More Drugs Cited As A Risky Mix with Grapefruit

(Helen Thompson)

http://www.npr.org/blogs/health/2012/11/27/166012281/a-deadly-cocktail-some-medications-don-t-mix-well-with-grapefruit?ft=1&f=1001

NATURE | NEWS

Simulated brain scores top test marks

First computer model to produce complex behaviour performs almost as well as humans at simple number tasks.

• Ed Yong

29 November 2012

Spaun solves simple tests

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Spaun sees a series of digits: 1 2 3; 5 6 7; 3 4 ?. Its neurons fire, and it calculates the next logical number in the sequence. It scrawls out a 5, in legible if messy writing.

This is an unremarkable feat for a human, but Spaun is actually a simulated brain. It contains 2.5 million virtual neurons — many fewer than the 86 billion in the average human head, but enough to recognize lists of numbers, do simple arithmetic and solve reasoning problems. 

NATURE

• P

  Jiangxi province, China, 2009.

REUTERS

Grim picture of polar ice-sheet loss

Antarctica and Greenland are rapidly losing their ice sheets because of climate change, says a comprehensive review.

Climate policy: The Kyoto approach has failed

Emissions trading: Cap and trade finds new energy

The global energy challenge: Awash with carbon

More than ever, nations are powering themselves from abundant supplies
of fossil fuels.

Graphic

Press Release No. 966

For use of the information media
Not an official record

2012: Record Arctic Sea Ice Melt, Multiple Extremes and High Temperatures

GENEVA/DOHA, 28 November 2012 (WMO) – The years 2001–2011 were all among the  warmest on record, and, according to the World Meteorological Organization, the first ten months indicate that 2012 will most likely be no exception despite the cooling influence of La Niña early in the year.

WMO’s provisional annual statement on the state of the global climate also highlighted the unprecedented melt of the Arctic sea ice and multiple weather and climate extremes which affected many parts of the world. It was released today to inform negotiators at the United Nations Climate Change Conference in Doha, Qatar.

January-October 2012 has been the ninth warmest such period since records began in 1850. The global land and ocean surface temperature for the period was about 0.45°C (0.81°F) above the corresponding 1961–1990 average of 14.2°C, according to the statement.

...

“The extent of Arctic sea ice reached a new record low. The alarming rate of its melt this year highlighted the far-reaching changes taking place on Earth’s oceans and biosphere.  Climate change is taking place before our eyes and will continue to do so as a result of the concentrations of greenhouse gases in the atmosphere, which have risen constantly and again reached new records,” added Mr Jarraud.

The Arctic reached its lowest annual sea ice extent since the start of satellite records on 16 September at 3.41 million square kilometers. This was 18% less than the previous record low of 18 September, 2007. The 2012 minimum extent was 49 percent or nearly 3.3 million square kilometers (nearly the size of India) below the 1979–2000 average minimum. Some 11.83 million square kilometers of Arctic ice melted between March and September 2012.

WMO will release a 10-year report on the state of the climate, “2001-2010, A Decade of Extremes” on 4 December 2012. It was produced in partnership with other United Nations and international agencies and highlights the warming trend for the entire planet, its continents and oceans during the past decade, with an indication of its impacts on health, food security and socio-economic development.

Highlights of 2012 provisional statement

Temperatures:.

During the first ten months of 2012, above-average temperatures affected most of the globe’s land surface areas, most notably North America (warmest on record for contiguous United States of America), southern Europe, western and central Russia and northwestern Asia. Much of South America and Africa experienced above average temperatures during the first ten months of the year, with the most anomalous warmth across parts of northern Argentina and northern Africa. Much of Asia had above-average temperatures, with cooler-than-average conditions across parts of northern China. South Asia and the Pacific were also predominantly warmer than normal, except for Australia.

Extremes: Notable extreme events were observed worldwide, but some parts of the Northern Hemisphere were affected by multiple extremes during January–October 2012.

• Heat waves: Major heat waves impacted the Northern Hemisphere during the year, with the most notable in March–May across the continental United States of America and Europe. Warm spells during March 2012 resulted in many record-breaking temperatures in Europe and nearly 15,000 new daily records across the USA. Russia witnessed the second warmest summer on record after 2010.  Numerous temperature records were broken in Morocco in summer.

• Drought:  According to the U.S. Drought Monitor, nearly two-thirds of the continental United States (65.5 percent) was considered to be in moderate to exceptional drought on 25 September  2012. Drought conditions impacted parts of western Russia and western Siberia during June and July, and Southeast Europe, the Balkans and some Mediterranean countries during summer. In China, the Yunnan and southwestern Sichuan province experienced severe drought during winter and spring. Northern Brazil witnessed the worst drought in 50 years. The April–October precipitation total, in Australia was 31 percent below normal.

• Floods: Many parts of western Africa and the Sahel, including Niger and Chad, suffered serious flooding between July and September because of a very active monsoon. Heavy rainfall from the end of July through early October prompted exceptional floods across Nigeria. Parts of southern China experienced their heaviest rainfall in the last 32 years in April and May. Devastating monsoonal floods impacted Pakistan during September.  Central and parts of northern Argentina suffered from record rainfall and flooding in August, and parts of Colombia were affected by heavy precipitation for most of the year.

• Snow and Extreme Cold:  A cold spell on the Eurasian continent from late January to mid-February was notable for its intensity, duration, and impact. Across eastern Russia, temperatures ranged between -45°C to -50°C during the end of January. Several areas of eastern Europe reported minimum temperatures as low as -30°C, with some areas across northern Europe and central Russia experiencing temperatures below -40°C.

Tropical Cyclones: Global tropical cyclone activity for the first ten months was near the 1981–2010 average of 85 storms, with a total of 81 storms (wind speeds greater or equal than 34 knots, or 63 kilometers per hour).  The Atlantic basin experienced an above-average hurricane season for a third consecutive year with a total of 19 storms, with ten reaching hurricane status, the most notably being Sandy, which wreaked havoc across the Caribbean and the USA East Coast. Throughout the year, East Asia was severely impacted by powerful typhoons. Typhoon Sanba was the strongest cyclone, globally, to have formed in 2012. Sanba impacted the Philippines, Japan, and the Korean Peninsula, dumping torrential rain and triggering floods and landslides that affected thousands of people and caused millions in U.S. dollars in damage.

Undisclosed Finding by Mars Rover Fuels Intrigue

The Mars rover Curiosity has found something — something noteworthy, in a pinch of Martian sand. But what is it?

Enlarge This Image

NASA/JPL-Caltech, via Malin Space Science Systems, via EPA

The Curiosity rover in a self-portrait stitched together from 55 images taken by a camera at the end of one of its arms. Data from the rover’s first soil sample is now being analyzed by scientists.

The scientists working on the mission who know are not saying. Outside of that team, lots of people are guessing.

The intrigue started last week when John P. Grotzinger, the Mars mission’s project scientist, told National Public Radio: “This data is going to be one for the history books. It’s looking really good.”

And then he declined to say anything more.

Fossils? Living microbial Martians? Maybe the carbon-based molecules known as organics, which are the building blocks of life? That so much excitement could be set off by a passing hint reflects the enduring fascination of both scientists and nonscientists with Mars.

“It could be all kinds of things,” said Peter H. Smith, a planetary scientist at the University of Arizona who was the principal investigator for NASA’s earlier Phoenix Mars mission but is not involved with Curiosity. “If it’s historic, I think it’s organics. That would be historic in my book.”

Dr. Grotzinger and other Curiosity scientists will announce their latest findings on Monday in San Francisco at a meeting of the American Geophysical Union.

Do not expect pictures of Martians, though.

Guy Webster, a spokesman for NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, Calif., which operates Curiosity, said the findings would be “interesting” rather than “earthshaking.”

Mr. Webster noted that “a really big announcement,” if one should occur, would most likely be made at NASA headquarters in Washington and not at an academic conference.

Whatever is revealed will be linked to the work of Curiosity’s sophisticated chemistry laboratory instrument, Sample Analysis at Mars — SAM, for short. The rover’s robotic arm dropped the first bit of sand and dust into the instrument on Nov. 9, and the scientists have been analyzing and contemplating ever since.

One of the main goals of SAM is to identify organic molecules, but it would be a big surprise for organics to show up in a first look at a sand sample selected more as a test exercise than with the expectation of a breakthrough discovery.

Curiosity will be headed toward layers of clays, which could be rich in organics and are believed to have formed during a warm and wet era early in the planet’s history. But Curiosity has months to drive before arriving at those locations.

And the Curiosity scientists have learned through experience that it pays to double-check their results before trumpeting them. An initial test of the Martian atmosphere by the same instrument showed the presence of methane, which would have been a major discovery, possibly indicating the presence of methane-generating microbes living on Mars today. But when the scientists ran the experiment again, the signs of methane disappeared, leading them to conclude that the methane found in the first test had come from air that the spacecraft had carried to Mars from its launching spot in Florida.

Mr. Webster, who was present during the interview with NPR, said Dr. Grotzinger had been talking more generally about the quality of data coming back from Curiosity and was not suggesting that the data contained a breakthrough surprise. “I don’t think he had in mind, ‘Here’s some particular chemical that’s been found,’ ” Mr. Webster said. “That’s not my impression of the conversation.”

On Twitter, Curiosity chimed in: “What did I discover on Mars? That rumors spread fast online. My team considers this whole mission ‘one for the history books.’ ” (The public information staff at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory writes the posts for the rover.)

Stores of ice confirmed on Sun-scorched Mercury

MESSENGER finds evidence of pure water ice near planet's north pole.

• Maggie McKee

29 November 2012

Water ice is abundant in Mercury's dark polar craters.

NASA/JOHNS HOPKINS UNI APPLIED PHYS LAB/CARNEGIE INST OF WASHINGTON

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Talk about a land of fire and ice. The surface of Mercury is hot enough in some places to melt lead, but it is a winter wonderland at its poles — with perhaps a trillion tonnes of water ice trapped inside craters — enough to fill 20 billion Olympic skating rinks.

The ice — whose long-suspected presence¹ has now been confirmed by NASA's orbiting MESSENGER probe — seems to be much purer than ice inside similar craters on Earth's Moon, suggesting that the closest planet to the Sun could be a better trap for icy materials delivered by comets and asteroids. Three papers detailing the findings are published today in Science^2, 3, 4.

Despite Mercury’s blistering 400 °C temperatures, the floors of many of its polar craters are in permanent shadow, because the planet's rotational axis is perpendicular to its orbital plane, so its poles never tip towards the star. Indeed, radar pinged to the planet from Earth in the past 20 years has revealed bright regions¹ near the poles consistent with metres-thick slabs of pure water ice.

Now, three different lines of evidence back the water-ice interpretation. Infrared laser pulses fired at the planet by MESSENGER's Mercury Laser Altimeter have revealed bright regions inside nine darkened craters near the planet's north pole². These bright regions, thought to be water ice, line up perfectly with ultra-cold spots that, according to a thermal model of the planet that takes into account Mercury's topography, should never be warmer than –170 °C³.But “radar does not uniquely identify water ice,” says David Lawrence, a planetary scientist at the Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Laboratory in Laurel, Maryland. Sulphur, for example, could have produced a similar radar signature.

A third team, using MESSENGER's Neutron Spectrometer, has spotted the telltale signature of hydrogen — which they think is locked up in water ice — in those same regions⁴. "Not only is water the best explanation, we do not see any other explanation that can tie all the data together," says Lawrence, lead author of the spectrometer study.

So where did the water come from? The bright icy spots identified by MESSENGER's laser are surrounded by darker terrain which receives a bit more sunlight and heat. The neutron measurements suggest that this darker area is a layer of material about 10 centimetres thick that lies on top of more ice, insulating it.

Dark materials

This darker material around the bright spots may be made up of complex hydrocarbons expelled from comet or asteroid impacts, says David Paige, a planetary scientist at the University of California, Los Angeles, and first author of  the thermal-model paper³.

Paige and his colleagues suggest that when these icy bodies slam into Mercury, their components migrate over time — by repeatedly vaporizing and precipitating — to the cooler poles, where they get stuck in the frigid polar craters.

But even there, sunlight will sometimes hit parts of the craters' interiors, vaporizing the water ice and leaving behind ‘lag deposits’ of hydrocarbons that gradually become thicker and darker as they are chemically altered by sunlight.

Small impacts should have buried the surface if the ice were a billion years old, and the MESSENGER researchers believe it might be much younger than that, perhaps 50 million years old.

"The ice deposits we are looking at are not ancient," says Paige.

ATHLETE CONNECTED WITH PEDS

By Boston.com Staff 

Jermaine Cunningham has become the latest Boston athlete to be suspended for violating a performance-enhancing drug policy. The defensive end reportedly tested positive for Adderall, a drug commonly prescribed for patients with attention disorders.

Cunningham joined a list of prominent athletes, many from Boston, who have been accused or convicted of using substances banned by their various leagues

Scientist takes inspiration from natural world to create self-filling water bottle | PRI.ORG

Scientist takes inspiration from natural world to create self-filling water bottle | PRI.ORG