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The Best of the Web

The final weekly round-up of the best science coverage on the web.

Dog trained to sniff out bees - The Guardian
We've covered the decline of honeybees on the Nebula Science Monitor before, but their cousins the Bumblebees are also in danger. But as Bumblebee hives are wild and tricky to find, the problem is hard to study. Luckily, the world could be saved by a bouncy puppy called Toby.

Renewed fighting threatens Congo gorillas - Telegraph
Only a month ago we reported on a huge surge in gorilla numbers in the Congo, and explained how isolation was protecting the great apes. Now artillery and hungry rebels are threatening the few remaining mountain gorillas as the fighting moves closer and the rangers struggle to protect the nature reserves.

NASA considers Shuttle shelf-life - BBC
Again following up a previous NSM story, this time about the future of NASA. The Space Shuttle was due to be retired in 2010, with the replacement Orion system not ready until later in the decade. The US would have been relying on Russian Soyuz systems to service its space assets, but with rising international tensions they might decide to keep risking shuttle flights to maintain strategic independance.
The near future of NASA should be a top priority for the incoming new US president.

McCain's VP wants creationism taught in schools - Yahoo
Sarah Palin: NRA member, anti-abortion, against universal healthcare and still considers creationsim a scientifc option. Many scientsts are christians, but very very few want to see children misled over creationism.There is just no basis for it.
If she's there to snatch the womens votes in the US election, they couldn't have found anyone less likely to advance women's issues in the US.
And given McCain's age, (he's older than Palin's parents and her home state of Alaska!) the chance of the VP having to step up to the presidency increases dramatically.

Lights Out? Experts fear fireflys are dwindling - AP
Another sad conservation story. Is there such a thing as conservation compasion fatigue? When it seems like half the world's life-forms are under threat from humanity, at least we still regret the passing of the beautiful ones.

Image- A firefly, obviously. I saw one in a hedge once and I thought somebody had dropped a watch.

Happier picnics, till we run out of fruit. Insect decline in the UK.

While researching honeybee decline in the UK I spoke to Yorkshire bee farmer Phil Askham. As well as discussing the specific threats to British beekeeping, we also talked about the importance of bees to farming. The government admit that beekeepers play a vital role in crop pollination.

But bees aren’t the only pollinating insect, and they aren’t the only species in decline.

Mr Askham doesn't believe the problem of declining numbers is confined to bees. He says that honeybees are simply becoming more and more important as other pollinating insects are dying out. Honeybees are easier to study and protect than other insects as the whole population is essentially domesticated.

"When I was a kid the number of insects was unreal. Unreal. They were everywhere," he explains.

"Now they're all gone.

"You only have to walk around outside now in summer. Where have all the insects gone? Thirty years ago it was different. It's rubbish now."

"And the wild bees are gone. I used to get three or four calls a week from the local police asking for help moving wild beehives from houses. I used to ignore the phone they were always pestering. Not any more though. I've had one call all summer."

This anecdotal evidence is supported by RSPB research from 2003, when the charity introduced the public to its Splatometer method for counting insects. Drivers were asked to clean their number plates, drive 20 to 80 miles, then use a grid to count the number of insects splattered across the plate.

The research remains at an early stage, with no previous data to compare the splat counts with. However the RSPB report said that many participants had been shocked by unexpectedly low results and commented on a perceived drop in the number of insects. They also point to the rapid decline in numbers among birds that survive on insects, with the house sparrow suffering a 65% decline in 30 years.

Insect decline is poorly documented. Not all species are as attractive or useful as butterflies and bumblebees, and insects are rarely regarded as anything but pests.

But if something is amiss at the bottom of the food chain and nature's tiny servants fail to pollinate our crops, the impact of insect decline is going to hit us harder than a speeding car.

Best of the Web Extra: Moo North

And on that farm the cows face north - says Google - New Scientist (Again)
A survey of Google Earth satellite images shows cows tend to stand on a North/South axis when grazing. The survey wasn't able to tell if the cows face North or South as it's impossible to make head nor tail of them from the grainy satellite pictures.

Can they feel magnetic fields in the fields, or are they just sunning themselves?

The story doesn't take into account the times and seasons Google took their satellite pictures, and I'd bet the position of the sun plays a part. Google Earth uses pictures taken on clear sunny days at noon for less clouds and less shadows. This means most of the images used in the survey are taken with full summer sun directly over the cows.
The survey also says the margin of error changes in relation to the cow's distance from the poles. Or, considered another way, how close they are to the full sun of the equator...

I'd like to hear more on this story as it does have a hint of nonsense about it. Hopefully all my suspicions were taken into account in the full study, but missed from the press release.

"In the 10,000 years since humans domesticated cattle, their geomagnetic orientation has gone unnoticed" quotes New Scientist.

The BBC have a cow farmer on hand to prove just that:
Willy Miller - a Scottish cattle farmer - remarked: "I've never noticed that my cows all face the same way."

At any rate, the trend is supposedly clear, even if the cause can be disputed.
So Remember - next time you're lost on a farm, the cows point North. Or South. Never left.

EDIT - 01:30: The AP release says researchers were able to "discount weather-effects" in the study by "analyzing clues" in the images, such as the position of shadows. Even if this is the case, the study is still based on a very limited range of climactic conditions.
(All AP quotes attempt to abide by their hillarious "4 words max" fair use policy for bloggers.)

EDIT 2 - Aside - 01.42: Just to prove those arn't horses in the image at the top I should say that I searched for cow farms mentioned in BBC news stories. So the cows pictured have all trampled or broken something in a newsworthy fashion. Celebrity cows.

The Best of the Web

A weekly round-up of the best science coverage on the web.

5 Really Weird Things About Water - Neatorama
Water is an anomalous material; science doesn't understand why it behaves the way it does. Why does hot water freeze faster, why does ice float, and is homeopathic medicine right about water having memory?

Confidence game: How Imposters capture our trust - Boston.com
Take notes, rule the world.

Mexicans get microchipped over kidnapping fears - New Scientist
We had something like this done with our dogs. Sadly it doesn't really work as you can't be tracked without a bigger device sending out your location.

Unknown insect discovered on eBay - Telegraph
"I had thought it would be rather nice to call it Mindarus ebayi," said Dr Harrington. "Unfortunately using flippant names to describe new species is rather frowned upon these days."

Mirror test shows magpies aren't so bird-brained - New Scientist
Magpies love shiny things, especially mirrors. Two for joy...

Magpie photo from Flickr - Sergey Yeliseev

Tinsley Cool Towers Demolition - Almost Live-blog - As it happened

An account of the demolition of the Tinsley Cooling Towers in Sheffield. Sadly there was no live internet connection from the demolition site, so this was written up from notes when I got back at 4am.

01.00 -- Geting ready. Taking several cameras and a video camera to maximise the chances of getting good images. It's going to be tricky in the dark but hopefully we'll get something.

02.01 -- The traffic heading out towards Meddowhall shopping centre from the city is heavy, cars queing back through the industrial estates that surround it waiting to get into the car parks. Busier than expected.

02.10 -- Finally park up. Most of the car-park is unlit, so we pick a spot by the police van. The car-park roofs are packed with people ten deep along the barriers and on the grass at the base. Anywhere with a clear view is full, and police lines are set up to keep everyone far enough back from the blasts.

02.25 -- Up in the crowds it's a festival atmosphere. Horns from parked cars rise in chorus, and boot BBQs smoke gently. Everywhere camera phones are attempting final images of the towers, and clusters of keen amatuers set up tripods and play with exposure settings. Every few minutes a hoax countdown swells from the croud. Down on the ground it's mainly kids getting as close to the police line as possible.

02.30 -- Heading through the shopping centre to the hospitality suite where E.On (The power company that own the towers) are delivering a press briefing. Meddowhall is faintly creepy when it's this empty, dispite the thousands setting up outside. We can confirm the slushy machines run overnight.

02.34 -- Raining. Raining? Great. Look at the Pros with their umbrellas that they didn't leave in the car.

02.45 -- On the press deck. There are street-lights between us and the towers which play havoc with camera equipment. All the TV crews are packed into the far left corner of the stand to keep the lights out of shot. The BBC have parked a massive antenna in everyones line of sight as well. We set up on the far right with a similar streetlight-free view. On the horizon we can see the blinking lights where the police have closed off the M1 for the night - not a minor opperation itself.

02.50 -- General moaning from the photographers about the low light stopping them shooting fast enough. That said, the towers are lit, which E.on wouldn't confirm in advance. And very beautiful they look too.

02.56 -- The klaxon sounds the three minute warning. The assembled press crowd to the edge and ready the equipment.

02.59.50 -- A final countdown runs through the crowd, but it's hard to tell if it's official. A slightly faster countdown comes from the radios of nearby security guards.

03.00 -- First the right tower goes, and then the left a few seconds later. After a puff of dust the sound hits, a muffled but powerful krumph. The top of the right tower twists and sinks, then the left tower follows. Before they're half-way down the dust has risen over them. The dust forms two pillars where the cooling towers just stood, and for a few seconds the dust takes the shape of the towers. Then it starts to smear with the wind.



03.00.10 -- Massive cheers from the crowd, another huge swell of car horns and klaxons. Despite the sadness at the tower's passing, everyone seems excited by the blasts.

03.00.30 -- A few people break through the barriers at the base of the press deck and run for the trees that seperate us from the towers. A platoon of police and security sprint after them and into the scrub.

03.01 -- Various photographers are muttering about buffers filling up too fast and not getting enough pictures in the low light. We managed; the video seems to have come out well. The still shots are weak though - I forgot to keep pressing the button for a few seconds when the blast hit.

03.05 -- The dust is starting to settle and something is emerging from the cloud, still standing where the north tower was. We discount it; the press release says there is a steel frame that might survive the blast.

03.07 -- No, a large piece of one of the towers is still standing. It's hard to see much as it's below the level of the motorway viaduct. It looks like the demolition hasn't gone to plan.

03.11 -- Sheffield City Council leader Paul Scriven dashes past. "That's gone wrong" he mutters to nobody in particular, before demanding answers from the E.On representative. He asks about the motoway re-opening, but is told it's too early to say.

03.25 -- Back in the hospitality suite Cllr Scriven is heard to complain: "We've got a serious problem; we're going to have traffic diverted all over the city." He's worried the remaining pieces of tower may need further demolition and the M1 won't re-open on bank holiday weekend. There are also fears the motorway bridge itself could have been damaged by the blasts. Nobody's ever demolished anything this big this close to a major road bridge before.
Demolition isn't an exact science, so I don't think E.On or the demolition crews are surprised by this, but obviously the city authorities wanted things to go as smoothly as possible.

03.30 -- The E.On representative is offering explanations in the Meddowhall VIP room. He says that the left-hand tower twisted as it collapsed and that the half closest to the motorway didn't fully collapse. It's not stable so they can't climb and re-drill it to plant more charges, so further demolition will have to be a careful job.
He promises Cllr Scriven that work has already started and they don't need to wait for daylight. He also says the viaduct looks fine.

03.45 -- Scriven briefs his aides. "Don't be drawn on whose fault it is... that will come out. It's all about getting the motorway open now."

03.46 -- Free food! We grab the last free pastries from the VIP room. Thanks E.On.

03.50 -- Heading home. Driving into the city without the towers in my mirrors. I hope whatever artwork they build to replace them is of a similar scale.

UPDATE 10.20 -- It seems the remaining pieces of the north tower collapsed around 5am and the M1 should re-open as planned. It's unknown yet if it collapsed after further work or on its own.

xkcd on Science Journalism

Click for bigness
xkcd

The Best of the Web

A weekly round-up of the best science coverage on the web.

India has plans for lunar expansion - Universe Today
Rocket science is easy, it's just maths and a large tank of gas. Robots are easy, they must be, I've seen the people on Robot Wars. I don't know why we're not all sending rovers to the Moon.

Iran launches test satellite - Psyorg
A satellite disguised as a bomb, I'd wager. Expect them to release a poorly photoshopped picture of the satellite in orbit any day now.

Star-Treck Warp drive is a possibility - Telegraph
Lots of things from Star Trek are coming true; mobile phones, stun lasers, the Klingon language, and soon - WWIII and Space Elves.

IKEA to sell solar panels - Green Daily
Is this what the green movement needs; cheap mass market green technologies for the home? Or will they break when you move and have a lifecycle carbon impact like a 747?

Science No Help in Olympic Gymnastics Age Controversy - Wired
"The hopes for finding a sure-fire way to peg age better than a carnie are likely to remain fruitless"
Gymnasts, mystery and carnies - this article has it all.

Braid - Eurogamer
Games = art. Or at least very beautiful, very touching, mind melting, rewarding toys.

Just right for the garden: a mini-cow - The Times
Tiny Cows! Teaching a whole new generation of children to love pets, look after pets and eat pets.

And the image at the top is: Braid. Poignant.

The Stinking Baltic coast

I just had a chat with Piret Johanson, an informant at the Estonian Environmental Inspectorate. She told me about the difficult conditions in the Baltic Sea. This is what I learned:

The Baltic is a dangerously unhealthy sea. Many years of careless Soviet pollution have taken their toll, much as they did on the Black sea.

"Estonia is a young country, and in Soviet times all the farm water, industrial water and sewage was directed into the sea without cleaning it first," Piret says.

"There are still some problems with cleaning the water first. Some places don't have enough money to change the system or they dont care to."

The casual spilling of oil and industrial waste into the water is now under control, but years of damage will take years to recover from.

On the Estonian coast the pollution manifests itself as piles of stinking black seaweed, washed up and rotting after being starved of oxygen on the seabed. In summer vast blankets of blue algae spread along beaches and out to sea making swimming impossible, causing rashes among those foolish enough to try. Even the fish are now moderately poisonous.

These are all symptoms of widespread pollution and hypoxia - areas where oxygen in the water is consumed by rotting plant matter. (Read more about hypoxia and ocean dead zones.)

Geographically the Baltic has a problem with water exchange, being an enclosed and relatively still sea. The building of dykes and roads between the costal islands only exacerbates this problem.

Into this still water runs all the fertiliser enriched runoff of half a continent, nitrates carried from the fields to the sea by rainwater, and there causing excessive growth of unwelcome algae.

"When my mother was young she could swim in the sea near our home, but now it's impossible to swim near the dyke," Piret explains.

The good news is that the problem is understood, and the EU and Environmental Inspectorate are working hard to make changes. Scandinavian and Baltic nations work together closely to protect and preserve the Baltic.

It is a process of regulation and education, teaching farmers how to clean their water, and ensuring ships don't dump their waste into the ocean. Silage management on land is affecting the future of a sea. Investment in this area is worthwhile if it serves to protect the fishing industry, not to mention the huge stretches of beautiful coastline on the edge of environmental collapse.

The Best of the Web

A weekly round-up of the best science coverage on the web.

Estonia, Google Help 'Cyber-Locked' Georgia - Wired's Danger Room blog
Georgian websites are facing massive denial of service attacks from within Russia, but where their sites can't hold up they turn to Google services to keep the news flowing. Estonia is also lending cyber support.

Mad Cows (And livid lambs) - Telegraph
The animal kingdom is fighting back against mankind it seems, as reported animal attacks worldwide surge.

Beijing Olympic 2008 opening ceremony giant firework footprints 'faked' - Telegraph
Faked television fireworks at the opening. They really happened, they just couldn't film them right. The trickery is more impressive than the real thing though.

Scientists closer to developing invisibility cloak - AP
For 'invisibility' read Active Camoflage. But still pretty impressive.

38 dead after being bitten by vampire bats - CNN
Rabies, not savage bats, mainly responsable.

Slow motion lightning - Gizmodo
Lightning at the speed of... something slower. Like a time-lapsed Tolkeinesque tree. Yes.

And the image at the top is NASA's image of the day: A meteor falls through the Northern Lights.

Google Street View in Sheffield - Staring right back

So I was off to fetch a coffee last week, taking a brief break from CSS code and single monitor misery, when I nearly became the latest casualty of Google Street View.

Stepping into the road with half an eye out for speeding busses, I stumbled in front of a black Astra with a tiny Google logo down the side. Amazingly my caffinee starved brain recognised it: A Google Street View car.

As a tram cruised past I had the perfect chance to photograph the stationary vehicle, with a smile to the bemused driver. Then it drove off, snapping in all directions as it went.

The car drew a few glances from others thanks to the camera tower strapped to the roof, but how many passers-by knew they were being quietly photographed going about their daily business?

And while I was stood there on the street corner, Googling Google's recent Street View activity on my phone, the car came past again. So I took another picture, and it took another picture of me.

It's easy to understand the secracy in which Google gather their photos. With fifteen minutes notice I could have printed a poster or arranged an amusing scene with my friends. Internet fame would have surely followed. Instead I'll be just another blurred shape with a camera phone out. And I expect to see lots of them showing up when they launch the UK service.

Marketing men would love to get their brands onto Street View. When it was revealled that Google planes were flying over Australia taking photos for Google Earth, farms and rooftops around Melbourn were covered in giant adverts.

Incidentally, the picture on the story is from PA, not mine: Their shot is just better for revealing the unique profile of the Street View car. My shot sits above this post.

50 years of NASA

NASA, the US National Aeronautics and Space Administration has celebrated it's 50th birthday.
Established on the 29th of July 1958 to be responsible for the American space program, their moto reads: "For the benifit of all".

To celebrate 50 years of amazing achievement, we've put together a picture gallery of some of NASA's finest moments in Space exploration.


50 years of NASA

The Best of the Web

A weekly round-up of the best science coverage on the web.

Ice on Mars - New Scientist
The Mars lander Phoenix picks up the first sample of Martian water. We knew there was water on Mars, but this is the first time mankind has been able to obtain a sample.
For more updates from the Phoenix lander, check out the rather entertaining Twitter feed.

Cheap Catalyst Could Turn Sunlight, Water Into Fuel - Wired
New developments could let us store solar energy as fuel instead of using expensive batteries.

Views of Jupiter - Boston.com
An amazing collection of pictures of Jupiter and its moons taken over the last thirty years.

How lily pollen will make gunmen come unstuck - The Times
Scientists look at using stubborn lily pollen to tag bullets, letting police confirm who has handled a weapon.

The Nature of Glass Remains Anything but Clear - The NY Times
If you thought glass was a liquid you're wrong. Disagreements over the nature of glass still rage.

Mother Earth gets undressed - Nature
As a worldwide database of geological maps is made available, a complete picture of the naked earth is revealed.

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