Science Friday
A few notable nuggets from this week:
--A paper published online at Science (abstract is available free with registration) that's receiving wide attention this morning suggests that the activities of sport fisherman may be as harmful to marine fish populations as those of the usual bête noire, the commercial fishing industry. Examining both commercial and recreational fisheries over the past 22 years, the paper's authors found that, while sport fishermen land only around 4% of the total U.S. marine fish catch, they account for around 23% of total nationwide landings of "populations of concern" -- at-risk fish such as red drum, bocaccio, and red snapper -- and for a whopping 38% to 64% of the catch of these populations in specific areas such as the South Atlantic and Gulf of Mexico. You can read more at ScienceNOW (subscription required), New Scientist, and News@Nature.
--PLOS Biology published a study this week that adds a new wrinkle (and a vaguely Frankensteinian one) to the controversy over performance-enhancing drugs and athletic doping: The researchers have used genetic manipulation to create a strain of super-athletes. But don't worry (at least for the moment); we're talking about super-athletic mice here. By tweaking the genetic code of the mice to express a more active form of the skeletal-muscle protein PPARδ, they created a race of athletes that were able to run 67% longer and 92% farther than controls before tiring out. Coincidentally, GlaxoSmithKline is now working on a drug that activates PPARδ directly rather than through genetic means; Ronald Evans, the senior author of the study, told New Scientist that "The potential for this to be abused by athletes is real."
--The European Southern Observatory is reporting the discovery of the smallest planet yet discovered outside of our solar system -- "only" fourteen Earth masses in size. That's only around 40% of the mass of the lightest previously discovered extrasolar planet, and puts it on a par with Uranus, the smallest of our solar system's gas giants. However, the specifics of this new planet's distance and orbit around its own host star, μ Arae, suggest that it could be made mainly of rock, not gas -- making it not a "sub-Jupiter," but a "super Earth."
--Finally, if you haven't already seen it, take a look at the New York Times article on the possibility of ginning up some robotic repair missions to save the Hubble Space Telescope.
All I have time for right now, I'm afraid. But interesting, no?
--A paper published online at Science (abstract is available free with registration) that's receiving wide attention this morning suggests that the activities of sport fisherman may be as harmful to marine fish populations as those of the usual bête noire, the commercial fishing industry. Examining both commercial and recreational fisheries over the past 22 years, the paper's authors found that, while sport fishermen land only around 4% of the total U.S. marine fish catch, they account for around 23% of total nationwide landings of "populations of concern" -- at-risk fish such as red drum, bocaccio, and red snapper -- and for a whopping 38% to 64% of the catch of these populations in specific areas such as the South Atlantic and Gulf of Mexico. You can read more at ScienceNOW (subscription required), New Scientist, and News@Nature.
--PLOS Biology published a study this week that adds a new wrinkle (and a vaguely Frankensteinian one) to the controversy over performance-enhancing drugs and athletic doping: The researchers have used genetic manipulation to create a strain of super-athletes. But don't worry (at least for the moment); we're talking about super-athletic mice here. By tweaking the genetic code of the mice to express a more active form of the skeletal-muscle protein PPARδ, they created a race of athletes that were able to run 67% longer and 92% farther than controls before tiring out. Coincidentally, GlaxoSmithKline is now working on a drug that activates PPARδ directly rather than through genetic means; Ronald Evans, the senior author of the study, told New Scientist that "The potential for this to be abused by athletes is real."
--The European Southern Observatory is reporting the discovery of the smallest planet yet discovered outside of our solar system -- "only" fourteen Earth masses in size. That's only around 40% of the mass of the lightest previously discovered extrasolar planet, and puts it on a par with Uranus, the smallest of our solar system's gas giants. However, the specifics of this new planet's distance and orbit around its own host star, μ Arae, suggest that it could be made mainly of rock, not gas -- making it not a "sub-Jupiter," but a "super Earth."
--Finally, if you haven't already seen it, take a look at the New York Times article on the possibility of ginning up some robotic repair missions to save the Hubble Space Telescope.
All I have time for right now, I'm afraid. But interesting, no?
posted by ahab at 6:58 AM
1 Comments:
Sure. Now we just need to get Monica to let you point at this blog from the Sciencemag site.
Post a Comment
<< Home