective measures fail.

Granted, that advice doesn’t do much to help unpollute the existing atmosphere for climate discussions, but it points to ways of preventing the situation from getting still worse. And that may be a second step toward improvement, falling right after the sympathetic outreach efforts of scientists like Hayhoe.

It’s also great that science communicators as a profession may be starting to take a more scientific approach to overcoming these cultural blocks to understanding, as John Timmer of Ars Technica reviewed splendidly back at the beginning of August. And although I’m not attending the ScienceOnline Climate conference now in progress, the feed of tweets emerging from it testifies to the value of the discussion. The program is also giving lots of attention to exactly these kinds of communications issues, such as the plenaries on “Testing Climate Communications Hypotheses” and “Credibility, Trust, Goodwill, and Persuasion,” as well as sessions on “Lamenting Eden-Climate Change Discussions Across Ideologies,” on “Problem solving, democracy, and handling climate change,” and on “Engagement Strategies—The CCTI & Beyond.” Follow along on #scioClimate and let’s see what we can all learn.

The The cultural challenge to climate science writing by Retort, unless otherwise expressly stated, is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 3.0 Unported License.

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NJ medical marijuana bill: What does science say? - Fox News

Today, New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie made a decision to sign a bill that will make medical marijuana easily accessible for children.

"As I have repeatedly noted, I believe that parents, and not government regulators, are best suited to decide how to care for their children," said Governor Christie in his conditional approval of the bill. "Protection of our children remains my utmost concern, and my heart goes out to those children and their families who are suffering with serious illnesses. Today, I am making commonsense recommendations to this legislation to ensure sick children receive the treatment their parents prefer, while maintaining appropriate safeguards. I am calling on the legislature to reconvene quickly and address these issues so that children in need can get the treatment they need."

The decision will have huge implications for 2-year-old Vivian Wilson who suffers from severe form of epilepsy called Dravet Syndrome, which causes her to have multiple seizures a day.  Vivian’s parents have said that ingestible extracts of certain strains of marijuana have helped children with their daughter’s condition.

But what does the science say? Dr. Arnold Fried, chairman of the Neuroscience Institute at Hackensack University Medical Center in N.J., spoke with Fox News Health of what is known about medical marijuana and how it could be used to potentially help Vivian.

What does the science show in regards to using medical marijuana to treat neurological diseases?

"The data is very poor in terms of its efficacy.  With that said, there are anecdotal reports that show it helps, but there are not big studies.  For it to be a good study, you would have to design it so that the (the marijuana) could be given in a way where they would also have a control sample. So the person doesn’t know if they got the drug or a placebo.

"However, in these anecdotal stories where they say it helps, there may be something else that is explaining what happens.  That’s the problem with anecdotal evidence; it doesn’t control for bias, and it doesn’t control for other variables.  You’d have to control for those, then see if it’s really effective.  But sometimes we do make decisions based on anecdotal data, so if that’s applicable here, it may be worth a try."

In theory, how would medical marijuana help neurological issues?

"From what I know about the science, doctors prepare an edible form of an extract of marijuana.  It’s not the chemical that makes you high, it’s the one that acts on the brain cells.  Basically it suppresses electrical activity.  A seizure is where you have an abnormal electrical signal in the brain that starts in one place or multiple places simultaneously and then spreads throughout the brain.  It’s an abnormal electrical wave that causes the person to have movements or shake.  So the drug would work by suppressing that wave."

Could medical marijuana potentially treat other neurological disorders?

"It’s sometimes used to treat multiple sclerosis in order to suppress some abnormal neurologic function, whether it’s pain or an unpleasant feeling in the extremity – what we call a dysesthesia.  These are some uses that are talked about.  And some people say the overall function for MS is approved.  They’re more mobile."

What is your particular stance on medical marijuana?

"My feeling about this case is that it should not be a political question or a social question.  It should be a medical question.  Has this girl exhausted a more proven way of dealing with her seizures?  I don’t know if a panel of physicians has really looked it over.  If they have, that’s great, but if they haven’t, they need to decided: Has she availed herself of surgery or nerve stimulation, which sometimes help dramatically.  

"If she truly has exhausted all the medical and surgical modalities for dealing with this epilepsy, I'm for it."

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Math and science initiatives become mainstream - Danbury News Times

It's not just the increase in jobs that's led area schools to increase the focus on teaching skills related to the STEM fields -- science, technology, engineering and math.

However, it is a powerful motivator, since over the past 10 years, growth in STEM jobs was three times as fast as growth in non-STEM jobs, according to the U.S. Department of Commerce.

Traditionally, states and districts have kept these subjects separate in both instruction and assessment, but increasingly they recognize the value of the discipline and way of thinking the STEM approach provides students across all disciplines.

"It's more problem solving and problem finding," Bethel High School technology teacher John Ryan said. "It transcends passive learning when a teacher stood in front the classroom. The more actively engaged students are, the more it improves the way kids retain their learning."

Critical thinking, problem solving, being scientifically literate and being able to collaborate are skills that scientists have used for ages in their work, and area districts are adopting a STEM approach in a variety of ways.

Danbury Public Schools has a middle school STEM academy for 300 students that incorporates the model into all the curriculum.

Bethel has an Academy of Digital Arts and Sciences Program, a four-year program in which students receive a cross-discipline approach to academics, design, and innovation skills that are integrated with digital media and science and technology topics.

It's part of the 21st Century Skills Initiative started at Education Connection with money from a nationally competitive federal government grant.

New Fairfield and New Milford high schools also have aligned programs with the 21st Century Skills Initiative, which provides original curricula, training, and support for innovative courses in science, technology, and math.

Other area programs include Danbury schools middle school STEM program academy, which has 300 students, a summer science camp in collaboration with Western Connecticut State University and growing collaborations among department heads at the high school.

Danbury's K-12 STEM curriculum administrator Harry Rosvally said he hears about new STEM programs starting around the state each year.

"STEM's become elevated in everybody's view. More people are aware of the need to support STEM," Rosvally said. The thriving corporations in the area, like Praxair and Boehringer Ingelheim, underscore its value.

At Danbury High, teachers are collaborating in various ways with STEM subject areas, he said.

"We realize it's the right way to do things," he said. "We realize that if the kids have use of a 3D printer it's so engaging that now they have the hunger to know the physics and math that goes with it."

Brookfield started its own 21st Century Skills class at the high school and now it's been added to the middle school, where fifth- through seventh-graders take it as part of their special class rotations and eighth graders can take it as an elective.

Brookfield also has a middle school technology/engineering education course that teaches math, science and technology principles. Students can take it as a rotating course in fifth, sixth, and seventh grade and then as an elective in eighth grade.

"We have a very active science, math and technology program where department heads work very closely together planning and collaborating," Brookfield Assistant Superintendent Genie Slone said.

The goal is for educators to teach students logical, analytical, creative and critical thinking skills, said Frank LaBlanca, who leads the 21st Century Skills Initiative for Education Connection.

"A STEM approach helps certain students learn these skills better than in other ways though there is no one solution for all students," he said.

eileenf@newstimes.com; 203-731-3333

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Elsewhere in Science, 16 August 2013 - Science Careers Blog (blog)

Elsewhere in Science, 16 August 2013By Donisha Adams Jim Austin August 16, 2013

Every week, Science publishes a few articles likely to be of interest to career-minded readers. But because those articles aren't featured on Science Careers, our readers could easily overlook them.

To remedy that, every Friday we're pointing readers toward articles appearing in Science—the print magazine as well as the other Science-family publications (ScienceInsider, ScienceNow, Science Translational Medicine (Sci. TM), and Science Signaling—that hold some relevance or nuggets of advice for readers interested in furthering their careers in science. (Please note that while articles appearing in ScienceInsider and ScienceNow may be read by anyone, articles appearing in Sci. TM and Science may require AAAS membership/Science subscription or a site license.)

• Since 1948, researchers with the Framingham Heart Study (FHS) have been monitoring a group of men and women from Framingham, Massachusetts for cardiovascular disease risks. In the News and Analysis section of Science this week, Jocelyn Kaiser writes about the budget cuts faced by the National Heart, Lung, and Blood Institute-sponsored program.

What's the connection to science careers? For one thing, a few people will lose jobs: "In response to this year's cut, FHS plans to lay off 19 of 90 staffers as well as scale back clinical exams and laboratory work," Kaiser writes. But the really important connection to careers is that the cuts threaten to compromise a study that has been going strong for 65 years and has delivered many important insights into cardiovascular disease. For scientists to do their work well, they need steady, adequate funding. When they don't get it, the cost can be high.

• Also in News and Analysis, Jeffrey Mervis writes about the National Science Foundation's (NSF's)  decision to cancel this year's round of funding for political science while keeping the program in place. NSF isn't saying much, but the move "appears to reflect an impasse between NSF's desire to preserve its highly regarded peer-review system and the need to abide by language in a government-wide funding bill that restricts NSF's ability to support research in the discipline," Mervis writes. An amendment to the 2013 spending bill passed in March limits NSF's political science funding to cases "when a project is deemed vital to national security or the country's economic interests."

"The casualties," Mervis writes, "include this year's edition of Duke University's long-running Ralph Bunche Summer Institute for promising minority students considering academic careers in political science. 'We were told this winter we had been recommended for renewal and were waiting for the paperwork when Coburn was passed,' says Paula McClain, a professor of political science and dean of the graduate school at Duke University in Durham, North Carolina. Then NSF put its $160,000-a-year contribution on hold. 'The students would have started in early June, and in late April I finally decided I couldn't keep people hanging on any longer.' "

• This week's juiciest career-related story is Yudhijit Bhattacharje's engaging look back at the discovery, by Marco Tavani's AGILE research team, of anomalous gamma radiation from the Crab nebula. "For decades, the three pulsars had emitted radiation so steadily that astronomers had come to rely on them as cosmic standards to calibrate their instruments—AGILE included," Bhattacharje writes. "Geminga, being closer, normally shines brighter than the Crab. But in the AGILE map, the Crab blazed brighter and larger than Geminga. The anomaly raised the troubling prospect of a flaw in the telescope's detectors. Tavani wanted to wish it away."

Tavani and his team eventually won awards for the discovery, but Tavani dismissed it when it first appeared in 2007—despite protestations from members of his team—because the observations seemed too weird. " 'For the moment, we put this week of observations in our drawer,' " Tavani told the group. " 'And we do not talk about this to anybody.' "

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Tornado Tech: How Drones Can Help With Twister Science - NPR

Tornado researchers want to use small drones, like this one called the Noctura, to study the storms.

Andy Arena/Oklahoma State University

Oklahoma was hit particularly hard by two massive outbreaks this year in what's been another deadly season of tornadoes in the U.S. Despite technology and forecasting improvements, scientists still have plenty to learn about how and why tornadoes form.

Currently, one of the best ways for researchers to understand how tornadoes form is to chase them. So off they go with mobile science laboratories, rushing toward storms armed with research equipment and weather-sensing probes.

It's dangerous work. Three chasers died in one of Oklahoma's May tornadoes because the storm unexpectedly changed directions. And there's also a lot left to chance — only 20 percent of supercell thunderstorms produce tornadoes.

"It's a loaded gun," says Jamey Jacob, an aerospace engineering professor at Oklahoma State University, of the big weather systems. "It's ready to go off, but when and where does it fire?"

One of the downsides of the current tornado research method is that it's passive, Jacob says. "You throw [probes] out there, [and] you hope something gets caught up [in the storm] somewhere," he says.

So he and dozens of other scientists and engineers are remaking tornado technology. They're looking to small drone aircraft loaded with sensors that can be launched from the trunk of a car, far from a potential tornado.

"With unmanned aircraft," Jacob says, "you fly it where you want it to go."

If you open up these drones, the contents could have come from a middle school science project. But the Kevlar shell and the tiny sensors are fit for a high-tech military plane.

Brian Argrow directs the research and engineering center for unmanned aerial vehicles at the University of Colorado, Boulder.

"Being able to sample the pressure, temperature, humidity, wind velocity — that you can't do remotely," he says. "Radar can only do so much at this point."

Scientists think these drones can help them increase warning time from the current 14-minute average to as much as an hour. Argrow says the technology exists, and the planes are ready to go, but many of them are stuck in university laboratories, frustrating researchers.

Drones can provide information about temperature, humidity and pressure that current radar systems can't provide. Above, the Talos drone, which has a 15.5-foot wingspan.

Jamey Jacob/Oklahoma State University

"It's often that technology gets ahead of policy, particularly in this country, and this is an instance where that essentially has happened," he says. "Some of the technology — the capability, anyway — has gotten ahead of what the current air traffic system is able to accommodate directly."

The Federal Aviation Administration declined to be interviewed for this story, but Argrow and his team started working with the agency in 2009 to integrate the new storm-chasing technology into the nation's airspace. They were able to fly into a few storms back then. But it's a very slow, bureaucratic process that doesn't mesh well with fast-developing thunderstorms.

Scientists think if new policies are put in place, these aerial chasers could be widely operational in five years, allowing meteorologists to make more accurate tornado warnings.

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Australia's One Nation under climate science denial - The Guardian

Link to video: Stephanie Banister: 'I don't oppose Islam as a country'

Oh, how the world laughed at Stephanie Banister – the extreme right wing Australian election candidate who told a TV interviewer that Islam was a country.

Wasn't it just side-splitting to hear the 27-year-old One Nation hopeful get her Qu-ran's mixed up with her harams?

What fun to hear her re-write the Jewish faithful as a congregation of Jesus-followers?  You could have knocked me down with a kippah.

The Queenslander claimed she was a victim of selective editing from the television network Channel Seven, which aired the interview. She's since pulled out of the election race.

But virtually every major news outlet in the developed world covered Banister's gaffs.

After twisting its satirical knife every which way, US television political comedy The Daily Show suggested Banister had set "a new low watermark for electoral ignorance".

But after reading her party's stance on climate change, I beg to differ.

One Nation appears to have gone shopping to the Climate Science Denial Mart and come back with the whole deli counter of debunked talking points.

"What's really behind all the global warming hoopla," One Nation's website asks.

"Power.  It's the same old Marxist/Communist/Fascist collectivist shtick, dressed up in new clothes. Global warming is all about a power grab by a wealthy elite and their collectivist sycophants — using the (United Nations) as a cover and tool."

Elsewhere, One Nation accuses the Bureau of Meteorology and the CSIRO of engaging in the corruption of science.

Much of the material is near identical to that offered by the climate science denial organisation the Galileo Movement, whose patron – Sydney shock-jock Alan Jones – says human-caused climate change is a hoax and the science is "witchcraft".

One Nation New South Wales Senate candidate Pauline Hanson even cites the Galileo Movement's project leader Malcolm Roberts, asking readers to check out a document which Sydney Morning Herald environment editor Ben Cubby has described as a "pile of horse shit".

Now, while you probably wouldn't expect the Christian Democrats to jumble its religious lexicon, the party is as equally clueless as One Nation about the current state of climate science.

According to the Christian Democrats, there are "equally reputable scientists" who say that climate change "is not, and never was driven by CO2 levels".

This ignores a recent study, co-authored by fellow The Guardian environment blogger Dana Nuccitelli, about 97 per cent of scientific studies on climate change in the last 20 years all agree that global warming is caused by humans. It also ignores all the major science academies in the developed world.

The CDP says it is "agnostic" about human caused climate change, which is a bit like saying you're an agnostic about the laws of physics.

Definitely not an agnostic, but rather an all-out worshipper of anti-science, is the Christian fundamentalist Rise Up Australia Party, led by a Melbourne Pastor who thinks humans have only been on earth for 6,000 years. Rise Up Australia also drafted in UK Independence Party figure Lord Christopher Monckton earlier for a pre-election push.

Key minor parties in Queensland – Katter's Australia Party and Palmer United Party – have also chosen to put debunked fringe ideas above sound science.

Katter's Australia Party says: "The scientific case is not made out and nor is there empirical evidence connecting carbon emissions to global warming - the argument is simply not sustainable."

The Palmer United Party doesn't say anything about climate change aside from saying it wants a national commission to investigate the "carbon issue" but its leader, billionaire miner Clive Palmer, is a climate science sceptic.

Palmer tried to play-down the role of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere by telling an ABC television audience that "97 per cent of carbon dioxide is from natural sources" – as if this was somehow relevant.

One Nation also does this sweet little climate denial two-step that tries to suggest that carbon dioxide is both inconsequential but also powerful enough to be the life force of the planet.

Pauline Hanson writes: "Carbon dioxide is Nature's invisible, tasteless, odourless trace gas essential to all life on Earth."

Perhaps she's been reading the same talking points as Opposition leader Tony Abbott, who earlier this year dog whistled to the climate denial crowd when he described emissions trading as "a so-called market, in the non-delivery of an invisible substance to no one."

Abbott has said in the past that he thinks climate science is "crap" but has also said he thinks it does contribute to climate change.

But Abbott's Liberal Party is riddled with representatives scornful of the risks of burning billions of tonnes of fossil fuels annually to load the atmosphere with that all-powerful (but also trace gas) carbon dioxide.

In Queensland, the state party's rank and file members voted last year in favour of a motion to ban the teaching of climate science in schools.

The motion was proposed by a party member who claims to have debunked the greenhouse theory using just two fish boxes and a roll of cling film in an experiment he cooked up in his kitchen.

Maybe it's time to quote some wise words from that former One Nation candidate and religious philosopher Stephanie Banister.

"Everyone in the world has a lot to learn about day to day stuff. Everything in life is just about learning."

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Science Movies to Avoid on Date Night - Discovery News

Another criminally underappreciated sci-fi film, director Andrew Niccol's 1997 "Gattaca" deals with both the hard science and social science aspects of human genetics technology. In a near-future setting, a kind of popular eugenics system allows parents to genetically profile embryos prior to implantation, selecting for optimal hereditary traits. Uma Thurman and Ethan Hawke -- surely two of our most genetically gifted movie stars -- must navigate a scary future society in which destiny is determined by genes. The name of the space agency in the film, Gattaca, is composed of the letters GATC -- or guanine, adenine, thymine and cytosine, the four bases of DNA.

While there's nothing particularly gross or disturbing in "Gattaca," the very subject matter -- and the presence of those two elite specimens Thurman and Hawke -- might lead a romantic interest to start questioning your own genetic potential.

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'Teddy bear'; carnivore emerges from the mists of Ecuador - The Guardian

Link to video: Olinguito: the newly discovered mammal

A small, wide-eyed beast with luxuriant orange fur has been identified as a new species more than 100 years after it first went on display in the world's museums.

The discovery brings to an end one of the longest zoological cases of mistaken identity and establishes the "olinguito" (which rhymes with mojito) as the first new carnivore recorded in the western hemisphere for 35 years.

The animal – which has been described as a cross between a teddy bear and a house cat – had been displayed in museums around the globe and exhibited at numerous US zoos for decades without scientists grasping that it had been mislabelled.

One adult female, named Ringerl, was kept at Louisville zoo in the 1960s, but was moved to Tucson zoo, to the Smithsonian's National zoo, and to the Bronx zoo after keepers repeatedly failed in their attempts to breed the animal. The reason for that failure is now clear: it was a different species to the mates on offer.

The true identity of the overlooked beast only emerged after Kristofer Helgen, curator of mammals at the Smithsonian's National Museum of Natural History, launched a 10-year investigation into an obscure group of raccoon-like mammals called olingos. What began with a drawer-full of remains ended with a nighttime trek through the cloud forests of Ecuador, where scientists photographed the creature living in the trees.

"If you look up olingos in a book today, pretty much everyone says we don't know quite how many species there are, what their ranges are, and which are endangered. I set out to resolve all that, I wanted to put olingos on the map," Helgen told the Guardian.

"But in the process of trying to do that, and because we were the first group in generations to look closely at his part of the carnivore family tree, we revealed this incredible and beautiful animal that everyone had overlooked," he said.

The moment of realisation came when Helgen was going through skins and skulls of mammals at the Field Museum in Chicago. "I pulled out a drawer and there were these brilliant, beautiful orange-red pelts with long flowing fur. It was nothing like olingo fur. I then looked at the skulls and the shape was very different. I wondered, 'is this a mammal that's been missed by every other zoologist?' It turns out that it was," he said.

The animal had been mistaken for an olingo because of some broad similarities, but these turned out to be superficial. Helgen's animal was different on almost every measure: it was smaller, much furrier, had a shorter tail, different teeth, and smaller ears. "We are not talking about splitting hairs. If you saw the two animals side by side you would wonder how they could ever be confused," Helgen said.

Convinced they had a new species on their hands, Helgen's team arranged an expedition to the cloud forests of the Andes, where similar creatures had come from. Trekking at night through the dense vegetation, and accompanied by a chorus of frogs and crickets, they spotted other nocturnal beasts in the beams of their headtorches: kinkajous and porcupines.

"Eventually, there it was, an olinguito. We got it in the beam, running around, jumping from tree to tree, but getting close enough so that when it turned and looked into the beam we knew exactly what it was," he said.

The olinguito is a carnivore, but the term has two meanings in biology. The most familiar is an animal that eats meat, but the other is any animal that belongs to the order Carnivora, which includes cats, dogs, tigers, bears and others. They are not all meat eaters, and the olinguito mostly eats fruit.

Working with local museums, the team later extracted DNA from animals on display and confirmed that some were olinguitos, a previously unknown relative of the olingo. They have since confirmed there are at least four sub-species of the animals.

The DNA evidence took the scientists back to the Smithsonian Institution. There they found that scientific databases already contained olinguito DNA that had been wrongly labelled as olingo. It also led them to tissues from a Colombian olinguito held in storage at the museum. They belonged to Ringerl, the unfortunate female that toured US zoos.

"We tracked down Ringerl's keeper and asked why she moved her around so much. She said 'we couldn't get her to breed with any of the olingos.' This animal wasn't fussy, it just wasn't the same species. It would have been impossible. It was a glorious case of mistaken identity," said Helgen.

The name olinguito means small or adorable olingo, but writing in the journal ZooKeys, the team give the animal a formal scientific name too, Bassaricyon neblina. The species name, neblina, means "fog" or "mist" in Spanish, a nod to the cloud forests where the animal lives. But it also means obscured. "That's exactly what the olinguito has been," Helgen said. "Lost in the fog."

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