And the winner is....

Congratulations to Emma Falconer who is the winner of the Communicate Science Photo Competition 2010. Emma wins for her photograph entitled "Butterflies" which was taken at the Oxford University Natural History Museum.

A copy of Reading the Irish Landscape by Frank Mitchell and Michael Ryan is winging its way to the winner.

Honorable mention goes to Greg Harris for his surface tension image and Janet Edwards for her image of Belmullet. Both of these photos really caught the judges' attention.
A special thank you to all those who submitted photographs and the judges who had the difficult task of choosing a winner. The full shortlist can be viewed here.

Well done everyone!!

Radio transmitters used to track bees

A group of scientists have used minute radio transmitters to track the movements of bees as they track down rare flowers.

It is the first example of the successful use of micro radio telemetry to track movement of an insect pollinator and the results may have implications for our understanding of biological activity patterns and the evolution of forset pollinators.

The iridescent blue-green orchid bees (Exaerete frontalis) were fitted with  transmitters weighing just 300 mg. Eyelash adhesive was used to attach the equipment to the bee's thorax (see image above).

A total of 16 bees were tagged (four were lost) and the team was able to track them for about 5 days. The results confirmed that such large orchid bees have very large home ranges and averaged about 45 hectares (although one of the bees had a range of 700 hectares).

The scientists warn that the results must be interpreted carefully but "by extending radio telemetry to bees that are scarcely a few times heavier than transmitters we obtained credible results because orchid bees are known for their flight capabilities".

These results were published in PLoS ONE journal and can viewed in its entirety here.

Irish Scientists discover new flying reptile

A group of scientists from Dublin have discovered the fossilized remains of a new species of pterosaur (a large flying reptile, see artists impression, left). Nizar Ibrahim from University College Dublin led the team who discovered the remains of the creature which they believe had a wingspan of about six metres.

The pterosaur has been named Alanqa saharica from the Arabic words 'Al Anqa' meaning phoenix. The species name 'saharica' is from its origins in the Sahara desert.

The find comes from an expedition to the Kem Kem beds in South Eastern Morocco conducted by the Dublin scientists alongside their colleagues from the University of Portsmouth and University Hassan II in Casablanca. The scientists identified the new species based on teeth and jaw remains (see below).

Nizar Ibrahim (pictured right) notes that: "This pterosaur is distinguished from all others by its lance-shaped lower jaw which had no teeth and looked rather like the beak of a gigantic heron.

"When this pterosaur was alive, the Sahara desert was a river bed basin lush with tropical plant and animal life. This meant there were lots of opportunities for different pterosaurs to co-exist, and perhaps feeding on quite different kinds of prey."

Speaking to the media, Ibrahim said: "It’s amazing to think that millions of years ago the Sahara was in fact a lush green tropical paradise, home to giant dinosaurs and crocodiles and nothing like the dusty desert we see today.

"Even to a palaeontologist dealing in millions of years it gives one an overwhelming sense of deep time."

This work was published in the PLoS ONE journal and can be viewed in its entirety here.

(Left) Holotype specimen of Alanqa saharica, i.e. the fragments used to define the new species.

Photo Competition - Shortlist Complete

All of the shortlisted entries for the Communicate Science Photo Competition 2010 are now available to view at the online exhibition and the accompanying slide show.
The winner will be announced on Friday next, 28th May.

Funny Science: all-action Darwin

Dana Carvey is Charles Darwin in this all-action epic.

Dana Carvey is "DARWIN" - watch more funny videos

Photo Competition - Results

Yet more photos have been added to our online exhibition of entries to the Communicate Science Photo Competition 2010.

You can visit the exhibition here, comment on the photos and learn who will become the overall winner.

It's life...but not as we know it

The headline in this morning's Irish Examiner is just the start of it: "Scientists create 'Frankenstein' cell", it screams. "An American biologist has stepped into the shoes of Baron Frankenstein by breathing life into a bacterium using genes assembled in the laboratory". And the Irish Examiner calls itself a serious newspaper!

The story is a fascinating one. As we told you back in January, 2010 was the year when Craig Venter promised he'd create artificial life. And he's done it.

The research, published in Science, outlines how they got the first ever microbe to survive and proliferate based on purely human-synthesized genetic information. Scientific American has a very useful summary of the latest developments here.

The research is groundbreaking and could have implications for renewable energy systems, the production of vaccines and other areas of research. Indeed, a bacterium that can digest oil spills would be very useful at the moment.

Arthur Caplan, Director of the Centre for Bioethics at University of Pennsylvania notes that, "Venter and his group were careful to use tiny molecular changes to "watermark," or stamp their creation—an identification requirement that any scientist or company ought be required to utilize when using the techniques of synthetic biology". This would prevent "bad guys making nasty bugs".

"value of life is not imperiled or cheapened by coming to understand how it works" - CaplanSpeaking of the ethical implications for this research, Caplan ponders: "is the dignity of life imperiled by showing that human beings can create a novel living thing?  I think not. There are those who are enthralled by the idea that life is a riddle beyond solution. However, the value of life is not imperiled or cheapened by coming to understand how it works." All in all, a much more nuanced and intelligent assessment of the science than the Irish Examiner could muster.