Whaling worsens carbon release, scientists warn

A century of whaling may have released more than 100 million tonnes - or a large forest's worth - of carbon into the atmosphere, scientists say.

Whales store carbon within their huge bodies and when they are killed, much of this carbon can be released.

US scientists revealed their estimate of carbon released by whaling at a major ocean sciences meeting in the US.

Dr Andrew Pershing from the University of Maine described whales as the "forests of the ocean".

Dr Pershing and his colleagues from the Gulf of Maine Research Institute calculated the annual carbon-storing capacity of whales as they grew.

"Whales, like any animal or plant on the planet, are made out of a lot of carbon," he said.

"And when you kill and remove a whale from the ocean, that's removing carbon from this storage system and possibly sending it into the atmosphere."

He pointed out that, particularly in the early days of whaling, the animals were a source of lamp oil, which was burned, releasing the carbon directly into the air.

"And this marine system is unique because when whales die [naturally], their bodies sink, so they take that carbon down to the bottom of the ocean.

"If they die where it's deep enough, it will be [stored] out of the atmosphere perhaps for hundreds of years."

Ocean trees

In their initial calculations, the team worked out that 100 years of whaling had released an amount of carbon equivalent to burning 130,000 sq km of temperate forests, or to driving 128,000 Humvees continuously for 100 years.

The idea would be to do a full accounting of how much carbon you could store in a fully populated stock of fish or whales

Dr Pershing stressed that this was still a relatively tiny amount when compared to the billions of tonnes produced by human activity every year.

But he said that whales played an important role in storing and transporting carbon in the marine ecosystem.

Simply leaving large groups of whales to grow, he said, could "sequester" the greenhouse gas, in amounts that were comparable to some of the reforestation schemes that earn and sell carbon credits.

He suggested that a similar system of carbon credits could be applied to whales in order to protect and rebuild their stocks.

"The idea would be to do a full accounting of how much carbon you could store in a fully populated stock of fish or whales, and allow countries to sell their fish quota as carbon credits," he explained.

"You could use those credits as an incentive to reduce the fishing pressure or to promote the conservation of some of these species."

Is bigger better?

Other scientists said that he had raised an exciting and interesting problem.

Professor Daniel Costa, a marine animal researcher from the University of California, Santa Cruz, told BBC News: "So many more groups are looking at the importance of these large animals in the carbon cycle.

"And it's one of those things that, when you look at it, you think: ' This is so obvious, why didn't we think of this before?'."

Dr Pershing pointed out that whales, with their huge size, were more efficient than smaller animals at storing carbon.

He used the analogy of a small dog compared to a large dog.

"My wife's 6lb (2.7kg) toy poodle eats one cup of food per day and my dog - a 60lb standard poodle - eats five cups of food per day," he said.

"That's only five times as much food but my dog weighs ten times as much."

He said that the marine carbon credit idea could be applied to other very large marine animals, including endangered bluefin tuna and white sharks.

Dr Pershing said: "These are huge and they are top predators, so unless they're fished they would be likely to take their biomass to the bottom of the ocean [when they die]."

The American Geophysical Union's Ocean Sciences meeting has been taking place this week in Portland, Oregon.

Can battlefield robots take the place of soldiers?

Can war be fought by lots of well-behaved machines, making it "safer for humans"? That is the seductive vision, and hope, of those manufacturing and researching the future of military robotics.

With 8,000 robots already in use, they believe they can bring about a military revolution.

Most of the robots currently deployed on land deal with non-combat tasks such as bomb disposal - unlike lethal aerial drones.

But Bob Quinn, who works for the US subsidiary of the British robot manufacturer QinetiQ, says the future promises more armed robots on the battlefield, including driverless vehicles.

"The closer you are to being shot, the more you understand the value of having a remote weapons capability," he says.

Anyone who has seen the Terminator films may find this vision scary. Quinn admits that, even among senior military figures, "science fiction movies caused a great deal of angst".

He stresses the need to make sure "that the weaponised robots only operate under the control of the soldier and never independently".

But the speed of modern warfare can make direct human control difficult, says Peter Singer, author of Wired for War.

Take the automated counter-artillery system deployed in Afghanistan.

"The human reaction time when there's an incoming canon shell is basically we can get to mid-curse word… [This] system reacts and shoots it down in mid-air. We are in the loop. We can turn the system off, we can turn it on, but our power really isn't true decision-making power. It's veto power now," Singer says.

Vegetarian vehicles

But if automated systems are taking decisions, how can we be sure they are hitting the right targets and obeying the laws of war?

US academic Patrick Lin was recently commissioned by the US military to study robot ethics.

QinetiQ's Talon robots are used to counter improvised explosive devices

"When you talk about autonomous robots," he argues, "a natural response might be to programme them to be ethical. Isn't that what we do with our computers?"

A striking example of a robot in need of careful programming is a driverless vehicle developed by the Pentagon, called the EATR.

It can refuel itself on long journeys by scavenging for organic material - which raises the haunting spectre of a machine consuming corpses on the battlefield.

Its inventor, Dr Robert Finkelstein of Robotic Technology Inc, insists it will consume "organic material but mostly vegetarian."

"The robot can only do what it's programmed to do, it has a menu," he adds.

But all this worries sceptics like Professor Noel Sharkey, co-founder of the International Committee for Robot Arms Control.

"You could train it all you want, give it all the ethical rules in the world. If the input to it isn't correct, it's no good whatsoever," he says. "Humans can be held accountable, machines can't."

If you cannot rely on a robot knowing what to target or distinguishing between enemy forces and innocent non-combatants, Patrick Lin suggests another solution.

"If there's an area of fighting that's so intense that you can assume that anyone there is a combatant," he argues, "then unleash the robots in that kind of scenario. Some people call that a kill box. Any target [in a kill box] is assumed to be a legitimate target."

No emotions

Other researchers suggest robots may avoid the faults of human soldiers.

"Robots that are programmed properly are less likely to make errors and kill non-combatants, innocent people, because they're not emotional, they won't be afraid, act irresponsibly in some situations," says Robert Finkelstein.

But Christopher Coker of the London School of Economics, an observer of wars past and present, disagrees.

"We should put our trust in the human factor," he says.

"Unfortunately the military in their reports often see the human factor as what they call the weakest link. I don't think it's the weakest link. I think it's the strongest link."

Computers will never be able to simulate the "warrior ethos", the mindset and ethical outlook of the professional soldier, he says.

The military revolution in robotics has already advanced rapidly in the air, where remotely piloted drone aircraft are now central to conflicts such as Afghanistan.

On the ground, use of robots has so far been more limited.

Yet given the political and popular concern about casualties among Nato forces, robot manufacturer Bob Quinn's sales pitch is likely to be persuasive.

"Let's keep our guys safe, and kill the enemy. Unfortunately, in warfare that's the situation you're in."

Genes reveal 'biological ageing'

Gene variants that might show how fast people's bodies are actually ageing have been pinpointed by scientists.

Researchers from the University of Leicester and Kings College London say the finding could help spot people at higher risk of age-related illnesses.

People carrying the variant had differences in the "biological clock" within all their cells.

The British Heart Foundation said the findings could offer a clue to ways of preventing heart disease.

While doctors know that as people age they are more at risk from diseases such as Alzheimer's, Parkinson's and heart disease, some people fall prey to these at an earlier age than expected.

Telomeres

One theory suggests that biological timers called "telomeres", part of the chromosomes in every cell that carry genetic code, may be a factor in this.

From birth, every time a cell divides, the telomeres get shorter and there is some evidence that people with shorter telomeres, either because they diminish more quickly or because they were born with shorter versions, may be at higher risk from age-related illness.

The researchers say in the journal, Nature Genetics, that they looked at more than 500,000 genetic variations across the entire human genome to see which variants cropped up more frequently in people known to have shorter telomeres.

They eventually located a number of variants located near a gene called TERC which, in people carrying them, seemed to be equivalent to an extra three or four years of "biological ageing".

Bad lifestyles

Professor Tim Spector, from King's College London, said: "What our study suggests is that some people are genetically programmed to age at a faster rate.

"Alternatively, genetically susceptible people may age even faster when exposed to proven 'bad' environments for telomeres such as smoking, obesity or lack of exercise - and end up several years biologically older or succumbing to more age-related diseases."

Professor Jeremy Pearson, associate medical director at the British Heart Foundation, which part-funded the study, said it was not yet clear whether telomeres did contribute to an increased risk of disease.

He said: "Understanding how our cells age is an important step in our quest for better ways to prevent and treat heart disease.

"Perhaps in the future one of the ways we try to reduce the risk of, or treat, heart disease would be to use an 'anti-ageing' approach for our arteries."

Premature birth gene clue found

DNA differences which appear to affect the risk of giving birth early have been found by US scientists.

The US National Institutes of Health study found the variants in both babies and mothers, a US conference was told.

It is thought they may play a role in controlling immune responses which could theoretically trigger labour if they become too powerful.

Premature birth - which accounts for 7% of UK births - is one of the biggest threats to a baby's future health.

The causes of premature birth are poorly understood, although infections and other medical complications are blamed in some cases.

The study looked at 700 DNA variants in 190 genes in women who delivered early, and those who carried their baby to term.

The cord blood of the babies was also tested for these variations.

They narrowed the search down to a handful of gene variations found more often in the women who gave birth prematurely, and their babies.

In particular, babies who carried the gene for the "Interleukin 6 receptor" were more likely to be born early.

This was a good candidate gene because Interleukin 6 is produced by cells in response to infection and is involved in inflammation.

High levels of Interleukin 6 in the amniotic fluid and foetal blood have been linked to the onset of premature labour.

Baby threat

Dr Roberto Romero, who led the study, said: "Our hypothesis is that the mother and/or the foetus signal the onset of preterm labour when the environment inside the uterus is unfavourable and threatens the survival of the maternal-foetal pair.

"When there is an infection in the uterus, the onset of premature labour appears to have survival value - it would allow the mother to rid herself of infected tissue and preserve her ability to have future pregnancies."

The chief executive of charity Bliss, Andy Cole, welcomed the study results.

"In England alone, 54,000 babies are born prematurely each year, a third of these for no known reason," he said.

"The development of a reliable test for identifying these mothers is vital in ensuring our most vulnerable babies have the best possible outcomes."

China dinosaur footprints found in Zhucheng

Archaeologists in China say they have discovered more than 3,000 dinosaur footprints, all facing the same way.

The footprints - thought to belong to at least six dinosaur types - were found in eastern Shandong province, state news agency Xinhua reports.

Archaeologists believe the prints are more than 100 million years old and say they could represent a migration or a panicked attempt to escape predators.

Dinosaur fossils have been found at about 30 sites in the Zhucheng area.

As a result, Zhucheng City has become known locally as "dinosaur city".

The footprints were uncovered on a 2,600 sq m (0.64 acre) rock slope in a gully following three months of excavation work, Xinhua reported.

The find is unusual because of the quantity and size of footprints uncovered, scientists said.

The footprints, which range from 10cm (3.9in) to 80cm in length, belong to dinosaur types including tyrannosaurs, coelurosaurs and hadrosaurs, Xinhua said.

Insects migrate in wind highways

Migrating insects use highways in the sky to speed their journey.

Researchers say moths and butterflies use sophisticated methods to find winds that will take them in certain directions for thousands of kilometres.

The little creatures travel on winds of up to 100km (60 miles) per hour.

They use internal compasses to find these fast moving winds to carry them to their journey's end.

Sky highway

It may seem a little difficult, in the depths of winter, to imagine sitting outside on a balmy summer's evening gazing up at the velvety night.

But, if you can, cast your mind's eye back because above you was a windy highway used by thousands of these delicate migrating creatures.

And the same journeys are sometimes carried on over several generations of insect.

The scientists say that each insect uses the same complex methods to whisk them to their wintering water-holes in the Mediterranean and back to more northerly climes in the summer.

"We were surprised by the scale of the movements, although we wouldn't have started the research without some idea of what was happening," says Dr Jason Chapman of the Rothamsted Research Institute in Hertfordshire, UK, who is the lead author of the report.

"What is also surprising is that very few of the insects end up going the wrong way".

But most moths and butterflies look like they can hardly make it across the garden. So how to they avoid getting ripped to shreds in these fast moving winds?

"When you are flying within the windstream you don't feel it" says Dr Chapman. "Having said that, we think the way they choose the winds that are fastest is through some sort of turbulence mechanism.

"As the data has built up over the years we have been amazed by the subtlety and sophistication of the system."

It is still not known exactly how this mechanism works - that will be for further study.

The group that published the research is one of only three is the world using special radar that can detect insect movement up to a kilometre in the air.

And, while the research is fascinating in itself, it has useful applications. "One of the people working on this research has also been working on data about the midges that carry bluetongue", says Dr Chapman.

"Hopefully other scientists' prediction models of the future, for some of the moths that could become invasive pests in this country, will incorporate our research".

Pluto's dynamic surface revealed by Hubble images

The icy dwarf planet Pluto undergoes dramatic seasonal changes, according to images from the Hubble Space Telescope.

The pictures from Hubble revealed changes in the brightness and the colour of Pluto's surface.

Mike Brown, from the California Institute of Technology, suggested Pluto had the most dynamic surface of any object in the Solar System.

Hubble will provide our sharpest views of Pluto until the New Horizons probe approaches in 2015.

The researchers note that Pluto became significantly redder in a two-year period, from 2000 to 2002.

When Hubble pictures taken in 1994 are compared with a new set of images taken in 2002 to 2003, astronomers see evidence that Pluto's northern polar region has become brighter.

Referring to the striking changes on Pluto, Professor Brown commented: "Imagine the Moon changing by that much. We're used to looking at the Moon and it being the same night after night. This thing has changed dramatically in that time.

"If you look around the entire Solar System, the only things that change their surfaces by any noticeable amount are the Earth, where ice caps come and go. There is Mars, where ice caps come and go. That's it.

Dramatic changes on Pluto Enlarge Image

"[With Pluto] you are looking at the surface in the Solar System that has the biggest changes of anything we've ever seen."

Pluto is one of a population of icy objects which inhabit an outer region of the Solar System called the Kuiper Belt.

At some 2,360km (1,467 miles) across, Pluto is smaller than several moons in the Solar System. Its eccentric orbit carries it around the Sun every 248 years.

Marc Buie, co-author of the research from the Southwest Research Institute in Boulder, US, said the redness seen on Pluto could be related to carbon. He added that methane (CH4) had been detected on the surface using spectroscopic measurements.

"If you put methane in an environment like that, it's not stable... because you have this dynamic, young surface, you could stir things up and release more methane all the time."

But researchers said it was not possible to relate different colours on Pluto to differences in the surface composition.

The brightening in the northern hemisphere could be the result of nitrogen ice vaporising at the sunlit pole and then refreezing at the opposite pole which is not illuminated.

But Marc Buie said the exact mechanism was a mystery: "What we think is maybe happening, is that as you are vigorously sublimating nitrogen off the lit pole, it has to be changing the texture of the ice and frost on the surface."

He added: "This could be gardening the surface and turning it into a 'fairy castle' structure that is more effective at scattering light back," he said.

Pluto's extreme orbit is one of the reasons behind the dramatic changes observed on its surface.

"Right now, Pluto is nearly in its closest position to the Sun. If you go to the year 2108, it's in its furthest position from the Sun. In that time period temperatures on Pluto will change dramatically," said Professor Brown.

PLUTO: A QUICK GUIDE Named after underworld god Lost status as planet in 2006 Average of 5.9bn km to Sun Orbits Sun every 248 years Diameter of 2,360km Has at least three moons Rotates every 6.8 days Gravity about 6% of Earth's Surface temperature -233C Nasa probe visits in 2015

"It's close to springtime on Pluto. In the fall, it will be so much further away from the Sun, and so much colder. Things that boiled up in the spring will condense."

"We think that these things are driven by seasonal processes on Pluto," said Dr Buie, "But it's a little bit of a surprise that you would see this big of a change this fast because the seasons take 248 of our years to progress."

Co-author Dr Alan Stern, also from the Southwest Research Institute, offered one example of how these changes could be speeded up.

He said computer models had shown "there are a series of closed-loop feedbacks that can force the process to change quickly".

For example, he told BBC News, "as Pluto draws away from the Sun, the sunlight is weaker and the planet wants to cool off. As it cools, the atmosphere must snow to the ground.

New Horizons will shed light on Pluto's composition

"When it snows, the surface becomes brighter, which helps it cool and speeds the process. That feeds on itself and you get more and more cooling."

The images, taken by Hubble's Advanced Camera for Surveys (ACS), will be vital for planning details of the New Horizons spacecraft's flyby of Pluto in 2015.

New Horizons will pass by Pluto so quickly that only one hemisphere will be photographed in the highest possible detail.

Alan Stern, who is principal investigator on the mission, said that with every great planetary reconnaissance mission "we have always learnt that when we get there, we are blown away by how primitive our ideas were from blurry images taken from Earth.

He told BBC News: "When we get there, the odds are very high that we will have so much more information and rich detail that all our views circa 1990 and 2000 and 2010 will appear antiquated. That's why I don't like to make predictions."

He added: "No one predicted river valleys on Mars, or volcanoes on the Galilean satellites, or that Mercury was mostly a core and little else. It's entirely likely that Pluto will be something so surprising that everything we've done so far looks quaint in comparison."

Artificial pancreas hope for children with diabetes

Scientists in Cambridge have shown that an "artificial pancreas" can be used to regulate blood sugar in children with Type 1 diabetes.

A trial found that combining a "real time" sensor measuring glucose levels with a pump that delivers insulin can boost overnight blood sugar control.

The Lancet study showed the device significantly cut the risk of blood sugar levels dropping dangerously low.

Experts said the results were an important "step forward".

Type 1 diabetes is a chronic, life threatening condition, in which the pancreas does not produce insulin - the hormone that regulates blood sugar levels.

In total, 17 children and teenagers with Type 1 diabetes took part in the study over 54 nights in hospital.

Individually, the glucose monitoring system and the insulin pump used in the study are both already widely used and commercially available.

But in order to turn them into a "closed loop" system which monitors the patient's condition and delivers treatment accordingly, the researchers developed a sophisticated algorithm to calculate the appropriate amount of insulin to deliver based on the real-time glucose readings.

They then measured how well the artificial pancreas system controlled glucose levels compared with the children's regular continuous pump, which delivers insulin at preselected rates.

Low blood sugar

Testing was done in different circumstances - for example on nights when the children went to bed after eating a large evening meal, which can lead to 'insulin stacking' or having done early evening exercise - both of which can increase the risk of low blood sugar episodes known as hypoglycaemic attacks or "hypos".

1 - Continuous glucose sensor monitors blood sugar level 2 - Data transmitted for the computer programme to work out insulin dose 3 - Insulin pump delivers the dose

Overall, the results showed the artificial pancreas kept blood glucose levels in the normal range for 60% of the time, compared with 40% for the continuous pump.

And the artificial pancreas halved the time that blood glucose levels fell below 3.9mmol/l - the level considered as mild hypoglycaemia.

It also prevented blood glucose falling below 3.0mmol/l, which is defined as significant hypoglycaemia, compared with nine hypoglycaemia events in the control groups.

Study leader Dr Roman Hovorka said: "This is the first randomised study showing the potential benefit of the artificial pancreas system overnight using commercially-available sensors and pumps.

"Our study provides a stepping stone for testing the system at home."

Karen Addington, chief executive of Juvenile Diabetes Research Foundation, who funded the research said the study provided "proof of principle" of an artificial pancreas.

"We need to redouble our efforts to move the artificial pancreas from a concept in the clinic to a reality in the home of children and adults with type 1 diabetes."

Dr Victoria King, research manager at leading health charity Diabetes UK, said: "This is an important step forward in managing overnight blood glucose levels as well as in the eventual development of a full 'artificial pancreas' which could vastly improve the quality of life for people with type 1 diabetes and reduce the risk of the associated complications."

Exoplanet gas spotted from Earth

Astronomers have used a new ground-based technique to study the atmosphere of a planet outside our Solar System.

The work could assist the search for Earth-like planets with traces of organic, or carbon-rich, molecules.

Gases have previously been discerned on exoplanets before, but only by using space-based telescopes.

Astronomers reporting in Nature say their method of spotting methane gas on exoplanets could be extended to many other, ground-based telescopes.

Methane was first spotted on an exoplanet named HD 189733b in 2008 by a group led by Mark Swain of Nasa's Jet Propulsion Laboratory in the US.

It is a "hot Jupiter" or gas giant that orbits very close to its parent star, which lies about 63 light-years away from Earth.

It marked the first time that an organic molecule had been detected on an exoplanet. The known planets residing outside our Solar System currently number more than 400.

Dr Swain and his colleagues have now shown that by looking at a different set of light wavelengths, methane and possibly other components can be catalogued using relatively small, Earth-bound telescopes.

They used Nasa's Infrared Telescope Facility in Hawaii to perform measurements of the light emitted by HD 189733b, using a version of the so-called transit method that measures an exoplanet's "secondary eclipse".

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What is a light year? Dr Tim O'Brien from Jodrell Bank explains

At its heart, the approach takes the light received on Earth when HD 189733b is behind its parent star and subtracts it from the light received when it is between its star and the Earth.

What results is the light due solely to the planet. However, the effects of the Earth's atmosphere, with its own atmospheric gases and passing clouds, would typically tend to overwhelm the signal from the distant star.

To overcome this obstacle, Dr Swain and his colleagues decided to look in the infrared part of the light spectrum - in a region that is not currently covered by space-based telescopes - and devised a method to get rid of the effects of Earth's atmosphere.

Their approach made simple assumptions about how errors in the light detected in the telescope are related to each other in terms of the wavelength or colour that is detected, or in terms of the time at which the detection is made. By making these correlations and correcting the signal over and over again, the overall error is whittled down.

With Earth's swirling atmosphere effectively subtracted, the team discovered a peak in their data that corresponded to methane emitting light in a process known as fluorescence.

"Up until this point we've not been able to use ground-based telescopes to detect molecules in an exoplanet's atmosphere," Dr Swain told BBC News.

"These molecules are probes of the conditions and chemistry, and since these planets are too far away for us to send a probe, they are eventually how we're going to answer the question of whether expolanets have a habitable atmosphere to support life."

However, the methane appears to contradict an assumption made about both stars and exoplanet atmospheres before - the existence of a so-called local thermodynamic equilibrium, or LTE. Something is putting more energy into the methane than it can quickly get rid of.

"We don't know what that process is in this case," Dr Swain said. "In our own Solar System, charged particles can cause this fluorescence; the other possibility is some sort of [light in the form of] photons."

Emission of light stimulated by charged particles bumping into atmospheric gases is exactly the mechanism behind the aurora displays seen at visible wavelengths at the Earth's poles.

"If we could show it was charged-particle pumping, you could put constraints on the planet's magnetic field - no-one's been able to do that for an exoplanet before."

Wider view

In any case, the methane emission is comparatively strong from HD 189733b, leading to two important conclusions. Firstly, other exoplanets may well be experiencing this same process, and detecting any methane or possibly other atmospheric gases would be made easier.

HD 189733b orbits very close to its parent star

"It's a pretty interesting discovery," said Keith Horne, an astrophysicist and exoplanet expert from the University of St Andrews.

"The main impact is this strong emission line that stands out quite dramatically," he told BBC News.

"You'd be able to detect it on other objects that are farther away [from their parent stars] or are fainter. So far, it's been just the nearest, transiting 'hot Jupiters' that are bright enough to detect this secondary eclipse."

But more than that, the new research shows that some observations that were once only possible from space can now be done using ground-based telescopes.

That vastly increases the number of instruments - far larger than the 3m telescope used in the Nature work - that could be trained on exoplanet atmospheres.

"Larger telescopes could look at this in more detail, because there's so many of them. It potentially allows many different teams to participate; previous detections with the Hubble and Spitzer telescopes are great, but there's only one Hubble and only one Spitzer."

Both Dr Swain and Professor Horne agree that more detailed work is required to be certain that the peak is due to methane, and to establish how the methane violates the LTE assumption.

However, with the new results in hand, further observations in the new spectral region will be easy to justify, at least until the James Webb Space Telescope - the first space-based telescope that can "see" in this part of the infrared - takes to the skies in 2014.

"It's a hard measurement to do, and they seem to have succeeded," Professor Horne said. "The committees that decide how big telescope time is spent will be able to see it's a worthwhile measurement."

Close encounters with Japan's 'living fossil'

It soon becomes clear that the giant salamander has hit Claude Gascon's enthusiasm button smack on the nose.

"This is a dinosaur, this is amazing," he enthuses.

"We're talking about salamanders that usually fit in the palm of your hand. This one will chop your hand off."

As a leader of Conservation International's (CI) scientific programmes, and co-chair of the Amphibian Specialist Group with the International Union for the Conservation of Nature (IUCN), Dr Gascon has seen a fair few frogs and salamanders in his life; but little, he says, to compare with this.

Fortunately for all of our digits, this particular giant salamander is in no position to chop off anything, trapped in a tank in the visitors' centre in Maniwa City, about 800km west of Tokyo.

But impressive it certainly is: about 1.7m (5ft 6in) long, covered in a leathery skin that speaks of many decades passed, with a massive gnarled head covered in tubercles whose presumed sensitivity to motion probably helped it catch fish by the thousand over its lifetime.

If local legend is to be believed, though, this specimen is a mere tadpole compared with the biggest ever seen around Maniwa.

A 17th Century tale, related to us by cultural heritage officer Takashi Sakata, tells of a salamander (or hanzaki, in local parlance) 10m long that marauded its way across the countryside chomping cows and horses in its tracks.

The hanzaki shrine is an attempt to make up for a mythical killing

A local hero was found, one Mitsui Hikoshiro, who allowed the hanzaki to swallow him whole along with his trusty sword - which implement he then used, in the best heroic tradition, to rend the beast from stem to stern.

It proved not to be such a good move, however.

Crops failed, people started dying in mysterious ways - including Mr Hikoshiro himself.

Pretty soon the villagers drew the obvious conclusion that the salamander's spirit was wreaking revenge from beyond the grave, and must be placated. That is why Maniwa City boasts a shrine to the hanzaki.

The story illustrates the cultural importance that this remarkable creature has in some parts of Japan.

Its scientific importance, meanwhile, lies in two main areas: its "living fossil" identity, and its apparently peaceful co-existence with the chytrid fungus that has devastated so many other amphibian species from Australia to the Andes.

Close family

"The skeleton of this species is almost identical to that of the fossil from 30 million years ago," recounts Takeyoshi Tochimoto, director of the Hanzaki Institute near Hyogo.

"Therefore it's called the 'living fossil'."

The hanzaki (Andrias japonicus) only has two close living relatives: the Chinese giant salamander (A. davidianus), which is close enough in size and shape and habits that the two can easily cross-breed, and the much smaller hellbender (Cryptobranchus alleganiensis) of the south-eastern US.

Creatures rather like these were certainly around when dinosaurs dominated life on land, and fossils of the family have been found much further afield than their current tight distribution - in northern Europe, certainly, where scientists presumed the the lineages had gone extinct until tales of the strange Oriental forms made their way back to the scientific burghers of Vienna and Leiden a couple of centuries ago.

"They are thought to be extremely primitive species, partly due to the fact that they are the only salamanders that have external fertilisation," says Don Church, a salamander specialist with CI.

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Scientists at the Hanzaki Insitute filmed a fight between two of the giant beasts

The fertilisation ritual must be quite some sight.

Into a riverbank den that is usually occupied by the dominant male (the "den-master") swim several females, and also a few other males.

The den-master and the females release everything they have got, turning incessantly to stir the eggs and spermatozoa round in a roiling mass.

Maybe the lesser males sneak in a package or two as well; their function in the ménage-a-many is not completely clear.

When the waters still, everyone but the den-master leaves; and he alone guards the nest and its juvenile brood.

It is not an ideal method of reproduction.

Research shows that genetic diversity among the hanzaki is smaller than it might be, partly as a result of the repeated polygamy, which in turn leaves them more prone to damage through environmental change.

But for the moment, it seems to work.

Outside the breeding season, the salamander's life appears to consist of remaining as inconspicuous as possible in the river (whether hiding in leaves, as the small ones do, or under the riverbanks like their larger fellows) and snapping whatever comes within reach, their usual meandering torpor transformed in an instant as the smell of a fish brushes by.

The adults' jaws are not to be treated lightly.

Among Dr Tochimoto's extensive collection of photos is one of bloodied human hands; and as he warns: "you may be attacked and injured; please be careful".

The giant Maniwa hanzaki brought gasps from experienced amphibian-watchers

When the chytrid fungus was identified just over a decade ago, indications were that Japan would be an unlikely place to look for its origins.

With the discovery of chytrid on museum specimens of the African clawed frog (Xenopus laevis), an out-of-Africa migration spurred by human transportation of amphibians once seemed the simple likelihood.

But just last year, a team of researchers led by Koichi Goka from Japan's National Institute for Environmental Studies published research showing that certain strains of chytrid were present on Japanese giant salamanders, and only on Japanese giant salamanders, including museum specimens from a century or so back; and that the relationship seemed benign.

AMPHIBIANS: A QUICK GUIDE First true amphibians evolved about 250m years ago There are three orders: frogs (including toads), salamanders (including newts) and caecilians, which are limbless Adapted to many different aquatic and terrestrial habitats Present today on every continent except Antarctica Many undergo metamorphosis, from larvae to adults

The hanzaki-loving strains of chytrid appear to differ from those that are proving so virulent to amphibians now.

Unravelling all that, says Don Church, might tell us something about the origins and spread of chytrid - and there is so much diversity among Japanese chytrid strains that the country is now being touted as a possible origin, as diversity often implies a long evolutionary timeframe.

More importantly, the discovery might also provide options for treating the infection.

"In the case of the North American salamanders, what was found was that they have bacteria living on their skin that produce peptides that are lethal to the amphibian chytrid fungus," says Dr Church.

"And those bacteria might be able to be transplanted to other species that can't fight off the fungus."

This is a line of research that is very much in play in laboratories around the world.

It appears likely now that studies of the Japanese giant salamander can expand the number of chytrid-fighting bacteria known to science, and so extend the options for developing treatments for an infection that currently cannot be controlled in the wild.

But that can only come to pass if the giant salamanders endure; something that is not guaranteed, with the challenges they face in modern Japan including, perhaps, new strains of chytrid itself.

There is as yet no modern hero able to still the pace of habitat loss or prevent invasion from rival species.

Vegetative state patients can respond to questions

Scientists have been able to reach into the mind of a brain-damaged man and communicate with his thoughts.

The research, carried out in the UK and Belgium, involved a new brain scanning method.

Awareness was detected in three other patients previously diagnosed as being in a vegetative state.

The study in the New England Journal of Medicine shows that scans can detect signs of awareness in patients thought to be closed off from the world.

Patients in a vegetative state are awake, not in a coma, but have no awareness because of severe brain damage.

Scanning technique

The scientists used functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) which shows brain activity in real time.

They asked patients and healthy volunteers to imagine playing tennis while they were being scanned.

In each of the volunteers this stimulated activity in the pre-motor cortex, part of the brain which deals with movement.

This also happened in four out of 23 of the patients presumed to be in a vegetative state.

The BBC's Fergus Walsh tests the new brain scanning technique

I volunteered to test out the scanning technique.

I gave the scientists two women's names, one of which was my mother's.

I imagined playing tennis when they said the right name, and within a minute they had worked out her name.

They were also able to guess correctly whether I had children.

Questions

This is a continuation of research published three years ago, when the team used the same technique to establish initial contact with a patient diagnosed as vegetative.

But this time they went further.

With one patient - a Belgian man injured in a traffic accident seven years ago - they asked a series of questions.

He was able to communicate "yes" and "no" using just his thoughts.

The team told him to use "motor" imagery like a tennis match to indicate "yes" and "spatial" imagery like thinking about roaming the streets for a "no".

The patient responded accurately to five out of six autobiographical questions posed by the scientists.

For example, he confirmed that his father's name was Alexander.

The study involved scientists from the Medical Research Council (MRC), the Wolfson Brain Imaging Centre in Cambridge and a Belgian team at the University of Liege.

Dr Adrian Owen from the MRC in Cambridge co-authored the report:

"We were astonished when we saw the results of the patient's scan and that he was able to correctly answer the questions that were asked by simply changing his thoughts."

Dr Owen says this opens the way to involving such patients in their future treatment decisions: "You could ask if patients were in pain and if so prescribe painkillers and you could go on to ask them about their emotional state."

It does raise many ethical issues - for example - it is lawful to allow patients in a permanent vegetative state to die by withdrawing all treatment, but if a patient showed they could respond it would not be, even if they made it clear that was what they wanted.

The Royal Hospital for Neurodisability in London is a leading assessment and treatment centre for adults with brain injuries.

Helen Gill, a consultant in low awareness state, welcomed the new research but cautioned that it was still early days for the research: "It's very useful if you have a scan which can show some activity but you need a detailed sensory assessment as well.

"A lot of patients are slipping through the net and this adds another layer to ensure patients are assessed correctly."

She said the hospital did a study of 60 patients admitted with a diagnosis of vegetative state and 43% could communicate.