from Sigma Xi, The Scientific Research Society
Today's Headlines - February 9, 2010
from the New York Times (Registration Required)
Just over two years ago, Rajendra K. Pachauri seemed destined for a scientist's version of sainthood: A vegetarian economist-engineer who leads the United Nations' climate change panel, he accepted the 2007 Nobel Peace Prize on behalf of the panel, sharing the honor with former Vice President Al Gore.
But Dr. Pachauri and the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change are now under intense scrutiny, facing accusations of scientific sloppiness and potential financial conflicts of interest from climate skeptics, right-leaning politicians and even some mainstream scientists. Senator John Barrasso, a Wyoming Republican, called for Dr. Pachauri's resignation last week.
Critics, writing in Britain's Sunday Telegraph and elsewhere, have accused Dr. Pachauri of profiting from his work as an adviser to businesses, including Deutsche Bank and Pegasus Capital Advisors, a New York investment firm--a claim he denies.
http://snipr.com/ubdsl
from BBC News Online
The results from the highest-energy particle experiments carried out at the Large Hadron Collider (LHC) in December have begun to yield their secrets.
Scientists from the LHC's Compact Muon Solenoid detector has now totted up all of the resulting particle interactions.
They wrote in the Journal of High Energy Physics that the run created more particles than theory predicted. However, the glut of particles should not affect results as the experiment runs to even higher energies this year.
http://snipr.com/ubdsz
from the Los Angeles Times (Registration Required)
Women who give birth after age 40 are nearly twice as likely to have a child with autism as those under 25, but it is unlikely that delayed parenthood plays a big role in the current autism epidemic, California researchers reported Monday.
The findings were expected to draw widespread attention because of the intense public interest in autism, but their true impact was expected to be simply in suggesting further avenues of research.
Surprisingly, the age of the father plays little role unless the mother is younger than 30 and the father is over 40, according to the analysis of all births in California in the 1990s.
http://snipr.com/ubdwr
from the Washington Post (Registration Required)
The Obama administration proposed a new climate service on Monday that would provide Americans with predictions on how global warming will affect everything from drought to sea levels.
The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration Climate Service, modeled loosely on the 140-year-old National Weather Service, would provide forecasts to farmers, regional water managers and businesses affected by changing climate conditions.
The move is essentially a reorganization of NOAA, and would bring the agency's climate research arm together with its more consumer-oriented services. It would not come with a boost in funding. A Web portal launched Monday at www.climate.gov provides a single entry point to NOAA's climate information, data, products and services.
http://snipr.com/ubdtc
from USA Today
The dead of winter may not be the time when most people's thoughts turn toward the allure of a hamburger on the grill. But from a food safety standpoint, it's probably the safest time there is to eat ground beef.
"The theory is that animals are carrying higher levels of E. coli during the summer months, and sometimes they may overwhelm the systems in place to control pathogen contamination in (processing) plants," says James Marsden, a professor of food safety and security at Kansas State University.
... So industry and researchers are turning their sights to new technologies being deployed on the farm, the feedlot and at the slaughterhouse to knock E. coli O157:H7 down to winter levels all year round.
http://snipr.com/ubdtt
from BusinessWeek
People who down two or more soft drinks a week may have double the risk of developing deadly pancreatic cancer, compared to non-soda drinkers, new research suggests.
But the overall number of people developing the malignancy remains low, with the U.S. National Cancer Institute (NCI) estimating 42,470 new cases last year.
"Soft drinks are linked with a higher risk of pancreatic cancer," said Noel Mueller, lead author of a study appearing in the February issue of Cancer Epidemiology, Biomarkers & Prevention. "We can't speculate too much on the mechanism because this is an observational study, but the increased risk may be working through effects of the hormone insulin."
http://snipr.com/ubdu6
from the New York Times (Registration Required)
This is a story about a waterfall, the World Bank and 4,000 homeless toads. Maybe the story will have a happy ending, and the bright-golden spray toads, each so small it could easily sit on a dime, will return to the African gorge where they once lived, in the spray of a waterfall on the Kihansi River in Tanzania.
The river is dammed now, courtesy of the bank. The waterfall is 10 percent of what it was. And the toads are now extinct in the wild. But 4,000 of them live in the Bronx and Toledo, Ohio, where scientists at the Wildlife Conservation Society and the Toledo Zoo are keeping them alive in hopes, somehow, of returning them to the wild. This month, the Bronx Zoo will formally open a small exhibit displaying the toads in its Reptile House.
Meanwhile, though, the toads embody the larger conflicts between conservation and economic development and the complexity of trying to preserve and restore endangered species to the wild. Their story also raises questions about how much effort should go to save any one species.
http://snipr.com/ubduh
from ScienceNOW Daily News
Americans love turkeys, so it's surprising how little researchers know about the birds' early relationship to humans.
Many archaeologists credited Mesoamericans--who lived in the area extending from present-day Mexico to Honduras--with bringing domesticated turkeys to North America sometime between 200 B.C.E. and 500 C.E., much like they brought maize, beans, and squash.
But a new study shows that Native Americans in what is now the southwestern United States likely tamed turkeys on their own.
http://snipr.com/ubduw
from National Geographic News
The first vertebrates to walk the Earth emerged from the sea almost 20 million years earlier than previously thought, say scientists who have discovered footprints from an 8-foot-long prehistoric creature.
Dozens of the 395-million-year-old fossil footprints were recently discovered on a former marine tidal flat or lagoon in southeastern Poland.
The prints were made by tetrapods--animals with backbones and four limbs--and could rewrite the history of when, where, and why fish evolved limbs and first walked onto land, the study says.
http://snipr.com/ubdv2
from Scientific American
Globally, roughly 13 million hectares of forest fall to the blade or fire each year. Such deforestation has long been driven by farmers eking out a slash-and-burn living or loggers using new roads to cut inroads into pristine forest.
But now new data appears to show that, at least for the first five years of the 21st century, big block clearings that reflect industrial deforestation have come to dominate, rather than smaller-scale efforts that leave behind long, narrow swaths of cleared land.
Geographer Ruth DeFries of Columbia University and her colleagues used satellite images from Landsat, along with the MODIS instrument on Aqua to analyze tree-clearing in countries ringing the tropics, representing 98 percent of all remaining tropical forest.
http://snipr.com/ubdvb
******************************************************************* "Science in the News" is produced daily by Sigma Xi as a service for its members and the public. It highlights science and technology news stories appearing in the mainstream media. The accompanying Web links provide access to the full text of the articles on the Web sites of the individual media outlets from which they are taken. For more about the service, visit American Scientist Online If you experience any problems with the URLs (page not found, page expired, etc.), we suggest you proceed to the Science in the News section of American Scientist Online, which mirrors the daily e-mail update. If you have any questions or comments about subscription or content, please e-mail us at cblackburn@sigmaxi.org. ******************************************************************** SIGN UP TODAY for "Science in the News Weekly," an e-newsletter produced by Sigma Xi in conjunction with "American Scientist Online." The newsletter provides a digest of the week's top stories from "Science in the News," and includes breaking news and feature stories from each weekend not normally covered by "Science in the News." For more information, visit American Scientist Online. ********************************************************************
Please follow these links for more information about Sigma Xi, The Scientific Research Society: Sigma Xi homepage Sigma Xi Public Understanding of Science Program American Scientist Online Send feedback regarding this enewsletter |