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First glimpse of excited baryon seen at LHC
Sanjana Shrestha/Save the Children
UPFRONT
Kangaroos know best AS MANY as 450,000 lives could be saved each year by taking a cue from marsupials. If parents of premature babies in poor countries were to continuously carry infants against the skin in “kangaroo pouches” and increase breastfeeding and regular medical monitoring, we might save more of the 15 million babies born too soon each year. That is the message from the most comprehensive global survey of premature births yet. Most premature births are in poor countries – two-thirds in south Asia and sub-Saharan Africa alone. Yet only 10 per cent of premature newborns survive there, compared with 90 per cent in rich nations. Research has shown that the Kangaroo Mother Care technique could save almost half of the 1.1 million babies that die
after premature birth each year. “It’s about keeping the babies warm, breastfeeding, and treating any new infections with antibiotics,” says Joy Lawn, lead author of the report published this week by a group including the World Health Organization. Already used in South Africa and Malawi, a scale-up of the technique is under way in Tanzania, Rwanda and Ghana. The report found that premature births are increasing in rich countries because of obesity, smoking, IVF and older women having babies, and in poor countries owing to malnutrition, teen pregnancy and lack of contraception, which means women tend to have babies closer together, increasing the chances of premature births.
–A mother’s soothing skin –
Meteorite rush A METEORITE that landed in northern California last week is much more valuable than scientists first thought. After the meteor was sighted streaking through the sky on 22 April, meteorite hunters found fragments of the rock, identified by the “fusion crust” that forms when it burns in the atmosphere. NASA and the SETI Institute in Mountain View, California, also mobilised a search team last weekend of about 30 scientists, to look for the fragile black rocks. The meteorite turns out to be a very rare type of rock called CM chondrite, which makes up less than 1 per cent of the meteorites that fall to Earth. Bill Cooke of
“Some believe this type of meteorite may have brought the first building blocks of life to Earth” NASA’s Meteoroid Environment Office at the Marshall Space Flight Center in Huntsville, Alabama, says it is not clear whether it is rare because it easily burns up in 4 | NewScientist | 5 May 2012
the atmosphere or there are just fewer of these rocks in space. The Murchison meteorite, a large CM chondrite that made landfall in Australia in 1969, is now one of the most studied rocks in the world. Besides being rare, CM chondrites contain a lot of carbon and organic materials such as amino acids. Some believe this type of meteorite may have brought the first building blocks of life to Earth. As CM chondrite is one of the oldest types of rock in the universe, Cooke says that dating the newly discovered fragments will be a priority. By coincidence, the meteorite fell in the same area that prospectors flocked to more than 150 years ago during California’s gold rush – and it has attracted prospectors of its own. Franck Marchis of the SETI Institute says the public’s response has been overwhelming. More than 1000 people showed up at the crash site with rocks they’d found, to ask the scientists if they were meteorites. Due to its rarity, Cooke reckons 30 grams of CM chondrite is worth about $6000.
Baryon excitement ANOTHER day, another particle. Unlike the Higgs boson, the neutral Xi_b baryon is not expected to solve any deep, outstanding mysteries. But, sightings of its excited state are another first for the Large Hadron Collider (LHC) at CERN near Geneva, Switzerland. The Xi_b, a conglomerate of quarks, was previously seen by the now-defunct Tevatron collider at Fermilab in Batavia, Illinois, but only in its lowest energy state.
Theory says the particle has higher energy states that decay rapidly into a zoo of lower-mass muons, pions and protons. These are tough to spot in the LHC’s particle detritus but can be used to confirm the presence of excited Xi_bs. The team at CMS, one of the LHC’s two main detectors, now reports piecing together 21 instances of excited Xi_b baryons. “The significance is that you are able to find these states in the very complicated environment of the LHC,” says CMS’s Nicholas Hadley.
Warm reception at wind farms WIND farms generate a lot of hot air in the media, and a little warm air in reality. By drawing down warm air from the atmosphere above, the turbines can slightly warm their immediate surroundings. Liming Zhou of the University at Albany, State University of New York, and colleagues studied land-surface temperature data gathered by NASA’s Terra and Aqua satellites, which give measurements with a spatial resolution of roughly 1 square
kilometre. They matched this to data on the location of 2358 wind turbines in west-central Texas, and found that the square kilometre around a wind turbine was on average 0.5 °C warmer than the rest of the region – a difference that was greatest at night. They say the turbines mix warmer air that sits at their apex with cooler air at ground level. Overall, however, the wider region did not warm significantly (Nature Climate Change, DOI: 10.1038/nclimate1505).
UPFRONT
Kangaroos know best AS MANY as 450,000 lives could be saved each year by taking a cue from marsupials. If parents of premature babies in poor countries were to continuously carry infants against the skin in “kangaroo pouches” and increase breastfeeding and regular medical monitoring, we might save more of the 15 million babies born too soon each year. That is the message from the most comprehensive global survey of premature births yet. Most premature births are in poor countries – two-thirds in south Asia and sub-Saharan Africa alone. Yet only 10 per cent of premature newborns survive there, compared with 90 per cent in rich nations. Research has shown that the Kangaroo Mother Care technique could save almost half of the 1.1 million babies that die
after premature birth each year. “It’s about keeping the babies warm, breastfeeding, and treating any new infections with antibiotics,” says Joy Lawn, lead author of the report published this week by a group including the World Health Organization. Already used in South Africa and Malawi, a scale-up of the technique is under way in Tanzania, Rwanda and Ghana. The report found that premature births are increasing in rich countries because of obesity, smoking, IVF and older women having babies, and in poor countries owing to malnutrition, teen pregnancy and lack of contraception, which means women tend to have babies closer together, increasing the chances of premature births.
–A mother’s soothing skin –
Meteorite rush A METEORITE that landed in northern California last week is much more valuable than scientists first thought. After the meteor was sighted streaking through the sky on 22 April, meteorite hunters found fragments of the rock, identified by the “fusion crust” that forms when it burns in the atmosphere. NASA and the SETI Institute in Mountain View, California, also mobilised a search team last weekend of about 30 scientists, to look for the fragile black rocks. The meteorite turns out to be a very rare type of rock called CM chondrite, which makes up less than 1 per cent of the meteorites that fall to Earth. Bill Cooke of
“Some believe this type of meteorite may have brought the first building blocks of life to Earth” NASA’s Meteoroid Environment Office at the Marshall Space Flight Center in Huntsville, Alabama, says it is not clear whether it is rare because it easily burns up in 4 | NewScientist | 5 May 2012
the atmosphere or there are just fewer of these rocks in space. The Murchison meteorite, a large CM chondrite that made landfall in Australia in 1969, is now one of the most studied rocks in the world. Besides being rare, CM chondrites contain a lot of carbon and organic materials such as amino acids. Some believe this type of meteorite may have brought the first building blocks of life to Earth. As CM chondrite is one of the oldest types of rock in the universe, Cooke says that dating the newly discovered fragments will be a priority. By coincidence, the meteorite fell in the same area that prospectors flocked to more than 150 years ago during California’s gold rush – and it has attracted prospectors of its own. Franck Marchis of the SETI Institute says the public’s response has been overwhelming. More than 1000 people showed up at the crash site with rocks they’d found, to ask the scientists if they were meteorites. Due to its rarity, Cooke reckons 30 grams of CM chondrite is worth about $6000.
Baryon excitement ANOTHER day, another particle. Unlike the Higgs boson, the neutral Xi_b baryon is not expected to solve any deep, outstanding mysteries. But, sightings of its excited state are another first for the Large Hadron Collider (LHC) at CERN near Geneva, Switzerland. The Xi_b, a conglomerate of quarks, was previously seen by the now-defunct Tevatron collider at Fermilab in Batavia, Illinois, but only in its lowest energy state.
Theory says the particle has higher energy states that decay rapidly into a zoo of lower-mass muons, pions and protons. These are tough to spot in the LHC’s particle detritus but can be used to confirm the presence of excited Xi_bs. The team at CMS, one of the LHC’s two main detectors, now reports piecing together 21 instances of excited Xi_b baryons. “The significance is that you are able to find these states in the very complicated environment of the LHC,” says CMS’s Nicholas Hadley.
Warm reception at wind farms WIND farms generate a lot of hot air in the media, and a little warm air in reality. By drawing down warm air from the atmosphere above, the turbines can slightly warm their immediate surroundings. Liming Zhou of the University at Albany, State University of New York, and colleagues studied land-surface temperature data gathered by NASA’s Terra and Aqua satellites, which give measurements with a spatial resolution of roughly 1 square
kilometre. They matched this to data on the location of 2358 wind turbines in west-central Texas, and found that the square kilometre around a wind turbine was on average 0.5 °C warmer than the rest of the region – a difference that was greatest at night. They say the turbines mix warmer air that sits at their apex with cooler air at ground level. Overall, however, the wider region did not warm significantly (Nature Climate Change, DOI: 10.1038/nclimate1505).