NewsTrust - Science - Most Recent Stories: News (Independent)

The Dirt on Worms

Wed, 18 Nov 2009 00:00:00 -0800

agweb.com - By Pam Smith - Nov. 18 (News Report) - The earthworm has long been considered the farmer’s friend. Their burrowing has always been thought to aerate the soil while their droppings provide fertilizer. No-till farmers count on these tireless workers to improve soil tilth. And on their worst day, earthworms sacrifice everything to land us a lunch from our favorite fishing hole

NewsTrust Rating: 3.0 average (not enough reviews) - See Reviews » - Review It Visit NewsTrust | About | Sign Up | Disclaimer

Phthalate exposure linked to less-masculine play by boys

Sun, 15 Nov 2009 00:00:00 -0800

Science Daily - Nov. 15 (News Report) - A study of 145 preschool children reports, for the first time, that when the concentrations of two common phthalates in mothers' prenatal urine are elevated their sons are less likely to play with male-typical toys and games, such as trucks and play fighting.

NewsTrust Rating: Not rated yet - See Info » - Review It Visit NewsTrust | About | Sign Up | Disclaimer

Colony Collapse and Ruptured Ribosomes; Minding Darwin's Bees Wax: Scientific American Podcast

Tue, 25 Aug 2009 00:00:00 -0700

scientificamerican.com - By Steve Mirsky - Aug. 25 (News Analysis) - John Williams, the beekeeper at Down House in England, talks about Darwin's bees. And May Berenbaum, entomologist at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, talks about the latest publication related to colony collapse disorder and ribosome damage in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. Websites related to this episode include www.bee-craft.com

NewsTrust Rating: 5.0 average (not enough reviews) - See Review » - Review It Visit NewsTrust | About | Sign Up | Disclaimer

Scientists in a flap over dinosaur nesting

Tue, 11 Aug 2009 00:00:00 -0700

bozemandailychronicle.com - By Gail Schontzler - Aug. 11 (News Report) - The science of the living and the science of the dead clashed Monday at a Museum of the Rockies symposium on dinosaur nesting and whether the creatures brooded on their nests like gigantic chickens. It was all very civilized, but it was hard not to miss a few feathers flying.

NewsTrust Rating: 3.9 average (not enough reviews) - See Review » - Review It Visit NewsTrust | About | Sign Up | Disclaimer

Warning green fears could make farming more industrialised

Sun, 09 Aug 2009 00:00:00 -0700

nzherald.co.nz - By Geoff Cumming - Aug. 09 (News Report) - Images of carefree cows roaming free, chewing grass or silage year round (well, almost), used to be the green selling point of New Zealand's dairy industry. Not for us those "factory farms" of the Northern Hemisphere where the poor cows are consigned to sheds and fed grain for long periods.

NewsTrust Rating: 4.2 average (not enough reviews) - See Review » - Review It Visit NewsTrust | About | Sign Up | Disclaimer

Is Google Killing General Knowledge?

Wed, 05 Aug 2009 00:00:00 -0700

moreintelligentlife.com - By Brian Cathcart - Aug. 05 (Special Report) - The average student, though better-informed than the earl’s daughter appears to be, seems not to value general knowledge. If asked a factual question, they will usually click on a search engine without a second thought. Actually knowing the fact, committing it to memory, does not seem to be a consideration.

NewsTrust Rating: 4.1 average - 5 Reviews » - Review It Visit NewsTrust | About | Sign Up | Disclaimer

Unpopular Science

Tue, 04 Aug 2009 00:00:00 -0700

The Nation - By Chris Mooney, Sheril Kirshenbaum - Aug. 04 (Special Report) - We live in a time of pathbreaking advances in biotechnology and nanotechnology, of private spaceflight and personalized medicine, amid a climate and energy crisis, in a world made more dangerous by biological and nuclear terror threats and global pandemics. Meanwhile, advances in neuroscience are calling into question who we are, whether our identities and thought processes can be reduced to purely physical phenomena, whether we actually have free will. The media ought to be bursting with this stuff. Yet precisely the opposite is happening: even in places where you'd expect it to hold out the longest, science journalism is declining.

NewsTrust Rating: 3.8 average - 6 Reviews » - Review It Visit NewsTrust | About | Sign Up | Disclaimer

Knowing How to Pick a Fight

Tue, 04 Aug 2009 00:00:00 -0700

Seed - By Steve Olson - Aug. 04 (Special Report) - For decades, right-wing commentators have heaped abuse on Paul Ehrlich. He has been derided as a “stupendously bad prophet” by the Wall Street Journal, “always wrong” by Investor’s Business Daily, a “doom-monger” by the Hoover Institution. When I repeat some of these characterizations to Ehrlich over lunch at a Palo Alto cafe, he laughs. “I don’t give a shit what people like Ann Coulter think of me,” he says. The opinions that he cares about are those of his fellow scientists, and they are, fortunately, far less caustic. “They might say, ‘Ehrlich is more pessimistic than I would be,’ or ‘Ehrlich has not valued the green revolution as much as I would have,’” he says. “But I don’t think I’ve seen a single scientific review of something I’ve written that says, ‘This is wrong.’”

NewsTrust Rating: 4.0 average (not enough reviews) - See Reviews » - Review It Visit NewsTrust | About | Sign Up | Disclaimer

California Will Require Green Chemistry in its Products

Mon, 27 Jul 2009 00:00:00 -0700

Miller-McCune - By Ray Estrada - Jul. 27 (Special Report) - While lots of places and people are interested in sustainable chemistry, California has become a pioneer in requiring it.

NewsTrust Rating: 4.5 average (not enough reviews) - See Review » - Review It Visit NewsTrust | About | Sign Up | Disclaimer

Light Repels Light

Mon, 20 Jul 2009 00:00:00 -0700

MIT Technology Review - By Anne-Marie Corley - Jul. 20 (News Report) - The repulsive side of an optical force could lead to ultra-fast telecommunications.

NewsTrust Rating: 3.7 average - 4 Reviews » - Review It Visit NewsTrust | About | Sign Up | Disclaimer

'EU Big Brother planning to watch you more closely' - The Local

Wed, 15 Jul 2009 00:00:00 -0700

thelocal.se - Jul. 15 (News Report) - The European Union's wide-ranging Stockholm Programme risks further damaging citizens' hard earned privacy rights, argues Pirate Party member and long-time libertarian blogger Henrik Alexandersson.

NewsTrust Rating: 4.0 average (not enough reviews) - See Review » - Review It Visit NewsTrust | About | Sign Up | Disclaimer

EU's Stockholm Programme to 'bolster individual privacy rights' - The Local

Wed, 15 Jul 2009 00:00:00 -0700

thelocal.se - Jul. 15 (News Report) - As European Union ministers gather in Stockholm on Wednesday Swedish ministers Beatrice Ask and Tobias Billström explain the Stockholm Programme, which outlines the EU’s efforts to promote cross-border cooperation in the areas of justice, home affairs, and migration over the next five years.

NewsTrust Rating: 3.9 average (not enough reviews) - See Review » - Review It Visit NewsTrust | About | Sign Up | Disclaimer

Most Scientists Politically Liberal (Reality Must Have a Liberal Bias)

Mon, 13 Jul 2009 00:00:00 -0700

AlterNet - By Steve Benen - Jul. 13 (Poll) - Only 9% of the scientists, meanwhile, consider themselves conservative, while fewer still (6%) identified themselves as Republicans. It's just speculation, but the party's hostility towards the basics of modern biology, global warming, and evidence-based reasoning may have something to do with this. Call it a hunch.

NewsTrust Rating: 4.0 average (not enough reviews) - See Reviews » - Review It Visit NewsTrust | About | Sign Up | Disclaimer

Smith moots Japan whaling legal action

Thu, 18 Jun 2009 00:00:00 -0700

news.ninemsn.com.au - Jun. 18 (News Report) - Australia is still considering taking legal action against Japan to stop it killing whales, Foreign Minister Stephen Smith says.

NewsTrust Rating: 3.7 average (not enough reviews) - See Review » - Review It Visit NewsTrust | About | Sign Up | Disclaimer

BBC - Newsnight: Susan Watts: No noble gas from North Korea blast

Thu, 11 Jun 2009 00:00:00 -0700

bbc.co.uk - By Susan Watts - Jun. 11 (News Report) - But there was one thing everybody in the room wanted to know. Had the network of sensors picked up radionuclides from the North Korean explosion two weeks ago? Seismologists here today say they are comfortable that explosion was a nuclear test, but detecting radionuclide evidence in the form of radioactive gas is the "smoking gun". And the big news here is that they have not found that signal.

NewsTrust Rating: 3.8 average (not enough reviews) - See Review » - Review It Visit NewsTrust | About | Sign Up | Disclaimer

North Korean blast smaller than thought

Tue, 26 May 2009 00:00:00 -0700

news.asiaone.com - May. 26 (News Report) - The yield is about four kilotonnes equivalent of TNT, with an uncertainty range from three to eight kilotonnes," Martin Kalinowski, a professor at the Carl Friedrich von Weizsacker Centre for Science and Peace Research (ZNF), at the University of Hamburg, told AFP.

NewsTrust Rating: 4.2 average (not enough reviews) - See Review » - Review It Visit NewsTrust | About | Sign Up | Disclaimer

Amid Media Circus, Scientists Doubt 'Ida' Is Your Ancestor

Wed, 20 May 2009 00:00:00 -0700

LiveScience - By Clara Moskowitz - May. 20 (News Report) - You know science has made it big when the Google homepage logo is changed to celebrate a fossil finding and the mayor of New York shows up at a press conference to unveil it. A new 47-million year old primate fossil unveiled to the world Tuesday has made waves among scientists and non-scientists. Google responded by working an image of the fossil into the logo of its search page.

NewsTrust Rating: 4.4 average (not enough reviews) - See Review » - Review It Visit NewsTrust | About | Sign Up | Disclaimer

Pesticides indicted in bee deaths

Mon, 18 May 2009 00:00:00 -0700

Salon - By Julia Scott - May. 18 (Special Report) - Instead of losing bees from all his colonies, Brandi watched the ones that skipped watermelon duty continue to thrive. Brandi discovered the watermelon farmer had irrigated his plants with imidacloprid, the world's best-selling insecticide created by Bayer CropScience Inc., one of the world's leading producers of pesticides and genetically modified vegetable seeds, with annual sales of $8.6 billion. Blended with water and applied to the soil, imidacloprid creates a moist mixture the bees likely drank from on a hot day.

NewsTrust Rating: 3.8 average (not enough reviews) - See Review » - Review It Visit NewsTrust | About | Sign Up | Disclaimer

Science Journalism's Crystal Ball

Thu, 07 May 2009 00:00:00 -0700

Columbia Journalism Review - By Cristine Russell - May. 07 (News Analysis) - In covering a crisis, it is crucial to quickly separate reliable information from speculation and hype—or, in the case of the fast-moving swine flu story, an epidemic from a pandemic. It’s easier, of course, if you have strong science and medical reporters on board.

NewsTrust Rating: 3.9 average - 3 Reviews » - Review It Visit NewsTrust | About | Sign Up | Disclaimer

A New Processing Scheme for Algae Biofuels

Fri, 01 May 2009 00:00:00 -0700

MIT Technology Review - By Monica Heger - May. 01 (News Report) - OriginOil, an algae biofuel company based in Los Angeles, has developed a simpler and more efficient way to extract oil from algae.

NewsTrust Rating: 3.8 average (not enough reviews) - See Review » - Review It Visit NewsTrust | About | Sign Up | Disclaimer

Does Anyone Understand Geo-Engineering?

Thu, 23 Apr 2009 00:00:00 -0700

MIT Technology Review - By Kevin Bullis - Apr. 23 (News Analysis) - Geo-engineering schemes fall broadly into two categories: those designed to remove carbon dioxide from the atmosphere and those designed to shade the earth and reflect sunlight back into space to cool the planet. Some researchers, for example, have proposed seeding the oceans with iron particles to fertilize carbon-dioxide-consuming algae. Others, including the Nobel laureate Paul Crutzen, have suggested injecting sulfurous particles into the upper reaches of the atmosphere, where they would block a small fraction of sunlight that reaches the earth. Other proposals range from the extremely simple--painting roofs white to reflect sunlight--to the extremely costly and elaborate: assembling sunshades in space.

NewsTrust Rating: 3.5 average (not enough reviews) - See Reviews » - Review It Visit NewsTrust | About | Sign Up | Disclaimer

Double-Action Power Stations: Energy and Hydrogen

Thu, 23 Apr 2009 00:00:00 -0700

greenprogress.com - Apr. 23 (News Report) - Gas power plants could be cheaply retrofitted to generate hydrogen as well as power, chemists say in a Royal Society of Chemistry journal.

NewsTrust Rating: 3.4 average (not enough reviews) - See Review » - Review It Visit NewsTrust | About | Sign Up | Disclaimer

Birth control pill - for men?

Mon, 20 Apr 2009 00:00:00 -0700

kinseyconfidential.org - By Natalie - Apr. 20 (News Report) - Usually when we talk about birth control as sexual health educators, we're talking to women. But the future of birth control might be able to even out the load of preventing pregnancy, if University of Iowa researchers have a say. They recently published a study in the American Journal of Human Genetics which looks at a genetic disorder that causes sperm to slow down rapidly, thus making it more difficult for the sperm to penetrate the egg of a female and cause pregnancy.

NewsTrust Rating: 2.7 average (not enough reviews) - See Review » - Review It Visit NewsTrust | About | Sign Up | Disclaimer

The Serpent and the Platypus

Sun, 19 Apr 2009 00:00:00 -0700

southernfriedscience.com - By Southern Fried Scientist (Andrew) - Apr. 19 (News Report) - Pound for pound, convergence is the most persuasive evidence for the truth of evolution out there; different lineages finding novel paths to the same solution. While I mostly talk about convergences in morphology, genetic convergence is often even more fascinating. Enter the bizarre case of the serpent and the platypus.

NewsTrust Rating: 3.9 average (not enough reviews) - See Reviews » - Review It Visit NewsTrust | About | Sign Up | Disclaimer

In search of the black swans

Wed, 15 Apr 2009 00:00:00 -0700

physicsworld.com - By Mark Buchanan - Apr. 15 (Special Report) - This is how discovery works: returns on research investment do not arrive steadily and predictably, but erratically and unpredictably, in a manner akin to intellectual earthquakes. Indeed, this idea seems to be more than merely qualitative. Data on human innovation, whether in basic science or technology or business, show that developments emerge from an erratic process with wild unpredictability.

NewsTrust Rating: 3.9 average (not enough reviews) - See Reviews » - Review It Visit NewsTrust | About | Sign Up | Disclaimer