FEBRUARY 2007
2007 AAAS Annual
Meeting
• San Francisco
15-19 February
Public release date: 16-Feb-2007
Contact: Neil Calder
neil.calder@slac.stanford.edu
650-926-8707
Stanford University
Nobel laureate Burton Richter to speak about future of particle physics
Particle physics is about to transform our thinking once again. Experiments of the last 15 years suggest new forms of matter, new forces of nature and perhaps even new dimensions of space and time. Pinning down the new ideas will require more data from larger and more expensive machines-at a time when funding is more difficult than ever to secure.
"As Dickens wrote, it is the best of times and the worst of times," says Nobel laureate Burton Richter, the Paul Pigott Professor in the Physical Sciences, Emeritus, at the Stanford Linear Accelerator Center and a pioneer of the particle colliders that now dominate high-energy physics. "We are in the midst of a revolution in understanding, but accelerator facilities are shutting down before new ones can open, and there is great uncertainty about future funding."
On Feb. 16, at the annual meeting of the American Association for the Advancement of Science in San Francisco, Richter will speak about the future course for elementary particle physics. He will offer a short overview of current research and explain his view of the most important opportunities for the field today.
Over the last 15 years, physicists discovered that they understand much less of the universe than they thought. No longer do they believe that luminous matter alone fills up the vacuum of space. Instead, two mysterious substances-dark matter and dark energy-comprise 96 percent of the universe. Neutrinos, very light elementary particles that stream from the sun, change from one type of matter to another as they travel close to the speed of light. And the Standard Model-the theory once believed to describe all fundamental interactions-no longer describes all that we observe.
The next 15 years are likely to answer some questions and raise new ones, Richter says. Physicists hope to find what is beyond the Standard Model, what at least some of the dark matter is made of and what is driving the accelerating expansion of the universe. The next few years may even see an experimental test of theories that posit more dimensions than just three of space and one of time, including string theory.
Yet none of this can happen without new experiments and new machinery, Richter says. In choosing which experiments to fund, the particle physics community must make choices that will severely limit the pace of discovery in some areas.
"This is a time where we cannot afford the merely good, but must focus on the really important if we are to continue our quest to learn what the universe is made of and how it works," Richter says.
In the lecture, Richter will present his views on which experiments must be funded and which will have to wait. Specifically, he will discuss the Large Hadron Collider (LHC), the proposed International Linear Collider (ILC), the need for accelerator research and development, the Joint Dark Energy Mission (JDEM) and Large Synoptic Survey Telescope (LSST) astroparticle experiments, and the critical questions that must be addressed regarding neutrinos.
The experiments
The LHC, now under construction at the European Laboratory for Particle Physics (CERN), will begin colliding protons at the end of this year. Researchers hope this machine will finally reveal the Higgs boson, a particle theorized to give mass to matter. The LHC also may discover whether particles have supersymmetric partners and determine if extra dimensions exist, among other things.
If built, the ILC would offer a more detailed perspective of what the LHC finds. By colliding electrons and positrons at higher energies than ever before, the machine would allow physicists to see new particles in unprecedented detail. Experiments at the ILC also could help explain the dominance of matter over antimatter in the universe by exploring "charge-parity violation," an asymmetry between the behavior of matter and antimatter, and could identify the particles predicted by theories of supersymmetry and extra dimensions. If the LHC turns up nothing, however, it is unlikely that the ILC will get built, Richter says.
Searches for dark matter and dark energy underground, on the Earth's surface and in space also will be an essential element of progress, Richter says. This area includes JDEM, a space-based instrument to search for supernovae, and LSST, a ground-based telescope that will provide digital imaging of faint astronomical objects across the entire sky.
In the coming years, various neutrino experiments with reactors, accelerators and cosmic rays may even offer insight into charge-parity violation.
"There's a huge opportunity here," he says. "While we may not be able to do all of this as fast as we would like, we need to get the really important done even if it takes longer than we would wish. The results will tell us much more about the universe and how it works."
Also speaking at the session are Nobel laureate David Gross of the University of California-Santa Barbara (matter, space and time); Young-Kee Kim of the University of Chicago (today's particle physics frontier); Philip Bryant of CERN (the LHC); Albert De Roeck of CERN (the LHC); and Jonathan Bagger of Johns Hopkins University (the ILC).
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COMMENT:
Burton Richter, Stanford Linear Accelerator Center: (650)
926-2601
Decision making isn't always as rational as you think (or hope)
SAN FRANCISCO -- When making tough choices about terrorism, troop surges or crime, we usually go with our gut.
The human brain is set up to simultaneously process two kinds of information: the emotional and the empirical. But in most people, emotional responses are much stronger than the rational response and usually take over, according to Michigan State University environmental science and policy researcher Joseph Arvai.
"People tend to have a hard time evaluating numbers, even when the numbers are clear and right in front of them," Arvai said. "In contrast, the emotional responses that are conjured up by problems like terrorism and crime are so strong that most people don't factor in the empirical evidence when making decisions."
Arvai joins four other scientists to discuss how people make decisions and evaluate risk at a symposium, titled "Numbers and Nerves: Affect and Meaning in Risk Information," today at the American Association for the Advancement of Science annual meeting.
In his research, Arvai and graduate student Robyn Wilson, of Ohio State University, asked individuals to consider two risk scenarios common in many state parks. One involved crime – vandalism and purse snatching – and the other involved damage to property from white-tailed deer, such as auto-deer collisions. The participants were asked to indicate which problem required more attention from risk managers.
"The neat thing with crime and deer overpopulation is that both risks could be measured on the same scale, which made our jobs as researchers easier," Arvai explained. "But because crime incites such a negative emotional response from most people, it consistently received more attention, even when the numbers showed that the risks from deer were much worse. We had to ratchet up the deer damage until it was ridiculously high before people noticed that it was a higher risk than crime.
"The bigger problem we’ve uncovered is that this response isn't limited to crime and deer," he continued. "We see it happening in other areas: terrorism, the war in Iraq and infectious diseases."
Can this heart over head thinking be reversed?
"People can be given tools that help them to 'listen' more to the empirical side of their brains," Arvai said. "But in our experiments, the effects of these tools tend to be relatively short term. We’ve been able to make people aware that they're letting their emotions guide them, and we’ve developed decision aids that help them strike a better balance between their emotions and the numbers. But people tend to revert to decisions guided by emotions once the experiment is over, and they leave the room."
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Contact: Jamie DePolo, Michigan Agricultural Experiment Station: (609) 354-8403, depolo@msu.edu
EMBARGOED FOR RELEASE 2:45 P.M. THURSDAY, FEB. 15, 2007
Arvai’s research is funded by the National Science Foundation, NASA, the Michigan Agricultural Experiment Station and Ohio State University.
INFANTS LEARNING SPEECH
Public Release: 16-Feb-2007
2007 AAAS Annual Meeting
Contact: Doré Dunne
dore.dunne@nserc.ca
613-851-8677
Natural Sciences and
Engineering Research Council
Not just babbling
Baby language is more than just nonsense to Natural Sciences and Engineering Research Council grantee Janet Werker. Her research shows infants listen to the words being spoken to them and look for patterns – sounds that are repeated over and over again – to learn how to speak. Now, she is using this research to help children who are developmentally delayed in language.
Her groundbreaking research, which was established during the 1980s but continues today, has earned Werker a fellowship in the American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS). She will receive the honour at a special ceremony during the AAAS annual conference, held this year in San Francisco from Feb. 15 to 19.
"I feel privileged to earn this fellowship because being nominated by your peers – especially international peers – is the best recognition of the quality of your work," says Werker, a psychology professor at the University of British Columbia. "It's amazing to me that people still use my fundamental research today, and gratifying that they find the more recent work valuable as well."
A 1984 study she published in Infant Behavior & Development showed infants of eight months living in English-speaking environments can easily distinguish sounds that are not present in that language, such as the Hindu "da," which is slightly different from the English "da." However, by 10 months the distinction all but vanishes.
Werker and her colleagues then did further research to understand the learning mechanisms that make this change possible, and the link between how infants place speech sounds into categories and the words they learn later on. This work has appeared in prestigious journals such as Nature.
The tests with children are only minutes long, and always in the presence of a parent. She does the tests using procedures such as training the children to look at a certain image when a sound is made, or suck on a pacifier in response to a sound of a certain type, behaviours children are able to do long before they can speak. In some studies, she also tracks infant eye movements, or records changes in the brain.
"This research is enjoyable and I have been fortunate to be able to do it for a long time. None of this would have been possible without the hard work of my graduate students and postdoctoral fellows. I hope this honour will allow me to give similar recognition to people I feel deserve praise for their research."
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Janet Werker
Department of Psychology
University of British Columbia
Tel.: 604-822-6741
E-mail: jwerker@psych.ubc.ca
Old dinosaur research leads to new honor
A lifelong obsession with fossils led to Natural Sciences and Engineering Research Council grantee Robert Reisz discovering the oldest known dinosaur embryos and the oldest known reptile that stands on two legs.
Now, he is being honoured for more than 35 years of research excellence by joining the ranks of the American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS). The society will induct him as a fellow during its annual conference, being held from Feb. 15 to 19 in San Francisco.
"I am humbled that they chose me, and I think it was because my research has had an impact in my field," says Reisz, a paleontologist at the University of Toronto. "I like to look at the very beginnings of major evolutionary events – to that time when mammals and reptiles and birds were just becoming separate from each other. It was an exciting time in history, about 270 million years ago – it was between ice ages, just like the time we are living in now – and I think my work has led to a greater understanding of what happened then."
Reisz earned three degrees in zoology at McGill University during the 1960s and 1970s, culminating in a doctorate in 1975. After spending a year at UCLA, he began research at the University of Toronto under an NSERC grant. He has remained at the university, continually funded by NSERC, ever since.
His research has spanned several countries, including Russia, Germany, the United States and Canada. His most recent discovery – finding 190-million-year-old dinosaur embryos in South Africa in 2005 – is part of a time period that is about 100 million years younger than the one he usually studies.
"I had a special research opportunity through NSERC to pursue this, and never expected it would be that successful. In fact, there will soon be an interpretive centre at the site where we found the embryos – the Golden Gate Highlands National Park in South Africa. It certainly is an honour to be recognized for my work."
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Robert Reisz
Department of Biology
University of Toronto – Erindale College
Tel.: 905-828-5364
E-mail: rreisz@utm.utoronto.ca
Science Books for Children: Awards
Public release date: 14-Feb-2007
Authors, illustrator win AAAS/Subaru SB&F Prize for Excellence in Science Books
Sponsored by Subaru of America, Inc.
SAN FRANCISCO -- Four authors and an illustrator of children's science books won the 2007 AAAS/Subaru SB&F Prize for Excellence in Science Books for recently published works that promote scientific literacy, are scientifically sound, and foster an understanding and appreciation of science in readers of all ages.The prizes are being awarded for individual books in four categories: Children's Science Picture Books, Middle Grades Nonfiction Science Books, Young Adult Science Book and Hands-on Science/Activity Book. The winners were selected by a judging panel, and will receive a cash prize of $1,500 and a plaque.
"These prizes recognize the importance of science books for children and young people that engage these readers by being clever and entertaining, while teaching them about science in the process," said Alan I. Leshner, chief executive officer at the American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS) and executive publisher of its journal, Science.
The AAAS/Subaru SB&F Prize for Excellence in Science Books celebrates outstanding science writing and illustration for children and young adults. AAAS and Subaru co-sponsor these prizes to promote science literacy by drawing attention to the importance of good science writing and illustration. "Subaru would like to congratulate the award winners for their outstanding contribution to science writing and illustration," said Tim Mahoney, Subaru of America Inc. "This type of contribution is one that is recognized today, but can be appreciated for generations to come."
The 2007 recipients are:
Children's Science Picture Book
An Egg Is Quiet
Author: Dianna Aston
Illustrator: Sylvia Long
Chronicle Books, 2006
Striking and accurate drawings of all types of eggs—from the very tiny blue crab egg to the hefty ostrich egg—bring this book to life. The beautiful illustrations and simple yet informative text show why eggs are different shapes (seabird eggs are pointy at one end, so they roll around in safe little circles, not off the cliff), colors (to camouflage themselves), and textures (amphibian eggs are "gooey", which keeps them from drying out). The author excellently captures the incredible variety of eggs while celebrating their form and function.
Middle Grades Nonfiction Science Book
Team Moon: How 400,000 People Landed Apollo 11 on
the Moon
Author: Catherine Thimmesh
Houghton Mifflin, 2006
This book takes readers behind the scenes of the mission that first placed humans on the Moon—dramatically telling, for example, the story of the near-catastrophe the astronauts faced when they were less than 35,000 feet from the lunar surface. The pictures do the story full justice, and it was good to see the emphasis on the team who made an historic event possible. Team Moon was also honored with the American Library Association's 2007 Robert F. Sibert Informational Book Award.
Young Adult Science Book
Tigerland and Other Unintended Destinations
Author: Eric Dinerstein
Island Press, 2005
Through a series of autobiographical essays, the author recounts his efforts to preserve wildlife and wildlands. He describes his not-always-enjoyable adventures seeking tigers in Nepal, giant river otters on the Orinoco, snow leopards in Kashmir, and bats in Costa Rica's Monteverde cloud forest. There are encounters with wildebeest on the Serengeti, the ancient vegetation of New Caledonia, prairie dogs and bison on North America's Great Plains, and the fauna and flora (endemic and introduced) of the Galápagos. Woven into his narrative are portraits of environmentalists and considerations of critical conservation issues such as ecotourism, habitat fragmentation, and ecosystem restoration. The book provides a quiet yet compelling introduction to conservation biology.
Hands-On Science/Activity Books
Thomas Edison for Kids: His Life and Ideas, 21
Activities.
Author: Laurie Carlson
Chicago Review Press, 2006
The author uses the life and inventions of Thomas Edison to inspire a new generation of curious minds. Young readers will find an excellent introduction to the relations among science, technology, and society. That perspective on the history and nature of science provides the backdrop for descriptions of Edison's curiosity, experimentation, inductive reasoning, and many inventions. Each chapter in the chronological narrative is strengthened by the inclusion of two or three related hands-on activities. For example, students can build a simple circuit to test various materials for electrical conductivity.
History
The AAAS/Subaru SB&F Prize for Excellence in Science Books celebrates outstanding science writing and illustration for children and young adults. The Prize began in 2005 by looking back on decades of outstanding science books and honoring five authors and one illustrator for their significant and lasting contribution to children's and young adult science literature and illustration. As of 2006, the Prize honors recently published, individual science books.
The prizes are meant to encourage the writing and publishing of high-quality science books for all age groups.
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The American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS) is the world's largest general scientific society, and publisher of the journal, Science (www.sciencemag.org). AAAS was founded in 1848, and serves 262 affiliated societies and academies of science, reaching 10 million individuals. Science has the largest paid circulation of any peer-reviewed general science journal in the world, with an estimated total readership of 1 million. The non-profit AAAS (www.aaas.org) is open to all and fulfills its mission to "advance science and serve society" through initiatives in science policy; international programs; science education; and more. For the latest research news, log onto EurekAlert!, www.eurekalert.org, the premier science-news Web site, a service of AAAS.
About Subaru of America, Inc.
Subaru of America, Inc. is a wholly owned subsidiary of Fuji Heavy Industries Ltd. of Japan. Headquartered in Cherry Hill, N.J., the company markets and distributes Subaru Symmetrical All-Wheel Drive vehicles, parts and accessories through a network of nearly 600 dealers across the United States. Subaru makes the best-selling All-Wheel Drive car sold in America based on R.L. Polk & Co. new vehicle retail registration statistics calendar year-end 2004. For additional information visit www.subaru.com.
Since 1965, Science Books & Films (SB&F) has been the authoritative guide to science resources, bringing expert information to bear on choices of materials for a library, classroom or institution. Published by AAAS, SB&F is the only critical review journal devoted exclusively to print and nonprint materials in all of the sciences and for all age groups. Every year, SB&F (www.sbfonline.com ) evaluates nearly 1,000 books, videos, DVDs and software packages for general audiences, professionals, teachers and students from kindergarten through college.
The awards will be bestowed at the 2007 AAAS Annual Meeting in San Francisco on 17 February. (See http://www.aaas.org/meetings.) For more information on these or other AAAS awards, go to http://www.aaas.org/aboutaaas/awards.
AAAS is the world's largest general scientific society, dedicated to "Advancing science · Serving society."
MARINE
ECOSYSTEMS, ANTARCTIC
Public Release: 15-Feb-2007
2007 AAAS Annual Meeting
“We're already seeing the marine ecosystems respond dramatically to increases in temperatures along the Antarctic Peninsula,” explained Berry Lyons, professor in the School of Earth Sciences and director of the Byrd Polar Research Center at Ohio State University.
Lyons was one of many polar researchers reporting this week on the global climate threat during the annual meeting of the American Association for the Advancement of Science in San Francisco .
“Researchers are seeing the movement of penguin populations southward down the peninsula as sea ice lessens along its margins,” Lyons said. “Gentoo and chinstrap penguins are shifting south into areas now populated by adelie penguins, and the adelies are being forced further south, all because of the change in sea ice.”
A decrease in sea ice along the coast shows a drop in krill in the marine environment. As a major food source for higher animals, the loss of krill will reduce resources for higher mammals and birds.
Data gained through the Long-Term Ecological Research (LTER) site near the American Palmer Station suggests that the ecosystem's response to warming in the region includes changes in both the krill's abundance and availability.
“The data implies that there may be less food there as the temperatures rise,” he said.
He manages the LTER site in the Dry Valleys near McMurdo Station, the largest of the three American bases in Antarctica . “It you look at the last 100 years or so, things have been warming in the valleys. We have seen lake levels rise, more melt from the surrounding glaciers and more aquatic ecosystems replacing soil-based ecosystems.”
Lyons sees what is happening now looking similar to what existed during the Eemian warming period – a time 130,000 years ago before the last major glacial stage. “We know that the climate was warmer then, sea levels were higher by a couple of meters compared to today.
Lyons points to the fact that all the global climate models predict a warming in the Antarctic and a decrease in sea ice along its margins.
“Those two things will have great impacts on both the glacial dynamics of the continent but also on the fragile marine and terrestrial ecosystems that have been thriving there in the past.”
Contact: Berry Lyons (614) 688-3241; Lyons.142@osu.edu.
Public Release: 15-Feb-2007
2007 AAAS Annual Meeting
Antarctic temperatures disagree with climate model predictions
COLUMBUS , Ohio – A new report on climate over the world's southernmost continent shows that temperatures during the late 20th century did not climb as had been predicted by many global climate models.
This comes soon after the latest report by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change that strongly supports the conclusion that the Earth's climate as a whole is warming, largely due to human activity.
It also follows a similar finding from last summer by the same research group that showed no increase in precipitation over Antarctica in the last 50 years. Most models predict that both precipitation and temperature will increase over Antarctica with a warming of the planet.
David Bromwich, professor of professor of atmospheric sciences in the Department of Geography, and researcher with the Byrd Polar Research Center at Ohio State University, reported on this work at the annual meeting of the American Association for the Advancement of Science at San Francisco.
"It's hard to see a global warming signal from the mainland of Antarctica right now," he said. "Part of the reason is that there is a lot of variability there. It's very hard in these polar latitudes to demonstrate a global warming signal. This is in marked contrast to the northern tip of the Antarctic Peninsula that is one of the most rapidly warming parts of the Earth."
Bromwich says that the problem rises from several complications. The continent is vast, as large as the United States and Mexico combined. Only a small amount of detailed data is available – there are perhaps only 100 weather stations on that continent compared to the thousands spread across the U.S. and Europe . And the records that we have only date back a half-century.
"The best we can say right now is that the climate models are somewhat inconsistent with the evidence that we have for the last 50 years from continental Antarctica .
"We're looking for a small signal that represents the impact of human activity and it is hard to find it at the moment," he said.
Last year, Bromwich's research group reported in the journal Science that Antarctic snowfall hadn't increased in the last 50 years. "What we see now is that the temperature regime is broadly similar to what we saw before with snowfall. In the last decade or so, both have gone down," he said.
In addition to the new temperature records and earlier precipitation records, Bromwich's team also looked at the behavior of the circumpolar westerlies, the broad system of winds that surround the Antarctic continent.
"The westerlies have intensified over the last four decades of so, increasing in strength by as much as perhaps 10 to 20 percent," he said. "This is a huge amount of ocean north of Antarctica and we're only now understanding just how important the winds are for things like mixing in the Southern Ocean." The ocean mixing both dissipates heat and absorbs carbon dioxide, one of the key greenhouse gases linked to global warming.
Some researchers are suggesting that the strengthening of the westerlies may be playing a role in the collapse of ice shelves along the Antarctic Peninsula.
"The peninsula is the most northern point of Antarctica and it sticks out into the westerlies," Bromwich says. "If there is an increase in the westerly winds, it will have a warming impact on that part of the continent, thus helping to break up the ice shelves, he said.
"Farther south, the impact would be modest, or even non-existent."
Bromwich said that the increase in the ozone hole above the central Antarctic continent may also be affecting temperatures on the mainland. "If you have less ozone, there's less absorption of the ultraviolet light and the stratosphere doesn't warm as much."
That would mean that winter-like conditions would remain later in the spring than normal, lowering temperatures.
"In some sense, we might have competing effects going on in Antarctica where there is low-level CO2 warming but that may be swamped by the effects of ozone depletion," he said. "The year 2006 was the all-time maximum for ozone depletion over the Antarctic."
Bromwich said the disagreement between climate model predictions and the snowfall and temperature records doesn't necessarily mean that the models are wrong.
"It isn't surprising that these models are not doing as well in these remote parts of the world. These are global models and shouldn't be expected to be equally exact for all locations," he said.
Contact: David Bromwich (614) 292-6692; Bromwich.1@osu.edu