Science Special News

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Earth hottest it's been in 400 years

The last two decades of the 20th century were the hottest in 400 years and quite likely the warmest for several millennia, a leading U.S. scientific body concludes in a new report. The National Academies' National Research Council report also said "human activities are responsible for much of the recent warming." The U.S. Congress had requested the report after controversy arose last year over surface-temperature reconstructions published in the 1990s by climatologist Michael Mann, now at Pennsylvania State University, University Park, and colleagues. The reconstructions resulted in the widely cited "hockey stick" graph, which shows Earth's temperature sharply rising in recent decades after a thousand years of stability. The graph looks like a hockey stick lying on its side. To create the graph, Mann and his colleagues pulled together temperature evidence from specimens such as tree rings, corals, and cores of sediment and ice. They had to rely on this natural evidence because thermometer records go back only about 150 years.

The graph gained prominence when the United Nations published it in a 2001 report that concluded that greenhouse gases from human activities had probably caused most of the warming measured since 1950, according to the New York Times. Critics of the graph have said that Mann and his colleagues based it on cherry-picked and erroneous data. Gerald North is a geoscientist at Texas A&M University in College Station. He chaired the National Research Council panel that produced the new report, which was released yesterday.

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Sleuthing out truth on UFOs

Mike Johnson and his daughter Brenna were driving home to Woahink Lake from town that spring night in 1995 when Brenna turned around in her seat and saw a strange light hovering above the water. The Johnsons knew exactly whom to call: Greg Barnes, regional UFO investigator - a self-taught expert in the field of "ufology." Barnes began with his typical first question: "What do you see right now?" Then, "How do you feel about it?" The latter query is nearly as important as the first, he said. It tells him whether the caller is panicked or calm, fearful or skeptical. That state of mind could affect a person's ability to report information accurately. "A person who's awestruck responds differently than a person who's petrified," Barnes said. "The person who's afraid isn't so much interested in details; they just want the thing away from them." Ultimately, Barnes drove to the Johnson house, not far from his own Woahink getaway.

He missed seeing the lights himself, but wound up interviewing 11 people who claimed that they'd seen either the lights or the floating, silent object that carried them, before the object veered west and glided out towards the ocean, reportedly disrupting cable television signals throughout Florence in its wake. Barnes knows his hobby and his business card adorned with a flying saucer place him squarely on the fringe. "You're easily branded a nut," he said. "I have to accept that, with this topic. What we have here is ordinary people seeing extraordinary things. A whole lot of what people see are obviously misidentifications; fishing boats, that kind of thing. People tell us 'Oh, that's just something that Lockheed made.' But I doubt very seriously the government would test their latest, greatest underwater machines in Florence."

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Top secret US aircraft flew over UK

It is the stuff of internet conspiracy theorists' dreams. A top secret, hypersonic, cold war spy plane that was allegedly flown by the Americans in UK airspace without the government's permission. Publicly, the UK government played down newspaper stories about people who reported seeing UFO-like phenomena. But documents released under the Freedom of Information Act suggest the Ministry of Defence took the rumours much more seriously. Its investigations even threatened to strain the special relationship. "It does show that they were concerned that this thing did exist and the Americans were flying it around willy-nilly over the UK," said David Clarke, a social scientist at Sheffield Hallam University, who obtained the documents. "It certainly suggests that the British government suspected that they were being kept in the dark." The United States has never confirmed the existence of the mysterious aircraft, called Aurora, which was supposedly designed to sneak at very high speed over the Soviet Union and take covert snaps of what the enemy was up to. It was rumoured to be capable of flying at up to mach 8 and so could reach anywhere on the planet in less than three hours.

In the early 1990s there were a string of supposed sightings and strange sounds over Scotland which some bewildered locals attributed to UFOs. Rumours in the press that Aurora was operating secretly out of RAF Machrihanish on the tip of Kintyre prompted Scottish MPs to ask questions in parliament. Briefing notes given to the then defence secretary Tom King on March 4 1992 show that civil servants did give the idea credence. "There is no knowledge in the MoD of a 'black' programme of this nature, although it would not surprise the relevant desk officers in the Air Staff and [Defence Intelligence Staff] if it did exist." The response suggested to an MP's question was rather less revealing: "The existence of any such project (or operation) would be a matter for the US authorities." The Americans denied everything, but the reports kept coming.

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Italian researchers who studied 3000 post-menopausal women found the date of the menopause was linked to the date of birth.Earliest onset was with March births, who reached at 48 years and nine months, and the latest was October births as Autumn born babies were still fertile at 50 years and three months, confirming that prenatal environments have surprising effects in later life, as does the body type.French studies by Michael Gauguin also showed that the month of birth strongly effected the career, sporting abilities and school work. A Caesarean birth can give a higher incidence of eczema and asthma, proclivities to these can also be seen on the ultra-scan handprint. Crucially inherited palmer signals can tell who the real father of a baby is, and even the mother will pass on certain linear formations, useful information in paternity cases, The communications sector in the little or Mercury finger will usually tell if the father has been present during pregnancy.The baby in the womb may not yet be able to speak, but they sure communicate through other ways, as the palmer gesture can be interpreted into language we all understand.

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"Mind-reading" computers on the horizon

A raised eyebrow, quizzical look or a nod of the head are just a few of the facial expressions computers could soon be using to guess people's minds. An "emotionally aware" computer being developed by British and US scientists will be able to estimate an individual's thoughts by analysing a combination of facial movements that represent underlying feelings. "The system we have developed allows a wide range of mental states to be identified, just by pointing a video camera at someone," Professor Peter Robinson, of Cambridge University, said.He and his collaborators believed the "mind-reading" computer's applications could range from improving people's driving skills to helping companies tailor advertising to people's moods."Imagine a computer that could pick the right emotional moment to try to sell you something, a future where mobile phones, cars and websites could read our mind and react to our moods," he said.

The technology is already programmed to recognise different facial expressions generated by actors.Prof Robinson hopes to get more data to determine whether someone is bored, interested, confused, or agrees or disagrees, when it is unveiled at a science exhibition in London today. People visiting the four-day exhibition, organised by the Royal Society, Britain's academy of leading scientists, will be invited to take part in a study to hone the program's abilities.The scientists, who are developing the technology in collaboration with researchers at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) in the US, also hope to get it to accept other inputs such as posture and gesture."Our research could enable websites to tailor advertising or products to your mood," Prof Robinson said.

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Lab tuned to gravity's 'ripples'

One of the great scientific experiments of our age is now fully underway. A German/UK team has put the giant GEO 600 gravitational wave detector in a continuous observational mode. The Hanover lab is trying to detect the ripples created in the fabric of space-time when black holes fall onto each other or massive stars explode. Success would confirm fundamental physical theories and open a new window on the Universe, enabling scientists to probe the moment of creation itself. GEO 600 is working alongside a US project known as Ligo (Laser Interferometer Gravitational Wave Observatory). It may also be joined in the hunt by an Italian lab within a year. A confirmed detection would require the super-sensitive equipment at more than one of these widely spaced facilities to record an event simultaneously. Compelling independent corroboration would come from a spacecraft that can see the burst of gamma-ray radiation expected to accompany the cataclysmic events that produce gravitational waves.

"If there is a supernova in our vicinity during the next couple of months, our chances of detecting and measuring the resulting gravitational waves are good," said Professor Karsten Danzmann, head of the International Centre for Gravitational Physics, which is jointly run by the Max Planck Society and the University of Hanover. "The first step towards gravitational wave astronomy has been taken." Researchers are extremely confident they now have the technology to detect gravitational waves. Observatories such as GEO 600 bounce lasers down long tunnels, hoping to pick up the fantastically small disturbances the waves should generate as they pass through the Earth.

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Rare chameleon snake found

Researchers scouring swamps in the heart of Borneo island have discovered a venomous species of snake that can change its skin color, the conservation group WWF announced Tuesday. The ability to change skin color is known in some reptiles, such as the chameleon, but scientists have seen it rarely with snakes and have not yet understood this phenomenon, the group said in a statement."I put the reddish-brown snake in a dark bucket,'' said Mark Auliya, a reptile expert and a consultant for the group. "When I retrieved it a few minutes later, it was almost entirely white.''Reptiles typically change color to camouflage themselves from predators.The 1.6-foot-long snake was discovered last year in wetlands and swamp forests around the Kapuas River in the Betung Kerihun National Park in the Indonesian part of Borneo island."The discovery of the 'chameleon' snake exposes one of nature's best-kept secrets.

Its ability to change color has kept it hidden from science until now,'' said Bambang Supriyanto, a WWF specialist on Borneo.Scientists named their find the Kapuas Mud Snake, and speculated it might only occur in the Kapuas River drainage system.The WWF, the international group formerly known as World Wildlife Fund, said 361 animal and plant species have been discovered since 1996 on Borneo, underscoring its unparalleled biological diversity.But it said that widespread logging has left Borneo with only half of its former forest cover, down from 75 percent in the mid-1980s.Indonesia and Malaysia have territory on Borneo, which is also home to the sultanate of Brunei.

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Big Brother eyes 'boost honesty'

The feeling of being watched makes people act more honestly, even if the eyes are not real, a study suggests. A Newcastle University team monitored how much money people put in a canteen "honesty box" when buying a drink. They found people put nearly three times as much in when a poster of a pair of eyes was put above the box than when the poster showed flowers. The brain responds to images of eyes and faces and the poster may have given the feeling of being watched, they say. Writing in the journal Biology Letters, the team says the findings could aid anti-social behaviour initiatives. The experiment made use of a long-running honesty box scheme based in a canteen at Newcastle University. Over the course of 10 weeks, an A5 poster listing hot drink prices was placed at eye-level above the honesty box. Each week, the poster featured different images of either flowers or a pair of eyes looking directly at the observer.

At the end of every week, the team calculated the total amount of money collected and the amount of drink likely to have been consumed. Dr Melissa Bateson, a behavioural biologist from Newcastle University and the lead author of the study, said: "We found that people paid 2.76 times as much money when we put a notice on the wall that featured a pair of eyes as opposed to when the image was of some flowers." She believes this happens because the eyes on the poster may affect people's perception that they are being watched by other people.

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Britons report 'psychic powers'

More than half of Britons believe in psychic powers such as mind-reading and premonitions, a survey suggests. Of 1,006 adults polled for Readers Digest Magazine, 43% reported reading others' thoughts or having theirs read. More than half had had a dream or premonition of an event before it happened and 26% said they had sensed when a loved-one was ill or in trouble. A fifth said they had seen a ghost and 29% believed near-death experiences were evidence there was an afterlife. Of those questioned, 43% claimed to have tapped into other people's thoughts or to have had their own minds read by someone else. More than two-thirds said they could sense when someone was looking at them and 62% could tell who was ringing before they picked up the phone. More than 10% thought they could influence machinery or electronic equipment using their minds. One in 10 said something bad had happened to another person after they had wished for it to happen.

Women were more likely to believe in the paranormal than men, though 53% of males said they sometimes knew who was ringing before picking up the phone and 45% had experienced dream or premonition before an event. Despite the high numbers who said they had experienced such phenomena, only 9% described themselves as psychic. Simon Bacon, lecturer at London's College of Psychic Studies and a practising medium, said: "When you say psychic, many people have an image of an old woman in a gown with a crystal ball. They don't associate themselves with that."

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Shuttle launch countdown begins

The US space agency has begun a three-day countdown to the launch of its next space shuttle mission. At 2200 BST (1700 EDT) on Wednesday, launch team members at Kennedy Space Center in Florida set the clock running ahead of Saturday's planned lift-off. The shuttle Discovery is set to visit the International Space Station on a 12-day mission to deliver supplies and equipment and test safety improvements. But Nasa says there is a strong chance of weather delaying the launch. Thunderstorms and anvil clouds brought the threat of lightning strikes, the agency said, estimating the chance of postponement at about 60%. During a countdown status briefing at Kennedy, Nasa test director Jeff Spaulding announced: "Discovery is in excellent shape, and we're tracking no issues in our preparation at this point. "Our teams have been working tirelessly during this last year to help make this flight and all shuttle flights as safe as possible for the crews."

In the run-up to launch, some final "tireless work" for the five-man, two-woman crew of Discovery will involve training for the descent phase, Florida Today newspaper reports. Mission commander Steve Lindsey and pilot Mark Kelly will practise landing in a Gulfstream aircraft modified to mimic the shuttle's steep trajectory during final approach. Fellow astronauts Mike Fossum, Stephanie Wilson and Piers Sellers will be at the pad, training to take pictures of the shuttle's re-designed external fuel tank once it is jettisoned from the orbiter nine minutes into flight.

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