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Submission + - Swarms of small satellites set to deliver close to real-time imagery of Earth (nature.com) 1

Submitted by ananyo
ananyo writes: A swarm of small satellites set to deliver close to real-time imagery of swathes of the planet is launching today. San Francisco-based Planet Labs, founded in 2010 by three former NASA scientists, is scheduled to launch 28 of its ‘Doves’ on 9 January. Each toaster-sized device weighs about 5 kilograms and can take images at a resolution of 3–5 metres.
Meanwhile Skybox Imaging plans to launch a swarm of 24 satellites, each weighing about 100 kilograms, which will take images of 1 metre resolution or better. Skybox launched its first satellite on 21 November (and captured the first HD video of the world from space) and plans to launch another this year, followed by the remainder between 2015 and 2017. In a first — at least for civilian satellites — Skybox’s devices will also stream short segments of near-live high-resolution video footage of the planet. So, too, will UrtheCast, a start-up based in Vancouver, Canada, whose cameras will hitch a ride on the International Space Station.
Because the swarms are still to be launched, scientists have yet to fully assess the quality of the imagery. But the satellites’ spatial resolutions of 1–5 metres are much higher than those of most scientific satellites. Landsat, NASA’s Earth-observation workhorse, for example, has a resolution of 15–100 metres depending on the spectral frequency, with 30 metres in the visible-light range.

Comment Re:Meaningless values are meaningless. (Score 1) 134

by ananyo (#45898691) Attached to: China Tops Europe In R&D Intensity

Proportion of GDP spent on research is not a 'meaningless' number. The EU spent a great deal of time trying to (unsuccessfully) urging its member states to push their total spending up to 3%. They've since realized that no single metric can adequately measure a nation's capacity to innovate in science - but this measure is still part of a basket of metrics that it's perfectly reasonable to use to examine a country's commitment to science.
To be clear - there's little evidence that spending a lot of money science will get you a Google or a Genentech, but on the other hand, a fair bit of evidence that spending nothing will make it extremely unlikely. ie science spending is necessary but not sufficient.

Submission + - China tops Europe in R&D intensity (nature.com)

Submitted by ananyo
ananyo writes: By pouring cash into science and technology faster than its economy has expanded, China has for the first time overtaken Europe on a key measure of innovation: the share of its economy devoted to research and development.
In 2012, China invested 1.98% of its gross domestic product (GDP) into R&D — just edging out the 28 member states of the European Union, which together managed 1.96%, according to the latest estimates of research intensity, to be released this month by the OECD.
The figures show that China’s research intensity has tripled since 1998, whereas Europe’s has barely increased (see graph). The numbers are dominated by business spending, reflecting China’s push in the manufacturing and information- and communication-technology industries.

Submission + - Bizarre star could host a neutron star in its core (nature.com) 1

Submitted by ananyo
ananyo writes: Astronomers say that they have discovered the first example of a long-sought cosmic oddity: a bloated, dying star with a surprise in its core — an ultradense neutron star.
Such entities, known as Thorne-Zytkow objects, are theoretically possible but would alter scientists' understanding of how stars can be powered. Since Thorne-Zytkow objects were first proposed in 19751, researchers have occasionally offered up candidates, but none have been confirmed.

Submission + - World's oldest decimal multiplication table discovered (nature.com)

Submitted by ananyo
ananyo writes: From a few fragments out of a collection of 23-century-old Chinese bamboo strips, historians have pieced together what they say is the world's oldest example of a multiplication table in base 10.
Each strip is about 7 to 12 millimetres wide and half a metre long, and has a vertical line of ancient Chinese calligraphy painted on it in black ink. The bamboo pieces constitute 65 ancient texts and are thought to be among the most important artefacts from the Warring States period before the unification of China. But 21 bamboo strips contained only numbers and, on closer inspection, turned out to be a multiplication table.
As in a modern multiplication table, the entries at the intersection of each row and column in the matrix provide the results of multiplying the corresponding numbers. The table can also help users to multiply any whole or half integer between 0.5 and 99.5. The researchers suspect that officials used the multiplication table to calculate surface area of land, yields of crops and the amounts of taxes owed.

Submission + - Researchers use electroconvulsive therapy to disrupt recall of nasty events (nature.com)

Submitted by ananyo
ananyo writes: In the film Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind, unhappy lovers undergo an experimental brain treatment to erase all memories of each other from their minds. No such fix exists for real-life couples, but researchers report in Nature Neuroscience that a targeted medical intervention helps to reduce specific negative memories in patients who are depressed.
The technique, called electroconvulsive (ECT) or electroshock therapy, induces seizures by passing current into the brain through electrode pads placed on the scalp. Despite its sometimes negative reputation, ECT is an effective last-resort treatment for severe depression, and is used today in combination with anaesthesia and muscle relaxants.
Marijn Kroes, a neuroscientist at Radboud University Nijmegen in the Netherlands, and his colleagues found that by strategically timing ECT bursts, they could target and disrupt patients' memory of a disturbing episode.

Submission + - Study confirms narcolepsy is an autoimmune disease (nature.com)

Submitted by ananyo
ananyo writes: As the H1N1 swine flu pandemic swept the world in 2009, China saw a spike in cases of narcolepsy — a mysterious disorder that involves sudden, uncontrollable sleepiness. Meanwhile, in Europe, around 1 in 15,000 children who were given Pandemrix — a now-defunct flu vaccine that contained fragments of the pandemic virus — also developed narcolepsy, a chronic disease.
Immunologist Elizabeth Mellins and narcolepsy researcher Emmanuel Mignot at Stanford University School of Medicine in California and their collaborators have now partly solved the mystery behind these events, while also confirming a longstanding hypothesis that narcolepsy is an autoimmune disease, in which the immune system attacks healthy cells.
Narcolepsy is mostly caused by the gradual loss of neurons that produce hypocretin, a hormone that keeps us awake. Many scientists had suspected that the immune system was responsible, but the Stanford team has found the first direct evidence: a special group of CD4+ T cells (a type of immune cell) that targets hypocretin and is found only in people with narcolepsy.

Submission + - Academics should not remain silent on hacking (nature.com)

Submitted by ananyo
ananyo writes: The Guardian's technology editor, Charles Arthur, asks in an opinion piece in Nature why researchers have remained largely silent in the wake of the revelation that the US National Institute of Standards and Technology's standard for random numbers used for cryptography had been weakened by the NSA:
"The nature of the subversions sounds abstruse: the random-number generator, the 'Dual EC DRBG' standard, had been hacked by the NSA and the UK's GCHQ so that its output would not be as random as it should have been. That might not sound like much, but if you are trying to break an encrypted message, the knowledge that it is hundreds or thousands of times weaker than advertised is a great encouragement."
Arthur attributes the silence of UK academics, at least, to pressure from GCHQ. He goes on to say:
"For those who do care, White and Matthew Green, who teaches cryptography at Johns Hopkins University in Baltimore, Maryland, have embarked on an ambitious effort to clean up the mess — one that needs help.
They have created a non-profit organization called OpenAudit.org, which aims to recruit experts to provide technical assistance for security projects in the public interest, especially open-source security software."

Comment Polynesians DIDN'T invent binary (Score 1) 170

by ananyo (#45713311) Attached to: Polynesians May Have Invented Binary Math

http://www.nature.com/news/polynesian-people-used-binary-numbers-600-years-ago-1.14380
>>Cognitive scientist Rafael Nuñez at the University of California, San Diego, points out that the idea of binary systems is actually older than Mangarevan culture. “It can be traced back to at least ancient China, around the 9th century bc”, he says, and it can be found in the I Ching, a millennia-old Chinese text that inspired Leibniz. Nuñez adds that “other ancient groups, such as the Maya, used sophisticated combinations of binary and decimal systems to keep track of time and astronomical phenomena. Thus, the cognitive advantages underlying the Mangarevan counting system may not be unique.”

Submission + - Simulations back up theory that Universe is a hologram (nature.com)

Submitted by ananyo
ananyo writes: A team of physicists has provided some of the clearest evidence yet that our Universe could be just one big projection.
In 1997, theoretical physicist Juan Maldacena proposed that an audacious model of the Universe in which gravity arises from infinitesimally thin, vibrating strings could be reinterpreted in terms of well-established physics. The mathematically intricate world of strings, which exist in nine dimensions of space plus one of time, would be merely a hologram: the real action would play out in a simpler, flatter cosmos where there is no gravity.
Maldacena's idea thrilled physicists because it offered a way to put the popular but still unproven theory of strings on solid footing — and because it solved apparent inconsistencies between quantum physics and Einstein's theory of gravity. It provided physicists with a mathematical Rosetta stone, a 'duality', that allowed them to translate back and forth between the two languages, and solve problems in one model that seemed intractable in the other and vice versa. But although the validity of Maldacena's ideas has pretty much been taken for granted ever since, a rigorous proof has been elusive.
In two papers posted on the arXiv repository, Yoshifumi Hyakutake of Ibaraki University in Japan and his colleagues now provide, if not an actual proof, at least compelling evidence that Maldacena’s conjecture is true.

Submission + - Study linking GM maize to rat tumours is retracted (nature.com)

Submitted by ananyo
ananyo writes: Bowing to scientists' near-universal scorn, the journal Food and Chemical Toxicology has fulfilled its threat to retract a controversial paper that claimed that a genetically modified (GM) maize causes serious disease in rats after the authors refused to withdraw it.
The paper, from a research group led by Gilles-Eric Séralini, a molecular biologist at the University of Caen, France, and published in 20121, showed “no evidence of fraud or intentional misrepresentation of the data”, said a statement from Elsevier, which publishes the journal. But the small number and type of animals used in the study means that “no definitive conclusions can be reached”. The known high incidence of tumours in the Sprague-Dawley rat ”cannot be excluded as the cause of the higher mortality and incidence observed in the treated groups”, it added.
Today’s move came as no surprise. Earlier this month, the journal’s editor-in-chief, Wallace Hayes, threatened retraction if Séralini refused to withdraw the paper, which is exactly what he announced at a press conference in Brussels this morning. Séralini and his team remained unrepentant, and allege that the retraction derives from the journal's editorial appointment of biologist Richard Goodman, who previously worked for biotechnology giant Monsanto for seven years.

Submission + - Google supercomputers tackle giant drug-interaction data crunch (nature.com)

Submitted by ananyo
ananyo writes: By analysing the chemical structure of a drug, researchers can see if it is likely to bind to, or ‘dock’ with, a biological target such as a protein. Researchers have now unveiled a computational effort that used Google's supercomputers to assesses billions of potential dockings on the basis of drug and protein information held in public databases. The effort will help researchers to find potentially toxic side effects and to predict how and where a compound might work in the body.
“It’s the largest computational docking ever done by mankind,” says Timothy Cardozo, a pharmacologist at New York University’s Langone Medical Center, who presented the project at the US National Institutes of Health’s High Risk–High Reward Symposium in Bethesda, Maryland. The result, a website called Drugable, is still in testing, but it will eventually be available for free, allowing researchers to predict how and where a compound might work in the body, purely on the basis of chemical structure

Submission + - Psychologists strike a blow for reproducibility (nature.com)

Submitted by ananyo
ananyo writes: Science has a much publicized reproducibility problem. Many experiments seem to be failing a key test of science — that they can be independently verified by another lab. But now 36 research groups have struck a blow for reproducibility, by successfully reproducing the results of 10 out of 13 past experiments in psychology. Even so, the Many Labs Replication Project found that the outcome of one experiment was only weakly supported and they could not replicate two of the experiments at all.

Submission + - Crowdsourcing goes mainstream in typhoon response (nature.com)

Submitted by ananyo
ananyo writes: Nature has an article up about how crowdsourcing and social media were integrated as never before by the United Nations, the Red Cross and Doctors without Borders in the relief efforts following typhoon Haiyan:
After typhoon Haiyan smashed into the Philippines on 8 November, an army of volunteers mobilized and worked around the clock to help guide relief efforts. But these were no boots on the ground. Instead, they were citizens from around the world who quickly analysed satellite imagery and other data, generating maps to provide relief agencies with invaluable crowdsourced information.
Crowdsourced disaster response, until a few years ago informal and often haphazard, is now getting more organized, and is being embraced by official humanitarian organizations and integrated into relief operations. Volunteer efforts have multiplied thanks to the arrival of online mapping tools, the increasing popularity of social networks such as Twitter and Facebook, and the spread of mobile phones. A suite of volunteer groups are emerging that contribute to disaster response in tight coordination with conventional relief organizations.

Submission + - Mystery humans spiced up ancients' rampant sex lives (nature.com)

Submitted by ananyo
ananyo writes: New genome sequences from two extinct human relatives suggest that these ‘archaic’ groups bred with humans and with each other more extensively than was previously known.
The ancient genomes, one from a Neanderthal and one from a different archaic human group, the Denisovans, were presented at a meeting at the Royal Society in London. They suggest that interbreeding went on between the members of several ancient human-like groups living in Europe and Asia more than 30,000 years ago, including an as-yet unknown human ancestor from Asia.
“What it begins to suggest is that we’re looking at a ‘Lord of the Rings’-type world — that there were many hominid populations,” says Mark Thomas, an evolutionary geneticist at University College London who was at the meeting but was not involved in the work.

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