the-BA : Science News Digest

In the news this week: the genes that make us human, Britain faces a scientist shortage and a new plan for picking planets. Plus, NASA’s missing moon tapes, a weird whale and how to bring frozen mammoths back from the dead.

A study led by scientists from the University of California, has identified a 108-letter stretch of human DNA that encodes two critical genes for brain development and which could be the key difference between humans and other primates, reports the Independent. The study, published in the journal Nature, compared the human genome with those of chimpanzees and other animals to pinpoint regions which have undergone accelerated evolutionary change in humans. The researchers discovered an area, known as Human Accelerated Region 1 (HAR1), which is most active during the development of the outer cortex (the region of the brain responsible for ‘higher’ activities such as language and consciousness) and which may help explain why this part of the brain expanded rapidly during human evolution.

"The evidence is very suggestive that this gene is important in the development of the cerebral cortex," said Professor David Haussler of the University of California, Santa Cruz. "That's exciting because the human cortex is three times as large as it was in our predecessors," he added.

In the same week that over 250,000 students received their A-Level results, the Confederation of British Industry (CBI) warned that Britain is in danger of running out of scientists because of its “stripped-down” secondary science curriculum, a lack of specialist teachers and poor careers advice, reports the Guardian. The CBI statements echo the findings of a recent study by the University of Buckingham, which suggests that the number of physics A-Level students has fallen by more than half in the last 20 years, while the number studying chemistry has fallen by 37 per cent over the same period. The CBI criticised the restructuring of the national curriculum to include GCSE double award science, which forces children to study three disciplines in the time usually allocated for two. CBI director general Richard Lambert said the education system was failing to “fire the imaginations” of pupils.

“We must smash the stereotypes that surround science and re-brand it as desirable and exciting; a gateway to some fantastic career opportunities. But the UK risks being knocked off its perch as a world-leader in science, engineering and technology. We cannot afford for this to happen,” he said.

Physics textbooks may have to be rewritten as four new heavenly bodies join the solar system, if a proposal by astronomers to create the first ever scientific definition for the term ‘planet’ gets the approval of the International Astronomy Union (IAU) next week. BBC News reports that the eight ‘classical’ planets which dominate the system (Mercury, Venus, Earth, Mars, Jupiter, Saturn, Neptune and Uranus) may be joined by a new category of planets, known as ‘plutons’. The new category will include the current outer planet Pluto, its moon Charon, Ceres – a spherical asteroid that sits between Mars and Jupiter, and an object beyond Pluto called 2003 UB313 but nicknamed Xena by the astronomers who discovered it.

The new proposed total of 12 planets may be set to rise even further as the IAU is already monitoring 12 more candidate planets, any of which could be upgraded in the future. The proposal has not been popular with all astronomical experts however. Robin Catchpole, from the Institute of Astronomy in Cambridge, said: "The public are very clear about what they understand by 'planets'. Those are the big, dominant bodies in the Solar System that we're all familiar with, the eight - or nine if you include Pluto.

"I think including more is going to add confusion to the public, but not really be particularly useful for astronomers."

On Monday the Telegraph reported that scientists at the University of Bologna have discovered that woad, the plant from which medieval Britons produced a striking blue dye that they smeared on their faces as warpaint, could be a useful tool in the fight against breast cancer. The plant, a member of the cabbage family whose scientific name is Isatis tinctoria, contains large quantities of the anti-cancer compound glucobrassicin, which acts against the hormone oestrogen, known to promote breast cancer in the human body.

In other science news…

The Daily Mail reports on rare observations, to be discussed in a paper in Applied Animal Behaviour Science, that appear to reveal the compassion of elephants for their dying companions.

Nature News reports the discovery of a 25-million year old "truly weird" whale fossil in Australia. The specimen is a distant relative of modern blue whales and humpbacks but instead of being a placid plankton eater, its large eyes and sharp teeth suggest that it ate large fish and possibly even sharks and other whales.

The Independent reports that the Hubble Space Telescope has captured detailed images of the faintest stars in the galaxy, from which the light reaching Earth is so dim that it is equivalent to that produced by “a birthday candle on the Moon.” Nevertheless, the images may offer astronomers a valuable insight into the types of stars that existed in the early universe.

The Times reports that patients taking Herceptin may be at greater risk of heart damage than was first thought. A study in the Journal of Clinical Oncology indicates that 28 per cent of patients taking the drug for advanced breast cancer suffered heart problems linked to muscle damage.

The US space agency NASA has revealed that the original tapes of Neil Armstrong’s historic first steps on the moon have been mislaid somewhere in their vast archives. The Daily Telegraph reports that grainy television footage, recorded by pointing a TV camera at a black-and-white monitor, is currently the only visual record of the Apollo 11 moon landing.

And finally…

The Guardian reports that sperm from mice that were frozen at -20C for 15 years has been used to produce healthy offspring. Scientists from the Institute of Physical and Chemical Research Bioresource Centre in Japan found that by freezing the testes (where sperm are produced), the epididymis (where sperm are stored) or the whole mouse, instead of just the sperm by itself, the DNA in the sperm survived the freezing process intact and could be extracted and used to fertilise eggs.

Writing in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, the research team stated that “If spermatozoa of extinct mammalian species (eg woolly mammoths) can be retrieved from animal bodies that were kept frozen for millions of years in permanent frost, live animals might be restored by injecting them into oocytes from females of closely related species.”