This advance ultimately will assist efforts to prevent and treat taste loss or impairment due to infection, radiation, chemotherapy and chemical exposures.

"People who undergo chemotherapy or radiation therapy for oral cancer often lose their sense of taste, leading to decreased interest in food, weight loss, and malnutrition," said lead author M. Hakan Ozdener, M.D., Ph.D., M.P.H., a cellular biologist at Monell. "The success of this technique should provide hope for these people, as it finally provides us with a way to test drugs to promote recovery."

Taste cells are found in papillae, the little bumps on our tongues. These cells contain the receptors that interact with chemicals in foods to allow us to sense sweet, salty, sour, bitter, and umami. They also are among the few cells in the body with the special capacity to regenerate, with new taste cells maturing from progenitor 'stem' cells every 10-14 days.

For many years it was believed that taste cells needed to be attached to nerves in order to both function properly and regenerate. For this reason, scientists thought that it was not possible to isolate and grow these cells in culture, which limited the scope of studies to understand how human taste cells function.

"It had become engrained in the collective consciousness that it wouldn't work," said Monell cellular biologist Nancy E. Rawson, Ph.D

To dispel the long-held belief, the Monell scientists first demonstrated in 2006 that taste cells from rats could successfully be maintained in culture. In the current study, published online in the journal Chemical Senses, they then applied that methodology to a more clinically relevant population – humans.

Taking tiny samples of tongue tissue from human volunteers, the researchers first adapted existing techniques to demonstrate that the human taste cells indeed can regenerate in culture.

They went on to show that the new taste cells were functional, maintaining key molecular and physiological properties characteristic of the parent cells. For example, the new cells also were activated by sweet and bitter taste molecules.

"By producing new taste cells outside the body, our results demonstrate that direct stimulation from nerves is not necessary to generate functional taste cells from precursors," said Ozdener.

The establishment of a feasible long-term taste cell culture model opens a range of opportunities to increase understanding of the sense of taste.

"Results from these cells are more likely to translate to the clinic than those obtained from other species or from systems not derived from taste tissue," said Rawson.

The cells also can be used to screen and identify molecules that activate the taste receptors; one such example might be a salt replacer or enhancer.

"The model will help scientists identify new approaches to design and establish cell culture models for other human cells that previously had resisted viable culture conditions," said Ozdener.

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At the American Association for Cancer Research (AACR) 102nd Annual Meeting 2011, however, researchers from Georgetown Lombardi Comprehensive Cancer Center, a part of Georgetown University Medical Center, demonstrate how cigarette smoke produces different "metabolites" or active biological compounds, in individual smokers, compared to non-smokers.

In their pilot study, they analyzed hundreds of metabolites found in the blood and urine of nine smokers and 10 non-smokers. The researchers narrowed their focus to the top 50 metabolites in smokers and non-smokers, which differed by group. In the smokers group, the levels of nicotine-related metabolites varied. In addition, overall metabolomic profiles varied among male and female. The researchers validated the reproducibility of the methodology to ensure the experiments were giving low variability.

"This gives us an idea of how people produce metabolites differently when smoking cigarettes, which is based on their particular genetic profile and other biological and environmental factors," says the study's lead investigator, Ping-Ching Hsu, a doctoral student who works in the laboratory of oncology researcher Peter Shields, M.D., who specializes in tobacco carcinogenesis, and occasionally serves as an expert witness against cigarette manufacturers in tobacco related litigation. Shields is the senior author.

This study is designed to identify the "metabolome" of individual smokers, which can provide clues as to both the specific effect that cigarette smoking has on human biology, as well as how individuals vary in their internal response to the smoke.

The ultimate goal of this study, which is part of extensive research project, is to find biomarkers in smokers that predict for development of disease in smokers, Hsu says. It can also help in the development of blood tests that will allow researchers to assess the harmfulness of one tobacco product compared to another.

A metabolite is produced when anything taken into the body – such as food, tobacco smoke, alcohol, or medicine – is metabolized, or broken down into chemicals that produce a biological function via metabolic pathways. The global metabolome is the network of metabolic reactions, and metabolomics is analysis of the metabolome at any given time.

Comparatively, cigarette manufacturers have only been required to use machines that "smoked" cigarettes to derive the chemical content of potential carcinogens. "Metabolomics provides a broad picture of what is happening in the body of smokers," Hsu says.

This is the second study Hsu has presented at an AACR conference. In November, she reported the findings of a study that examined the blood "metabolomics" profile of light versus heavy smokers, and found that smoking behavior could alter several biological pathways.

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Jose Russo, MD, director of the Breast Cancer Research Laboratory at Fox Chase, will present the new findings at the AACR 102nd Annual Meeting 2011 on Wednesday, April 6.

To investigate how fish oil intensifies the effects of tamoxifen, Russo, in collaboration with a team led by Andrea Manni, MD, from Pennsylvania State University, induced mammary tumors in rats and then divided the animals into four groups. They fed the groups either a 17 percent fish oil diet, with or without tamoxifen, or a 20 percent corn oil diet, with or without tamoxifen, for eight weeks. They then analyzed gene expression patterns in the tumors. Omega-3 fatty acids produced a greater expression of genes related to cellular specialization, or differentiation—a sign of lower cancer severity—compared to corn oil. The combination of fish oil and tamoxifen reduced the expression of genes linked to tumor growth and spreading.

"If a tumor was being treated with tamoxifen, the addition of an omega-3 fatty acid diet seemed to make the tumor, at least at the molecular level, more benign and less aggressive and responsive to tamoxifen," says Russo.

The fish oil diet also boosted the expression of genes related to immune defenses against tumors, more so than did the corn oil diet. But omega-3 fatty acids simultaneously increased the expression of genes that trigger counterproductive immune responses, such as inflammation and allergic reactions, which curtail the ability of cells to fight cancer and can even promote the migration of tumor cells.

More studies are needed to fully understand the effects of fish oil on the immune system, Russo says. Meanwhile, his team is examining whether omega-3 fatty acids can prevent breast cancer in animals and testing the influence of diet on breast cancer risk in women.

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What are the signs of spring? They are as familiar as a blooming Daffodil, a songbird at dawn, a surprising shaft of warmth from the afternoon sun.

And, oh yes, don't forget the meteors.

"Spring is fireball season," says Bill Cooke of NASA's Meteoroid Environment Center. "For reasons we don't fully understand, the rate of bright meteors climbs during the weeks around the vernal equinox."

In other seasons, a person willing to watch the sky from dusk to dawn could expect to see around 10 random or "sporadic" fireballs. A fireball is a meteor brighter than the planet Venus. Earth is bombarded by them as our planet plows through the jetsam and flotsam of space--i.e., fragments of broken asteroids and decaying comets that litter the inner solar system.

In spring, fireballs are more abundant. Their nightly rate mysteriously climbs 10% to 30%.

"We've known about this phenomenon for more than 30 years," says Cooke. "It's not only fireballs that are affected. Meteorite falls--space rocks that actually hit the ground--are more common in spring as well1."

Researchers who study Earth's meteoroid environment have never come up with a satisfactory explanation for the extra fireballs. In fact, the more they think about it, the stranger it gets.

Consider the following:

There is a point in the heavens called the "apex of Earth's way." It is, simply, the direction our planet is traveling. As Earth circles the sun, the apex circles the heavens, completing one trip through the Zodiac every year.

The apex is significant because it is where sporadic meteors are supposed to come from. If Earth were a car, the apex would be the front windshield. When a car drives down a country road, insects accumulate on the glass up front. Ditto for meteoroids swept up by Earth.

Every autumn, the apex climbs to its highest point in the night sky. At that time, sporadic meteors of ordinary brightness are seen in abundance, sometimes dozens per night.

Read that again: Every autumn.

"Autumn is the season for sporadic meteors," says Cooke. "So why are the sporadic fireballs peaking in spring? That is the mystery."

Meteoroid expert Peter Brown of the University of Western Ontario notes that "some researchers think there might be an intrinsic variation in the meteoroid population along Earth's orbit, with a peak in big fireball-producing debris around spring and early summer. We probably won't know the answer until we learn more about their orbits2."

To solve this and other puzzles, Cooke is setting up a network of smart meteor cameras around the country to photograph fireballs and triangulate their orbits. As explained in the Science@NASA story What's Hitting Earth?, he's looking for places to put his cameras; educators are encouraged to get involved. Networked observations of spring fireballs could ultimately reveal their origin.

"It might take a few years to collect enough data," he cautions.

Until then, it's a beautiful mystery. Go out and enjoy the night sky. It is spring, after all.

FOOTNOTES

(1) A Study on the Relative Rates of Meteorite Falls on Earth's Surface -- by Ian Halliday and Arthur A. Griffin, Meteoritics, Vol. 17, No. 1, March 31, 1982

(2) Peter Brown notes that the antapex of Earth's way is highest in spring. The antapex is the opposite of the apex. It is the direction Earth is heading away from. Could the sporadic fireballs be coming from the antapex? "There's no evidence for an antapex source of fireballs. Precise details are still unclear, however, in part due to lack of fireball data from different latitudes."

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An international team of scientists published new research this week on the origins of flies and, and despite popular belief, the common ancestry house flies have with mosquitoes.

Researchers, publishing a paper in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the USA, said the mosquito branched off the same evolutionary tree as the house fly about 220 million years ago, while the house fly branched off about 170 million years later.

While only a few species of flies are commonly known and considered pests, there are more than 152,000 named species of flies, which account for close to 10 percent of all species on Earth.

Flies evolved to thrive in almost any nutrient-rich substrate and in nearly every corner of the globe.

The new research “provides an evolutionary framework for future comparative work on species that are critically important to both society and science,” said one of the paper’s co-authors, Dr David Yeates from CSIRO Ecosystem Sciences.

“What this research shows us is that the Fly Tree of Life went through three periods of fast diversification, with many different groups experimenting with ways to be a fly,” Yeates said in a statement.

“The mosquito, March fly and common house fly are everyday members of these bursts of evolution, which occurred during unstable periods of Earth’s history when dramatic environmental change created new habitats for these ‘experimental’ flies,” he added.

“The really interesting thing is that living representatives of these early branching groups, such as mosquitoes and March flies, are still with us,” Yeates said.

March flies branched off the evolutionary tree around 175 million years ago.

The research conducted by 27 scientists from six countries.

» Read More...

As the Dawn spacecraft continues on its way to Vesta, which it will reach in July, mission controllers have been putting it through its paces with a series of maneuvers that test the vehicle’s capabilities, a rehearsal for the high- and low-altitude mapping orbits it will operate in. It’s interesting to consider Dawn’s ion thrusters, which after more than 2.2 years of powered flight, continue to work flawlessly, now with a bit less than half of the original supply of xenon propellant (the spacecraft started with 425 kilograms of xenon). The velocity change in this period has been 5.7 kilometers per second, marking a record for on-board propulsion systems.

Dawn’s approach to Vesta is slow and spiraling, closing in on the asteroid at 0.7 kilometers per second as the orbital paths of target and spacecraft become more and more similar. In this mission report, chief engineer Marc Rayman (JPL) describes the trajectory, which is made possible by the high fuel efficiency of the ion propulsion system and the long periods of thrusting:

    Designing the spiral trajectories is a complex and sophisticated process. It is not sufficient simply to turn the thrust on and expect to arrive at the desired destination, any more than it is sufficient to press the accelerator pedal on your car and expect to reach your goal. You have to steer carefully (and if you don’t, please don’t drive near me), and so does Dawn. As the ship revolves around Vesta in the giant asteroid’s gravitational grip, it has to change the pointing of the xenon beam constantly to stay on precisely the desired winding route to the intended science orbits.

Interestingly, Rayman says that from Dawn’s perspective, Vesta is already the brightest object in the sky other than the Sun, about as bright as Jupiter appears to us in the evening skies on Earth. I keep calling Vesta an asteroid but the differences between it and other main belt asteroids are profound. Vesta is about 530 kilometers across, compared to the much smaller objects that travel with it in their orbits between Mars and Jupiter. Moreover, Vesta has undergone differentiation, meaning its structure is layered, showing a core, mantle and crust.

Image: This image shows a model of the protoplanet Vesta, using scientists’ best guess to date of what the surface of the protoplanet might look like. It was created as part of an exercise for NASA’s Dawn mission involving mission planners at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory and science team members at the Planetary Science Institute in Tuscon, Ariz. The images incorporate the best data on dimples and bulges of the protoplanet Vesta from ground-based telescopes and NASA’s Hubble Space Telescope. The cratering and small-scale surface variations are computer-generated, based on the patterns seen on the Earth’s moon, an inner solar system object with a surface appearance that may be similar to Vesta. Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech/UCLA/PSI.

It was back in 1972 that Tom McCord (now at the Bear Fight Institute, WA) and colleagues discovered the signature of basalt on Vesta, an indicator that the object had melted at some time in the past. We now believe that Vesta had enough radioactive material inside when it coalesced that rock could melt and the lighter layers could float to the outside, a process we normally think of in planetary rather than asteroid terms. That makes Vesta interesting as a ‘protoplanet,’ a dense, layered body that never fully developed by merging with other objects of the same category.

Vesta is, in other words, a window into the remote past, one we can study by looking at the hundreds of meteorites that make up some of Vesta’s debris following ancient collisions with space rocks, and now by orbiting the distant object itself. Dawn principal investigator Christopher Russell (UCLA) describes Vesta’s significance:

    “This gritty little protoplanet has survived bombardment in the asteroid belt for over 4.5 billion years, making its surface possibly the oldest planetary surface in the solar system. Studying Vesta will enable us to write a much better history of the solar system’s turbulent youth.”

We’ll have a year at Vesta to study these matters, with Dawn arriving in July at a time when the south pole will be in full sunlight and the huge crater at the pole will be completely visible. Vesta’s evolution may be put on display if we get a good enough view of the layered materials inside the crater. In any case, Dawn will be able to give us high-resolution data on the asteroid’s surface composition, topography and texture as we probe its internal and external features. More on Vesta as protoplanet in this JPL news release.

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The fascination of the so-called ‘Pioneer anomaly’ is that it offers the possibility of new physics, an apparently constant acceleration on the Pioneer 10 and 11 probes with a value of (8.74 ± 1.33) × 10−10 m/s2 being something that we can’t easily explain. Equally useful is the chance the Pioneer anomaly gives us to validate current physical models by figuring out how we might explain this acceleration through hitherto unsuspected processes, perhaps aboard the spacecraft itself. Either way you look at it, the Pioneer anomaly has deserved the attention it has received, and now a new paper emerges to take a crack at resolving the issue once and for all.

Frederico Francisco (Instituto Superior Técnico, Lisbon) and colleagues have revisited the question of whether heat that is emitted and reflected aboard the spacecraft could account for the anomalous acceleration. Francisco’s team had accounted for between 33% and 67% of the acceleration in a thermal model they developed in 2008. The new paper builds on this earlier work, with a methodology based on a distribution of point-like radiation sources that can model the thermal radiation emissions of the spacecraft. The authors then deploy a method called ‘Phong Shading’ that is commonly used to render the illumination of surfaces in 3D computer graphics. This allows them to study how heat effects can be reflected off the various parts of the spacecraft.

Image: An artist’s rendition of one of the Pioneer probes. Credit: NASA.

I referred to the acceleration as ‘apparently constant’ above, but the authors take pains to note that we haven’t fully characterized the acceleration. In fact, one analysis of the flight data shows that, given the data we have, both a constant acceleration and one with a linear decay of a period greater than fifty years are compatible with the data. This comes into play as the team tests for the constancy of the acceleration, as discussed in the paper:

    … a so-called “jerk term” is found to be consistent with the expected temporal variation of a recoil force due to heat generated on board… This is essential if the hypothesis of a thermal origin for the Pioneer anomaly is to be considered, as such [a] source would inevitably lead to a decay with at least the same rate as the power available onboard. Possible causes for an enhanced decay include e.g. degradation of thermocouples, stepwise shutdown of some systems and instruments, etc.

With this in mind, the authors go to work looking at thermal radiation and the force it can bring to bear on a surface, using Phong Shading to model the reflection of this radiation off the various other surfaces of the Pioneer probes. Radiation facing outwards, for example, radiates directly into space with an effect that cancels out. But radiation emitted toward the center of the spacecraft is reflected by the high-gain antenna and the main equipment compartment. The trick is to weigh these effects in terms of the acceleration. The method gives “a simple and straightforward way of modeling the various components of reflection…,” according to the paper, and one that accounts for the effect of thermal radiation on different parts of the spacecraft.

The result: The Phong shading method confirms earlier work suggesting that the Pioneer anomaly results from heat effects aboard the spacecraft. It also offers a method with which to study similar effects aboard other spacecraft. The authors explain:

    …the acceleration arising from thermal radiation effects has a similar order of magnitude to the constant anomalous acceleration reported [in a study of the anomaly published in 2002]. We believe that the chosen approach is most adequate for the study of this particular problem, taking into account all its specific characteristics. Moreover, this Phong shading method is well suited for future studies of radiation momentum transfer in other spacecraft.

And the paper concludes:

    With the results presented here it becomes increasingly apparent that, unless new data arises, the puzzle of the anomalous acceleration of the Pioneer probes can finally be put to rest.

This is a useful result, and one that will now be scrutinized by the wider community. If its conclusions are accepted, we will have made a step forward in identifying an effect that may need to be taken into account in future spacecraft operations. Just as important, we’ll have been able to rule out a line of investigation that seemed to open a door into new physics, meaning that the analysis of the Pioneer Anomaly, now more than a decade old, has born fruit. This is exactly what good science should do, and while we might hope for breakthroughs into new theories, anomalies like these are just as valid as ways of testing and verifying accepted physical laws.

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Some song-lovers may say that music’s in their genes. One young British boffin goes a step further by putting music in his jeans: he wears the world’s first pants-borne, playable electronic drum kit, complete with eight different drum sounds. And just so those pants aren’t lonely, another group of engineers has figured out a way to print sensors onto plastic, possibly making way for commercialized yoga mat drums (did somebody order that?) and more drums made out of things that aren’t drums.

The bloke inside the drummable jeans is Aseem Mishra, a 17-year-old British student who nabbed this year’s Young Engineer Of Great Britain award. His invention allows people to perform drum solos on their legs (video) by tapping eight paper-thin sensors sewn into the back of the fabric. The prototype must be plugged into a loudspeaker-toting backpack to make noise; Mishra says future models won’t be tied down like that.

Why would anyone create such a thing? As he told BBC News, he’s always thought that lugging his drum kit around for his band’s gigs were a hassle. “I think at the time I might have been tapping on my legs,” he explains, “and I thought, I know why don’t I see if I can put a drum kit in my trousers.”

As for the playable beach-towel-sized mat, it’s a project out of the Industrial Technology Research Institute (ITRI) and is made by stamping widely used gadgets called  microelectromechanical systems (MEMS) onto plastic. MEMS are thin machines that combine electrical components and mechanical parts, and are used to monitor air pressure in car tires, to reflect light onto film screens, and more. In this case, they’re printed onto flexible plastic and programed to emit drum sounds. IEEE Spectrum says this technology could be used “in healthcare … a thin sheet of sensors laid under a mattress could provide early warning of pressure points that could turn into bedsores. Smartphones could come with a rollout keyboard—no more fat-finger errors. With weight sensors molded into luggage handles, your suitcase …  could weigh itself and warn you that [you've] over packed before you got to the airport.”

Related Content:
Discoblog: Weird App Morphs Music to Match the Picture on Your iPhone
80beats: Amazon Gets the Jump on Apple and Google by Launching Cloud Music Service
DISCOVER: Is Music for Wooing, Mothering, Bonding—or Is It Just “Auditory Cheesecake”?
Discoblog: Rogue Performer Turns Friend’s Face Into Drum Kit—All for Science!

» Read More...

Stirring up thoughts of death may influence people's support of intelligent design and evolution, according to new research.

Led by researchers at the University of British Columbia, the paper details the results from five studies in the journal PLoS ONE. The team found that existential thoughts, or those in which people were reminded of their own mortality, led subjects to view the theory of intelligent design more positively.

In line with the scientific community, the authors state that evolution, especially descent with modification through natural selection, is largely accepted as a way to study biological change over time.

NEWS: Poll: Belief in Evolution Increases

Intelligent design, as defined by the authors, "proposes that naturalistic accounts are insufficient to explain complex organic phenomena and that therefore an intelligent and presumably supernatural 'designer' is responsible for the origin of all life." This theory is not the same as creationism.

Despite the fact that 43 percent of Americans favor teaching intelligent design alongside evolution in classrooms, the theory lacks scientific support for its claims, the authors write. This too is in line with scientific consensus.

So why do people support intelligent design without scientific proof, especially when claims on evolution are backed by science?

The need to maintain psychological security may play a role.

In four studies, approximately 1,400 subjects -- college students and adults in Canada and the United States -- were asked to write about their feelings after imagining their own death. Groups were told to read passages about evolution and intelligent design afterward. Then, subjects rated the expertise of the author and reported their own belief in a particular theory.

NEWS: Culture (Not Just Genes) Drives Evolution

In a fifth study, researchers asked 269 college students similar questions after being presented with an intelligent design approach and a naturalist passage authored by Carl Sagan.

The team found that favoring intelligent design wasn't necessarily tied to religion or education. Rather, people share similar emotional reactions when faced with existential thoughts. Since intelligent design favors the idea that human life was created intentionally rather than through random natural processes, the authors write, it makes sense for people to lean toward explanations that maintain humans' importance in the universe.

But in conditions in which subjects were exposed to Carl Sagan's passage, people were more likely to rate a naturalistic approach more favorably, perhaps because it supports evolution while still maintaining humans' uniqueness in the cosmos.

» Read More...

It’s not a very fair fight. In one corner is a tiny ant. In the other is a large wasp, two hundred times heavier and capable of flying. If the two of them compete for the same piece of food, there ought to be no contest. But sometimes the wasp doesn’t even give the ant the honour of stepping into the ring. It picks up the smaller insect in its jaws, flies it to a distant site and drops it from a height, dazed but unharmed.

Julien Grangier and Philip Lester observed these ignominious defeats by pitting native New Zealand ants (Prolasius advenus) against the common wasp (Vespula vulgaris). The insects competed over open cans of tuna while the scientists filmed them.

Their videos revealed that ants would sometimes aggressively defend their food by rushing, biting and spraying them with acid. But typically, they were docile and tolerated the competing wasp. Generally, the wasp was similarly passive but on occasion, it picked up the offending ant and dropped it several centimetres away. In human terms, this would be like being catapulted half the length of a football field.

The wasps never tried to eat the ants, and they never left with one in their jaws. They just wanted them out of the picture. Indeed, the more ants on the food, the further away the wasps dropped them. This may seem like an odd strategy but at least half of the dropped ants never returned to the food. Perhaps they were physically disoriented from their impromptu flight, or perhaps they had lost the chemical trail. Either way, the wasps could feed with fewer chances of taking a faceful of acid.

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Want to build chemical robots that can morph to change shapes and squeeze into spaces that appear smaller than the bots? Then the guys who invented the first Internet want to talk to you.

The Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency--DARPA--recently issued a request for proposals for what they call ChemBots. The robots would be built to gain access to denied or hostile areas and give war fighters advantage in a broad range of military operations.

DARPA issued a statement saying robots provide attractive and effective means of gaining entry and it wants to develop soft, flexible, and mobile robots that can squeeze and traverse through small openings in buildings, walls, and under doors. It wants the robots to be large enough to carry an "operationally meaningful payload."

» Read More...

No, I have not converted to Buddhism. And yes, I am still an atheist. That said, I’ve been reading a book recommended by a friend of mine, Brad Warner’s Sex, Sin and Zen, which has given me the opportunity to run a little informal experiment about which I’ll tell you in a minute.

By Massimo Pigliucci

Warner is a Zen Buddhist monk, and the book is a light-hearted exploration of what Buddhism has to say regarding one of the things we care most about in life: sex. But this post, alas, is not about sex. Instead, it is about the reaction I got on my “official” Facebook page when I posted the following quote from the book (you can find the exact thread here):

Atheism, as rational and sensible as it is, will never be an adequate substitute for religion. It's like trying to substitute actual eating with a superbly argued essay on food.

The quote comes from a context in which Warner was discussing an article by Elisabeth Cornwell entitled “Why women are bound to religion: an evolutionary perspective,” which makes the commonsense argument that “in order for women to abandon religion and its securities, there needs to be something tangible to replace the support it offers.” Warner then goes on to explain that Buddha realized that “religion and spirituality were pretty much fucked up. But he also understood the very important role they play in human society. As Cornwell points out in her article on the evolution of religion, religion serves a need much, much deeper than anything the intellect can ever hope to reach.” And it is this passage that is followed by the quote I posted on Facebook.

I thought this was all obviously true, and in fact reflects a standing debate within both the atheist and secular humanist communities (they overlap, but they are most certainly not identical) to explain why religion — pace Nietzsche — is still very much alive and well in the 21st century. The response I got from my Facebook friends was somewhat surprising. There were more than 20 comments within a matter of minutes (35 as of the time of this writing), with 3,666 “impressions” (a number that Facebook provides to give you an idea of how many people have seen your post on their Wall —- the 666 figure is, I take it, just a coincidence).

If you scroll through the comments, two patterns emerge: first, most people missed what I thought was the obvious point of the quote (granted, I had the advantage of having read the full chapter, but still); second, the overwhelming majority of the posts were defensive to the utmost degree. Here is a sample:

"Avoiding wood alcohol, as rational and sensible as it is, will never be an adequate substitute for wood alcohol. It's like trying to substitute actual eating with a superbly argued essay on food."

"Whoever said that atheism is supposed to be a substitute for religion? I am an atheist and I do not want a substitute for religion. If I missed religion, I'd get myself some."

"This is a silly analogy. One could just as well say it's trying to substitute injecting yourself with syphilis with a superbly argued essay on not being a jackass."

"And I suppose that not collecting stamps is not a substitute for a hobby either..."
"If you really want baloney, you can still go to the supermarket."

"An aphorism can never be an adequate substitute for more complex writing. It is an argument from authority which uses a specific poetic approach to make the ideas more appealing."

"We're all born atheists. It' religion that's the substitute."

"Atheism does not contain ritual, ceremony, or practice, and so is not like eating."

"Avoiding poison, as rational and sensible as it is, will never be an adequate substitute for eating poison."

"Atheism could never be a substitute for religion, in the same way that not stamp collecting could never be a substitute for stamp collecting."

"This implies an unsubstantiated hunger that is not recognized by fulfilled agnostics."
You get the gist. There were, of course, also some readers who took the quote as an indication of a serious problem:

"Instead of substituting religion, if we start reflecting upon the need to fill the void it may get us some where... and in the process, hopefully, not fill the void with magic and wishful thinking."

"The bare thesis of atheism provides none of the social supports, ethical guidelines, or cosmological-metaphysical closure of religion. Humanism, however, can and does."

"There is a hole that needs filling (physical and metaphysical explanations, justifications for moral codes, social cohesion, sense of community, belonging, purpose, common goals, etc.) and religion just happened to develop in order to fill that hole."

"Atheism isn't in the business of replacing religion. Humanism is. Atheism is the demolition phase. Humanism is the new foundation."

The first set of quotes (and similar others on the thread) reflect an all too common reflexive attitude by several of my fellow atheists, a “(rhetorically) shoot first and understand later” sort of approach which is not exactly conducive to constructive discourse. This reflexive attitude seems to be based on two underlying assumptions: first, that whatever comes from religion must be bad, by definition; second, that atheists don’t need to do much more than point out how silly the other side is, and we are done. Both assumptions are highly questionable.

Without getting into a long history of both Western and Eastern thought — a history in which religions have played a major positive as well as negative role regardless of how much we would like them to play only a negative one — it seems to me undeniable that religions do indeed, as Buddha recognized and Warner re-articulated, fill a fundamental human psychological niche. That niche has to do not just with explanations of how the world works (an area in which science has steadily and inexorably overtaken religion even in the mind of many religious people), but with meaning, emotions, ethics, and the specter of final and total annihilation of the self.

It is these latter dimensions of the niche that most people refer to as “spirituality,” and neither science nor atheism can do a damn thing about them, unfortunately. Science can tell us which parts of the brain are responsible for our emotions, or are used when we engage in moral decision making, but that’s a completely different set of questions that has only a superficial bearing on the real issues.

Before you start furiously hitting your keyboard to pen long and angry responses to the above paragraph, please pause to think that nothing I am writing here can reasonably be construed as a defense of religion. But it is a (partial) explanation of why religion persists despite literally millennia of attempts by the secular-rational community to get rid of it. It is a fact that we better face and analyze, rather than run away from.

Which brings me to the second assumption that seems to underlie many of my readers’ responses: surely once we explain to people that there are no gods, once we break the spell to use my friend Daniel Dennett’s phrase, people will flock to atheism in droves and we’ll be done with religion once and for all. Hence the popularity in certain quarters of the New Atheists’ attacks on religion — as well as their abysmal failure to make a dent in the phenomenon of religion itself. To be fair, one can hardly expect a handful of books to change society (well, except for the Old Testament, or the Christian Gospels, or the Quran, or the Vedas, or the Theravada, or...), but the disheartening fact is that there really isn’t anything new in the New Atheism. As documented by Jennifer Michael Hecht in her super Doubt: A History we have been going at it for millennia, and yet religions persist, largely unperturbed by the barrage of rational arguments against them. Do you see why Warner is right, that we do have a problem?

The quotes from my Facebook responses which struck closest to what I think is a good analysis are those that present atheism as the first of two punches that the secular movement is attempting to deliver to the religious juggernaut, what philosopher Francis Bacon (in the context of how science works) called the pars destruens (the project of destruction). Bacon then argued that one doesn’t get very far by just demolishing things, one has to build something in their stead, what he termed the pars construens (the construction project). Here the pars construens can be played by secular humanism, which — unlike atheism — is a philosophy with positive values.

There are a couple of problems, however. I have already nodded at the most obvious one: not all atheists are secular humanists. This is because it is easier to agree on what we all do not believe than on what we do believe. Secular humanism, at least as presented in the various Humanist Manifestos, adopts a number of positions that are clearly reflective of European style progressive liberalism, which means that our libertarian friends (a sizable minority within the atheism movement), not to mention the comparatively few (in my experience) conservative atheists, immediately (and ill advisedly, in my opinion) jump ship. I know a good number of atheists who proudly distance themselves from secular humanism.

The other thing is, humanist groups and even humanist inspired congregations have been around for quite some time now, but they haven’t made much of a dent. Think of the American Humanist Association, the Council for Secular Humanism, the Society for Ethical Culture, the American Ethical Union, and even — to some extent — the Unitarians. I mean, it’s not like we haven’t been trying. But have you been at any meetings or platforms of any of these groups? They are usually attended by a small number of people, more often than not with a population characterized by an aging demographic. They are simply not going to be the response to religion that we are looking for, no matter how much good they do for the people that support them.

So we do have a problem, and we don’t seem to know what to do about it. Let me leave you with a few more thoughts from Warner — not because I endorse everything he says (I’m certainly not about to enlist as a Buddhist), but because it provides us with much food for thought, if we can manage to stop the damn knee-jerk reaction that is sure to powerfully present itself a few lines into his writings:

"A lot of people consider Buddhism a form of atheism. In a sense it is, in that it does not have a god in the usual sense of the word. We don’t have a deity figure. We don’t have a creation myth. We don’t fear reprisals from cosmic grandpa if we fail to worship him properly. Yet ... the universe in Buddhist terms is not dead matter or a cosmic void. It is a living, intelligent thing we all partake in. ... If God is a big ‘ol white dude in the sky who smites sinners and rewards football players, then I’m an atheist. If God exists outside the universe, I’m an atheist. If God cares more for one religion than another, I’m an atheist. And if God believes that women are inferior to men, I’m an atheist. ... I don’t worship God as an old man on a throne beyond the orbit of Jupiter, but I do worship the universe. The universe is more than dead matter. It’s more than insubstantial spirit."

Well, I don’t think the universe is any such thing, but clearly our message is much harder to successfully deliver. Is there any way around this, or is secularism forever destined to be a minority position among humankind?

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Some cheerful news on the climate change front today, as US government boffins report that ice breaking off the Antarctic shelves and melting in the sea causes carbon dioxide to be removed from the environment. This powerful, previously unknown "negative feedback" would seem likely to revise forecasts of future global warming significantly downwards.

The US National Science Foundation (NSF) which funded the iceberg study, describes the results as having "global implications for climate research".

"These new findings... confirm that icebergs contribute yet another, previously unsuspected, dimension of physical and biological complexity to polar ecosystems," says Roberta Marinelli, director of the NSF's Antarctic Organisms and Ecosystems Program.

A team of NSF-funded scientists examined the effects on an area of the Weddell Sea of a large (20 mile long) berg moving through, melting as it went and diluting the salty sea water - also adding key nutrients carried from the land. They found that after the iceberg had passed, levels of CO2 had plunged and much more chlorophyll was present. Chlorophyll is the substance in green plants which lets them suck in nasty CO2 and emit precious life-giving oxygen: in the Weddell Sea it was present in phytoplankton, tiny seagoing plantoids which are thought to account for half the carbon removed from the atmosphere globally.

The scientists say that more and more icebergs are set to be found in the seas around the Anatarctic as more ice breaks off the shelves attached to the peninsula which reaches up from the polar continent towards South America. This should mean more phytoplankton and thus less CO2.

The iceberg team consider that the increased number of bergs coming from the western Antarctic is the result of warming temperatures in the region, though recent research from British boffins has suggested that in fact other factors may be in play - at least in the case of the Pine Island Glacier, one of the major sources of sea ice in that area.

If the phytoplankton-boosting effect of the bergs is as big as the NSF appears to be suggesting, however, it would seem that any carbon-driven temperature rise could be at least partly self-correcting.

Increased iceberg shedding would seem likely to be seen mainly or only around the western peninsula: antarctic sea ice shelves elsewhere are actually growing, not shrinking, and at such a rate as to outweigh the peninsular losses. The past three decades have seen the south-polar ice sheets grow by 300,000 square kilometres overall.

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ft. The US Navy has indicated that it would like to have unmanned, robotic spyplane/bombers operating from its aircraft carriers "in the 2018 timeframe", which suggests that flying kill-robots will soon be in the same league as the most powerful manned combat aircraft.Present-day robotic warplanes such as the well-known Predator and its variants (for example the even larger and still more powerful Reaper) are heavily armed and highly capable, but in the world of major air forces they're still quite feeble. Rather than supersonic jet propulsion they typically rely on comparatively slow propellors, and their weaponry options are comparatively restricted.

In short, in a fight, humans would easily win an air war against the robots - at the moment.

But that could change in as little as seven years. The US Naval Air Systems Command (aka NAVAIR) yesterday issued an announcement that it would like contractors to conceptually demonstrate that it's possible to deploy an Unmanned Carrier Launched Airborne Surveillance and Strike (UCLASS) system "in the 2018 timeframe". The UCLASS is to be "persistent" - ie it should be possible for a naval air wing to keep robot spyplane-bombers in the air around the clock for long periods - and it should be able to operate based aboard a nuclear-powered aircraft carrier (CVN).

According to the announcement:

    The envisioned capability will include CVN launch; CVN based flight control inside the Carrier Controlled Airspace (CCA) and within line-of-sight (LOS) of the CVN; and land-based mission control outside the CCA and LOS with the CVN utilizing existing DoD Unmanned Air System (UAS) control systems (modified as necessary); and recovery back aboard the CVN. Additionally, the air vehicle will be operable from BLOS land-based, fixed site airfields utilizing the remote vehicle control architecture, and interfaced with other Navy airborne systems during mission operations. Persistence should allow a single carrier to provide sustained 24/7 ISR capabilities even when conducting 12-hour flight deck operations. The envisioned system may require aerial refueling capability.

Most of this will be demonstrated as part of the ongoing X-47B programme, intended to show that unmanned jets can do carrier operations. The first X-47B took to the air last month, though only from a normal landbased runway: it and its companion aircraft are expected to achieve the full panoply of carrier operations - catapult launch, tailhook/arrester-wire landing, even air-to-air refuelling - by the end of 2013.

Carrier tailhook landings are seen as one of the most difficult piloting feats to master, and keeping human pilots qualified in this tricky skill requires a lot of expensive training time. Then, humans' endurance is limited - even where there are two pilots and room to stretch out for a nap (as in the case of the B-2 Stealth bomber) there's a limit to how long a manned aircraft can keep on topping up its tanks using air-to-air refuelling and stay in the sky.

Not so the UCLASS, which could remain on patrol as an airborne spyeye for days or even weeks on end, sustained by airborne fuel supplies as required.

If the X-47B is anything to go by, the UCLASS would also be far and away the most powerful war robot yet fielded, boasting full-fat jet propulsion and Stealth features to match the latest manned aircraft. The just-issued NAVAIR document also specifies that it is to have the option of carrying a wide range of "mission packages" - including both surveillance sensors and, of course, weapons.

In short the UCLASS is likely to be the first combat robot which could actually give a manned fighter plane some trouble - and it could be here a lot sooner than had been expected.

That said, NAVAIR also specifies that "weapons release will be accomplished under positive human control": there is no suggestion - as there is in some other robo-bomber projects - of autonomous weapons release. In any case autonomous weapons release is already a practical reality: the Tomahawk cruise missiles used to suppress Colonel Gadaffi's air defences last week are effectively autonomous robot kamikazes - they decide on their own whether or not they've found the right place/thing to blow up.

For now there's no decision on UCLASS, anyway. NAVAIR are merely looking to shell out $2m or so on a study telling them whether the idea - and the timeline - are feasible or not.

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Comment Sensationalism has always been part of the popular media - but Fukushima is a telling and troubling sign of how much the media has changed in fifty years: from an era of scientific optimism to one where it inhabits a world of fantasy - creating a real-time Hollywood disaster movie with a moralising, chivvying message.

Not so long ago, the professionals showed all the deferential, forelock-tugging paternalism of the dept of "Keep Calm And Carry On". That era lasted into the 1960s. Now the driving force is the notion that "We're all DOOMED – and it's ALL OUR FAULT" that marks almost every news bulletin. Health and environment correspondents will rarely be found debunking the claims they receive in press releases from lobby groups – the drama of catastrophe is too alluring. Fukushima has been the big one.

The Fukushima situation has yet to cause any measurable radiological health effects, and workers at the site were far less hard hit by the quake, tsunami and related events than just about anyone in the disaster zone, but nonetheless the nuclear story rapidly eclipsed the tens of thousands killed directly by the quake. TV's reaction to the crisis shows how at odds it is with a more rational audience, those who know something about radiation, its consequences, and the human body's capacity to absorb it and recover from it. The crisis for the media is that thanks to the internet, we can now all bypass these conduits for superstition and stupidity.

We've given the media's treatment of Fukushima plenty of attention in the past fortnight, so it's hardly worth reiterating. The reactors endured a Force 9 earthquake and 15m high tsunami – and three safety systems failed. The ageing plant was never going to explode or meltdown ("like a dirty bomb" we were told); the containment vessels held firm.

In the first weekend, TV chose "experts" who could be relied upon to ignore this - and instead highlight the mythology of nuclear hazards. I noted two examples in the first forty eight hours. The BBC chose a radiation expert called Dr Christopher Busby, billing him as a former adviser to the government on radiation.

"If this stuff comes out then it's going to make what's happened so far, in terms of the tsunami damage, look a little bit like an entrée to the real course," predicted Busby, sending viewers diving behind the sofa.

But Busby's chief notoriety is his modelling work on natural background radiation, which is highly controversial. It's often self-published, and the Journal of Radiological Protection put out a paper (PDF/45KB) debunking his work, pointing out serious flaws.

"Chris Busby ... is apparently quite prepared to self-publish reports containing glaring errors in data and/or analyses; nonetheless, the findings are duly given publicity in the media, presumably a principal objective. Efforts should be made to enable journalists, in particular, to distinguish between the reliability to be placed upon the results given in self-published documents and those appearing in scientific journals," the journal noted in 2004.

Was he there to keep the plot of the disaster movie rolling, or to provide clear scientific advice?

Busby, it must be remembered, is also a scientific advisor to the Green Party. As the Institute of Physics pointed out:

"Chris Busby is essentially an aspiring politician who happens to have scientific qualifications – he is the Green Party’s spokesperson on science and technology and has stood for election to the European Parliament – and, in my view, his actions must be seen in this light. It would be asking too much of him to make substantial concessions on the very issue that has brought the media publicity that provides the fuel to drive a political career."

Meanwhile Channel 4 found a Professor Walt Patterson, from think-tank Chatham House, who also talked up the disaster. An advocate of global governance and a critic of nuclear power (and more recently fossil fuels) for 40 years, his reaction was predictable. Another anti-nuclear activist, John Large, also passed himself off as an unbiased pundit on the news channels. He's Greenpeace's favourite "hired gun".

"What the Japanese government are trying to do is consistent with a major radiological disaster," Patterson opined on Channel 4 News. And what I try to do with a football, sometimes, is consistent with a World Cup winning hat-trick. But not quite the same thing.

Admittedly, it's hard to find talking heads at weekends. But even if Bohr, Einstein and Teller had been wandering past the gates of TV centre (or Horseferry Road) that weekend, one suspects the producers wouldn't have been interested. They wouldn't fit the script.

Words like "meltdown" and "radiation leak" have a mythical potency – and TV reported the mythology, not the facts. Fukushima came to represent man's hubris and his folly in "defying nature". The Daily Mail, for example, helpfully made this quite clear: "Nature's Deadly Rage, it fumed. You could hear echoes all over the media. BBC TV News described "nature’s fury".

It's an interesting metaphor.

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International boffins are meeting in Blighty today with the aim of setting up a European solar radiation-storm warning service. With the Sun expected to belch forth increasing amounts of bad "space weather" in coming years, the scientists warn that billions of pounds' worth of damage could be done to satellites in orbit.
The new warning setup is to be called SPACECAST.

“Space weather is a serious natural hazard and better forecasting is a priority for Europe," says Professor Richard Horne of the British Antarctic Survey (BAS), leading on the project for the UK.

"This is especially important as we approach maximum levels of solar activity and increased numbers of magnetic storms. SPACECAST will provide forecasts of disruptive space weather events and issue warnings and alerts for periods of high risk."

According to Horne and his colleagues, the solar sunspot cycle is to peak over the next few years: however, the actual storms which affect electronic equipment in the vicinity of Earth don't quite match this cycle and the storm peak is expected to lag about two years behind the sunspot maximum. The years 2013 to 2015 are expected to be especially stormy in space - with perhaps as many as 60 events per year that could cause serious problems.

The European Union is especially keen to get a rad-storm service up and running as its new Galileo nav-sat constellation is set to come into service (at initial levels of capability) just as the storm cycle peaks. SPACECAST, which has EU funding of €2.5m so far, is to be up and running from 2012.

The risk to satellites has already been proven, with a particularly violent 2003 storm affecting some 47 spacecraft - and totally writing off one which had cost a cool $640m. Modern assessments of the famous Carrington super-storm of 1859 have suggested that another such monster would cause as much as $30bn of satellite damage should it strike today's civilisation rather than the electronically primitive one of the mid-19th century.

NASA, which has itself warned in recent times of the hazard of a devastating "space Katrina", is involved with SPACECAST. Boffins from Finland, France, Belgium and Spain will also join the BAS on the project. ®

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A NASA spacecraft watching the sun has caught a dazzling view of a solar eruption that launched a vast tendril of magnetic plasma into space.

NASA's Solar Dynamics Observatory recorded the sun tentacle, which scientists call a solar prominence, on March 19 as it erupted into space with a rounded, twisting motion.

The eruption occurred over five hours as SDO watched the sun in the ultraviolet range of the light spectrum, SDO mission scientists said in a statement. The solar observatory watched as the prominence twisted up from the sun and expanded, then became unstable. [Video: Round Eruption From the Sun]

Ultimately, the sun filament lost cohesion and its particles streamed away from the sun.

"Prominences are elongated clouds of plasma that hover above the sun's surface, tethered by magnetic forces," SDO mission scientists explained.

The sun is currently in the midst of an active phase of its 11-year solar weather cycle and has kicked up a series of powerful eruptions and flares in recent months. The SDO spacecraft and other space observatories are keeping a close watch on the sun to monitor is solar weather activity. [Amazing Sun Photos from Space]

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Bigfoot caught on tape?

A Shelby, North Carolina man claims to have a video of the legendary Bigfoot.

Thomas Byers was driving with a friend when he says he saw Bigfoot cross Golden Valley Church Road in Rutherford County Tuesday evening. Naturally, he whipped out his video camera and was able to capture a five-second video from about 15 to 20 feet away.

"It ran across the road and into the woods right in front of us and I was able to film it," Byers wrote in an e-mail to WCNC NewsChannel 36 in Charlotte, N.C. "In the short video you can hear it snarl or growl at me."

And Bigfoot, it seems, is in desperate need of a shower. "One thing I know is the smell of it was horrid. It smelled like a cross between road kill and a skunk. And it did not like the fact that I was there on the road with it. In the video you can hear it snarl or growl at me as it crosses the road."

Byers details the event on a personal website where he has posted the video plus a few pictures. In the description, he explains that Bigfoot, or Knobby as it's known locally, has been "spotted for years."

Commenters on his site remained divided over the authenticity of the video.

"Unfortunately, until one is captured or killed and delivered to a lab, nothing can be proven," said online user 'Mike'. "Any sighting could be staged, or a prank by someone in a primate-like costume."

"I personally believe you," said 'Luke'. "But if you want to convince the skeptics out there you need a better video and physical evidence such as droppings."

As the debate rages on over whether or not this was the real deal, Byers is satisfied simply to have experienced the moment. "It was truly one of the most amazing things that I have ever seen," he said on his website.

Representatives of the American Bigfoot Society and the Bigfoot Field Researchers Organization did not immediately respond to requests for comment.

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NEW YORK-- Here's some good news in the wake of Japan's disaster: A new study says big earthquakes don't set off other dangerous ones around the globe.

Big quakes do trigger local aftershocks, but researchers found no sign of setting off moderate-sized events beyond about 600 miles away.

That won't surprise most experts, said lead study author Tom Parsons. But it's different from his prior research, which did find a global effect for setting off small quakes, said Parsons, of the U.S. Geological Survey in Menlo Park, Calif.

Parsons and Aaron Velasco of the University of Texas at El Paso reported the work online Sunday in the journal Nature Geoscience.

They looked at worldwide earthquake records for the 30 years ending in 2009. There were 205 big earthquakes, with magnitude of 7 or more, and 25,222 moderate ones with magnitudes between 5 and 7.

Then the researchers looked at the timing of these events for evidence that the larger quakes triggered the moderate ones. They checked for delays of up to 24 hours, long enough to let the seismic waves from the big quakes peter out.

They did find an increase in moderate quakes, but only within about 600 miles of the initial event, and nearly all within 375 miles. At distances beyond 600 miles, the number of moderate quakes after a big event was no higher than normal.

While the study didn't look at whether big quakes trigger other big quakes far away, the new data suggest they do not, Parsons said. Anyway, since the world averages only about seven quakes at magnitude 7 or above per year, any such effect would have been noticed already, he said.

The new result agrees with what most seismologists believe just from experience, said Klaus Jacob of Columbia University's Lamont-Doherty Earth Observatory. "It's nice to see it confirmed with a thorough study," Jacob said.

Parsons said that after the magnitude-9 Japan event on March 11 he watched the global map of earthquakes to look for any distant effect. He saw none.

"It appears to fall in line with what we've seen before," Parsons said.

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A  new videogame that requires you to abduct women and give them a "reassuring slap" if they freak out has gamers and women's rights-groups crying foul.

Brace yourself for the awfully sexist world of Duke Nukem Forever.

The game's 1996 precursor Duke Nukem 3D -- which sold 3.5 million copies, made millions for its developers and transformed the entire world of video games -- depicted women as strippers and prostitutes.  The new iteration of the game, set for release this spring, takes sexism to a new level -- starting with Duke receiving implied oral sex from twins in school uniforms.

"It was offensive then and it's even more offensive now," Jamia Wilson, vice president of the Women's Media Center, told FoxNews.com. "These depictions of women are extremely harmful, especially to young women," she added.

Duke Ferris, editor-in-chief at gamehelper.com, said sexism is an intentional part of Duke Nukem Forever. “The game is meant to objectify women -- that's the point,” he said.

Gearbox Studios bought the rights to the game last year, following 15 years of delays and disappointments that made the Duke a running joke among gamers. They described an especially controversial multiplayer mode called "Capture the Babe" in an interview with the Official Xbox Magazine.

The magazine described it as "more goofy than offensive."

"The 'Babe' will sometimes freak out while you're carrying her (somewhat understandably we'd say), at which point you have to hit a button to gently give her a reassuring slap," the magazine wrote.

The Entertainment Software Rating Board labels all video games as a guide for parents (E for Everyone, T for Teen). It described some of the sequences gamers will encounter: "A couple of missions within this level require players to recover sex toys and pictures of topless women. A few sequences strongly imply sexual acts: Two women appear to perform fellatio on the central character," reads one passage.

“Our job is to provide consumers with information and guidance that helps them choose games they deem suitable for themselves and their families," Eliot Mizrachi, a spokesman for the group, told FoxNews.com.

The game will be available in stores and online, where customers must click a button stating they are 17 years of age or older -- the only barrier to children buying such a game.

The ESRB argues that its ratings effectively allow consumers to self-police: If you find that sort of thing offensive, simply don't let your kids buy the game.

"This game carries a Mature rating indicating that it’s intended for ages 17 and up, and retailers overwhelmingly enforce their store policies requiring that M-rated games not be sold to a customer under that age without a parent’s consent,” Mizrachi said.

strippers from Duke Nukem Forever trailer

Gearbox CEO Randy Pitchford defended the Capture the Babe mode in an interview published in Xbox Magazine.

"Our goal isn't to shock people, but I think there's some stuff that'll be just a bit uncomfortable," he said. "We try to get right up to that edge and then relax enough so people don't reject it."

They may have crossed the line this time.

Following the what-were-they-thinking response shared across the gaming community, Gearbox announced Thursday yet another delay to the overdue game's release. Duke Nukem Forever, which had been slated for release May 3, is now scheduled for June 14.

The company did not say whether the delay was related to the controversy.

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Spaceships powered primarily by water could open up the solar system to exploration, making flights to Mars and other far-flung locales far cheaper, a recent study has found.

A journey to Mars and back in a water-fueled vehicle could cost as little as one space shuttle launch costs today, researchers said. And the idea is to keep these "space coaches" in orbit between trips, so their relative value would grow over time, as the vehicles reduce the need for expensive one-off missions that launch from Earth.

The water-powered space coach is just a concept at the moment, but it could become a reality soon enough, researchers said. [Video: Space Engines: The New Generation]

"It's really a systems integration challenge," said study lead author Brian McConnell, a software engineer and technology entrepreneur. "The fundamental technology is already there."

Space coach: The basics

The space coach concept vehicle is water-driven and water-centric, starting with its solar-powered electrothermal engines. These engines would super-heat water, and the resulting steam would then be vented out of a nozzle, producing the necessary amount of thrust.

Electrothermal engines are very efficient, and they're well-suited for sustained, low-thrust travel, researchers said. This mode of propulsion would do the lion's share of the work, pushing the space coach from Earth orbit to Mars.

Smaller chemical rockets could be called into service from time to time when a rapid change in velocity is needed, McConnell said.

The space coach's living quarters would be composed of a series of interconnected habitat modules. These would be expandable and made of fabric, researchers said — much like Bigelow Aerospace's inflatable modules, which have already been deployed and tested in low-Earth orbit.

Water would be a big part of the space coach's body, too, according to the study. Packed along the habitat modules, it would provide good radiation shielding. It could also be incorporated into the fabric walls themselves, freezing into a strong, rigid debris shield when the structure is exposed to the extreme cold of space.

Rotating the craft could also generate artificial gravity approximating that of Earth in certain parts of the ship, researchers said.

Slashing the cost of space travel

The dependence on water as the chief propellant would make the space coach a relatively cheap vehicle to operate, researchers said. That's partly because electrothermal engines are so efficient, and partly because the use of water as fuel makes most of the ship consumable, or recyclable.

Because there are fewer single-use materials, there's much less dead weight. Water first used for radiation shielding, for example, could later be shunted off to the engines. Combined, these factors would translate into huge savings over a more "traditional" spacecraft mission to Mars using chemical rockets, according to the study.

"Altogether, this reduces costs by a factor of 30 times or better," McConnell told SPACE.com. He estimates a roundtrip mission to the Martian moon Phobos, for example, could be made for less than $1 billion.

A space coach journey would also be more comfortable, McConnell added. The ship would carry large quantities of water, so astronauts could conceivably grow some food crops and — luxury of luxuries — even take hot baths now and again.

McConnell and co-author Alexander Tolley published their study last March in the Journal of the British Interplanetary Society.

A fleet of space coaches?

McConnell envisions space coaches cruising around the solar system, each individual vehicle fueling up with water in low-Earth orbit when the need arises. In the future, fuel could be sourced along a space coach's travels — for example, water could be mined from an asteroid or a Martian moon.

Parts could be swapped out and upgraded on orbit as well, helping to keep the space coaches in good operating condition for several decades, McConnell said. Each mission undertaken from low-Earth orbit would be far cheaper than anything launching from the ground.

McConnell thinks an entire fleet of space coaches could one day populate the heavens, flying a variety of different flags — as long as somebody takes the initial plunge.

"If one party decides to do this, I think it would spur a lot of other activity," McConnell said. "I think countries wouldn't want to get left behind."

From vision to reality

No huge technological leaps are required to make the space coach a reality, McConnell said. Bigelow's expandable habitats are already space-tested, for example, as are several varieties of electrothermal engine.

"There's not a lot of new technology that needs to be built," McConnell said.

Electrothermal engines that use water as fuel, however, have not been flight-tested, so some work needs to be done on the propulsion system. McConnell envisions holding a design competition for the engines, as well as one for the overall ship design — cash-reward contests that would be like smaller versions of the Google Lunar X Prize, which is a $30 million private race to the moon.

Once winners of these competitions emerge, ground-testing and, eventually, flight-testing would follow. McConnell declined to put forth any specific timelines, but he's optimistic about the possibilities.

"I think things could happen very quickly," he said. "It's really just a matter of convincing decision-makers that this is worth getting into."

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A week ago Saturday, my three Honors students and I went on a field trip led by Gary Fleeger of the Pennsylvania Geological Survey, to examine some cool glacial features in western Pennsylvania. The trip was associated with the joint meeting of the northeastern & north-central sections of the Geological Society of America, held in Pittsburgh.

My favorite part of the trip was examining a glacial delta complex near Jacksville, Pennsylvania. We started off with a real treat: checking out the Jacksville Esker:

Here’s a link to a much bigger version of this photograph.

This was my first-ever actual real-life esker. It was pretty cool. Here’s a Google Map “terrain” view:

The first photo was taken from W. Liberty road, a bit east of the intersection with Dickey Road, looking north.

The sediment that comprises this esker was deposited by a stream flowing within glacial ice, and transporting meltwater (and its entrained sediment) out and away from the glacier, in this case towards the southeast. There, the meltwater reached a lake that had formed in front of the glacier (a so-called proglacial lake), where the sediment was deposited in a large delta that grew (“prograded“) out into the lake over time. The lake here has long since drained away, just as the glacier that produced it has melted, but the sediment is still there. This is not the superlatively-poorly-sorted glacial sediment that we call “till,” but a more washed, tumbled, processed, sorted, and overall mature package known as “outwash.” Because it’s concentrated in sand and gravel (and relatively deficient in boulders and mud), outwash deposits make for good places for people to get the sand and gravel we need for construction. The Glacial Sand and Gravel Company is quarrying the delta deposits near Jacksville, and they were kind enough to let us visit their operation to check out the sediments. Here’s some of our crew in the gravel pit:

See those tilted layers? Those are foreset beds from the proglacial delta. They aren’t horizontal beds that were later tectonically tilted — this is more or less the inclination at which they were deposited.

As a river flows into a calm body of water like the ocean or a proglacial lake, the water loses velocity. It can’t carry as much sediment when it’s flowing slowly, so the sediment gets deposited. This forms a delta.  Some of the sediment gets deposited at the bottom of the delta’s multiple channels, called distributaries. These distributary deposits are more or less horizontal, and relatively thin in spite of being coarser-grained (because they are in the fastest moving current). They are called topset beds. Sediment dumped off the advancing “nose” of the delta (at the outer tip of the distributaries) is deposited at a slight angle, and these are the foreset beds you see in the picture above. In the deeper, calmer water, we get more horizontal beds, but they are finer-grained due to calmer depositional conditions. These are the bottomset beds.

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NASA is looking for U.S. high school students to participate in their INSPIRES program: Interdisciplinary National Science Program Incorporating Research Experience. Students who get in will get access to all kinds of cool stuff:

    The selected students and their parents will participate in an online learning community with opportunities to interact with peers, NASA engineers and scientists. The online community also provides appropriate grade-level educational activities, discussion boards and chat rooms for participants to gain exposure to careers and opportunities available at NASA.

That’s nice, but the real deal is this part:

    Students selected for the program also will have the option to compete for unique grade-appropriate experiences during the summer of 2012 at NASA facilities and participating universities. The summer experience provides students with a hands-on opportunity to investigate education and careers in the STEM disciplines.

Man, I would’ve killed for that opportunity when I was in high school! So if you’re a teacher with some good students, a parent, or a high school kid yourself, check out the program. And if it looks good to you, apply! The deadline for applications is June 30.

Hey. Sometimes, it is rocket science.

March 24th, 2011 4:43 PM Tags: education, INSPIRES
by Phil Plait in Cool stuff, NASA | 21 comments | RSS feed | Trackback >
21 Responses to “NASA wants smart high school kids”

   1. 1.   Archimedes Says:
      March 24th, 2011 at 4:59 pm

      Grrrr… Why only US high school students?? Why doesnt something similar for European students exist?? :/
   2. 2.   IVAN3MAN_AT_LARGE Says:
      March 24th, 2011 at 5:15 pm

      NASA won’t find any here: NeighborhoodScout’s Top 100 Worst Performing Public Schools in the U.S.
   3. 3.   Empirical Says:
      March 24th, 2011 at 5:47 pm

      That NASA is plundering ankle biters for new ideas leaves unresolved the obvious probem: NASA. What America needs is a rocket with tremendous expense, near-zero payload, questionable reliability, and no mission. Add some Japanese radwaste for an ISS FUBAR coronal ejection toasty tan. NASA can deliver! Projects Mxyztplk and Btfsplk.

      They will cost double and be late, then be canceled while still paying full price for let contracts. There is no more sincere delivery than that.
   4. 4.   RwFlynn Says:
      March 24th, 2011 at 6:06 pm

      I’ve always loved NASA’s willingness to work with kids and young adults. This makes me wish I were just a few years younger.
   5. 5.   Floyd Says:
      March 24th, 2011 at 6:13 pm

      There should be a NASA program for high IQ school and college students. NASA should check out the national SATs or ACT scores and put top performers in a summer program before college.
   6. 6.   NCC-1701Z Says:
      March 24th, 2011 at 6:20 pm

      This is for smart American high school kids? Uh, good luck with that. Given the way Republicans feel about science, ‘smart’ and ‘American’ are rapidly becoming mutually exclusive.
   7. 7.   Grand Lunar Says:
      March 24th, 2011 at 6:50 pm

      Oh how I wish I could participate in that!
      But I was born 12 years too early…..
   8. 8.   Other Paul Says:
      March 24th, 2011 at 7:19 pm

      @NCC-1701Z : Surely it just makes smart Americans easier to identify?
   9. 9.   Cathy Says:
      March 24th, 2011 at 7:52 pm

      I was going to work at NASA when I grew up. It was my dream for about ten years. Then I hit my barrier in integral calculus and realized that I lacked the math chops to make a career out of it. (Now I write science fiction instead so I’m having fun anyway.)

      Still, I would have jumped on an opportunity like this in high school. The closest I got was being an assistant for a StarLab!
  10. 10.   matt Says:
      March 24th, 2011 at 11:19 pm

      Nasa always has the best acronyms. I always wondered if they had someone full time to think them up.
  11. 11.   Atheist Panda Says:
      March 25th, 2011 at 2:47 am

      @7. Grand Lunar: Me too, only 30 years too early, and on the wrong continent….
  12. 12.   MadScientist Says:
      March 25th, 2011 at 2:54 am

      @Archimedes: You’ll have to nag ESA about a European equivalent.

      @#6: There may be a lot of idiot GOP members trying hard to ruin the US education system, but there are still a lot of smart kids and plenty of opportunities for them.
  13. 13.   gss_000 Says:
      March 25th, 2011 at 4:51 am

      There are programs for college and grad students to spend a summer at NASA too. Campuses are crawling with students. I spent a summer at Goddard and it was a blast. For instance, while us grad students got to hear lectures made specially for us by researchers, the college students were taken up into a plane to make atmospheric measurements. NASA’s great for all level of students.

      As for why only American students, there are a lot of clearance issues at these facilities. When it comes to students, its just easier if you’re an American citizen. Although there was a Japanese student attending an American college in my group so maybe there are ways non-Americans can participate.
  14. 14.   Jim Gerard Says:
      March 25th, 2011 at 5:19 am

      Thanks for the shout-out, Phil! I run the Online Learning Community for INSPIRE (note there is no S at the end, in case your searches come back wrong), where our students meet virtually during the year to “Discover, Connect, Equip”. Every Thursday we host a live chat with a NASA engineer, scientist or manager to connect with the students. Last night we heard about the new Sustainability Base from the associate director of the Ames Research Center in California. I wonder if a certain former NASA Bad Astronomer wouldn’t mind taking an hour of time to talk to our community about promoting science?
  15. 15.   jrpowell Says:
      March 25th, 2011 at 8:03 am

      Both of my daughters will be applying for this program. Thanks for letting us know!
  16. 16.   Ray Says:
      March 25th, 2011 at 8:06 am

      INSPIRES? What a sorry excuse for an acronym. Probably thought of the acronym first and then fit in the rather tortured program name afterwards. Has the rancid smell of a committee meeting all over it.
  17. 17.   Krikkit Says:
      March 25th, 2011 at 8:48 am

      I have been involved in these little outreach programs before, I tell you they are not worth the waste of time.

      They are highly bureaucratic, often run by people with half the IQ of the participants, are incredibly boring, and do not accomplish a damn thing.

      They look good on your resume’, though.
  18. 18.   MichaelL Says:
      March 25th, 2011 at 10:59 am

      Maybe they need to give this kid a call:
      http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-1369595/Jacob-Barnett-12-higher-IQ-Einstein-develops-theory-relativity.html
  19. 19.   JimB Says:
      March 25th, 2011 at 11:21 am

      @NCC-170Z: All I can say is that *this* parent (and his wife) are doing all we can to fight against that with our son. So far, so good. Too bad he’s in 5th grade, or we’d be signing him up NOW. (As much as I’d like to be of an age to participate, I don’t want to go through high school again. Now, college…..:) )

      Thanks for posting this Phil.
  20. 20.   Matt Says:
      March 25th, 2011 at 12:15 pm

      I was part of a similar program in 2007 called High School Aerospace Scholars. It was a fantastic experience. The best part was getting exclusive tours of the facilities at Johnson Space Center, meeting several Astronauts (including a geologist who visited the Moon in the 70′s!), and working with real NASA scientists and engineers on mock missions. We even got to sit in the mission control center during a Shuttle mission to the ISS.

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If you follow me on Twitter you may have figured out I’m otherwise occupied for right now, and have spotty internet access. But I happened to have a connection for a few minutes, and got a press release from the folks at Rutgers and the Chandra X-Ray Center about a supernova remnant, and the picture of this old exploded star was simply too cool not to share right away:
Pretty freaky, eh? [Click to ensupernovenate.]

The science involved is pretty interesting (see the Chandra page about it), but basically, this shows high-energy X-rays (in blue) and lower energy X-rays (in red) emitted by extremely hot gas in the supernova (the entire image is superposed on the correct background from the Digitized Sky Survey to show the positions of stars). This emission traces the magnetic fields in the gas (which is actually ionized and therefore a plasma), and this in turn has yielded some surprises for the scientists. Again read the page for the details, which are cool.

But in the meantime, the image itself gives an almost three-dimensional feel to the supernova remnant, doesn’t it? The roiling gas is expanding away from the blast site at thousands of kilometers per second, driven by the explosion that, when it blew, was the equivalent of more than the energy given off by the Sun over its entire lifetime!

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This image is from my favorite Red Planet paparazzo, the HiRISE camera on Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter. It shows three craters, each about 1.5 to 2 km (0.9 to 1.2 miles) across… and they all formed at the same time!

How can I tell? Well, for one thing, if this were a coincidence, with three impacts happening at very different times, then you’d see overlap in the crater rims; the earliest crater would be partially obscured by the later crater, and that in turn by the most recent impact. But that’s not the case here, since the rims aren’t overlaying each other. In fact, the straight walls between them are exactly what you’d expect if you have impact explosions happening simultaneously: the expanding shock waves smack into each other and create a linear feature.

Not only that, but let your eye follow the straight lines between craters up and down, above and below the craters themselves and onto the landscape. You can see that the hellish expanding wall of fire etched itself onto the Martian surface well beyond just the crater rims, and those linear features match the crater wall orientation. I annotated the image here to show you what I mean; the red lines are just outside the linear features.

I can picture what must have happened, millions of years ago over Mars…

An asteroid or perhaps a comet is orbiting the Sun, minding its own business. Most likely it’s a frail body, easily broken apart, but held together by its own gravity. As long as it’s left undisturbed, that is. And what’s that looming ahead? A small planet, but too large to avoid. It grows larger, and larger still… As the object plunges into the thin air of Mars, it breaks up into three similar sized pieces, each perhaps a hundred meters or so across, the size of a football stadium. Moving at the blinding speed of 30 kilometers per second, each of the three pieces hit. Given the crater centers are only about 2 kilometers apart, all three pieces impacted the surface within a fraction of a second of each other.

At essentially the same moment, three fireballs are created, explosions equivalent to the detonations of tens of millions of tons of TNT. Each creates a circular shock wave expanding along the ground, and within a few seconds the shock waves collide. On either side of the center impact, two focused walls of flame and debris are created, blasting up and down in nearly straight lines. The explosions of the two outer impacts expand left and right in near perfect half-circles.

Later, much later, when the area cooled off, what remained is what we see today. Three conjoined craters, the magnitude and fury of their impacts faded by time, but still readable in the landscape. They’re filled with rippling sand dunes now, grains of rust and basalt blown by the ever-present Martian winds. But they’re a reminder of a time, long ago, when, for a few moments, the wind blew much, much harder.

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One of my favorite asteroids is Kleopatra: a big, 217 km (135 mile) long main-belt rock that’s a wee bit weird. This image may give you a hint as to why:
It’s shaped like a cartoon dog bone! It circles the Sun out past Mars, tumbling end-over-end, and its origins have always been something of a mystery. However, new observations and analysis reveal quite a bit about how this asteroid got its unusual shape. I won’t spoil it, but instead simply point you to Emily Lakdawalla’s excellent summary of Kleopatra on The Planetary Society blog. It’s a tale of collisions, spin, and eventual reconciliation, as many good stories are.

One thing I didn’t know is that Kleo has two moons: Alexhelios and Cleoselene. They orbit the asteroid in the plane of the its rotation, and may be cast-offs from the formation of Kleo itself. Read Emily’s article for the whole scoop.

Man, the solar system is a cool place. And there’s still so much left to see!

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