the-BA : Science News Digest

Cats - our long-time companions (Image copyright: istockphoto.com)

In the news this week: the new PM shakes up the science and education arena, a mystery mummy is identified as Egypt’s missing female pharaoh, and evidence suggests cats, not dogs, are our oldest friends...

The news has been full of reports about the severe flooding occurring in the UK, particularly in Yorkshire, Lincolnshire and the Midlands. In response to forecasts predicting further severe weather, a national flood support centre has been established.
(BBC News)

According to the Meteorological Office, multiple rainfall records are being set, with several weather stations already having recorded their highest levels for June. Despite this, average June temperatures are much higher than normal so far.

The Guardian noted: ‘No one can pin any one event on anything as vast as global warming. However, with temperatures generally rising around the world, and subtropical temperatures becoming more common in Europe, extreme events are predicted, with intense localised storms becoming the norm.’

Together, last autumn and winter were Britain’s wettest on record, and this spring was the hottest.

Meanwhile, a UN report warned that desertification caused by climate change could force tens of millions of people from their homes, particularly in sub-Saharan Africa and Central Asia.

According to the study undertaken by more than 200 experts from 25 countries, ‘Desertification has emerged as an environmental crisis of global proportions, currently affecting an estimated 100 to 200 million people, and threatening the lives and livelihoods of a much larger number.’

Zafaar Adeel, lead author of the study, added that the strain placed on natural resources and nearby societies by this displacement of people will cause social turmoil, threatening international stability.

The report suggested that simple measures such as encouraging forests in dryland areas could help prevent the spread of deserts.
(BBC News)

Gordon Brown took up his position as Prime Minister this week. And, as speculated in last week’s Science News Digest, he soon instigated a shake up of government departments responsible for science and education.

Former Home Office minister John Denham will oversee a new department called the Department of Innovations, Universities and Skills (DIUS), which has taken over the science and innovation sections of the Department of Trade and Industry (DTI).

In his ministerial statement to the Commons, reported BBC News, Gordon Brown said: ‘The new department will be responsible for driving forward delivery of the government’s long-term vision to make Britain one of the best places in the world for science, research and innovation, and to deliver the ambition of a world-class skills base.’

A new department focusing on children, families and schools has also been created and Gordon Brown’s former adviser Ed Balls has been placed in charge. Between them, the two new departments will cover the responsibilities previously managed by the now-abolished Department for Education and Skills.

In what some are calling Egyptology’s ‘find of the century’, archaeologists have identified the mummy of the most famous queen to rule the ancient land. More powerful than Cleopatra or Nefertiti, Queen Hatshepsut (1473-1458 BC) was the only female pharaoh from Egypt’s golden age.

Hatshepsut’s rule stretched across the country and she was the first to build a tomb in the Valley of the Kings. However, when her sarcophagus was opened, her mummy was found to be missing.

Using knowledge of royal Egyptian mummification alongside computed tomography (CT) scanning, a team of experts and archaeologists led by Dr Zahi Hawass, Egypt’s secretary general of the Supreme Council of Antiquities, were able to narrow the search for Hatshepsut’s mummy to two possibilities.

Now, after using a variety of forensic techniques, researchers believe they have conclusively identified the lost queen. In particular, CT scanning of an inscribed box hidden in Hatshepsut’s mortuary temple revealed a broken tooth that fit into a space in the mummy’s mouth within a fraction of a millimetre. Preliminary studies comparing DNA extracted from the Hatshepsut mummy with DNA taken from mummies of family members also supports the claim.

’The discovery of the Hatshepsut mummy is one of the most important finds in the history of Egypt,’ Dr Hawass told the Daily Telegraph. ‘Our hope is that this mummy will help shed light on this mystery and on the mysterious nature of her death.

‘She had problems with her teeth and diabetes and died at the age of 50 because of cancer,’ he added. ‘She had many health problems.’

I enjoyed the Guardian’s choice of headline to accompany its story about a giant penguin fossil find: ‘Pick up a penguin? Not this one you wouldn’t’.

Apparently, new fossils found in Peru reveal a ‘monster’ that was over 1.5 metres tall, weighed as much as a person and had an 18-centimetre beak. The tallest penguin alive today is the 1.2-metre Emperor. And the only species found on the coast of Peru today, is the tiny Humboldt penguin.

The 36 million-year-old find has contradicted scientists’ belief that penguins didn’t reach equatorial regions until four to eight million years ago. And since the birds would have lived during a much warmer climate, the discovery appears to challenge the general rule that as climatic conditions get warmer, species tend to evolve into a smaller body size.

However, whilst the Icadyptes salasi fossil is the most complete of any giant penguin yet discovered, the bird may not be the largest: Anthropornis nordenskjoeldi, thought to have lived up to six million years ago, may have been up to 2 metres high and weighed 100kg.

Dr Craig Venter, the scientist who led the private effort to map the human genome, has long been researching ways to make artificial genomes, as he hopes to create new species of bacteria that can produce environmentally friendly fuels.

This week, his aim came one step closer to being realised following a groundbreaking experiment that effectively turned a bacterium into a different species by substituting its genome with that of a closely related species.

Although the host bacterium simply received DNA from a donor bacterium and it’s own genetic code was still present, tests after the DNA transplant showed that only the added genome was used. The bacterial cells had become biologically identical to the donor bacteria and its own DNA had been either silenced or destroyed.

Alongside ethical concerns about creating man-made life forms, critics also worry that similar techniques could be abused to create dangerous new germs. However, Dr Venter insisted that his team had worked under ethical scrutiny at every stage.

’I don’t think there has ever been another field of science that has had so much public input and analysis before there have been any results,’ he told the Times. ‘Potential abuses such as biological warfare concern everyone in the field.’

The Independent reported that researchers from Oxford and Cambridge universities have independently discovered a new type of stem cell in mice and rats that behaves just like a human stem cell, raising the prospect of better animal models of disease.

Stem cells have the potential to develop into any of the specialist cell types of the body and scientists hope that in the future it will be possible to use them to treat a multitude of human illnesses and injuries. Some trials are already in progress and showing promise.

The best stem cells in terms of their potential to develop into other cell types are derived from early embryos. However, scientists have long been puzzled as to why mice embryonic stem cells appear to behave differently to human ones. The latest findings, published in the journal Nature, suggest that, rather than species differences, it is likely that the timing of the stem cell harvesting is responsible.

Professor Roger Pedersen, who led the Cambridge research team, commented: ‘The differences between mouse and human embryonic stem cells that we had attributed to species differences may actually come down to the developmental stages from which the cells emerge.

’Our hope is that pinpointing the developmental stage when human embryonic stem cells originate will help scientists who are using cells to develop cures for injuries and disease.’

Symptoms of mental retardation and autism have been reversed for the first time in laboratory mice by inhibiting the action of PAK, a brain enzyme that affects the number, size and shape of connections between brain cells.

Inhibiting the enzyme in mice with Fragile X syndrome (a leading cause of mental retardation and autism in humans) corrected previous signs of hyperactivity, purposelessness and repetitive movements. Analysis showed that structural abnormalities between brain cell connections had been rectified and proper electrical communication restored.

Professor Eric Klann, of New York University’s Center for Neural Science commented: ‘This is very exciting because it suggests that PAK inhibitors could be used for therapeutic purposes to reverse already established mental impairments in fragile X children.’
(BBC News)

Other news in brief:

Researchers at a UK-based company have produced a prototype artificial skin that has produced promising results in early trials of wound-healing. It is hoped it could provide an alternative to skin grafts used to treat serious burns and large wounds, where skin is taken from another area of the body.

The results of the first tests suggest the artificial skin integrates itself with real tissue better than any previously tried substitutes.
(BBC News)

IBM and Sun Microsystems are battling it out to build the world’s biggest supercomputer. At the International Supercomputer conference in Dresden, Germany, scientists unveiled Constellation, a 30 million-pound machine with the memory of 200,000 home computers, able to operate at speeds of 421 teraflops (421 trillion calculations a second).

The computer will go live later this year, and will outrank the current leader, IBM’s 280 Teraflop Blue Gene/L. However, at the same meeting, IBM announced its plan to build Blue Gene/P. The new machine will run at speeds of around one petaflop (one quadrillion calculations a second) and is claimed that it will be more energy efficient than its rivals.
(The Guardian)

NASA set up a new Einstein Probes Office to coordinate five missions that will rigorously test Einstein’s ideas, studying dark energy and black holes as well as searching for clues to the origin and evolution of the universe.
(The Guardian)

And finally...

While it is commonly dogs that are thought of as Man’s best friends, new evidence published in the journal Science suggests cats may actually be our oldest companions.

Whereas DNA has previously shown that dogs originated from East Asian wolves just 15,000 years ago, a new genetic study indicates ancestors of domestic cats started living alongside humans any time from 10,000 to 130,000 years ago. Mitochondrial DNA from 979 domestic and wild cats were studied.

The study reveals cats worldwide can trace their origins to at least five female ancestors from the Fertile Crescent of the Middle East, which stretches from the eastern Mediterranean to the Persian Gulf.

The new research suggests cats were probably first attracted to early human settlements in the area by the rats and mice that lived there.

Researchers hope that the work will help efforts to conserve the Scottish wildcat, at risk due to cross-breeding with feral cats. Previously, little was known about genetic differences among cats, but now a genetic marker has been discovered that can identify the endangered animal.
(The Daily Telegraph)