New Primate Discovered

050527105010 Originally uploaded by ReidAnderes. Two research teams working independently in Tanzania have discovered a monkey that had eluded scientists despite decades of research in the region. The "highland mangabey" is the first monkey species to be described in Africa since 1984. Full-body view of Lophocebus kipunji (Ehardt et al. 2005 sp. nov.). Note the animal's long fur, coat color, lighter area on chest and distal tail and characteristic tail carriage. The artist's reconstruction was drawn from research video taken by C. L. Ehardt in Tanzania in the Ndundulu Forest of the Udzungwa Mountains and in the Southern Highlands. (Credit: Zina Deretsky, National Science Foundation) Related News Stories New Species Of Monkey Discovered In Tanzania: The First In Africa For More Than 20 Years (May 23, 2005) -- Researchers from the Wildlife Conservation Society, working in conjunction with other partners, have discovered Africa's first new species of monkey in over 20 years, marking the third monkey WCS ... > full story One In Every Three Primates Now Threatened With Extinction (October 9, 2002) -- New evidence of the peril facing the world's apes, monkeys, lemurs and other primates, with one in every three now endangered with extinction, is revealed in a new report -- The World's Top ... > full story Primates On The Brink: Mankind's Closest Living Relatives Under Threat Around The World (April 26, 2005) -- Mankind's closest living relatives - the world's apes, monkeys, lemurs and other primates - face increasing peril from humans and some could soon disappear forever, according to a report ... > full story Researchers Find New Giant Amphibian Fossils In Africa (April 14, 2005) -- Two new 250 million year-old species of large, meat-eating amphibians have been discovered by researchers, including investigators from McGill ... > full story > more related stories Related section: Plants & Animals The entire known range for the highland mangabey totals a mere 28 square miles (73 square kilometers). Due to the combined threats of logging, charcoal-making, poaching and excessive removal of forest resources, this rare animal is at great risk of extinction, and the researchers estimate only a few hundred of the monkeys remain. The co-discoverers--researchers from the Wildlife Conservation Society (WCS), the University of Georgia (UGA) and Conservation International (CI)--describe the mangabey in the May 20, 2005, issue of the journal Science.

Lens method finds far-off world

BBC NEWS: "An international team of astronomers has found a planet which, at about 15,000 light-years from Earth, is one of the most distant yet detected. The new world was discovered when its parent star's gravity distorted the light from an even more distant star. The way the distant star's light changed betrayed the planet's presence. Two amateur astronomers in New Zealand helped find the world using 'backyard' telescopes, showing that almost anyone can become a planet hunter. The newly discovered world is several times the mass of Jupiter, but astronomers say the microlensing technique used to find the planet worked so well that it could be used to find much smaller, Earth-sized planets."

Wormhole 'no use' for time travel

BBC NEWS: "For budding time travellers, the future (or should that be the past?) is starting to look bleak. Hypothetical tunnels called wormholes once looked like the best bet for constructing a real time machine. These cosmic shortcuts, which link one point in the Universe to another, are favoured by science fiction writers as a means both of explaining time travel and of circumventing the limitations imposed by the speed of light. The concept of wormholes will be familiar to anyone who has watched the TV programmes Farscape, Stargate SG1 and Star Trek: Deep Space Nine. The opening sequence of the BBC's new Doctor Who series shows the Tardis hurtling through a 'vortex' that suspiciously resembles a wormhole - although the Doctor's preferred method of travel is not explained in detail. But the idea of building these so-called traversable wormholes is looking increasingly shaky, according to two new scientific analyses."

Scientists Say Sunshine May Prevent Cancer

News: "Scientists are excited about a vitamin again. But unlike fads that sizzled and fizzled, the evidence this time is strong and keeps growing. If it bears out, it will challenge one of medicine's most fundamental beliefs: that people need to coat themselves with sunscreen whenever they're in the sun. Doing that may actually contribute to far more cancer deaths than it prevents, some researchers think. The vitamin is D, nicknamed the ``sunshine vitamin'' because the skin makes it from ultraviolet rays. Sunscreen blocks its production, but dermatologists and health agencies have long preached that such lotions are needed to prevent skin cancer. Now some scientists are questioning that advice. The reason is that vitamin D increasingly seems important for preventing and even treating many types of cancer. In the last three months alone, four separate studies found it helped protect against lymphoma and cancers of the prostate, lung and, ironically, the skin. The strongest evidence is for colon cancer. "

Sugar Is Latest Supermarket Demon

New York Times: "Last summer, as the low-carbohydrate dieting craze began to fade, executives at Stonyfield Farms decided they had to make a change to their Moove Over Carbs yogurt. What they came up with was simple and painless: In January, they pulled Moove Over Carbs from the shelves, and this month, Moove Over Sugar takes its place. Except for the name, the product remains exactly the same - sugars are, after all, also carbs. Both yogurts contain a sugar substitute and have at least 40 percent fewer calories than Stonyfield Farm's regular flavored varieties. Low-sugar has become the new low-carb. Food makers are rushing to meet demand from consumers concerned with their waistlines and healthier eating by providing an array of new products, some of them aimed at children. But scientists are divided over how positive this development is, questioning whether the change will help people lose weight, and how healthful the artificial sweeteners are"

New Nuclear Battery Runs 10 Years, 10 Times More Powerful

“Our society is placing ever-higher demands for power from all kinds of devices,” says Philippe Fauchet, professor of electrical and computer engineering at the University of Rochester and co-author of the research. “For 50 years, people have been investigating converting simple nuclear decay into usable energy, but the yields were always too low. We’ve found a way to make the interaction much more efficient, and we hope these findings will lead to a new kind of battery that can pump out energy for years.”

Cheating, or an Early Mingling of the Blood?

New York Times: "Last month, when the champion American cyclist Tyler Hamilton was accused of blood doping, or transfusing himself with another person's blood to increase his oxygen-carrying red cells, he offered a surprising defense: the small amount of different blood found mixed in with his own must have come from a 'vanishing twin.' In other words, his scientific expert argued, Mr. Hamilton had a twin that died in utero but, before dying, contributed some blood cells to him during fetal life. And those cells remained in his body, producing blood that matched the dead twin and not Mr. Hamilton."

Cloak protects glacier from sun

BBC News: "Workers at a Swiss ski resort have wrapped part of a retreating glacier in reflective sheeting to protect it, they say, from global warming. The Gurschen glacier, nearly 3,000m (10,000ft) above sea level, is melting like many others worldwide, with the worst damage done in summer. The thin protective layer of foil covers an area of 3-4,000 sq m (about 43,000 sq ft)."

Bicycle chosen as best invention

BBC NEWS: "The humble bicycle has won a UK national survey of people's favourite inventions. Listeners to BBC Radio 4's You and Yours programme were invited to vote in an online poll looking at the most significant innovations since 1800. It was an easy victory for the bicycle which won more than half of the vote. The transistor came second with 8% of the vote, and the electro-magnetic induction ring - the means to harness electricity - came third."

Amazing Bird Defeats Extinction

Long believed to be extinct, a magnificent bird--the Ivory-billed Woodpecker--has been rediscovered in the Big Woods of eastern Arkansas. More than 60 years after the last confirmed sighting of the species in the United States, a research team announced that at least one male ivory-bill still survives in vast areas of bottomland swamp forest.

Killer dino 'turned vegetarian'

"A "mass graveyard" of bird-like dinosaurs has been uncovered in Utah, US, Nature magazine reports this week. Scientists believe the previously unknown species was in the process of converting to vegetarianism from a rather more bloodthirsty diet. Falcarius utahensis seems to represent an intermediate stage between a carnivorous and herbivorous form. The creature, which lived in the Early Cretaceous Period, provides a "missing link" in dinosaur evolution. "Falcarius represents evolution caught in the act, a primitive form that shares much in common with its carnivorous kin, while possessing a variety of features demonstrating that it had embarked on the path toward more advanced plant-eating forms," said co-author Scott Sampson of the Utah Museum of Natural History."

Trousers tell why Napoleon died

"A study of Napoleon Bonaparte's trousers could put an end to the theory that the French Emperor was poisoned. Napoleon died aged 52 on St Helena in the south Atlantic where he had been banished after his defeat at Waterloo. His post mortem showed he died of stomach cancer, but it has been suggested arsenic poisoning or over-zealous treatment was to blame. Now Swiss researchers say his trousers show he lost weight prior his death, confirming he had cancer."

Globetechnology: In a snarl over 'tiger'

Globetechnology: In a snarl over 'tiger': "Robert F. Young %u2014 a founder of Linux distributor Red Hat and now owner of the Hamilton Tiger-Cats Canadian football team, has offered Apple Computer CEO Steve Jobs a quick way out of a lawsuit over the latest version of Tiger, Apple's latest operating system. The lawsuit, filed one day before Apple released Tiger, sought an injunction on behalf of TigerDirect.com, based in Miami, to stop Apple from using the word 'tiger' because it infringes on its trademarked name."