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

Data breach at climate research center in U.K

Fri, 20 Nov 2009 00:00:00 -0800

Washington Post - By Juliet Eilperin - Nov. 20 (News Report) - Hackers broke into the electronic files of one of the world's foremost climate research centers this week and posted an array of e-mails in which prominent scientists engaged in a blunt discussion of global warming research and disparaged climate-change skeptics.

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Greenland ice loss 'accelerating'

Thu, 12 Nov 2009 00:00:00 -0800

BBC News - Nov. 12 (News Report) - The Greenland ice sheet is losing its mass faster than in previous years and making an increasing contribution to sea level rise, a study has confirmed. Published in the journal Science, it has also given scientists a clearer view of why the sheet is

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Scientists: Nuke panel owes Utahns an apology

Mon, 09 Nov 2009 00:00:00 -0800

Salt Lake Tribune - By Judy Fahys - Nov. 09 (News Report) - Three scientists say federal nuclear regulators owe Utahns an apology -- and a policy change -- for allowing shallow burial of depleted uranium, including the 49,000 tons already at EnergySolutions Inc.'s landfill in Tooele County.

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Making Health Care Better

Sun, 08 Nov 2009 00:00:00 -0800

New York Times - By David Leonhardt - Nov. 08 (Special Report) - The American health care system is more expensive than any other, without providing better results. The cure, says Brent James, is measurement.

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Judge OKs Challenge to Human Gene Patents

Tue, 03 Nov 2009 00:00:00 -0800

Wired - Nov. 03 (News Report) - A federal judge ruled Monday that a lawsuit can move forward against the Patent and Trademark Office and a research company awarded exclusive rights to human genes known to detect early signs of breast or ovarian cancer. The first-of-its-kind lawsuit

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Googling Fights Dementia, Study Suggests

Tue, 20 Oct 2009 00:00:00 -0700

National Geographic - By Ker Than - Oct. 20 (Special Report) - Using search engines may help stave off dementia and memory loss, a new brain-scan study suggests. Scientists found that middle-aged and older adults with little Internet experience showed increased activity in key brain regions after surfing the Web

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The Big Business of Swine Flu

Wed, 14 Oct 2009 00:00:00 -0700

ABC News - By Dalia Fahmy - Oct. 14 (News) - Americans are still debating whether to roll up their sleeves for a swine flu shot, but companies have already figured it out: vaccines are good for business. Drug companies have sold $1.5 billion worth of swine flu shots, in addition to the $1 billion for seasonal flu they booked earlier this year. These inoculations are part of a much wider and rapidly growing $20 billion global vaccine market.

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For First Time, AIDS Vaccine Shows Some Success in Trials

Fri, 25 Sep 2009 00:00:00 -0700

New York Times - By By DONALD G. McNEIL Jr. - Sep. 25 (News Report) - A new AIDS vaccine tested in Thailand has protected a significant minority against infection, the first time any vaccine against the disease has even partly succeeded in a clinical trial.

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A world first: Vaccine helps prevent HIV infection

Thu, 24 Sep 2009 00:00:00 -0700

Associated Press - By Marilynn Marchione, Michael Casey - Sep. 24 (News Report) - For the first time, an experimental vaccine has prevented infection with the AIDS virus, a watershed event in the deadly epidemic and a surprising result. Recent failures led many scientists to think such a vaccine might never be possible. The World Health Organization and the U.N. agency UNAIDS said the results "instilled new hope" in the field of HIV vaccine research, although researchers say it likely is many years before a vaccine might be available.

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Darwin's complex loss of faith

Thu, 17 Sep 2009 00:00:00 -0700

The Guardian - By Nick Spencer - Sep. 17 (Special Report) - It is easier to make a film about a man who allegedly "killed God" than one who studied barnacles for eight year years. The new film about Charles Darwin, Creation, does the former and although it has been criticised for historical inaccuracy, it remains a beautiful, moving and eminently watchable movie. Darwin himself never thought his theory killed God, writing towards the end of this life "It seems to me absurd to doubt that a man may be an ardent theist and an evolutionist." It didn't even kill his own religious faith. But it did wound it severely. Up until his return from the Beagle in 1836, Darwin considered himself an "orthodox" Christian. There is no reason to doubt this although it is important to recognise that his orthodoxy was a specific early 19th century, rational, demonstrable, civilised, gentlemanly kind of orthodoxy. In particular, it was heavily influenced by William Paley whose Natural Theology confidently argued that nature contains "every manifestation of design… [that] design must have had a designer … That designer must have been a person [and] that person is God." Christianity for Darwin was primarily a proof to be established and Paley did that admirably. When his emerging theory began to undermine these ideas, it also undermined the Christianity that was built on them. It didn't happen immediately. Darwin's notebooks show him trying to accommodate an intellectually credible idea of God and his new theory – in many ways successfully.

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Spacecraft 'could surf gravitational tubes' to make solar travel more efficient

Sat, 12 Sep 2009 00:00:00 -0700

Daily Telegraph - By Andy Bloxham - Sep. 12 (News Report) - Scientists in the US are trying to map the twisting "tubes" so they can be used to cut the cost of space travel. Each one acts like a gravitational version of the Gulf Stream, created from the complex interplay of forces between planets and moons.

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Methane seeps from Arctic sea bed

Tue, 18 Aug 2009 00:00:00 -0700

BBC News - Aug. 18 (News Report) - Methane bubbles observed by sonar, escape from sea bed as temperatures rise Scientists say they have evidence that the powerful greenhouse gas methane is escaping from the Arctic sea bed. Researchers say this could be evidence of a predicted positive

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Fast-spinning black holes might reveal all

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

New Scientist - By Marcus Chown - Aug. 09 (News Report) - It is the ultimate cosmic villain: space and time come to an abrupt end in its presence and the laws of physics break down. Now it seems a "naked" black hole may yet emerge in our universe, after spinning away its event horizon. In 1969, physicist Roger Penrose postulated that every singularity, or black hole, must be shrouded by an event horizon from which nothing, including light, can escape. His Cosmic Censorship Conjecture has it that singularities are always hidden.

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Clever rooks repeat ancient fable

Thu, 06 Aug 2009 00:00:00 -0700

BBC News - Aug. 06 (News Report) - Footage of clever rooks reveal that one of Aesop's fables may be based on fact, scientists report.

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Mystery deepens on Mars methane

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

BBC News - By Judith Burns - Aug. 05 (News Report) - Martian surface is very hostile to organics say scientists Methane on Mars is produced and destroyed far faster than on Earth, according to analysis of recent data. Scientists in Paris used a computer climate model for the Red Planet to simulate

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'Organic has no health benefits'

Wed, 29 Jul 2009 00:00:00 -0700

BBC News - Jul. 29 (News Report) - Organic food is no healthier than conventionally produced food, a large independent review has concluded.

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Human activity is driving Earth's 'sixth great extinction event'

Tue, 28 Jul 2009 00:00:00 -0700

The Guardian - By Ian Sample - Jul. 28 (Special Report) - Earth is experiencing its "sixth great extinction event" with disease and human activity taking a devastating toll on vulnerable species, according to a major review by conservationists. Much of the southern hemisphere is suffering particularly badly,

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Jupiter - Our Cosmic Protector?

Sun, 26 Jul 2009 00:00:00 -0700

New York Times - By Dennis Overbye - Jul. 26 (News Analysis) - Jupiter took a bullet for us last weekend. An object, probably a comet that nobody saw coming, plowed into the giant planet’s colorful cloud tops sometime Sunday, splashing up debris and leaving a black eye the size of the Pacific Ocean. This was the second time in 15 years that this had happened. The whole world was watching when Comet Shoemaker-Levy 9 fell apart and its pieces crashed into Jupiter in 1994, leaving Earth-size marks that persisted up to a year. That’s Jupiter doing its cosmic job, astronomers like to say. Better it than us. Part of what makes the Earth such a nice place to live, the story goes, is that Jupiter’s overbearing gravity acts as a gravitational shield deflecting incoming space junk, mainly comets, away from the inner solar system where it could do for us what an asteroid apparently did for the dinosaurs 65 million years ago. Indeed, astronomers look for similar configurations — a giant outer planet with room for smaller planets in closer to the home stars — in other planetary systems as an indication of their hospitableness to life.

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The evidence Bush tried to hide

Sun, 26 Jul 2009 00:00:00 -0700

The Guardian - By # Suzanne Goldenberg, Damian Carrington - Jul. 26 (News Report) - Graphic images that reveal the devastating impact of global warming in the Arctic have been released by the US military. The photographs, taken by spy satellites over the past decade, confirm that in recent years vast areas in high latitudes have lost their ice cover in summer months. The pictures, kept secret by Washington during the presidency of George W Bush, were declassified by the White House last week. President Barack Obama is currently trying to galvanise Congress and the American public to take action to halt catastrophic climate change caused by rising levels of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere.

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Nasa finds monster black hole sucking up gas, dust and stars at centre of galaxy

Sun, 26 Jul 2009 00:00:00 -0700

Daily Telegraph - By Heidi Blake - Jul. 26 (News Report) - Nasa has found a monster black hole 100 million times the mass of the Sun feeding off gas, dust and stars at the centre of a galaxy 50 million light-years away.

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Bacteria outcalculate computers

Fri, 24 Jul 2009 00:00:00 -0700

The Guardian - Jul. 24 (Special Report) - Biologists have created a living computer from E. coli bacteria that can solve complex mathematical problems Computers are evolving – literally. While the tech world argues netbooks vs notebooks, synthetic biologists are leaving traditional computers behind altogether. A team of US scientists have engineered bacteria that can solve complex mathematical problems faster than anything made from silicon. The research, , proves that bacteria can be used to solve a puzzle known as the . Imagine you want to tour the 10 biggest cities in the UK, starting in London (number 1) and finishing in Bristol (number 10). The solution to the Hamiltonian Path Problem is the the shortest possible route you can take. This simple problem is surprisingly ...

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Study Finds Chimps Die From Simian AIDS, Dispelling Widely Held Belief

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

New York Times - By Lawrence K. Altman - Jul. 23 (News) - For the first time, scientists have shown that chimpanzees in the wild become sick and die from the simian version of AIDS. The finding upsets a widely held scientific belief that chimpanzees, the closest relatives to humans, can get the virus that causes simian AIDS but without harm.

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Jupiter collision a warning call to Earth

Wed, 22 Jul 2009 00:00:00 -0700

Christian Science Monitor - By Peter N. Spotts - Jul. 22 (News Report) - When an object smacked into Jupiter over the weekend, giving astronomers their best cosmic-collision show since the comet Shoemaker-Levy 9 in 1994, the giant gas ball of a planet took the poke like the Pillsbury Dough Boy. For all its scientific interest, however, the collision also serves as a stark reminder that the solar system remains a shooting gallery – with Earth, as well as Jupiter, on the wrong side of the firing line.

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Potent cancer drug hopes raised

Tue, 21 Jul 2009 00:00:00 -0700

BBC News - Jul. 21 (News Report) - A new way of making cancer cells die has been discovered by UK scientists, raising hopes of potent new treatments.

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Driven to Distraction: U.S. Withheld Data Showing Driving Risks

Tue, 21 Jul 2009 00:00:00 -0700

New York Times - Jul. 21 (News Report) - In 2003, researchers at a federal agency proposed a long-term of study of 10,000 drivers to assess the safety risk posed by cellphone use behind the wheel.

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