Science News

By Zeeya Merali

The Abel prize--considered the "Nobel" prize of mathematics--has been awarded to John Tate, recently retired from the University of Texas at Austin, for his work on algebraic number theory, the mathematical discipline that deals with connections between whole numbers and lies at the heart of Internet security.

Established in 2002, the Abel Prize is presented annually by the King of Norway and carries a cash award of $1 million.

"Number theory knits together the subtle and strange properties of whole numbers in a beautiful way," says mathematician Ian Stewart at the University of Warwick in Coventry, UK. [More]

By Janet Fang

Soils around the globe have increased their emissions of carbon dioxide over the past few decades, according to an analysis of 439 studies.

The findings, published in the March 25 issue of Nature, match predictions that increasing temperatures will cause a net release of carbon dioxide from soils by triggering microbes to speed up their consumption of plant debris and other organic matter.

Ben Bond-Lamberty and Allison Thomson, terrestrial carbon research scientists at the University of Maryland's Joint Global Change Research Institute in College Park, conducted the study by stitching together almost 50 years of soil-emissions data--1,434 data points--from 439 studies around the world. [More]

Despite viruses' reputation as constant shape-shifters, the recent pandemic flu (influenza A H1N1, 2009) bears an uncanny resemblance to the 1918 flu , new research has found. Two new studies, published online March 24 in Science and Science Translational Medicine , describe a small, but crucial structure that the two flu viruses share--and how that similarity might help prevent future outbreaks. [More]

Out of context, many of our behaviors--if limited to the mere veneer of plain description--would raise many an eyebrow. The most innocent of things can sound tawdry and bizarre when certain facts and details are omitted. Here’s a perfect example: I accidentally bit my dog Gulliver’s tongue recently.

Now you may be asking yourself what I was doing with his tongue in my mouth to begin with. But I would submit that that is perhaps a better question for Gulliver, since he’s the one that violated my busily masticating maw by inserting that long, thin, delicatessen-slice muscle of his while I was simply enjoying a bite of a very banal bagel. Shocked by the feel of human teeth chomping down on his tongue, he yelped--then scampered off. Fortunately, Gulliver showed no signs of lasting trauma and I was saved from having to explain to the vet how it came to be that I bit off my dog ’s tongue; but for days after the “incident” Gulliver kept his prized possession sealed behind the vault of his own clamped jaw. This gave my partner, Juan, and me at least a temporary reprieve from Gulliver’s normally overindulgent use of that particular organ on our faces. The story was strange enough for me to share with friends, and this particular tale of man-bites-dog unleashed the predictable onslaught of humorous bestiality innuendos. And that, ladies and gentleman, is where the real story begins.

For much of the past five million to seven million years over which humans have been evolving, multiple species of our forebears co-existed. But eventually the other lineages went extinct, leaving only our own, Homo sapiens , to rule Earth. Scientists long thought that by 40,000 years ago H. sapiens shared the planet with only one other human species, or hominin: the Neandertals . In recent years, however, evidence of a more happening hominin scene at that time has emerged. Indications that H. erectus might have persisted on the Indonesian island of Java until 25,000 years ago have surfaced. And then there's H. floresiensis --the mini human species commonly referred to as the hobbits --which lived on Flores, another island in the Indonesian archipelago, as recently as 17,000 years ago.

Now researchers writing in the journal Nature report that they have found a fifth kind of hominin that may have overlapped with these species. ( Scientific American is part of Nature Publishing Group.) But unlike all the other known members of the human family, which investigators have described on the basis of the morphological characteristics of their bones, the new hominin has been identified solely on the basis of its DNA.

Editor's Note: Scientific American 's George Musser will be chronicling his experiences installing solar panels in Solar at Home (formerly 60-Second Solar). Read his introduction here and see all posts here .

I had a fun talk yesterday afternoon with Bob MacDonald, the CEO of Skyline Solar , makers of a new concentrated photovoltaic (CPV) array. The thing looks rather like a big solar cooker, with a long mirror that focuses sunlight so that you only need a tenth as many solar cells to cover a given area. CPV may become the first photovoltaic technology to reach cost parity with fossil fuels.

Editor's Note: Journalist and crew member Kathryn Eident is traveling on board the RV Atlantis on a monthlong voyage to explore undersea volcanism in the eastern tropical Pacific Ocean, among other research projects. This is the first blog post detailing this voyage of discovery for ScientificAmerican.com . 

02º36' N x 94º47' W--Thousands of feet below the research vessel Atlantis , three people are roaming the seafloor. With a bathymetric map--a topographical of the seafloor--to chart the way, two scientists and a pilot glide over a craggy landscape filled with seamounts, volcanoes and small valleys. The darkness around them is absolute--they can only see what's immediately in front of them with the lights they've brought. They've been at the bottom of the ocean for a few hours now, collecting rock samples, taking pictures and capturing video. Soon, they will ascend through the depths and returnto the ship. [More]

The member nations of the Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species of Wild Fauna and Flora (CITES) at their meeting in Doha, Qatar, this week passed resolutions to aid tigers, elephants and rhinos, three of the species most victimized by the illegal wildlife trade. [More]