Bicycle production increased 3.2 percent in 2007, bringing the number of new bicycles manufactured to 130 million annually, according to Worldwatch Institute estimates published in the latest Vital Signs Update. Two-thirds of this production continues to take place in China, which has long been an industry leader.

More and more cities are announcing plans to launch or expand bike-sharing schemes as part of a growing effort to reduce city congestion and extend public transportation options without huge infrastructure investments. Earlier this year, Paris rolled out 20,000 bikes at more than 1,450 rental stations throughout the city—four times as many stations as subway stops. Other cities have shown similar initiative, including Copenhagen, Berlin, and, more recently, Rome and Washington, D.C.

“Spreading bicycle use goes hand in hand with sustainable transportation,” said Gary Gardner, a senior researcher for the Worldwatch Institute and the author of the Update. “It’s good for people’s health and is a low-cost way to reduce pollution.”

Many of the places with the highest cycling rates have emphasized policies that give priority to cycling, walking, and public transportation over private automobiles. These same policies have all made cycling safe, fast, and convenient.

“With the right leadership from policymakers worldwide, bicycle use could take off and become part of the solution to climate change,” added Gardner.

"All human beings are born free and equal in dignity and rights. They are endowed with reason and conscience and should act towards one another in a sprit of brotherhood", states Article 1 of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights (UDHR).

60 years after its adoption by the United Nations General Assembly at the Palais de Chaillot in Paris on 10 December 1948, the Declaration is ready to take a journey into space: destination the International Space Station, and more specifically, ESA's Columbus laboratory.

On Friday 7 November at the Quai d'Orsay, the French Foreign Ministry, Ms Rama Yade, state secretary responsible for foreign affairs and human rights within the French government, will officially hand over a copy of the Declaration to ESA's Director General, Jean-Jacques Dordain.

The Declaration, properly protected in space-proof packaging, is tentatively scheduled, if all goes according to plan, to reach the International Space Station following lift-off on board the Space Shuttle from the Kennedy Space Center on 14 November. It will be stored on a permanent basis inside ESA's Columbus multidisciplinary space laboratory.

"The ESA Astronaut Corps welcomes this humanitarian initiative. In recognition of the fact that human beings are at times downtrodden, the Declaration can symbolically find its place 'above' all the peoples of the world", says ESA astronaut Léopold Eyharts, who earlier took part in the launch, docking and start of operations of the Columbus laboratory during his two-month stay at the ISS in spring of this year.

The International Space Station hosts a crew of three international astronauts (soon to be six) on a permanent basis living and working in space in the interests of research and for the benefit of humanity as a whole. Together with the USA, Russia, Canada and Japan, Europe is a contributing partner in this international endeavour.

An alarming new study to be published in November in the Annual Review of Environment and Resources finds that one-third of the world’s marine fish catches are ground up and fed to farm-raised fish, pigs, and poultry, squandering a precious food resource for humans and disregarding the serious overfishing crisis in our oceans.

Lead author Dr. Jacqueline Alder, senior author Dr. Daniel Pauly, and colleagues urge that other foods be used to feed farmed animals so that these “forage fish” can be brought to market for larger-scale human consumption. “Forage fish” include anchovies, sardines, menhaden, and other small- to medium-sized fish species which are the primary food for ocean-dwelling marine mammals, seabirds (especially puffins and gulls) and several large fishes.

Currently, catches of forage fish are predominantly used in animal feed, but these species are highly nutritious and well-suited for direct human consumption.

“We need to stop using so many small ocean fish to feed farmed fish and other animals,” Alder said. “These small, tasty fish could instead feed people. Society should demand that we stop wasting these fish on farmed fish, pigs, and poultry.” Although feeds derived from soy and other land-based crops are available and are used, fishmeal and fish oil have skyrocketed in popularity because forage fish are easy to catch in large numbers, and hence, relatively inexpensive.

Entitled “Forage Fish: From Ecosystems to Markets,” the study is a product of the nine-year Sea Around Us Project, a partnership between the University of British Columbia in Vancouver and The Pew Charitable Trusts.

“It defies reason to drain the ocean of small, wild fishes that could be directly consumed by people in order to produce a lesser quantity of farmed fish,” said Dr. Ellen K. Pikitch, executive director of the Institute for Ocean Conservation Science and a Professor at Stony Brook University’s School of Marine and Atmospheric Sciences. “Skyrocketing pressure on small wild fishes may be putting entire marine food webs at great risk.”

Forage fish account for a staggering 37 percent (31.5 million tonnes) of all fish taken from the world’s oceans each year, and 90 percent of that catch is processed into fishmeal and fish oil. In 2002, 46 percent of fishmeal and fish oil was used as feed for aquaculture (fish-farming), 24 percent for pig feed, and 22 percent for poultry feed. Pigs and poultry around the world consume more than double the seafood eaten by Japanese consumers and six times the amount consumed by the U.S. market.

Despite this large-scale extraction, few management plans have been created to guide the sustainable removal of these fish, and little is known about the role of forage fish in the marine ecosystem and how fishing impacts them. The most intensive commercial use of these fish is for farmed-animal feed, but there is also a growing demand for human fish oil supplements. In some areas of the world, especially developing countries, almost all of the small fish used as farm feed are, or once were, eaten by people. These include the Peruvian and European anchovy, capelin, Japanese pilchard, round sardinella, and European anchovy. “The use of forage fish for animal husbandry competes directly with human consumption in some areas of the world,” the authors write. Excessive removal of forage fish could also hurt populations of seabirds and marine mammals that rely upon them as food.

“We must find a better way to manage forage fisheries before we cause irreversible damage to the broader ocean environment which depends on them as a food source,” said Joshua Reichert, managing director of the Pew Environment Group. “Human beings are not the only, or necessarily, the most important consumer of these fish. Whatever people take out of the sea needs to be carefully calibrated to ensure that sufficient fish are left to sustain populations of other fish, seabirds and marine mammals which all play a major role in the healthy functioning of the world's oceans.”

This fall the Institute for Ocean Conservation Science at Stony Brook University will launch the Lenfest Forage Fish Task Force, a team of preeminent scientists and policy experts from around the world that will address this escalating environmental dilemma. The Task Force will be chaired by Dr. Pikitch and funded by the Lenfest Ocean Program. Task force members will by 2010 develop scientific approaches to sustainably manage forage fisheries using “ecosystem-based fisheries management,” which emphasizes the interconnectedness of species and habitats and breaks from traditional species-by-species management.

For decades, scientists and resource managers have known that wildfires affect forest soils, evidenced, in part, by the erosion that often occurs after a fire kills vegetation and disrupts soil structure. But, the lack of detailed knowledge of forest soils before they are burned by wildfire has hampered efforts to understand fire’s effects on soil fertility and forest ecology.

A new study led by the Pacific Northwest (PNW) Research Station addresses
this critical information gap and represents the first direct evidence of
the toll wildfire can take on forest soil layers. It draws on data from the
2002 Biscuit Fire, which scorched some 500,000 acres in southwest Oregon,
including half of a pre-existing study’s experimental plots, which had been
studied extensively before the fire. The result was a serendipitous and
unprecedented opportunity to directly examine how wildfire changes soil by
sampling soils before and after a wildfire. The study appears in the
November issue of the Canadian Journal of Forest Research.

“Losing our experiment in the fire was hard, but the opportunity to better
understand fire as a dominant ecosystem process has been very exciting,”
said Bernard Bormann, a research forest ecologist with PNW Research Station
and the study’s lead investigator. “This study, covering over 300 acres,
provided nearly 400 soil sampling points as well as extensive tree and
understory plots to use in our analysis.”

Bormann—along with study co-author and Western Washington University
professor Peter Homann and colleagues from the PNW Research Station and
Oregon State University— conducted chemical analyses on soil samples
collected before and after the fire. They found that the combustion of the
organic layer at the soil’s surface, including woody debris, caused
intense, 1,300 °F-plus temperatures, which, in turn, displaced considerable
amounts of carbon and nitrogen from the underlying mineral soil layer and
left mostly ash behind. What was more surprising to the researchers was how
these organic materials may have been lost. Some carbon and nitrogen were
lost as gases—consisting mostly of carbon dioxide, nitrogen dioxide, and
water vapor—and some in an inch of fine mineral-soil particles, which
disappeared and left behind a crust of rocks.

“Altogether, we documented losses of more than 10 tons per acre of carbon
and between 450 to 620 pounds per acre of nitrogen,” Bormann said. “The
loss of topsoil and combustion of organic materials together led to losses
that are higher than most previous estimates.”

The loss of topsoil and carbon from soil can negatively affect a range of
processes, Bormann said, including nutrient retention and water
infiltration. In the absence of special nitrogen-fixing plants, which are
capable of converting atmospheric nitrogen into nitrogen compounds for
growth, losses of nitrogen in the order of what he and his colleagues
documented would require at least a century to be reversed.

Equally disconcerting is the role these released organic materials might
have on the atmosphere, especially in the face of a warming climate. The
burning of soil by wildfire may contribute to global warming, in the short
term, by releasing carbon as a greenhouse gas and, in the long term, by
reducing soil productivity through losses of organic matter and nutrients.
With less productive soils, Bormann said, a forest will not grow as quickly
nor reabsorb as much carbon as before a burn—a process critical to
mitigating the accumulation of atmospheric carbon, which traps heat in the
atmosphere and can, thus, raise temperatures.

“Our findings suggest that forest managers should carefully consider the
effects of wildfire on soils when planning to reduce fuels, suppress future
fires, and help trees and habitat recover after fire,” Bormann said.

Indians from the Enawene Nawe tribe in the Brazilian Amazon occupied and shut down the site of a huge hydroelectric dam on Saturday, destroying equipment, in an attempt to save the river that runs through their land.

The Enawene Nawe say the 77 dams to be built on the River Juruena will pollute the water and stop the fish reaching their spawning grounds. Fish is crucial to the Enawene Nawe’s diet as they do not eat red meat. It also plays a vital part in their rituals.

‘If the fish get sick and die so will the Enawene Nawe,’ said one member of the tribe.

Companies led by the world’s largest soya producers, the Maggi family, are pushing for the construction of the dams. Soya baron Blairo Maggi is also the governor of Mato Grosso state.

The Enawene Nawe number only five hundred, and live in one village in large communal houses around a central square. They were first contacted in 1974 by Jesuit missionaries. They chose for many years to have very little interaction with the outside world, but threats to their land have led them to campaign vigorously for their rights.

A new report from the Center for International Forestry Research (CIFOR), the Secretariat of the Convention on Biological Diversity (CDB) and partners warns that an upsurge in hunting bushmeat—including mammals, birds, reptiles and amphibians — in tropical forests is unsustainable and that it poses serious threats to food security for poor inhabitants of forests in Africa, who rely largely on bushmeat for protein.

The authors of the report call on policymakers in the region to develop policies protecting endangered species, while allowing sustainable hunting of "common" game, since there is no clear substitute available if common wild meat sources were to be depleted.

According to the report, large mammal species are particularly vulnerable. Many – such as elephants, gorillas and other primate species - have already become locally extinct, while fast reproducing generalist species that thrive in agricultural environments—such as duikers or rodents—may prove more resilient. The report makes an urgent appeal for a coordinated policy response to the crisis at the local, national and international levels, but warns that blanket bans on hunting and trade that don't discriminate between specific local contexts and species are bound to fail.

Researchers estimate that the current harvest of bushmeat in Central Africa amounts to more than 1 million tonnes annually—the equivalent of almost four million head of cattle. Bushmeat provides up to 80 percent of the protein and fat needed in rural diets in Central Africa, according to the report.

"If current levels of hunting persist in Central Africa, bush meat protein supplies will fall dramatically, and a significant number of forest mammals will become extinct in less than 50 years," said Robert Nasi of CIFOR, an author of the report.

The report, "Conservation and Use of Wildlife-Based Resources: The Bushmeat Crisis," was published by CBD and CIFOR, one of 15 centers supported by the Consultative Group on International Agricultural Research (CGIAR). It also includes major contributions from the Overseas Development Institute (ODI) and the Wildlife Conservation Society (WCS).

The report sums up the latest state of knowledge on this controversial issue and makes a strong case for developing a regulated and legalized bushmeat industry to ensure that the poorest forest-dwellers can continue to access this vital source of protein and livelihoods, but in a more sustainable way.

Local, national and regional trade in bushmeat has become a significant part of the informal sector's "hidden economy." Overall, international trade in wild animal products has an estimated value of US$3.9 billion. For West and Central Africa alone, the estimates range from $42 to $205 million a year. Yet, these statistics are still largely ignored in official trade and national policies regulating forest policy.

The report notes that it is important to make a clear distinction between commercial entrepreneurs, who engage in what they know to be an illicit activity, and poor rural people, for whom bushmeat represents both animal protein and a cash-earning commodity.

"If local people are guaranteed the benefits of sustainable land use and hunting practices, they will be willing to invest in sound management and negotiate selective hunting regimes," said Frances Seymour, Director General of CIFOR. "Sustainable management of bushmeat resources requires bringing the sector out into the open, removing the stigma of illegality, and including wild meat consumption in national statistics and planning."

"Reframing the bushmeat problem from one of international animal welfare to one of sustainable livelihoods—and part of the global food crisis—might be a good place to start," she added.

Wildlife is also adversely affected by the industrial extractive sector - logging, mining and oil drilling, for example – as these activities directly facilitate hunting through road construction and/or the provision of transportation for hunters. Salaried employees and their extended families that live in company camps or near the timber concessions are a major source of local demand for – and supply of – bushmeat.

European consumers are also partly responsible. Apart from the direct demand for bushmeat products from expat communities, European demand for African timber exports helps to drive this local timber extraction – both legal and illegal.

The report recommends that the local and international timber industry work with NGOs, local communities, and governments to develop forest policies and management plans that incorporate wildlife concerns, rather than focusing just on timber and other forms of natural resource extraction. Such plans should include conservation education, an agreed system of law enforcement, development of alternative protein supplies and an intensive monitoring program. If designed and applied appropriately, this will not only serve to enhance wildlife conservation, but will ultimately benefit the private sector and local communities as well.

According to the authors, the so-called bushmeat crisis is the focus of many conservation organizations, whose advocacy for a "crackdown" on the trade has fostered confusion and misunderstanding about the links between hunting, wildlife trade, livelihoods, and ecosystems.

Most people in tropical forests hunt, the report notes, and meat sales within the local village can be significant—including up to 90 percent of the catch sold in the Democratic Republic of Congo. Such figures counter the conventional wisdom of many conservation groups that suggests banning all commercial sales of bushmeat will deliver a win-win solution for both conservation and the poor.

The report advocates a more secure rights regime as the key to any solution. "Only if the local hunter is bestowed with some right to decide what, where and how he may hunt—as well as the knowledge to understand the consequences of his decisions—will he embrace his responsibility to hunt sustainably," Nasi said.

The report emphasizes that it is of critical importance to craft a specific, tailored approach for different cases and species, while also recommending that policymakers look to other renewable resource sectors, such as fishing and logging, for clues on how to develop a sustainable management strategy for bushmeat.

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Over 1,000 Congolese army troops and their families – a total of 6,000 people – have left Virunga National Park and moved outside the protected area in an effort to reduce human presence in the area and preserve the flora and fauna of Africa's oldest national park, also a World Heritage Site.

The decision to re-deploy the army troops – about 10% of the total number in North Kivu - came after intense negotiations between Virunga National Park Director Emmanuel de Merode and General Vainqueur Mayala, the army's commanding officer for the conflict-ridden province.

“De-militarizing Virunga National Park remains our greatest and most difficult challenge. The Congolese National Army has taken the first step, which represents a major breakthrough at a time when the threats to the park have never been greater,” said de Merode.

“The occupation of Rwindi park station was strategic,” said Colonel David Kitenge of the 8th Military Region. “We had to have a strong presence at Rwindi and other nearby stations to safeguard the main road north of Goma, and to prevent attack by the FDLR and the Mai Mai rebels. Today we wish to support the Congolese Wildlife Authority in their efforts. Human populations, of all kind, are detrimental to environmental conservation.”

The Congolese army – also known as FARDC - has approximately 10,000 troops in North Kivu that are stationed throughout the province. Rwindi, a main park station in the center of Virunga some 130km north of Goma, had been the army’s headquarters in the area since December 2007, when violence in the region escalated. This deployment operation, that does not affect the occupation of the Gorilla Sector by rebels loyal to dissident General Laurent Nkunda, also included the removal of over 200 troops in Vitshumbi, on the southern shores of Lake Edward .

The entire operation took 3 days and required additional trucks and funds for fuel. The total cost of $10,000 was covered by World Wildlife Fund, at the request of the Congolese Wildlife Authority (ICCN). WWF is one of the conservation groups operating in Virunga to support ICCN.

Virunga National Park , which borders on Uganda and Rwanda and covers 8,000km2, is often used as a hideout and an operating base by armed groups, including the FDLR and the Mai Mai.

Portland, OR– Medical students who attend racially and ethnically diverse medical schools say they are more prepared to care for patients in a diverse society, a new study in the current issue of the Journal of the American Medical Association finds. The study is the first of its kind to examine the link between medical school diversity and educational benefits.

Dr. Somnath Saha of the Portland VA Medical Center and colleagues examined whether the proportion of minority students within a medical school made a difference in whether students said they felt prepared to care for diverse patient populations; their attitudes about access to health care; and plans to care for patients in areas that are traditionally underserved by the health care system. The researches defined diversity as the proportion of students from different racial and ethnic backgrounds, as well as the degree to which the medical schools promoted interracial interaction. They excluded data from historically black and Puerto Rican medical schools, where minority groups comprise the majority of students.

The survey of more than 20,000 graduating medical students from 118 medical schools found that white students who attend racially diverse medical schools said they felt better prepared than students at less diverse schools to care for racial and ethnic minority patients. They are also more likely to endorse access to adequate health care as a right. However, the researchers found no association between the diversity of a medical school and whether white students intended to provide care in underserved areas.

“Diversity matters when it comes to training the next-generation of medical leaders,” said Saha, an associate professor at the Oregon Health and Science University and a former Robert Wood Johnson Foundation Generalist Physician Faculty Scholar. “Students who train in diverse medical schools are better prepared to meet the needs of our diverse population.”

Many medical schools have policies and programs to achieve racial diversity and increase the numbers of American American, Latino and Native American students, who are underrepresented in the physician workforce. These policies have come under scrutiny in recent years as being unnecessary and discriminatory. However, Saha and colleagues argue that racial and ethnic diversity in medical education are key components of creating a physician workforce that can best meet the needs of a rapidly increasing diverse population, and help end racial disparities in health care. The study lends support to U.S. Supreme Court decisions that racial diversity in the student body is associated with measurable, positive educational benefits, they write.

The study also found that student body diversity is necessary, but not sufficient by itself for all students to realize the educational benefits of diversity. Medical schools must actively promote positive interaction among students from different backgrounds, as well as have a critical mass of minority students, to achieve the full educational benefits of diversity.

Heavy fighting between DR Congo's army and rebels erupted at 3.30am today around the Gorilla Sector in Virunga National Park, according to Emmanuel de Merode, Director of Virunga National Park for the Congolese Wildlife Authority.

Mortar and grenade fire have been exchanged non-stop all day between the army and the rebels, the reverberrations of which can be heard in the park and the Gorilla Sector. De Merode said at present there was no intention to evacuate the Rangers but that if the situation worsened they would leave the park station that is in close proximity to the fighting.

"This latest escalation of the conflict undermines our efforts to resume our work in the Gorilla Sector. It is almost 1 year to the day since this conflict started, but we are as determined as ever to get back in. It is critical that we know the status of the mountain gorillas," said de Merode.

Fighting between rebels, loyal to dissident General Laurent Nkunda, and the army has been ongoing in this area for 1 year , but the situation had calmed in recent months following January peace talks between armed groups in eastern DRC. Rangers however have been unable to patrol the Gorilla Sector for 12 months.

This sector - known as the Mikeno Sector - was attacked repeatedly in 2007 during which 10 mountain gorillas were killed. It was attacked in January 2007, when two Silverbacks were killed. An adult female was executed in June 2007 and in July 2007, 5 were massacred causing an international outcry. In September a dead infant female was found in the hands of alleged traffickers.

Some 1,100 Wildlife Rangers protect the National Parks of Eastern Congo, a region affected by a 10-year civil war and current political instability. These parks are home to mountain gorillas, chimpanzees, forest elephants and rhinos. The Rangers have remained active in protecting these parks, four of which have been classified as World Heritage Sites by UNESCO.

Mountain Gorillas are critically endangered, with only 700 remaining in the world, about 380 in the Virunga Volcanoes Conservation Area (shared by DRC, Rwanda and Uganda ) and 320 in the Bwindi Impenetrable Forest, Uganda. Despite the conflict in the region, their decline had been reversed up until January 2007 thanks to international support and courageous conservationists coupled with the popularity of gorilla-watching tourism. At September 2007 there were 72 habituated Mountain Gorillas in DR Congo.

The Congolese Wildlife Authority (ICCN) and its Rangers work throughout the country to protect the National Parks of Congo and their wildlife from poachers, rebel groups, illegal miners and land invasions. Over 150 Rangers have been killed in the last 10 years protecting the 5 parks of eastern DRC, and Rangers worked throughout the civil war without receiving a salary.

Virunga National Park, Africa ’s oldest national park (established in 1925) and a UNESCO World Heritage Site since 1979, is home to 200 of the world’s mountain gorillas. Formerly known as Albert National Park, Virunga lies in eastern DR Congo and covers 7,800 square kilometers.

Oxygen is constantly leaking out of Earth’s atmosphere and into space. Now, ESA’s formation-flying quartet of satellites, Cluster, has discovered the physical mechanism that is driving the escape. It turns out that the Earth’s own magnetic field is accelerating the oxygen away.

The new work uses data collected by Cluster from 2001 to 2003. During this time, Cluster amassed information about beams of electrically charged oxygen atoms, known as ions, flowing outwards from the polar regions into space. Cluster also measured the strength and direction of the Earth’s magnetic field whenever the beams were present.

Hans Nilsson, Swedish Institute of Space Physics, headed a team of space scientists who analysed the data. They discovered that the oxygen ions were being accelerated by changes in the direction of the magnetic field. “It is a bit like a sling-shot effect,” says Nilsson.

Having all four Cluster spacecraft was essential to the analysis because it gave astronomers a way to measure the strength and direction of the magnetic field over a wide area. “Cluster allowed us to measure the gradient of the magnetic field and see how it was changing direction with time,” says Nilsson.

Before the space age, scientists believed that Earth’s magnetic field was filled only with particles from the solar wind, the constant sleet of particles that escapes from the Sun. They thought this formed a large cushion that protected the Earth’s atmosphere from direct interaction with the solar wind.

“We are beginning to realise just how many interactions can take place between the solar wind and the atmosphere,” says Nilsson. Energetic particles from the solar wind can be channelled along the magnetic field lines and, when these impact the atmosphere of the Earth, they can produce aurorae. This occurs over the poles of Earth. The same interactions provide the oxygen ions with enough energy to accelerate out of the atmosphere and reach the Earth’s magnetic environment.

The Cluster data were captured over the poles with the satellites flying at an altitude of anywhere between 30,000 and 64,000 kilometres. Measurements taken by earlier satellites during the 1980s and 1990s showed that the escaping ions were travelling faster the higher they were observed. This implied that some sort of acceleration mechanism was involved and several possibilities were proposed. Thanks to this new Cluster study, the mechanism accounting for most of the acceleration has now been identified.

At present, the escape of oxygen is nothing to worry about. Compared to the Earth’s stock of the life-supporting gas, the amount escaping is negligible. However, in the far future when the Sun begins to heat up in old age, the balance might change and the oxygen escape may become significant. “We can only predict these future changes if we understand the mechanisms involved,” says Nilsson.

For now, Cluster will continue collecting data and providing new insights into the complex magnetic environment surrounding our planet.

The Visual Monitoring Camera (VMC) is mounted on Mars Express, ESA's deep-space probe now orbiting the Red Planet. It originally provided simple, low-tech images of Beagle lander separation, and is now back in action as the 'Mars Webcam'. It's not a scientific instrument, but it does provide fantastic views of Mars - including crescent views of the planet not obtainable from Earth.

The semiconductor silicon and the ferromagnet iron are the basis for much of mankind's technology, used in everything from computers to electric motors. In this week's issue of the journal Nature (August 21st) an international group of scientists, including academic and industrial researchers from the UK, USA and Lesotho, report that they have combined these elements with a small amount of another common metal, manganese, to create a new material which is neither a magnet nor an ordinary semiconductor. The paper goes on to show how a small magnetic field can be used to switch ordinary semiconducting behaviour (such as that seen in the electronic-grade silicon which is used to make transistors) back on.

The new material exists in a quantum halfway house between magnet and semiconductor - in the same way that much more complex materials such as ceramics which exhibit high temperature superconductivity exist in quantum halfway houses between metals and magnetic insulators. The research is of fundamental importance because it demonstrates, for the first time, a simple recipe for reaching this halfway house, whilst also suggesting new mechanisms for controlling electrical currents and magnetism in semiconductor devices.

Professor J.F. DiTusa of Louisiana State University and a co-author of the paper said: "It's amazing that something which was thought to exist theoretically in mathematical physics could actually be found in an alloy which was simply formed by melting together a few common elements."

Professor Gabriel Aeppli of UCL (University College London), another member of the research team and Director of the London Centre for Nanotechnology, added: "It might be possible to see similar effects in devices made using materials and methods found in laser pointers. This would put what we've seen firmly in the realm of that which can easily be achieved using current technologies."

The first author of the paper, Dr. N. Manyala of the National University of Lesotho, said: "We are looking forward to investigating whether we can see these effects using thin layers of the same materials deposited directly on the silicon wafers. These wafers are the same as those used by mass market electronics manufacturers as the basis for integrated circuits." Dr. Ramirez, who is now with LGS-Bell Labs Innovations echoed this thought, noting that, "with the end of Moore's law in sight, mechanisms for controlling and understanding possible new information bits such as spins in solids are actively being sought after."

COLUMBUS, Ohio – Researchers monitoring daily satellite images here of Greenland’s glaciers have discovered break-ups at two of the largest glaciers in the last month.

They expect that part of the Northern hemisphere’s longest floating glacier will continue to disintegrate within the next year.

A massive 11-square-mile (29-square-kilometer) piece of the Petermann Glacier in northern Greenland broke away between July 10th and by July 24th. The loss to that glacier is equal to half the size of Manhattan Island. The last major ice loss to Petermann occurred when the glacier lost 33 square miles (86 square kilometers) of floating ice between 2000 and 2001.

Petermann has a floating section of ice 10 miles (16 kilometers) wide and 50 miles (80.4 kilometers) long which covers 500 square miles (1,295 square kilometers).

What worries Jason Box, an associate professor of geography at Ohio State, and his colleagues, graduate students Russell Benson and David Decker, all with the Byrd Polar Research Center, even more about the latest images is what appears to be a massive crack further back from the margin of the Petermann Glacier.

That crack may signal an imminent and much larger breakup.

“If the Petermann glacier breaks up back to the upstream rift, the loss would be as much as 60 square miles (160 square kilometers),” Box said, representing a loss of one-third of the massive ice field.

Meanwhile, the margin of the massive Jakobshavn glacier has retreated inland further than it has at any time in the past 150 years it has been observed. Researchers believe that the glacier has not retreated to where it is now in at least the last 4,000 to 6,000 years.

“If the Petermann glacier breaks up back to the upstream rift, the loss would be as much as 60 square miles (160 square kilometers),” Box said, representing a loss of one-third of the massive ice field.

The Northern branch of the Jakobshavn broke up in the past several weeks and the glacier has lost at least three square miles (10 square kilometers) since the end of the last melt season.

The Jakobshavn Glacier dominates the approximately 130 glaciers flowing out of Greenland’s inland into the sea. It alone is responsible for producing at least one-tenth of the icebergs calving off into the sea from the entire island of Greenland, making it the island’s most productive glacier.

Between 2001 and 2005, a massive breakup of the Jakobshavn glacier erased 36 square miles (94 square kilometers) from the ice field and raised the awareness of worldwide of glacial response to global climate change.

The researchers are using images updated daily from National Aeronautics and Space Administration satellites and from time-lapse photography from cameras monitoring the margin of these and other Greenland glaciers. Additional support for this project came from NASA.

British mining company Vedanta is under intense pressure over its plans to mine the Dongria Kondh tribe’s land in India, as a Scottish investment group sells its shares and Amnesty International joins the campaign in support of the tribe.

Martin Currie – an Edinburgh-based investment management company – has sold its £2.3million stake in Vedanta following pressure from Survival International. The company’s director of corporate communications, Scott White, said, ‘It is fundamental that we expect companies to behave both within the law and morally… The doubts over the issues with the bauxite project … led to exiting the stock.’

Last year the Norwegian government’s Council of Ethics recommended that Norway sold its shares in Vedanta due to an ‘unacceptable risk of complicity in current and future severe environmental damage and systematic human rights violations.’

Since the Supreme Court of India gave its clearance for Vedanta’s mine at Niyamgiri in the Indian state of Orissa earlier this month, Amnesty International has added its voice to those calling for the mine to be stopped because of the devastating impact it would have on the Dongria Kondh. Local politicians also met this week to discuss ways of halting the mine, and a gathering of 15,000 local Kondh people is planned.

The Dongria Kondh have vowed to resist the mine. On hearing the Supreme Court’s decision, 40 Dongria Kondh from several villages blockaded the road to the proposed mine site. They held banners across the road with the slogan, ‘We are Dongria Kondh. Vedanta cannot take our mountain.’ Dongria activists swore not to leave Niyamgiri and stated, ‘Niyamgiri is Dongria land. Vedanta cannot come here without our permission. We say no.’

The Dongria Kondh also recently claimed they were ‘tricked’ into praising Vedanta on a video posted on YouTube. Sahadev Kadraka, one of the Dongria men filmed ‘praising’ the company, has said, ‘There were three people from Vedanta. They said, ‘We have brought some clothes for your village and we will give them to you.’ They asked us ‘Do you support Vedanta and do you want to mine bauxite?’ We said no, we don’t want to give our mountain. Then they said, ‘Everyone from the other side of the mountain has agreed to mine. If you refuse, we will not give anything to you. If you complain then we won’t provide anything to you again.’’

Survival’s director Stephen Corry said today, ‘Bribery and intimidation are weapons of the bully and have no place in a reputable mining company. They work against the legal principle of consent which Vedanta must obtain if it is to work within the international law on tribal peoples. Vedanta has agreed this and must stick to its word. 'Development' which destroys local tribes has no place in 21st century India. If the mine goes ahead, the Dongria Kondh will be destroyed and Vedanta's balance sheet will be stained forever.’

The study is the largest in the world so far and was performed in collaboration with the Queen Mary University of London. More than 7,600 Swedish twins (men and women) aged 20-47 years responded to a 2005 - 2006 survey of health, behaviour, and sexuality. Seven percent of the twins had ever had a same-sex sexual partner.

"The results show, that familial and public attitudes might be less important for our sexual behaviour than previously suggested", says Associate Professor Niklas Långström, one of the involved researchers. "Instead, genetic factors and the individual's unique biological and social environments play the biggest role. Studies like this are needed to improve our basic understanding of sexuality and to inform the public debate."

The conclusions apply equally well to why people only have sex with persons of the opposite sex as to why we have sex with same-sex partners. However, the conclusions are more difficult to transfer to countries where non-heterosexual behaviour remains prohibited.

Overall, the environment shared by twins (including familial and societal attitudes) explained 0-17% of the choice of sexual partner, genetic factors 18-39% and the unique environment 61-66%. The individual's unique environment includes, for example, circumstances during pregnancy and childbirth, physical and psychological trauma (e.g., accidents, violence, and disease), peer groups, and sexual experiences.

If borne out experimentally, his work could help explode Moore’s Law and could revolutionize computing technology.

Moore’s Law predicts that the number of transistors that can be economically placed on an integrated circuit will double about every two years. But by 2020, Moore’s Law is expected to hit a brick wall, as manufacturing costs rise and transistors shrink beyond the reach of the laws of classical physics.

A solution lies in the fabled molecular switch. If molecules could replace the current generation of transistors, you could fit more than a trillion switches onto a centimeter-square chip. In 1999, a team of researchers at Yale University published a description of the first such switch, but scientists have been unable to replicate their discovery or explain how it worked. Now, Pati believes he and his team may have found the mechanism behind the switch.

Applying quantum physics, he and his group developed a computer model of an organometallic molecule firmly bound between two gold electrodes. Then he turned on the juice.

As the laws of physics would suggest, the current increased along with the voltage, until it rose to a miniscule 142 microamps. Then suddenly, and counterintuitively, it dropped, a mysterious phenomenon known as negative differential resistance, or NDR. Pati was astonished at what his analysis of the NDR revealed.

Up until the 142-microamp tipping point, the molecule’s cloud of electrons had been whizzing about the nucleus in equilibrium, like planets orbiting the sun. But under the bombardment of the higher voltage, that steady state fell apart, and the electrons were forced into a different equilibrium, a process known as “quantum phase transition.”

“I never thought this would happen,” Pati said. “I was really excited to see this beautiful result.”

Why is this important? A molecule that can exhibit two different phases when subjected to electric fields has promise as a switch: one phase is the “zero” and the other the “one,” which form the foundation of digital electronics.

Management Insights, a regular feature of the journal, is a digest of important research in business, management, operations research, and management science. It appears in every issue of the monthly journal.

“Are Overconfident CEOs Born or Made? Evidence of Self-Attribution Bias from Frequent Acquirers” is by Matthew T. Billett and Yiming Qian of the University of Iowa.

Whether to engage in mergers and acquisitions is one of the most important decisions top managers make, the authors write. While many of the factors influencing these decisions may be based on objective financial metrics, there is increasing evidence that behavioral biases play an important role in managerial decision making. The authors explore one such bias—managerial overconfidence— and find evidence suggesting CEOs develop overconfidence through ‘self-attribution bias’ when making merger and acquisition decisions. Individuals subject to self-attribution bias overcredit their role in bringing about good outcomes and underestimate the role of luck.

Consistent with this, they find that CEOs appear to overly attribute their role in successful deals, leading to more deals even though these subsequent deals are value destructive.

They also find evidence that CEOs alter their stock holdings prior to deals in a pattern consistent with overconfidence in the outcome of these subsequent deals.

The authors advise that CEOs be particularly cautious and disciplined when engaging in acquisitions following prior success. Boards and other stakeholders should also ensure that any proposed deal is judged on its own merits and is not justified on the basis of prior CEO success in mergers and acquisitions, they say.

Professors Billett and Zian based their results on a sample of public acquisitions between 1985 and 2002. Over this period, U.S. public companies acquired $3.7 trillion worth of other U.S. public companies.

A team of Penn State researchers has shown for the first time that the entire class of non-magnetic materials, such as those used in some computer components, could have considerably more uses than scientists had thought. The findings are important because they reveal previously unknown information about the structure of these materials, expanding the number of properties that they potentially could have. A material's properties, such as electrical conductivity and mechanical strength, are what determine its usefulness. The research will be published in the journal Physical Review Letters.

A material's properties are determined by its structure, explained Venkatraman Gopalan, a researcher in Penn State's Center for Nanoscale Science, a professor of materials science and engineering, and the project's leader. "If I was out hiking and I found a rock that contained a quartz crystal, I could tell you what properties the crystal can and cannot have just based on what we call its symmetry--the number and arrangement of crystal planes it has. Symmetry results from the way the atoms are arranged in the quartz," he said. "It is an extremely powerful way of understanding our world."

The non-magnetic materials that Gopalan and his colleagues studied were thought to have one of the 32 different crystal symmetries--called point group symmetries--known to exist in nature. On the other hand, magnetic materials have 90 different point group symmetries because their atomic particles have magnetic spins, which can be imagined as tiny loops of current. "Motion is an extremely important aspect of magnetism," said Gopalan. "Magnetism develops in nature as soon as charged particles start moving or spinning."

Scientists long have believed that symmetry allows magnetic materials to have more properties than non-magnetic materials because flipping the direction of spin creates an additional symmetry. But Gopalan's team has shown that non-magnetic materials, theoretically, can have just as many properties as magnetic materials. According to Gopalan, some non-magnetic materials have groups of atoms that distort by twisting or rotating. This slight movement is equivalent to a tiny loop of current and is enough to give the material some additional properties that previously were thought to belong only to magnetic materials.

The researchers tested their theory experimentally using strontium titanate, which is a non-magnetic material. They cooled the material and found that its oxygen atoms responded by twisting into a tighter postion to save energy and space. "The oxygen atoms don't rotate all the way around like a loop of current does in magnetic materials, but theoretical analyses show that they do twist and, therefore, it is possible that these materials could have previously unknown properties," said Gopalan.

Next, the team investigated whether the twisting movement translated into the expression of additional properties. In particular, they predicted and tested for an optical property that they call roto second harmonic generation, which is analogous to a well-known property called magnetic second harmonic generation. Second harmonic generation is found, for example, in the crystals that are used in green laser pointers to convert infrared laser light into green laser light. The group found that the strontium titanate material does have a small amount of roto second harmonic generation.

"Nobody has thought of relating magnetic symmetries to a non-magnetic material like strontium titanate, but that's precisely what our paper does," said Gopalan. "We first did a theoretical analysis in which we applied the symmetry framework that traditionally is used to describe magnetic materials to this vast class of non-magnetic materials. Then we did a laboratory experiment with a particular non-magnetic material and we found that it has a property that previously was thought to belong only to magnetic materials. We suggest that it is possible for the entire class of non-magnetic materials to have more symmetries and more properties than previously have been thought possible."

The team's findings could lead to an explosion of research into new properties of non-magnetic materials and to possible applications of these properties. "These materials are used in hundreds of applications," said Peter Schiffer, associate vice president for research and a professor of physics at Penn State, "but this new work holds great promise for finding many more uses."

"The population was split into two groups, then one of the groups died out 45,000 years ago, long before the first humans began to appear in the region," said Stephan C. Schuster, associate professor of biochemistry and molecular biology at Penn State University and a leader of the research team. "This discovery is particularly interesting because it rules out human hunting as a contributing factor, leaving climate change and disease as the most probable causes of extinction." The discovery will be published later this week in the early online edition of the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (PNAS).

The research marks the first time scientists have dissected the structure of an entire population of extinct mammal by using the complete mitochondrial genome -- all the DNA that makes up all the genes found in the mitochondria structures within cells. Data from this study will enable testing of the new hypothesis presented by the team, that there were two groups of woolly mammoth -- a concept that previously had not been recognized from studies of the fossil record.

The scientists analyzed the genes in hair obtained from individual woolly mammoths -- an extinct species of elephant adapted to living in the cold environment of the northern hemisphere. The bodies of these mammoths were found throughout a wide swathe of northern Siberia. Their dates of death span roughly 47,000 years, ranging from about 13,000 years ago to about 60,000 years ago.

Schuster and Webb Miller, professor of biology and computer science and engineering at Penn State, led the international research team, which includes Thomas Gilbert at the University of Copenhagen in Denmark and other scientists in Australia, Belgium, France, Italy, Russia, Spain, Sweden, the United Kingdom, and the United States. The team includes experts in the fields of genome evolution, ancient DNA, and mammoth paleontology, as well as curators from various natural-history museums.

Another important finding for understanding the extinction processes is that the individuals in each of the two woolly-mammoth groups were related very closely to one another. "This low genetic divergence is surprising because the woolly mammoth had an extraordinarily wide range: from Western Europe, to the Bering Strait in Siberia, to Northern America," Miller said. "The low genetic divergence of mammoth, which we discovered, may have degraded the biological fitness of these animals in a time of changing environments and other challenges."

Our study suggests a genetic divergence of the two woolly-mammoth groups more than 1-million years ago, which is one quarter the genetic distance that separates Indian and African elephants and woolly mammoths," Miller said. The research indicates that the diversity of the two woolly-mammoth populations was as low centuries ago as it is now in the very small populations of Asian elephants living in southern India. "The low genetic divergence of the elephants in southern Indian has been suggested as contributing to the problems of maintaining this group as a thriving population," Schuster said. Intriguingly, the mitochondrial genomes revealed by the researchers are several times more complete than those known for the modern Indian and African Elephants combined.

Whereas studies before this research had analyzed only short segments of the DNA of extinct species, this new study generated and compared 18 complete genomes of the extinct woolly mammoth using mitochondrial DNA, an important material for studying ancient genes. This achievement is based on an earlier discovery of the team led by Miller, Schuster, and co-author Thomas Gilbert, which was published last year and that revealed ancient DNA survives much better in hair than in any other tissue investigated so far. This discovery makes hair, when it is available, a more powerful and efficient source of DNA for studying the genome sequences of extinct animals. Moreover, mammoth hair is found in copious quantities in cold environments and it is not regarded as fossil material of enormous value like bone or muscle, which also carries anatomical information.

"We also discovered that the DNA in hair shafts is remarkably enriched for mitochondrial DNA, the special type of DNA frequently used to measure the genetic diversity of a population," Miller said. The team's earlier study also showed that hair is superior for use in molecular-genetic analysis because it is much easier than bone to decontaminate. Not only is hair easily cleaned of external contamination such as bacteria and fungi, its structure also protects it from degradation, preventing internal penetration by microorganisms in the environment.

An important aspect of the new study is that the hair samples it used had been stored in various museums for many years before being analyzed by the researchers, yet the scientists were able to obtain lots of useful DNA from them. "One of our samples originates from the famous Adams mammoth, which was found in 1799 and has been stored at room temperatures for the last 200 years," Schuster said. This research technique opens the door for future projects to target interesting specimens that were collected a long time ago and are no longer available from modern species, the scientists said. Even the molecular analysis of entire collections seems now possible, an effort that the team calls "Museomics."

"We plan to continue using our techniques to untangle the secrets of populations that lived long ago and to learn what it might have taken for them to survive," Schuster said. "Many of us also have a personal interest in learning as much as we can about how any species of large mammal can go extinct."

Greg Smutzer, director of the Laboratory of Gustatory Psychophysics in the Biology Department of Temple's College of Science and Technology (http://www.temple.edu/biology), has created taste strips similar to breath-freshening strips, but these edible strips contain one of the five basic tastes that are detected by humans — sweet, sour, salty, bitter and monosodium glutamate, which is also known as umami taste.

This research, "A Test for Measuring Gustatory Function," has been published in the June 2 online "Ahead of Print" edition of The Laryngoscope (http://www.thelaryngoscope.com), the journal of the American Laryngological, Rhinological and Otological Society.

The idea was born when a lab equipment repairman who was a friend of Smutzer's stopped by the laboratory more than four years ago and offered him one of the new breath-freshening strips.

He said, "You have to try one of these," Smutzer recalled. "I had never seen the strips before. But as soon as he showed them to me, one of my first thoughts was, this technology would be ideal for a taste test because it is so simple to use."

Smutzer starts by using a combination of two polymers, pullulan and Methocel. His strips are created by dissolving the polymers — in the form of powders — in warm water and then allowing the solution to cool to room temperature. Added into the solution is a small amount of a taste stimulus that will give each strip the desired taste: sodium chloride for salty, sucrose for sweet, ascorbic acid for sour, quinine for bitter, and monosodium glutamate for umami taste.

Once the solution is cool, it is then poured onto Teflon-coated pans and allowed to dry five to six hours in order to produce a clear, thin film. When dry, the films are carefully removed, and cut into one-inch-square strips.

He said that pullulan, a major ingredient of the Listerine breath strips, is tasteless and dissolves within seconds in the mouth. Methocel is added in small amounts to increase the tensile strength of the pullulan films.

The development of the taste strips solves a problem for researchers. According to Smutzer, no standardized method for rapidly measuring taste function in humans is currently available, and taste norms for the human population as a function of age and sex have yet to be determined.

"What is typically done in the lab is a 'sip and spit' test, where a liquid solution is prepared that contains dissolved tastant," Smutzer explained. "You then place a small amount of the solution, maybe half an ounce, into a small cup for the test subject to place into their mouth, swish around and then spit it out."

But this type of test is difficult to administer outside the lab because the solutions have a very short shelf life and are not very portable, he said. Another big problem with the liquid test is that it cannot be effectively used to examine selected regions of the tongue, such as just one side, the front or the back of the tongue.

"It is very difficult to do regional testing with the liquid test because it is tough to concentrate liquid in just one area of the mouth," said Smutzer, who is hoping to commercialize the taste strips. "We can alter the size or thickness of these strips, place them on a desired area of the tongue and allow saliva to dissolve them without causing the tastant to spread over the surface of the tongue."

Since different parts of the tongue may respond to different tastes, or may respond more or less strongly to the same taste stimulus. Smutzer said his taste strips could be used to develop detailed taste maps of the tongue surface, a project he plans to examine in the future.

Another major advantage of this technology, according to Smutzer, is that the strips can measure thresholds for tastants at levels that are from 10 to 100 times lower when compared to a standard "sip and spit" test. These lower threshold values for sweet, sour, salty, bitter or umami taste could be useful for examining taste disturbances in clinical populations where such disturbances have not been previously identified.

Smutzer added that his strips, which are stored at room temperature and have been used up to six months after being produced, could also be beneficial to the pharmaceutical industry, since certain medications can create temporary taste disturbances. He said that subjects could be tested with taste strips during clinical trials to determine whether new drugs or therapies interfere with taste function.