Scientists at the National University of Ireland tested the effectiveness of a common hospital and home disinfectant, benzalkonium chloride (BKC) on a easily found pathogen, pseudomonas aeruginosa. The pathogen tends to infect those already weakened by illness.

What they found is that the pathogen will grow stronger when exposed repeatedly to small amounts of disinfectant. So if you skimp out on how much Pine-Sol you add to your mopping bucket, you may be turning your home into a superbug petri dish.

While Fleming isn't saying we shouldn't use disinfectants, he does say they need to be used responsibly. Use the amount directed on the bottle and be aware that diluted disinfectant can build up on a surface, which then encourages the bacteria's growth. "For heaven's sake, rotate your disinfectant even if you like the smell and it's cheap, to prevent a build-up of residue"

Fleming's report is published in January's Microbiology.

Common Disinfectants Create Mutant Superbugs [Treehugger]

Boys need more attention. Really? Recently published research suggests that as girls are helped to achieve academic and social success, boys are getting left behind. The result: American boys are leaving school with lower literacy rates, lower grades, and higher dropout rates. They also have higher suicide, arrest and premature death rates. Hmm. Maybe this is all related to another study, which showed that spankings lower IQ scores?

Dinosaurs wiped out by algae. While many scientists believe an asteroid impact killed off the dinosaurs, Clemson University researchers announced on October 19th at the Geological Society of America that they believed toxins from algae were to blame for not just killing off the great beasts of 65 million years ago, but five other species. Their scientific peers aren't buying the theory, claiming the evidence just isn't there.

Fetuses have memories in the womb. As if we needed more fuel for the abortion debate, scientists co-authored a study published in Child Development that says fetuses just 30 weeks of age have short-term memory. This discovery was claimed after a series of "fetuses became habituated to a low sound that makes a vibration, and so weren't startled after repeated stimulation. Fetuses younger than 30 weeks never showed signs of habituation, while those older could remember the stimulation for longer and longer stints with age."

Who's the oldest of them all? While Ardi was pronounced the official oldest link to us humans, another fossil was found in the meantime that may change our evolutionary tree. Ida is a 47-million year old primate fossil (Ardi is 4.4 million years old) that has scientists debating whether or not her remains are proof of an even earlier precursor of humans.

Climategate. The University of East Anglia computer systems are hacked, leaking thousands of private (and pretty incriminating) emails and files from prominent climate scientists. The emails seem to show that climate scientists, such as Phil Jones, were purposely keeping research papers whose conclusions argued against the connection between global warming and human activity out of an important climate panel report. Oops!

Many don't realize that Alda has a geeky side. Known for his 11 year story arc on M*A*S*H, the actor has always been fascinated with science. He's been lucky enough to entertain that side of his life by serving on the board of the World Science Festival and hosting the now defunct Scientific American Frontiers for 12 years.

While he hasn't starred in any science-based films (yet), Alda did act the part of Nobel Prize-winning physicist Richard Feynman in the play QED in 2001. Explaining his lack of science fiction on his resume, Alda tells io9, "Nothing's been offered to me that looked really interesting." Are you listening, Hollywood?

"I used to read science fiction a lot and I still like it if it's a model of how we really are, so we can see ourselves from another perspective," Alda continues. "The thing is that I read so much science, much more than I do fiction, because to me, science in itself is a great detective story that's happening in front of us. I don't get as involved with science fiction, except as it tries to help me understand who we are, because the greatest frontier in science is to understand humanity itself."

In a quest to learn more about that very subject, Alda and the folks at PBS take a look at what makes us human in a three-part series premiering on January 6th. The Human Spark, a three-part miniseries, sends Alda to three continents as he talks with archaeologists and scientists about our evolution and how we differ from Neandrathals, apes, and other animals.

"We often start off with these great divides," Alda explains. "We say, we're the only ones that cry. We're the only ones that laugh. We're the only ones that build skyscrapers. And little by little, as we've explored this, I've begun to see some of these lines blur and disappear in certain cases. What my interviews with scientists, being out in the field with these animals, and taking part in these experiments has done, is I've personally started to feel more connected to these other animals and see some of the roots of my behavior."

Alda went so far as to have his brain scanned at MIT's McGovern Institute, but it wasn't the first time he's done so. Turns out the producers at Scientific American Frontiers have made Alda get his head examined a few times already. While the brain scans in this instance were done to show what areas scientists think are uniquely human, technicians at MIT noted that they wouldn't have been able to guess Alda's age based on his brain scans — his noggin looks a few years younger! "I've carried that along with me for a while now," Alda laughs. "It cheers me up."

Alda's big question, which has yet to be answered involves our future as a species. "Scientists have told me that the average lifespan of a species is about two million years. We've only been here a fraction of that so far. Do we have a chance of having an average existence on earth? Can you picture us here a million years from now. What would we be like? What destruction will we be capable of? I hope we learn more about ourselves and that this series makes its own small contribution to that."

The Human Spark premieres on January 6th on PBS. Check local listings for times.

Researchers at Imperial College London are working to create an alcohol-like drug that would let imbibers experience a pleasant state of inebriation without worrying about becoming drunk, hungover, or physically addicted to the substance. Led by controversial neuropsychopharmacologist David Nutt, the team is looking at benzodiazepines — such as the main ingredient in Valium — to achieve the desired effect. Nutt envisions a world where drinking is safer, with fewer of the accidents and incidents currently related to alcohol.

The advantages of benzodiazepines, according to Nutt, is that they don't affect the brain's addiction centers in the way alcohol does and that they can be easily purged from the body with an antidote. Effectively, if Nutt's research pans out, he claims that drinkers would be able to "switch off" the effects of the faux alcohol by ingesting a pill.

Nutt and his fellow researchers are currently trying to find the benzodiazepine that most closely mimics the effects of alcohol. However, he is concerned that — even if he is successful — European governments will refuse to permit the sale of benzodiazeprine "alcohol," since benzos don't enjoy the same privileged history that alcohol does.

Alcohol substitute that avoids drunkenness and hangovers in development [Telegraph via reddit]

The Independent reports that researchers from Cambridge University in the UK observed locusts climbing ladder-like structures to investigate whether or not they used vision to guide them. The fact that they did means that they're displaying a level of visual brain processing previously believed to be too great for insects, according to the study's Dr. Jeremy Niven:

The visual control of limb placement in the locusts suggests that this can be achieved by much smaller-brained insects. It's another example of insects performing a behavior we previously thought was restricted to relatively big-brained animals with sophisticated motor control, such as humans, monkeys or octopuses.

Next, Cambridge scientists plan on setting up a chess match between an octopus and a locust to decide which is more intelligent.

Look out! A great step for locust-kind [Independent.co.uk]

Earlier this week, we told you about the vampiric ways of blue stragglers. Now Nature has published two papers on blue stragglers, which together prove that these bizarre stars are the result of interstellar violence and colonization.

According to Nature:

Blue straggler stars - hotter and more massive than would be expected for their apparent age - are found in stellar clusters, where all the stars are thought to have formed at the same time. Massive stars exhaust their nuclear fuel more quickly than their low-mass counterparts; it is therefore remarkable that the stragglers have not yet evolved into red giants, or the cooling stellar remnants known as white dwarfs. A likely explanation is that blue stragglers originate from normal stars that have undergone a recent increase in mass - either through stellar collision and merger, or by mass transfer between binary companions.

Now it seems that both mechanisms are at work. Francesco Ferraro and colleagues report the existence of two distinct populations of blue stragglers in the globular cluster M30, one redder than the other. They present evidence that the redder stars formed from mass transfer within binaries, whereas the bluer stars formed from stellar collisions. Meanwhile, Robert Mathieu and Aaron Geller studied blue stragglers in another cluster in our Galaxy, the open cluster NGC 188. They report that 76% of the blue stragglers in the cluster are in binary systems - a frequency three times that found among the normal stars. From this observation, and some unusual features of the binary orbits, the authors conclude that most or all of the blue stragglers in NGC 188 formed from multiple-star systems, and that both mass transfer and stellar collisions were involved.

via Nature (first article and second article)

The reason is complex. Increased atmospheric carbon dioxide also means increased absorption of carbon in the Earth's oceans. And this increase, in turn, means more acidic sea water. More acidic oceans mean less absorption of sound at low frequencies.

And less sound absorption means louder noises over longer distances. In a paper published in Nature Geoscience, scientists predict that, within 100 years, absorption of sounds at around 200 Hz will go down by 70%, meaning sound could travel much farther.

The effects of less absorption and more noise at this frequency could be huge. For instance, scientists and commercial shipping vessels use these lower range frequencies for navigation and oceanic research. Also, marine mammals, such as whales, use these low frequencies for finding food and mates. Noisier oceans might cripple ocean navigation and interfere with whale life.

Unfortunately, the acidification of the ocean won't end when we stop polluting. In fact, the acidic shallow waters will propagate into the deeper ocean, where sound travels farthest, and possibly spread this noisy effect much farther than expected.

Recently, scientists found that blue whale songs are changing, drifting lower in pitch. Their research hinted at the deep complexity of marine life and the in-progress nature of this kind of science. This new marine acoustics research puts an additional wrinkle in the world of underwater communication, making the story more complex and even more interesting.

Man-made carbon dioxide affects ocean acoustics [EurekAlert]

According to Nature, this is the "first true three-dimensional representations of the Mandelbrot set." It was created by computer programmer Daniel White from Bedford, UK. See more of his work, and get a full explanation of the Mandelbulb, on his site.

via Nature

The cells themselves, created at Sandia National Laboratories, are built using microelectronic and microelectromechanical processes, the same ones used for many of the smallest (and coolest) new microscopic machines.

As with any new and exciting technology, applications seem limitless. The current generation of photovoltaic cells are wafers around 6 square inches. In contrast, these tiny cells could be mounted on flexible substrates, such as on fabric or oddly shaped surfaces.

As an added bonus, the mass-produced micro-cells will also eventually be cheaper to make and install than current solar power cells. This could finally pave the way for buildings that pay their own energy costs with solar power. Or it could mean charging your iPod on the go from a solar-power-collecting shirt.

Glitter-sized solar photovoltaics produce competitive results [PhysOrg]

According to a new study from the National University of Singapore, orb-weaver spiders will often include decorative touches in their webs. But these touches aren't an aesthetic choice; the web ornaments serve to attract unwitting smaller insects into the web.

The ornaments include the usual creepy spidery flare: the remnants of previous victims and old egg sacks. But these spider decorators also include woven baubles, twigs, and even brightly colored flower pieces. The festive detritus attracts the eyes of possible victims, much like the glittering displays in department store windows do for us.

The spiders that do decorate show a pretty huge increase in traffic: well-decorated spider webs show a more than 200% increase in ensnared victims.

Spiders Decorate Webs with Ornaments [Discovery News]

The Boston Globe's Christopher Shea has a terrific discussion of the study on the Brainiac blog:

Giuliano and Spilimbergo made use of the General Social Survey, which has recorded political attitudes among the American public since 1972. The specific questions Giuliano and Spilimbergo explored were whether living through a recession in one's "impressionable years"—defined as 18 to 25—influenced Americans' views on the merits of economic redistribution; on whether financial success resulted largely from hard work or from luck; and on faith in public institutions. Attitudes were analyzed by region, to account for geographical discrepancies in American economic performance. And, because so many people have lived through at least one year of a recession, the study focused on the worst recessions: those in which GDP growth was -3.8 percent for at least one year.

In each case, a recession during one's impressionable years had a significant effect on political and economic attitudes. People with such an experience were more committed to redistribution, more inclined to attribute success to luck, and less likely to trust public institutions. In each case, having been through a severe recession accounted for 4 percent of the variation in attitudes. For the sake of comparison, in the case of income redistribution, that's about one-third of the effect of possessing a high school education—as opposed to a B.A. or B.S, the authors said. (People with college degrees are less amenable to income redistribution.)

Shea points out that if this study turns out to be correct, we can expect the generation coming of age in the next 10 years may have a more "European" attitude toward inequality.

What's heartening about this study is that it shows people who have suffered through hard times often come out wanting to help other people. Hence their commitment to "redistribution," whether through social spending, universal health care, or other programs aimed at redistributing wealth. Unfortunately, a side-effect of recession experiences is that people stop believing in the very public institutions that might - if reformed - be able to help with this redistribution.

via Boston Globe's Brainiac

In the last ten years, researchers have discovered thousands of species, both living and extinct. We got dino-eating crocodiles and killer kangaroos; a fish with a transparent head and a demon duck of doom; a bright pink millipede and giant spiders. And previously named species, such as the tongue-eating isopod and the alien-limbed Magnapinna, made headlines.

A few of these species were observed before 2000, but were only named or recognized as species in the last ten years. And each has some wonderfully monstrous quality, be it their incredible size, arsenal of offensive or defensive weapons, or knack for survival.

A Big Cat With Bite: The Bornean Clouded Leopard, which was found to be a new species in 2007 (though it had been observed long before), may not look like much at first. It may weigh in at a mere 55 pounds, putting it on the small side for a big cat, but it has the largest teeth of any known cat alive. It has even been described as the modern answer to the Sabertooth Tiger.
The Largest Snake to Slither the Earth: If South America's giant Anacondas make you quiver, be grateful that Titanoboa cerrejonensis has been dead for two million years. This prehistoric constrictor grew up to 50 feet in length and weighed in at a whopping 2500, the largest snake ever found. And its favorite food? Crocodiles. I can only imagine the digestive system on that thing.

Incidentally, this decade also saw the discovery of the smallest known snake, the Barbados Threadsnake.

Fanged Frogs: 2009 was a big year for frogs with teeth. Fanged frogs turned up in the Mount Bosavi crater in Papua New Guinea, where strange and wondrous new species are being discovered all the time. But even more monstrous are the Limnonectes megastomias, recently discovered in Thailand. This amphibian has been known to use its fangs in deadly combat, dismembering its froggy opponents. On top of that, when a bird swoops near, L. megastomias will snap and turn it into a tasty feast.

Sea Monsters of the Ancient Deep: Paleontologists digging in the Arctic Svalbard islands uncovered what they believe to be a new species of pliosaur, one with a skull twice as large as a Tyrannosaurus rex's. Its teeth were 12 inches long (with a bite four times as strong as T. Rex's), and is 15-meter-long body weighed an estimated 45 tons. That would make this Jurassic beast considerably larger than any pliosaur previously discovered.

Beware the Box: Giant jellyfish are a sight to behold, but it's the diminutive Malo kingi that you'll really want to avoid. The jelly gets its name, tragically, from its first known victim, Robert King, an American tourist swimming off the Queensland coast in 2002. Some researchers believe kingi venom is among the most toxic in the world.

A Rat as Big as a Cow: They just don't make rodents like they used to. Josephoartigasia monesi weighed around a ton — dwarfing the modern capybara — and had enormous incisors that rival a beaver's wood shredding teeth. Those incisors came in hand when fending off predatory birds and Sabertooth Tigers, though this largest of the rodents snacked on fruits and vegetables.

Mammal-Eating Plants: Pitcher plants are nothing new, but these large, rat-eating veggies added a few species in the last ten years. Naturalist David Attenborough was immortalized in Nepenthes attenboroughii, a new species found in the Philippines. Rodents are attracted to the liquid in the pitchers, then drown when they tumble inside.

A Bug Bigger Than You: In 2007, diggers found giant spiked claw belonging to Jaekelopterus rhenaniae in Prum, Germany. This sea scorpion, which lived 390 million years ago, was an estimated 8.2 meters long and ate anything it could get its claws on — including other scorpions.

Extreme Living, in Your Hairspray: Extremophiles can exist in environments that would kill lesser species — in extreme heat or cold, inside nuclear reactors, or in the void of space. Microbacterium hatanonis, discovered in 2008, chooses an odd environment as its home: in hairspray. It's not clear how the bacterium affects humans, but the discovery adds more information on where and how they can survive.

Bomber Worms: This year, a researcher at Scripps Institute of Oceanography discovered seven new species of sea worms that secrete small globs of fluid that act as biological flash bombs. These bombs glow, distracting predators while the worm slips away. It's only a shame that their defensive bombs can't be weaponized for bonus monster action.

Messier 30 is an unusual cluster. It's an ancient cluster, and yet it is filled with blue stars, stars that tend to age and die more quickly than other types of stars. Astronomers have termed these unusually old blue stars "blue stragglers," and they believe that there are two reasons these stars still exist.

Some of the blue stragglers in Messier 30 are vampires; when they get near a more massive star, they are able to siphon off hydrogen from that star, effectively lengthening its life. But more recent studies have found that some of the stars are the results of high-powered collisions. When two older stars collide head-on, it restokes their nuclear fusion, resulting in larger, seemingly younger blue stars than before.

Vampires and collisions rejuvenate stars [Hubble Information Centre via Bad Astronomy]

Ducks are known for their bizarre penises, stretching up to 20cm in size in an anti-clockwise spiral. That's an impressive organ for a bird often only 60cm long. The females, on the other hand, have vaginas that spiral clockwise, opposite to their menfolk. Ducks also engage in what is politely termed "forced copulation", where the male ducks attempt non-consensual sex with the female, and explosively extend their penises with a technique that takes less than half a second.

Eversion in air: from blogs.discovermagazine.com/loom from Carl Zimmer on Vimeo.

This forceful mating is something the females try to avoid. Luckily, evolution is on their side. Female ducks have evolved vaginas that spiral clockwise, and contain sharp turns, which scientists believe were used to prevent insemination by unwanted suitors. This theory has finally been tested by enterprising researchers at Yale, with too much time and glassware on their hands. With sets of cylindrical glass tubes shaped into clockwise or anti-clockwise spirals, they tested how easily the penis advanced through various vaginal configurations. The clockwise vaginas managed to stop the intruding organ, protecting the female duck form unwanted advances.

In fact, the majority of forced copulations don't result in fertilization, and it appears the two sexes are involved in an arms race over their genitalia, with males evolving new attacks and the females defences. The twisted vaginas can completely stop the penis from its explosive exertion, preventing unwanted genes from being passed on. This helps stop undesired advances, and lets females retain control over who will reproduce successfully with them.

It may not be a vagina dentata, but it's a close approximation.

[via Yale]

Researchers at A*STAR in Singapore and the United States used a method called "gene transfection" to develop brain-tumor cells that expressed a firefly gene, so they would emit light. They looked for the cells that were the most mobile within a three-dimensional matrix, and it turned out "the most invasive cells express a gene that makes them mobile." That same gene has been associated with reduced survival in cancer patients.

Then the researchers injected these tumor cells into zebrafish embryos, which have a fast development cycle. A few days later, they were able to watch the bioluminescent tumor cells moving around the zebrafish bodies, invading other organs.

Adds A*STAR:

This new bioluminescence screening platform represents a unique real-time method for observing small numbers of cancer cells in a live animal. It is cheaper, easier and far more sensitive than existing imaging methods such as positron emission or computed tomography scanning, or magnetic resonance or fluorescent imaging. Furthermore, the discovery of a genetic subset of highly invasive GBM cells could help greatly in the development of drugs that target tumor-initiating cells.

Bioluminescence image from Scientific American. A*STAR via NanoWerk.

Primatologist Jill Pruetz from Iowa State University in Ames was studying chimps in Senegal, on the savannahs. It was summer, during brushfire season, and she noticed that the chimps showed no fear of the wildfires at all. In fact, they moved to avoid it easily, predicting where to stand next to avoid the 10-foot flames. She speculates that these chimps were demonstrating a key insight that could lead to controlling fire: "An understanding of the behavior of fire under various conditions that enables one to predict its movement, permitting activity in close proximity to it."

Pruetz told LiveScience:

I was surprised at how expert they were at handling the fire. The fire was burning really hot, and the flames were at least 10 feet high, up to 20 feet at times.

She added that the chimps could predict the fire's next moves better than she could:

I could predict it, sort of, but if it were just me, I would have left. At one time, I actually had to push through them because I could feel the heat from the fire that was on the side of me and I just wasn't that comfortable with it.

The primatologist believes that chimps would have to develop two other key ideas before lighting any fires, however: "The ability to control fire by containing it, providing or depriving it of fuel and perhaps extinguishing it. [And] the capability to start a fire." Once chimps master the next two steps, it's just a slippery slope down to Charlton Heston shaking his fist in Planet of the Apes.

via LiveScience

Photo via AFP

Nobody is really sure what created Gould's Belt, but many researchers speculate that there was some kind of giant supernova or possibly rogue dark matter that sent out such massive bursts of energy that it created "ripples" spreading outward from the event. The Belt would be the result of those ripples. Here's a map showing some of the Belt's major features.

The image above is the first clear view of one of these features. According to ESA:

Some 700 newly-forming stars are estimated to be crowded into these colourful filaments of dust. The complex is part of a mysterious ring of stars called Gould's Belt.

This image shows a dark cloud 1000 light-years away in the constellation Aquila, the Eagle. It covers an area 65 light-years across and is so shrouded in dust that no previous infrared satellite has been able to see into it. Now, thanks to Herschel's superior sensitivity at the longest wavelengths of infrared, astronomers have their first picture of the interior of this cloud . . .

This cloud is part of Gould's Belt, a giant ring of stars that circles the night sky – the Solar System just happens to lie near the centre of the belt. For more than a hundred years, astronomers have puzzled over the origin of this ring, which is tilted to the Milky Way by 20º. The first to notice this unexpected alignment, in the mid-19th century, was England's John Herschel, the son of William, after whom ESA's Herschel telescope is named. But it was Boston-born Benjamin Gould who brought the ring to wider attention in 1874.

Gould's Belt supplies bright stars to many constellations such as Orion, Scorpius and Crux, and conveniently provides nearby star-forming locations for astronomers to study.

Below, you can see an image of what Gould's Belt would look like from above the Milky Way galactic plane. Our solar system sits right in the middle of that white ring, which represents the Belt.

via ESA Portal and Orbiting Frog

BibliOdyssey has even more of these Victorian infographics, including the Victorian view of the history of the world. Check out higher resolution versions of these infographics at BibliOdyssey's Flickr account.

[via Metafilter]

Tableau d'Astronomie et de Sphère
Tableau d'Astronomie et de Sphère [detail]
Tableau d'Histoire Naturelle: Annelides, Crustaces, Arachnides, etc.
Chart of the World Exhibiting Its Chief Physical Features. Currents of the Ocean &c. Ethnographic Chart of the World Shewing (sic) the Distribution and Varieties of the Human Race
Geological Map Of The State Of Pennsylvania
Humboldt's Distribution of Plants in Equinoctial America
Tinted drawing showing the comparative lengths of rivers and heights of mountains worldwide. The first text page in this volume has the legend for this sheet.