A Giant Puzzle With Billions of Pieces

Day after day, legions of microorganisms work to produce energy from waste in biogas plants. Researchers from Bielefeld University's Center for Biotechnology (CeBiTec) are taking a close look to find out which microbes do the best job. They are analysing the entire genetic information of the microbial communities in selected biogas plants up and down Germany. From the beginning of 2013, the Californian Joint Genome Institute will undertake the sequencing required. The biocomputational analysis will be performed at CeBiTec. Not an easy task, since the data will be supplied in billions of fragments stemming in turn from hundreds of organisms. Piecing together this huge jigsaw puzzle will be painstaking work.

In Germany, there are more than 7,000 biogas plants which can supply over six million households with power. The plants are filled mostly with plant biomass like maize silage but also with agricultural waste materials like liquid manure and chicken manure. One of the key research questions is how the production of biogas can be optimised. For this reason, Bielefeld scientists Dr Alexander Sczyrba, Dr Andreas Schlüter, Dr Alexander Goesmann, Professor Dr Jens Stoye und Professor Dr Alfred Pühler want to know what microbes are responsible for the decomposition of biomass -- and which of them do it best. "We are interested in discovering the microbiology that is really behind the processes going on in a biogas plant; what micro-organisms play which role at which stage," explains Andreas Schlüter, whose research at CeBiTec is in the field of biogas production.

First genome deciphered

The researchers' work has already borne its first fruit. "At CeBiTec, we have managed to deci-pher the complete genome sequence of Methanoculleus bourgensis, a methane producer," reports Professor Pühler. By doing so, Bielefeld has sequenced the first genome for a methane-producing archaeon from a biogas plant -- a single-celled primordial bacterium which plays an important role in certain biogas plants. Now, the researchers want to go even further.

Putting the puzzle together

The project is part of the Community Sequencing Program, a public sequencing programme financed at the Joint Genome Institute by the US Department of Energy. While previous biogas studies have concentrated primarily on certain marker genes, now the entire genetic information of the microorganisms is to be studied. The American institute will produce more than one terabyte of sequence data for this, which is equivalent in volume to approximately 300 human genomes. This data will be supplied in a countless number of fragments, however, since even the most modern technology is not capable of reading all at once the millions of bases of which a microbial DNA molecule consists. Instead, the sequencing technologies supply vast quantities of overlapping sections of about 150 bases.

The DNA sequences will then be returned to Bielefeld in billions of fragments, which is where Alexander Sczyrba's Computa-tional Metagenomics team comes into play. They develop bioinformatic procedures for the reconstruction of genome sequences. Their task is to compare the data, recognise the overlaps and use them to reassemble the base sequence. "We are trying to complete a puzzle made up of billions of pieces, which also includes hundreds of different puzzles all mixed up," explains Sczyrba.

Single-cell genomics promises new insights

Quite incidentally, the Bielefeld researchers will be breaking new ground in genomics. An estimated 99 per cent of all microorganisms cannot be cultivated in the laboratory. A brand new technology, single-cell genomics, is to provide insights here by determining the genome sequence from single microbial cells. Knowledge of the identity and functions of hitherto completely unknown microorganisms is expected to be gained. During the joint project, the Joint Genome Institute will sequence approximately 100 single-cell genomes.

The researchers have scheduled roughly two years for their project, in which also Bielefeld doctoral students of the Graduate Cluster in Industrial Biotechnology (CLIB) are involved. At the end, they hope to have discovered the optimal microbial community for biogas plants -- and thus be in a position to make this process of generating energy even more efficient.

Read more at Sceince Daily

News Sceptical Award

This year I'm going to do something special for all the readers of The Magical Journey! Past years I've been making the sceptical awards myself but this year it's all up to you! What blog, podcast or sceptical news thingy do you think is deserved to be awarded this year?

If you have any suggestions, please write in the comments with a link to the page and I will look it up! The winner will be awarded with The Sceptical Award 2012!

The Winner will be announced the 29th of December 2012 so hurry up!

Danny Boston from A Magical Journey

Hawaiian Islands Are Dissolving from Within, Study Says

Most of us think of soil erosion as the primary force that levels mountains, however geologists have found that Oahu's mountains are dissolving from within due to groundwater.

Someday, Oahu's Koolau and Waianae mountains will be reduced to nothing more than a flat, low-lying island like Midway.

But erosion isn't the biggest culprit. Instead, scientists say, the mountains of Oahu are actually dissolving from within.

"We tried to figure out how fast the island is going away and what the influence of climate is on that rate," said Brigham Young University geologist Steve Nelson. "More material is dissolving from those islands than what is being carried off through erosion."

The research pitted groundwater against stream water to see which removed more mineral material. Nelson and his BYU colleagues spent two months sampling both types of sources. In addition, ground and surface water estimates from the U.S. Geological Survey helped them calculate the total quantity of mass that disappeared from the island each year.

"All of the Hawaiian Islands are made of just one kind of rock," Nelson said. "The weathering rates are variable, too, because rainfall is so variable, so it's a great natural laboratory."

Forecasting the island's future also needs to account for plate tectonics. As Oahu is pushed northwest, the island actually rises in elevation at a slow but steady rate. You've heard of mountain climbing; this is a mountain that climbs.

According to the researchers' estimates, the net effect is that Oahu will continue to grow for as long as 1.5 million years. Beyond that, the force of groundwater will eventually triumph and the island will begin its descent to a low-lying topography.

Undergraduate student Brian Selck co-authored the study, which appears in the journal Geochimica et Cosmochimica Acta. Unfortunately for him, he joined the project only after the field work in Hawaii took place.

Instead, Selck performed the mineralogical analysis of soil samples in the lab back in Provo. The island's volcanic soil contained at least one surprise in weathered rock called saprolites.

"The main thing that surprised me on the way was the appearance of a large amount of quartz in a saprolite taken from a 1-meter depth," Selck said.

Read more at Science Daily

A New Type of Nerve Cell Found in the Brain

Scientists at Karolinska Institutet in Sweden, in collaboration with colleagues in Germany and the Netherlands, have identified a previously unknown group of nerve cells in the brain. The nerve cells regulate cardiovascular functions such as heart rhythm and blood pressure. It is hoped that the discovery, which is published in the Journal of Clinical Investigation, will be significant in the long term in the treatment of cardiovascular diseases in humans.

The scientists have managed to identify in mice a previously totally unknown group of nerve cells in the brain. These nerve cells, also known as 'neurons', develop in the brain with the aid of thyroid hormone, which is produced in the thyroid gland. Patients in whom the function of the thyroid gland is disturbed and who therefore produce too much or too little thyroid hormone, thus risk developing problems with these nerve cells. This in turn has an effect on the function of the heart, leading to cardiovascular disease.

It is well-known that patients with untreated hyperthyroidism (too high a production of thyroid hormone) or hypothyroidism (too low a production of thyroid hormone) often develop heart problems. It has previously been believed that this was solely a result of the hormone affecting the heart directly. The new study, however, shows that thyroid hormone also affects the heart indirectly, through the newly discovered neurons.

"This discovery opens the possibility of a completely new way of combating cardiovascular disease," says Jens Mittag, group leader at the Department of Cell and Molecular Biology at Karolinska Institutet. "If we learn how to control these neurons, we will be able to treat certain cardiovascular problems like hypertension through the brain. This is, however, still far in the future. A more immediate conclusion is that it is of utmost importance to identify and treat pregnant women with hypothyroidism, since their low level of thyroid hormone may harm the production of these neurons in the fetus, and this may in the long run cause cardiovascular disorders in the offspring."

Read more at Science Daily

No Doomsday! The Quick Reference Guide

Still worried about flaming space rocks inextricably falling from the sky? Losing sleep over nonsensical "killer" solar flares? Got your knickers-in-a-knot over the non-existent Planet X?

If you answered "yes," you obviously haven't been paying attention. And no, this isn't a conspiracy or some fantasy coverup, the "great" Mayan Doomsday of 2012 is a hoax, a farce, a "marketing fallacy," a pink elephant, a lie, complete and utter bullsh*t (don't take my word for it, Penn & Teller said so).

But just in case there is any shred of doubt in your mind about Dec. 21 and the end of the world, here's a quick and dirty guide (plus links for further reading) to some of the key doomsday scenarios invented by a few questionable people who have been vying to make money out of your fear. I make no apologies for my sarcasm; I've been debunking this stuff for over four years -- I'm all Apocalypsed out.

1) Did the Maya predict doomsday? NO. If the ancient Maya didn't predict doomsday, then what's all this "Mayan Doomsday" baloney? Exactly. It's all made up, invented, fabricated, a big turd.

2) What about Planet X/Nibiru? Isn't some large planetary body predicted to zoom through the inner solar system causing all kinds of carnage? In a word: No. In two words: heck no. Anyone with good eyesight or a low-end telescope would have spotted an incoming planet (or brown dwarf) in the night sky a long time ago.

3) Any marauding asteroids or comets? As far as the world's asteroid-hunting programs are concerned, 90 percent of the massive, 1 kilometer-wide, civilization-ending asteroids have been discovered. No imminent smaller asteroids (i.e. ones that could cause regional/city-wide damage) have been detected. Of course, a bus-sized space rock could flatten your house tomorrow, but really, what are the odds?

4) What about a killer zombie hamster uprising? Now you're just being silly (although it does have potential to be the cutest doomsday scenario of all doomsday scenarios).

5) OK, will the Earth flip and swap poles? No. The Earth doesn't work like that (unless it got hit by something big -- refer to #2 and #3). What about a crazy geomagnetic shift? That could cause all kinds of mayhem! Um, no, not likely. Although the magnetic poles of the Earth tend to wander and they have changed polarity in the history of our planet, there's no indication of any rapid geomagnetic change any time soon.

6) Killer solar flares -- come on, that's a realistic doomsday scenario, right? Although the sun is reaching "solar maximum" -- a period in the sun's 11-year cycle when flares and coronal mass ejections (CMEs) are more frequent -- there's no evidence to suggest that Dec. 21 will include the eruption of a any powerful solar flare. Sure, the sun might produce a flare that could cause radio interference in our atmosphere, but this solar cycle is a comparatively weak cycle, and nothing big is forecast. Space weather is a serious concern, however, as solar activity can interfere with satellites and power grids, but it certainly cannot generate "killer" solar flares. That is a serious misconception as to how the sun works.

7) I'm getting so bored with this. I need a vacation.

8) Galactic alignment? According to many doomsayers, the solar system is passing through the center of the galactic disk right now. They've nailed it down the a specific day -- right when the Maya Long Count calendar ends! While it's true there is some wobble in the sun's orbit around the Milky way, there's no real way of knowing when we go through the "center" of the galaxy's equator. Modern astronomy cannot pin that moment down to a year, let alone a day, so how the heck did the ancient Maya do it? Yeah, they were good astronomers, but they weren't that good. Some doomsayers also profess to some divine knowledge that when the sun eclipses the supermassive black hole (Sagittarius A*) at center of the Milky Way during this alignment, some magical force will influence Earth. The fact that the sun isn't even close to eclipsing the galactic center, let alone the presence of a made-up magical force, should reveal that it's all complete bunkum.

9) About that black hole in the center of our galaxy -- it's scary right? Not at all. It's located over 20,000 light-years from Earth. It's not going to suck us in any time soon.

Time to Party, Not Worry

To be honest, there are many more crappy doomsday scenarios based around Dec. 21, but each and every one is flawed. Some may have been spawned from a shred of scientific fact, but each have blown the significance of the Maya Long Count calendar out of proportion.

However, all doomsday scenarios are born from individuals who want to make money out of people's fear. They've been writing books and making movies all with one goal in mind: to scare you into buying into the hype so they can make money. It's a sinister marketing ploy that has been used for generations, but this "2012 doomsday" has been especially viral because the Internet has aided the spread of scientific disinformation.

So, as Friday arrives and we look forward to Christmas, in the future when you hear about another doomsday, please check the science and do your own research. Do not swallow the lies of a few crazed individuals who want to profit from your fear and confusion. No one has ever prophesized the future, and no calendar end date has signified the end of the world.

Read more at Discovery News

Welcome Winter

In the very likely event that we survive Friday's rumored Mayan apocalypse, those of us in the Northern Hemisphere will at least get to experience another cosmic occasion: the winter solstice.

On Friday, Dec. 21, the sun will appear to make its lowest, quickest trek across the sky all year, resulting in the shortest day of 2012 and the official start of winter.

Earth is tilted on its axis 23.5 degrees, so it leans one way as it spins around its axis while orbiting the sun. On Dec. 21, the top half of the planet (everything north of the equator) will face away from the sun, leaving the North Pole in complete darkness.

Since the summer solstice on June 20, 2012, the altitude of the midday sun (or its height above the horizon) has been getting lower as its direct rays have been gradually migrating to the south. Technically, after the exact moment the winter solstice occurs Friday — 6:12 a.m. EST (1112 GMT) — the sun will turn around and start on its journey back north. So starting Saturday, the days will slowly start getting longer, but that doesn't mean it will start getting warmer. In fact, the coldest days are yet to come.



Daylight in the mid-latitudes lasts for around nine hours close to the winter solstice, compared with about 15 hours around the summer solstice (when the Northern Hemisphere is tilted toward the sun). With less sunlight energy hitting us, temperatures plummet. And even though the days will get longer during January, Northern Hemisphere oceans continue to cool in the relative lack of the sun's rays, and ocean temperatures drive much of the weather on the continents.

Read more at Discovery News

One Day Until the Mayan Apocalypse

It's the end of the world! Or not.

Despite the failure of a multitude of doomsday prophecies over the centuries, believers are at it again, this time with an interpretation of the ancient Mayan calendar that pegs the end of the world as tomorrow, Friday, Dec. 21.

The so-called 2012 apocalypse has spawned a Hollywood film ("2012," released with questionable timing in 2009), official responses from NASA and the closure of at least one mountain in France, which officials fear will be swamped with believers looking for a trip to safety on a flying saucer on Dec. 21. Friday also happens to be the official start of winter, or the winter solstice, when the top half of the planet faces directly away from the sun.

The rumors get their start because Dec. 21 in the Western calendar likely corresponds to the end of the 13th b'ak'tun of the Mayan Long Count Calendar, one of three calendars the ancient Maya used to count time. The calendar works by counting first days, then 20-day chunks of time, then 260-day periods and 7,200-day periods. Ticking up like a car odometer, the calendar finally keeps track of 144,000-day blocks of time called b'ak'tuns.

The thirteenth b'ak'tun

Thirteen b'ak'tuns would have been seen by the ancient Maya as a completed cycle of creation, but there were absolutely no apocalyptic predictions associated with this date. Just as an old 2012 calendar will be tossed for a new 2013 model, the Mayan calendar will continue on. In fact, the Maya had units for counting even larger chunks of time than b'ak'tuns -- their calendar is capable of tracking millions of years.

Rumors of an apocalypse linked to the Mayan calendar emerged only when Westerners got their hands on the numbers. Theories blew up, largely online, making the Mayan apocalypse one of the very few grassroots doomsday predictions in history.

Apocalypse rumors eventually became so pervasive that they brought the Dec. 21 back to the attention of the modern Maya, said Robert Sitler, a professor of Latin American studies at Stetson University in Florida. Few Maya had given much thought to the calendar, as it fell out of use more than 1,000 years ago. Now, however, many Maya are giving the day its due, Sitler told LiveScience, though not as the end of the world. Most groups interpret the end of the b'ak'tun as a time of change and enlightenment.

No doomsday

Many of the apocalyptic rumors surrounding Dec. 21 have focused on astronomical theories, such as a collision between Earth and an asteroid or a rogue planet. That's brought NASA into the fray. The agency has been working overtime to quash doomsday rumors, even maintaining its own debunking website.

Among the wilder theories is the idea that the magnetic poles of the planet will suddenly flip-flop, either destroying life on Earth or sending us back to the Stone Age. Not so, according to NASA. The North and South magnetic poles do gradually change and switch places, but the key word is "gradual." The process takes place over thousands of years and has happened many times without disrupting life on the planet.

Another theory holds that a rogue "Planet X" or "Nibiru" will swoop in from the outer solar system to collide with Earth. Fortunately, there is no Planet X. And if an object were set to hit the planet by tomorrow, you can bet it'd be visible in the sky by today.

Read more at Discovery News

Human Hands Evolved for Punching

Human hands evolved so that men could make fists and fight, and not just for manual dexterity, new research finds.

The study, published in the Journal of Experimental Biology, adds to a growing body of evidence that humans are among the most aggressive and violent animals on the planet.

"With the notable exception of bonobos, great apes are a relatively aggressive group of mammals," lead author David Carrier told Discovery News. "Although some primatologists may argue that chimpanzees are the most aggressive apes, I think the evidence suggests that humans are substantially more violent."

Carrier points out that while chimpanzees physically batter each other more frequently than humans, rape appears to be less common in chimpanzees, and torture and group-against-group forms of violence, such as slavery, are not documented in the animals.

"Chimpanzees are also known to engage in raiding welfare in which one group largely eliminates a neighboring group, but this is not comparable in scope to the genocide that has characterized human history," added Carrier, a University of Utah biology professor.

For this latest study, he and co-author Michael Morgan, a medical student, conducted three experiments. First, they analyzed what happened when men, aged from 22 to 50, hit a punching bag as hard as they could. The peak stress delivered to the bag -- the force per area -- was 1.7 to 3 times greater with a fist strike compared with a slap.

"Because you have higher pressure when hitting with a fist, you are more likely to cause injury to tissue, bones, teeth, eyes and the jaw," Carrier said.

The second and third experiments determined that buttressing provided by the human fist increases the stiffness of the knuckle joint fourfold. It also doubles the ability of the fingers to transmit punching force, mainly due to the force transferred from the fingers to the thumb when the fist is clenched.

In terms of the size and shape of hand anatomy, the scientists point out that humans could have evolved manual dexterity with longer thumbs, but without the fingers and palms getting shorter.

Gorilla hands are closer in proportion to human hands than are other apes' hands, but they and no other ape -- aside from us -- hits with a clenched fist.

The researchers additionally point out that humans use fists during threat displays. There is also a difference in body size between males and females, particularly evident with hands and arms. This, Carrier said, is "consistent with the hand being a weapon."

Human males tend to be more physically violent than women, with men being ten times more likely to commit homicide than females in the U.S., Carrier said. But the research, nonetheless, applies to women as well.

"The bottom line is that women need to fight and defend themselves too," Morgan told Discovery News. "Women need to fight off attackers and defend themselves from rape."

Read more at Discovery News

Mass Shootings Have Long History

He came along with a shotgun on his shoulder while a group of children were playing in front of the school. Without warning or provocation, he raised the gun to his shoulder, took deliberate aim, and fired into the crowd of boys.

Although it sounds sadly modern, the account was published in the New York Times more than a century ago.

Dated April 10, 1891, the article described an elderly man firing a shotgun at children playing in front of St. Mary's Parochial School in Newburgh, NY.

"None of the children were killed, but several were well filled with lead," the report said.

More than a century earlier, on July 26, 1764, a teacher and 10 students were shot dead by four Lenape American Indians in Greencastle, Pennsylvania, in what is considered the earliest known U.S. mass school shooting.

Indeed, killing or trying to kill a mass of people is not a modern phenomenon. For as long as there has been history, there have been gruesome mass murders.

"The terms amok, a Malayan word, and berserk, a Norse word, have been used to describe individuals going on killing sprees. Both terms have been around for centuries, which reflects the fact that mass murder is neither a modern nor a uniquely American phenomenon," Grant Duwe,director of research at the Minnesota Department of Corrections, told Discovery News.

Defined as bloody events that occur within a 24-hour period and that involve a minimum of four victims, mass murders have occurred all over the world, in different times, societies and cultures.

Some of the earliest recorded cases include the 1893 killing with guns and swords of 11 people (including an infant) in Osaka, Japan, the 1914 shooting of 7 people in the Italian village of Camerata Cornello, not to mention the case of German spree killer Ernst August Wagner.

In 1913, he stabbed to death his wife and four children in Degerloch, near Stuttgart, then drove to Mühlhausen an der Enz where he opened fire on 20 people, killing at least nine, leaving two animals dead and several buildings burned to the ground.

In 1927, South African farmer Stephanus Swart shot dead at least 8 people and injured 3 others in Charlestown, South Africa, before committing suicide.

In 1938 almost half of the population of the rural village of Kaio, near Tsuyama city in Japan, was murdered as 21-year-old Mutsuo Toi killed 30 people with a shotgun, sword and axe, injured three others and then shot himself to death.

Between 1954 and 1957, William Unek murdered a total of 57 people in two separate spree killings in the Belgian Congo.

He first killed 21 people with an axe, then shot dead ten men, eight women and eight children, slaughtered six more men with the axe, burned two women and a child, and strangled a 15-year-old girl.

More recently in the bloody timeline of shooting sprees, some of the most dramatic incidents include the 1987 Hungerford massacre in England, where gun enthusiast Michael Ryan shot 16 people dead and wounded another 15 before committing suicide, the 1996 Port Arthur massacre in Australia, where 28 year old Martin Bryant killed 35 people and wounded 21 before being caught by police, and the 1996 school shooting in the Scottish town of Dunblane.

There, failed shopkeeper Thomas Hamilton opened fire at a primary school, killing 16 children and a teacher before turning his gun on his mouth.

"I could have been one of those children," tennis player Andy Murray wrote in his autobiography, "Hitting Back."

Britain's highest ranked player, Murray was eight when Hamilton burst into the school and began shooting. He and his 10-year-old brother Jamie escaped the fire by hiding under a desk.

In the United States, two mass murder waves characterized the 20th century. One appeared in the 1920s and 30s and another in the mid-1960s, following a tranquil period in the 1940s and 50s.

The two waves, however, were qualitatively different, according to Duwe.

The author of "Mass Murder in the United States: A History," Duwe researched 909 cases of mass killing that occurred in the United States between 1900 and 1999.

"The first mass murder wave in the 1920s and 30s was comprised mainly of familicides and felony-related massacres, which, then as now, are less likely to garner extensive media coverage," Duwe said.

On the contrary, the second mass murder wave from the mid-1960s through the mid-1990s consisted of a greater number of mass public shootings, similar to the recent Aurora movie theater shooting and Newtown school shooting.

These incidents "have always captured a great deal of interest and concern," Duwe said.

Read more at Discovery News

Five Planets, One 'Habitable,' May Circle Tau Ceti

One of our solar system's nearest neighbors appears to have five planets circling the parent star, all closer than Mars orbits the sun.

One world, in particular has captured scientists' eye because it is located within the star's so-called habitable zone, a region where water, if it exists, could be in a liquid state -- a key ingredient for life as we know it.

The parent star is Tau Ceti, a sun-like star located less than 12 light-years from Earth, in the constellation Cetus.

The planet of interest is estimated to be about 4.3 times more massive than Earth. If confirmed, the planet would be the smallest yet discovered in a star's habitable zone, say scientists who will be publishing their research in an upcoming issue of Astronomy & Astrophysics.

"This discovery is in keeping with our emerging view that virtually every star has planets, and that the galaxy must have many such potentially habitable Earth-sized planets. They are everywhere, even right next door," astronomer Steve Vogt, with the University of California Santa Cruz, said in a statement.

"We are now beginning to understand that nature seems to overwhelmingly prefer systems that have multiple planets with orbits of less than 100 days. This is quite unlike our own solar system where there is nothing with an orbit inside that of Mercury. So our solar system is, in some sense, a bit of a freak and not the most typical kind of system that nature cooks up," Vogt added.

Astronomers used instruments on three telescopes to look for tiny wobbles in starlight coming from Tau Ceti caused by the slight gravitational tugging of its orbiting brood.

Read more at Discovery News