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This week in European sciences -- week 04|2004 |
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Overview
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Chilling Death of the Neanderthals About 30,000
years ago the Neanderthals disappeared completely from the European scene.
Now, a team of experts considered all available data and "concluded
that the Neanderthals simply did not have the technological know-how to
survive the increasingly harsh winters. What's more, the original human
settlers of Europe very nearly suffered the same fate", writes NewScientist
(January
24, 2004). |
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NewScientist
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Communicating Science After the Latest Cloning Furore After new stories about a possible cloned baby in the media this week, scientists in UK criticized strongly the media in an open letter. Alok Jha analyses the issue in the Guardian (January 22, 2004) and comments on the role of scientists and the media in a society open for debates. The group of distinguished scientists argued that no credible scientist would go anywhere near research in the area, which is unethical and dangerous. Jha demands that scientists should become involved in public debates at an early stage and more regularly. According to studies in communicating science, 60 percent of people in an opinion poll said they trusted scientific evidence from university researchers, barely 15 percent could say the same about the media. This corresponds to 91 percent of scientists that believe it's their duty to communicate their results to the public. But, unfortunately 60 percent have no time to actually do it. Ten Sequenced Genomes - What Will It Bring to Us? After the
genome sequence of the honey bee has been published this month, Alok Jha
gives in the Guardian (January
22, 2004) an overview on ten recently sequenced organisms ranging
from humans, chimpanzees, mice to malaria, fruit fly, dog, chicken, tuberculosis
and zebrafish. |
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The
Guardian |
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In Neue Zürcher
Zeitung (January
22, 2004) Daniela Wünsch remembers the great German physicist
and mathematician Theodor Kaluza (1885 - 1954). In one of his theories
Kaluza added one more spatial dimension to the 4-dimensional Einsteinian
space-time continuum. Thus, in 1921 he argued that he was able to explain
electromagnetism and gravitation in a single theory. The proposal was
soon forgotten. Today, physicists see Kaluza's ideas as the first step
towards the multi-dimensional string theory which is the hot candidate
for the unification of all four basic forces. |
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Neue
Zürcher Zeitung |
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You want your smile to be as bright-white as that of your favourite actor? No problem, promise the adverts for bleaching teeth. Tina Baier reports in Süddeutsche Zeitung (January 21, 2004) on the trend of polishing up your look. Typically, substances like hydrogen peroxide are used to bleach teeth - they produce oxigen radicals that oxidize or reduce the pigments in the outermost layer of the teeth. Hence, the unpleasant color changes to a bright white. But there are downsides, as Baier states. If you treat affected teeth, the substance can move far inside the teeth and harm the nerve. Well, oxigen radicals act as a toxin for the cells. Furthemore, at the moment there are no data for long-term effects of the treatment available. An expert advices to bleach teeth no more than twice a year. Quality of Medical Websites Questionable Experts promote
the development of a quality label and tighter quality control for websites
with medical information. As Nicola Siegmund-Schultze reports in Süddeutsche
Zeitung (January
21, 2004), the quality of information on drugs or treatments on the
Web is rather bad. For instance, only one hundred out of 300 checked websites
with information about the use of Viagra, the potence enhancing drug with
dedicated indication for impotence and erectile disfunction, gave good
information. The research team of the University of Heidelberg, Germany,
examines German, British, French and Italian websites. Mostly the indication
was poorly described, side-effects not even mentioned. |
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Süddeutsche
Zeitung |
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What's this:
We use it all the time, can't do without it, and yet we hate it more than
any other electronic gadget? According to the Massachusetts Institute
of Technology, it's the mobile phone that we have these ambivalent feelings
for. The Corriere della Sera (January
21, 2004) reports on a recent survey that shows that whilst 95 percent
of people believe technological progress is a blessing, it is at best
a mixed one. That alarm clocks should make it to the top ten of the most-hated
list at 25 percent - closely followed by the TV set - will be no surprise
to most of us, but many people apparently also hate such innocent things
as electric razors and microwave ovens. Whether the industry will pick
up on the bad vibes and come up with gentler alarm clocks remains to be
seen. |
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Corriere
della Sera |
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Is there
a theoretical limit for the height of a skyscraper? Huber Filser reports
in Süddeutsche Zeitung (January
20, 2004) on the boom of building more and higher buildings. For Europeans
this is difficult to imagine, but according to Filser about 300 high rises
are being built at the moment in Tokio, 490 in Sao Paulo. In principle
buildings up to 800 meters are possible, experts say. Engineers and architects
must protect the buildings against heavy wind pressure and possible earth
quakes. Other challenges are the logistics inside such a vertical town:
How to transport most efficiently thousands of people living or working
there? Consumers and workers will decide whether they want to at 1000
meters above ground. |
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Süddeutsche
Zeitung |
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Slow-Paced Life Prolongs Life Expectancy The lives
of birds are often short: predators, starvation and cold weather make
sure that birds rarely die of complications from old age. Tobias Hagerberg
reports in Dagens Nyheter (January
21, 2004) that Swedish researchers from Stockholm's Natural History
Museum have compiled an extensive list of the maximum reported lifespans
of birds. On the top of the list is a 53-year old albatross from New Zealand.
A 32-year old golden eagle and a 29-year old lesser black-backed gull
hold the Swedish record. These data give further support to the idea that
a slow-paced life with low reproductive rates, which is typical for many
seabirds, prolongs life expectancy. |
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Dagens
Nyheter |
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PR-Disaster, Mars Express Successful Concerning
the PR-efforts around space exploration, Europeans still have a lot to
learn from the Americans. Susanna Baltscheffsky gives in Svenska Dagbladet
an account of the successes and failures accompanying the recent ESA mission
to Mars (January 18, 2004).
The spectacular failure of the Mars lander "Beagle" has attracted attention
away from the apparently impressive operation of the orbiting Mars Express
probe. Stas Barabash, Professor of Astrophysics from Kiruna, states that
the scientific quality of the data collected by the seven instruments
onboard Mars Express surpasses those from the two American probes. Lennart
Nordh, Swedish representative at ESA, believes that it is justified to
send several missions to Mars. The American and European spacecrafts are,
according to Nordh, sufficiently different so that the data from the two
sources can complement each other. President
Bush also captured the media attention by announcing a manned mission
to Mars. It is, however, not well known that also the Europeans plan such
a mission under the name "Aurora".
Planning has been going on for two years and at a ministerial meeting
next year a decision will be taken. |
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Svenska
Dagbladet |
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Manned space
exploration has a final downside: People have to eat, to breathe and to
dump or recycle their litter. Hence, they have to bring all supplies with
them, or more likely an artificial biosphere supports their life. Jörg
Albrecht writes in Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung (January
18, 2004) about the different experiments done by researchers of the
former Soviet Union and the NASA. Russian researchers, for instance, recycled
the breathed air with algae. But one may not eat the algae. Therefore
at a later stage vegetables and wheat. NASA scientists, on the other hand,
favour hand aquatic systems. Their advantage is that they develop well
without gravity. |
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Frankfurter
Allgemeine Zeitung |
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