RedNova - We May Not Be the Only Humans on Earth: "A 3ft tall 'hobbit' discovered on a remote Indonesian island has raised the extraordinary possibility that our human species might not be alone on Earth.
The female creature has been identified as a completely new member of the human race.
But, although she lived 18,000 years ago, scientists believe her relatives survived for thousands more years on the island of Flores.
And experts have not ruled out the possibility of her descendants, or other unknown human species, still hiding in the impenetrable forests and cave systems of South-East Asia.
Mythical tales abound in the region of a race of little people that dwell on the islands of Indonesia.
Dutch explorers who colonised Flores 100 years ago were told colourful stories of a human-like creature local inhabitants called 'ebu gogo'.
The tales described how they could be heard 'murmuring' to one another, and how, parrot-fashion, they repeated back words spoken to them.
Dr Henry Gee, senior editor of scientific journal Nature, said scientists who made the discovery were now having to think again about these stories' source.
'Until they found this creature they would have dismissed them as tales of hobbits and leprechauns, but no longer,' he told a news conference last night."

Science & Technology at Scientific American.com: How Low-Cal Diet Lengthens Fruit Fly Life Span: "Scientists have known for some time that drastically reducing calorie intake prolongs the lives of a wide variety of organisms. But the molecular mechanisms underlying this phenomenon have proved difficult to discern. Recent studies have indicated that a natural enzyme known as Sir2 mediates longevity in yeast, worms and rats. Findings published online today by the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences indicate that the same holds true in fruit flies."

Article: Brain prosthesis passes live tissue test�| New Scientist "The world’s first brain prosthesis has passed the first stages of live testing.
The microchip, designed to model a part of the brain called the hippocampus, has been used successfully to replace a neural circuit in slices of rat brain tissue kept alive in a dish. The prosthesis will soon be ready for testing in animals."

It's official - the platypus is weird. 25/10/2004. ABC News Online: "Scientists from the Australian National University have proved what many have thought for years - platypuses are really weird.
In the international Nature journal today they report a platypus has five chromosones determining sex, not one - like the rest of the species in the world.
Professor Jennifer Graves says platypus have five X and five Y chromosomes, and when sperm are made it gets even stranger.
'What we've discovered is that these five Xs and five Ys line up in a great big long chain, that go XY XY XY XY XY XY, and then all the X chromosomes move to one pole, and all the Y chromosomes move to the other,' she said.
Professor Graves says there is another unexpected finding.
'One end of the chain looks like human sex chromosomes but the other end of the chain looks like bird sex chromosomes, so the chain is actually linking a very ancient system of sex determination in birds and probably reptiles too,' she said.
The unique status of the Australian mammal is now unassailable."

Wired News: All Bio Systems Are Go: "Advancements in systems biology require cooperation from scientists in multiple fields, pulling together the expertise of biologists, physicists, computer scientists, chemists, engineers and mathematicians.
'Systems biology is an idea whose time has come,' said Hood. 'But it is not for everyone. It requires a culture and integration of biology, technology, computation and medicine that is not possible in most institutions.'
If systems biology progresses in line with Hood's expectations, one consequence may be the elimination of so-called physics envy suffered by biologists, whose work has traditionally not centered on mathematical expertise. Such progress would also move the digital revolution currently underway in biological sciences to an entirely new level."

Science & Technology at Scientific American.com: High-Soy Diet Doesn't Affect Fertility, Monkey Study Suggests: "Rates of breast cancer among Asian women, who consume more soy protein on average than Americans do, are much lower than they are for women in the U.S. Scientists have hypothesized that plant estrogens called isoflavones confer this protection by reducing ovarian hormone levels. If so, some researchers have reasoned, they could also impair fertility. The results of a new monkey study presented yesterday at the annual meeting of the American Society for Reproductive Medicine, however, indicate that a high-soy diet does not affect fertility."

The New York Times > Science > Those Brilliant Fall Outfits May Be Saving Trees: "
Those Brilliant Fall Outfits May Be Saving Trees
As trees across the northern United States turn gold and crimson, scientists are debating exactly what those colors are for.
The scientists do agree on one thing: the colors are for something. That represents a major shift in thinking. For decades, textbooks claimed that autumn colors were just a byproduct of dying leaves. 'I had always assumed that autumn leaves were waste baskets,' said Dr. David Wilkinson, an evolutionary ecologist at Liverpool John Moores University in England. 'That's what I was told as a student.'
During spring and summer, leaves get their green cast from chlorophyll, the pigment that plays a major role in capturing sunlight. But the leaves also contain other pigments whose colors are masked during the growing season. In autumn, trees break down their chlorophyll and draw some of the components back into their tissues. Conventional wisdom regards autumn colors as the product of the remaining pigments, which were finally unmasked. In other words, autumn leaves were a tree's gray hair.
But in recent years, scientists have recognized that autumn colors probably play an important role in the life of many trees. Yellow leaves get their color from a class of pigments called carotenoids. Another group of molecules, anthocyanins, produce oranges and reds. Trees need energy to make carotenoids and anthocyanins, but they cannot reclaim that energy because the pigments stay in a leaf when it dies. If the pigments did not help the tree survive, they would be a waste. What's more, leaves actually start producing a lot of new anthocyanin when autumn arrives.
'The reds are not unmasked-they are made in autumn,' said Dr. David Lee, a botanist at Florida International University.
Evolutionary biologists and plant physiologists offer two different explanations for why natural selection has made autumn colors so widespread, despite their cost. Dr. William Hamilton, an evolutionary biologist at Oxford University, proposed that bright autumn leaves contain a message: they warn insects to leave them alone.
Dr. Hamilton's 'leaf signal' hypothesis grew out of earlier work he had done on the extravagant plumage of birds. He proposed it served as an advertisement from males to females, indicating they had desirable genes. As females evolved a preference for those displays, males evolved more extravagant feathers as they competed for mates.
In the case of trees, Dr. Hamilton proposed that the visual message was sent to insects. In the fall, aphids and other insects choose trees where they will lay their eggs. When the eggs hatch the next spring, the larvae feed on the tree, often with devastating results. A tree can ward off these pests with poisons.
Dr. Hamilton speculated that trees with strong defenses might be able to protect themselves even further by letting egg-laying insects know what was in store for their eggs. By producing brilliant autumn colors, the trees advertised their lethality. As insects evolved to avoid the brightest leaves, natural selection favored trees that could become even brighter."

Science & Technology at Scientific American.com: Sleeping Dino Assumed Birdlike Pose The discovery strengthens the ties between dinosaurs and modern birds. “This specific heat-conserving pose that Mei long was found in provides support for the hypothesis that at least some nonavian dinosaurs, including this animal and its troodontid relatives, were warm-blooded as are today's birds,” Norell explains.

: "This will be the first time that surgical procedures, performed from a vast distance away, will utilise airwaves rather than undersea cables to transmit the information, says surgeon Tim Broderick of the University of Cincinnati, Ohio, who will be taking part in the NASA experiment, dubbed NEEMO 7.
Although the procedures, which include a gall bladder removal, will actually be carried out on a surgical training dummy, the NASA experiment is being seen as a crucial proof-of-principle. If the surgery is successful, it is hoped that astronauts will eventually be allowed to receive emergency surgical care while aboard the International Space Station (ISS)."

Wired News: A MacGyver for the Third World: "'A village in Honduras was getting over-chlorinated water because their chlorination tank did not have a way of controlling the flow of chlorine into the stream water,' Frayne said. 'So, Amy and her students solved the problem using the parts of a toilet tank. That's not a connection most people would make.
'The coolest thing is, she solved it on the spot. What's more, her solution not only works, but it is something that can easily be understood and repaired by people in that village, which means that it can be kept functioning long after Amy and her students have left,' Frayne said."

Umami in food: "Sure MSG is the best source of the umami taste but it is not the only source, you can add nucleotides - disodium 5`-guanylate (627), disodium 5`-inosinate (631) or disodium 5`-nucleotides (635) to achieve the umami taste, however, these substances do not provide the same quality of umami taste at the low levels that MSG does. MSG is the ultimate umami ingredient.
So how can food manufacturers and provide the umami taste and not add MSG? They could use ingredients that are naturally rich in glutamate. For instance the rich and savoury umami taste of pasta smothered with rich tomato sauce and covered in grated Parmesan cheese is a joy to many people. Both the tomatoes and Parmesan cheese are naturally high in glutamates, and the concentration of the tomato sauce by cooking adds to the proportion of glutamate in the sauce. The Parmesan tops up the glutamate content to provide that umami experience.
Other foods that can be added to provide glutamate, and therefore the umami taste, are mushrooms, peas, corn, slow cured meats. Each of these will contribute to the umami taste by adding glutamate to the food. How else can umami taste be added?
Slow, long cooking can contribute to the umami taste as well, because slow and long cooking is also likely to cause the breakdown of proteins releasing the glutamate once bound in the protein into the food in a free form providing its umami taste to the food. This is exactly the same glutamate that you get by adding a little MSG. MSG may be a short cut, but it achieves the same umami taste for exactly the same reason - the amount of free glutamate in increased."

Article: Vein camera keeps injections on target�| New Scientist: It looks like a ghoulish Halloween trick. Yet the device, which projects a creepy green video image of a patient’s veins onto their skin, is about to go on trial in a US hospital. The idea is that it will help staff to pinpoint a suitable vein for an injection or a drip.

Article: Robotic capsule to crawl through intestines�| New Scientist: "A capsule designed to crawl though a patient's stomach, enabling doctors to view and even treat an internal ailment remotely, has been developed by an international research team.
Researchers from the Sant'Anna Valdera Centre in Pontedera, Italy and the Korean Institute of Science and Technology in Seoul, Korea, have developed a prototype crawling system.
Current endoscopies require a patient to swallow a capsule equipped with a camera that transmits images back outside the body. This enables a doctor to remotely examine the tract for potential problems. The capsule is passed through the patient's gastrointestinal tract by the motion of their digestive system.
But the team led by Paolo Dario at Polo Sant'Anna Valdera believes endoscopies could be improved using surgical capsules with a multitude of legs, allowing them to crawl slowly to a particular part of a patient's intestines.
'After swallowing, the protective coating would dissolve and locomotion would begin,' Dario told New Scientist. 'The idea is to improve current techniques for full gastrointestinal endoscopies.'"