Barely legal: is attraction and estimated age of young female faces disrupted by alcohol use, make up, and the sex of the observer? "One 'reasonable ground' for unlawful sex with a minor is mistaken age. Alcohol consumption and make-up are often deemed further influences on impaired perception. Two hundred and forty persons in bars and cafes rated the attractiveness of composite faces of immature and mature females with and without additional makeup, alcohol users having their concurrent blood-alcohol level measured using a breathalyser. A non-sex-specific preference for immature faces over sexually mature faces was found. Alcohol and make-up did not inflate attractiveness ratings in immature faces. While alcohol consumption significantly inflated attractiveness ratings for participants viewing made-up sexually mature faces, greater alcohol consumption itself did not lead to overestimation of age. Although alcohol limited the processing of maturity cues in female observers, it had no effect on the age perceptions of males viewing female faces, suggesting male mate preferences are not easily disrupted. Participants consistently overestimated the age of sexually immature- and sexually mature-faces by an average of 3.5 years. Our study suggests that even heavy alcohol consumption does not interfere with age-perception tasks in men, so is not of itself ...

In another step forward in the quest to create artificial life in a test tube, a team of genetic engineers led by Craig Venter has built a synthetic genome and proved that it can power up when placed inside an existing cell.

Dr. Venter calls the result a “synthetic cell” and is presenting the research as a landmark achievement that will open the way to creating useful microbes from scratch to make products like vaccines and biofuels. At a press conference Thursday, Dr. Venter described the converted cell as “the first self-replicating species we’ve had on the planet whose parent is a computer.” [The New York Times]

The technical achievement is worth crowing about. The researchers built on Venter’s trick from last year, in which he took the genome from one bacterium, transferred it the hollowed-out shell of a different bacterial species, and watched as the new cell “booted up” successfully. In this new step, the researchers built a genome from scratch, copying the genetic code from a bacterium that infects goats and introducing just a few changes as a “watermark”; then they transferred that synthetic genome to a cell. As the researchers report in Science, the cell functioned and replicated, creating more copies of the slightly altered goat-infecting bacterium–now nicknamed Synthia.

But the reactions to Venter’s accomplishment have been mixed–while some celebratory headlines trumpeted the creation of artificial life, many scientists said the reaction was overblown, and took issue with Venter’s claim of having created a truly synthetic cell. Here, we round up a selection of responses from all corners of the science world.

Bioethicist Arthur Caplan finds the philosophical ramifications of the work fascinating:

“Their achievement undermines a fundamental belief about the nature of life that is likely to prove as momentous to our view of ourselves and our place in the Universe as the discoveries of Galileo, Copernicus, Darwin and Einstein.” [Nature News]

But many experts say that since Venter copied a pre-existing genome, he didn’t really create a new life form.

“To my mind Craig has somewhat overplayed the importance of this,” said David Baltimore, a leading geneticist at Caltech. Dr. Baltimore described the result as “a technical tour de force” but not breakthrough science, but just a matter of scale…. “He has not created life, only mimicked it,” Dr. Baltimore said [The New York Times].

In addition, many experts note that the experimenters got a big boost by placing the synthetic genome in a preexisting cell, which was naturally inclined to make sense of the transplanted DNA and to turn genes on and off. Thus, they say, it’s not accurate to label the experiment’s product a true “synthetic cell.”

Meanwhile, physicist Freeman Dyson backed his way into paying the researchers a compliment in his own inimitable way:

This experiment, putting together a living bacterium from synthetic components, is clumsy, tedious, unoriginal. From the point of view of aesthetic and intellectual elegance, it is a bad experiment. But it is nevertheless a big discovery. It opens the way to the new world of synthetic biology. It proves that sequencing and synthesizing DNA give us all the tools we need to create new forms of life. After this, the tools will be improved and simplified, and synthesis of new creatures will become quicker and cheaper. Nobody can predict the new discoveries and surprises that the new technology will bring [The Edge].

And while some horrified environmentalists called for an immediate halt to such experiments, arguing that unnatural life forms could cause unknown disasters if released into the wild, Paul Keim of the National Science Advisory Board for Biosecurity was quick to reassure the public.

Keim said there is no new hazard because the Venter team manufactured a genome whose structure and function were already understood. The researchers didn’t create a novel life form. “We have a long way to go before we see a totally synthetic organism that does something important or dangerous,” he said. [Washington Post]

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An image from the MODIS on NASA’s Aqua satellite on Tuesday afternoon, May 11, shows that the damaged Deepwater Horizon oil well continued to leak significant amounts of oil in the Gulf of Mexico.

Oil slicks become most visible in satellite images when they appear in a swath of the image called the sunlit region—where the mirror-like reflection of the sun is blurred by ocean waves into an area of brightness. In the bright zone of reflection, the difference between the oil-smoothed water and rougher surface of the clean water is enhanced. The slick appears as a silvery-gray patch in the center of the image. The tip of the Mississippi Delta is at upper left. Wispy clouds make it hard to determine whether any of the streamers or smaller patches of oil extend northeast of the main slick.

Image courtesy Jeff Schmaltz, MODIS Land Rapid Response Team, NASA, GSFC

There’s that old saying about the futility of a bird and a fish falling in love. Apparently, two birds might not fair any better: Unlucky ducks from two different species are falling for the wrong women. Actually, matchmaker Michael D. Sorenson of Boston University set them up at birth. In a foreign exchange program of sorts, his team took sixteen young male redheads (Aythya Americana) and sixteen young male canvasbacks (Aythya valisineria) and switched their homes, allowing canvasbacks to raise redhead ducklings and vice versa. Sorenson wanted to study imprinting—when a young bird sees its caretaker and recognizes her as its mother. Determining what Mom looks like turns out to be important later in a bird’s life, as the duck uses its mother’s image to pick out mates. But, as anyone who knows the origins of the word “cuckold” can attest, even when scientists aren't mucking about in the nests some birds don’t raise their own offspring. Some deadbeat ducks--including the redheads--sneak their eggs into another species’ nest, a way to shove off parenting responsibilities. Sorenson wanted to find out if such an abandoned bird could imprint the wrong mother, and later pick the wrong mates. The resulting romantic comedy, published online today in ...

Craig Venter and colleagues have achieved a remarkable milestone: they designed a genome, and brought it to life. More specifically, they’ve synthesized a chromosome consisting of over a million DNA base pairs, and implanted it in a bacterial cell to replace the cell’s original genome. That cell then reproduced, giving birth to offspring that only had the synthetic genome. See the Venter Institute press release, discussion in Nature (pdf), more discussion at Edge, and some background from Carl Zimmer. Update: and here is the paper.

Who knows exactly what this means as yet — but it’s important! You can argue if you like about whether it’s really “artificial life” — that argument has already started, and already seems boring. There are also speculations about designing microorganisms to help us solve problems like global warming or (let’s say) massive oil spills. Not completely crazy speculations, either. But there’s a long way to go before anything like that is coming off a biological assembly line. And eventually we’ll be going much further than that, beyond designer microorganisms into much weirder terrain. This isn’t a culmination, it’s just a start.

Will the Florida Keys catch a break with the loop current? Most observers are now in agreement that one of the biggest ecological worries about the BP oil spill—that it could reach the Gulf of Mexico’s loop current that flows to the Keys—has begun to occur. However, The New York Times reports today via Greenwire that eddies around the edge of the current are keeping much of the oil out of it.

Clear predictions are hard to come by because the oil continues to defy expectations about which direction it will go, and so does the loop current.

The loop moves based on shifting winds and other environmental factors, so even though oil is leaking continuously it may be in the current one day, and out the next. The slick itself has defied scientists’ efforts to track it and predict its path. Instead, it has repeatedly advanced and retreated, an ominous, shape-shifting mass in the Gulf, with vast underwater lobes extending outward [AP].

And, oceanographers like Mitch Roffer say, eddies forming near the current could disrupt it and change the oil’s course.

Satellite shots this morning showed that an eddy farther south along the Florida coast is expanding in size and strength. That cyclone appears likely to destabilize or even sever the Loop Current, greatly reducing the oil threat to the Florida Keys and beyond, he said. “If it forms, it’s going to pull a lot of the oil away from Florida,” Roffer said. There are no guarantees, he added, “but it looks very likely that this is forming” [The New York Times].

While this development—if it holds—would benefit the Keys and the areas beyond, there’s still a great mass of oil dumping into the Gulf. BP said today that the siphon it successfully installed on the leak is now carrying 5,000 barrels of oil per day up to a tanker on the shore. Since lots of oil is still leaking, that’s a de facto admission that the original estimate of the spill—5,000 barrels a day—was much too low. You can now watch the live video feed of the oil online.

Another lingering fear about the spill is coming to pass as well. Oil is beginning to show up in force on the Louisiana coastline, according to Governor Bobby Jindal.

“This is serious — this is the heavy oil that everyone has been fearing. It is here now,” Jindal said Wednesday as he toured the Mississippi Delta by boat and swept a fishnet through water, holding up dark, dripping glop. The region is home to rare birds, mammals and a wide variety of marine life. “This is one of the oldest wildlife management areas here in Louisiana, and now it is covered in oil,” Jindal said [NPR].

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Image: U.S Coast Guard photo by Chief Petty Officer John Kepsimelis

Though humans cannot see light outside the visible spectrum, satellites are able to detect wavelengths into the ultraviolet and infrared. The Landsat 7 satellite uses an instrument that collects seven images at once, with each image showing a specific section of the electromagnetic spectrum, called a band. Each image highlights a different part of the electromagnetic spectrum.

The satellites original images are all acquired in black and white, so color must be assigned via computer to the black and white images. The three primary colors of light are red, green and blue, and each color is given a different band/image. Once the three images are combined, you will have what is called a “false color image.” A common band combination shows green, healthy vegetation as bright red, which is useful in forestry and agricultural applications. Landsat images are also used to gather geological and hydrological data along with other kinds of environmental monitoring. In a helpful explanation, the folks at Landsat offer this catchy formula to aid you in remembering: “One common way that primary colors are assigned to bands can be easily remembered using the mnemonic:

“RGB = NRG (Red, Green, Blue = Near Infrared, Red, Green…)
Red = Near IR (ETM+ band 4)
Green = Red (ETM+ band 3)
Blue = Green (ETM+ band 2)”

There. That should be easy to remember. My suggestion: try singing it.

All images courtesy USGS National Center for EROS and NASA Landsat Project Science Office

Ganges River Delta. The Ganges River forms an extensive delta where it empties into the Bay of Bengal.