Every weekday, Sigma Xi, the Scientific Research Society, picks the raddest articles from the mainstream media so we don't have to. Open wide: Today's Science in the News is piping hot.
The Most Intense Laser in the Universe
from Nature News: Is this really the most intense laser in the Universe? Yes, that's what scientists working on the HERCULES laser at the University of Michigan in Ann Arbor claim. ... This record-breaking beam actually has very low energy - at just 20 joules, it is less than the 8,000 joules stored in a tic tac - but the energy is squeezed into a tiny spot (1.3 micrometres in diameter, about a hundred times thinner than a human hair) for a very short time, just 30 femtoseconds (10^-15 seconds). So the beam has an intensity of 2 x 10^22 watts per square centimetre: two orders of magnitude more intense than achieved before.
Giant "Frog From Hell" Fossil Found in Madagascar
from National Geographic News: Scientists working in Madagascar have found what may be the largest frog that ever lived. The bad-tempered Beelzebufo, or "devil frog," also poses a big mystery - Why do its closest relatives live half a world away in South America? Paleontologist David Krause of Stony Brook University in New York and his colleagues began unearthing the specimen in bits and pieces more than a decade ago. Over the years a 75-piece puzzle emerged that was only recently put together by fossil-frog expert Susan Evans of University College London. Evans, lead author of a new paper detailing the find, describes the 70-million-year-old frog as a rather intimidating animal the size of a beach ball, 16 inches high and weighing about 10 pounds.
Scientists Would Turn Greenhouse Gas Into Gasoline
from the New York Times (Registration Required): If two scientists at Los Alamos National Laboratory are correct, people will still be driving gasoline-powered cars 50 years from now, churning out heat-trapping carbon dioxide into the atmosphere - and yet that carbon dioxide will not contribute to global warming. The scientists, F. Jeffrey Martin and William L. Kubic Jr., are proposing a concept, which they have patriotically named Green Freedom, for removing carbon dioxide from the air and turning it back into gasoline. The idea is simple. Air would be blown over a liquid solution of potassium carbonate, which would absorb the carbon dioxide. The carbon dioxide would then be extracted and subjected to chemical reactions that would turn it into fuel: methanol, gasoline or jet fuel.
Space Wars - Coming to the Sky Near You?
from Scientific American: "Take the high ground and hold it!" has been standard combat doctrine for armies since ancient times. Now that people and their machines have entered outer space, it is no surprise that generals the world over regard Earth orbit as the key to modern warfare. But until recently, a norm had developed against the weaponization of space - even though there are no international treaties or laws explicitly prohibiting nonnuclear anti-satellite systems or weapons placed in orbit. Nations mostly shunned such weapons, fearing the possibility of destabilizing the global balance of power with a costly arms race in space. That consensus is now in danger of unraveling. In October 2006 the Bush administration adopted a new, rather vaguely worded National Space Policy that asserts the right of the U.S. to conduct "space control" and rejects "new legal regimes or other restrictions that seek to prohibit or limit U.S. access to or use of space."
Revealed: Secrets of the Camouflage Masters
from the New York Times (Registration Required): WOODS HOLE, Mass. - The cuttlefish in Roger Hanlon's laboratory were in fine form. Their skin was taking on new colors and patterns faster than the digital signs in Times Square. Dr. Hanlon inspected the squidlike animals as he walked past their shallow tubs, stopping from time to time to ask, "Whoa, did you see that?" One cuttlefish added a pair of eye spots to its back, a strategy cuttlefish use to fool predators. The spots lingered a few seconds, then vanished. ... Dr. Hanlon likes to see how far he can push their powers of camouflage. He sometimes put black and white checkerboards in the tubs. The cuttlefish respond by forming astonishingly sharp-edged blocks of white.
from the Washington Post (Registration Required): A series of surprising findings about some of the most widely accepted assumptions in medicine has renewed debate about how aggressively doctors use drugs to prevent and treat some of the nation's leading health problems. In addition to casting doubt on notions such as lowering cholesterol to prevent heart disease and normalizing blood sugar to protect diabetics, the studies involving well-known drugs such as Avandia and Vytorin have also rekindled concern about whether new medications are being tested adequately before being allowed on the market. "We definitely need to pause and reassess our assumptions about what is best for patients," said Harlan M. Krumholz, a professor of medicine at Yale University. "Clearly we have more to learn."
from the Baltimore Sun: The record recall last weekend of 143 million pounds of ground beef illustrates a key gap that remains despite recent federal efforts to bolster food safety: The quality of government inspections continues to vary sharply around the country, food safety experts say. "You go to one plant, and they do an excellent job," said Temple Grandin, an animal-handling expert at Colorado State University who regularly visits plants and helped develop industry guidelines on proper practices. "You go to another, and they don't." U.S. Department of Agriculture inspectors frequently miss violations during daily checks of the more than 200 slaughterhouses around the country, and some inspectors ignore warning signs, she said. Based on her observations, Grandin estimates that at least 10 percent of meat companies try to sidestep regulations.
Internet-Predator Concerns Overblown, Researchers Say
from the Seattle Times: WASHINGTON -- A lot of parental worries about Internet sex predators are unjustified, according to new research by a leading center that studies crimes against children. "There's been some overreaction to the new technology, especially when it comes to the danger that strangers represent," said Janis Wolak, a sociologist at the Crimes against Children Research Center at the University of New Hampshire in Durham. "Actually, Internet-related sex crimes are a pretty small proportion of sex crimes that adolescents suffer," Wolak added, based on three nationwide surveys conducted by the center.
Tuna Fisheries Facing a Cod-Like Collapse
from New Scientist: The collapse of north Atlantic cod populations could provide an important lesson for preventing tuna from suffering a similar fate worldwide, researchers say. Over-fishing caused Canada's cod industry to plummet in value from $1.4 billion in 1968 to just $10 million in 2004. Now researchers warn that tuna fisheries worldwide are on the brink of a similar collapse. "Cod have been reduced to between 1 percent and 3 percent of their natural abundance and people still want to fish them," says Daniel Pauly of the University of British Columbia, Vancouver, Canada. "Are we going to do the same thing with tuna?"
Ray Wu, 79; Developed Rice Strains
from the Los Angeles Times (Registration Required): Cornell University geneticist Ray Wu, a pioneer in genetic engineering who developed pest-, drought- and salinity-resistant rice strains that are poised for widespread use throughout the world, died of cardiac arrest Feb. 10 at Cayuga Medical Center in Ithaca, N.Y. He was 79. The new strains have the potential to sharply increase the supply of rice, which is the staple food for more than half the world's population. "Where rice is grown, everyone knows Ray Wu," said Cornell geneticist Susan McCouch. "He made enormous contributions to the development of rice transformation systems that are widely used to address crop production constraints throughout the rice-growing world."
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