Science In The News Daily

Guidelines Push Back Age for Cervical Cancer Tests

Fri, 20 Nov 2009 09:02:00 EST

New guidelines for cervical cancer screening say women should delay their first Pap test until age 21, and be screened less often than recommended in the past.

from the New York Times (Registration Required)

Five "Oddball" Crocs Discovered, Including Dinosaur-Eater

Fri, 20 Nov 2009 09:01:00 EST

A "saber-toothed cat in armor" and a pancake-shaped predator are among the strange crocodile cousins whose bones have been found beneath the windswept dunes of the Sahara, archaeologists say.

from National Geographic News

Maize Genome Mapped

Fri, 20 Nov 2009 09:00:00 EST

Plant biologists have something special to be thankful for this US Thanksgiving Day. The genome of maize (corn)--a staple crop first introduced by Native Americans to the European settlers centuries ago--has finally been sequenced.

from Nature News

IBM Reveals the Biggest Artificial Brain of All Time

Fri, 20 Nov 2009 08:58:00 EST

San Jose, Calif. -- Scientists at IBM's Almaden research center have built the biggest artificial brain ever--a cell-by-cell simulation of the human visual cortex: 1.6 billion virtual neurons connected by 9 trillion synapses. This computer simulation, as large as a cat's brain, blows away the previous record--a simulated rat's brain with 55 million neurons--built by the same team two years ago.

from Popular Mechanics

Scientists Zero in on Reason for Mammoths' Demise

Fri, 20 Nov 2009 08:57:00 EST

About 15,000 years ago, North America was home to an astonishing number of large plant-eating mammals--giant sloths, mastodons, mammoths. A thousand years later, they were all gone, wiped from the face of the Earth with sudden finality.

from the Los Angeles Times (Registration Required)

The Secrets Within Cosmic Dust

Fri, 20 Nov 2009 08:54:00 EST

At the threshold of a sterile lab at NASA's Johnson Space Center in Houston, I pull on a white clean-room suit, a surgical cap and mask, booties and latex gloves. My host, a mineralogist named Mike Zolensky, swabs my digital voice recorder with alcohol to remove flakes of skin and pocket lint. He doesn't want any detritus to contaminate the precious dust in the room.

from Smithsonian Magazine

Why Web Widgets Will Invade Your TV

Fri, 20 Nov 2009 08:52:00 EST

The Internet revolution may finally be televised. Innocuous little software applications, popularly known as "widgets," may turn out to be the back door to your TV screen that Internet companies have been waiting for.

from the Christian Science Monitor

"Study Ethics, NIH!"

Fri, 20 Nov 2009 08:50:00 EST

The government agency tasked with funding crucial life science research needs to focus more attention on ethical quandaries and nefarious business practices that often obscure the path from discovery to public benefit, says a strongly worded letter to Francis Collins, the director of the National Institutes of Health (NIH), signed by more than 100 biomedical researchers, journal editors, and health care administrators in the US.

from the Scientist (Registration Required)

Scuba Diving to the Depths of Human History

Fri, 20 Nov 2009 08:49:00 EST

Kitted out with the latest scuba gear, Garry Momber peers through the murky water to the seabed below. It's dark--Momber is 11 metres below the water's surface and the black peat of the seabed absorbs what little light reaches the bottom. Then the tide turns, and as clearer water flows in from the open seas, the decaying remains of an ancient forest emerge from the gloom.

from New Scientist

Mystery of HIV Carriers Who Don't Contract AIDS

Fri, 20 Nov 2009 08:47:00 EST

More than half a million people in the U.S. have died from HIV infection, and more than a million currently live with the virus, but a relative handful of people infected with HIV never get treatment for it and never get sick from it. The immune systems of this small population--perhaps 50,000 Americans--somehow control the virus for long periods of time.

from Scientific American

Large Hadron Collider Ready to Restart

Thu, 19 Nov 2009 11:18:00 EST

Scientists have repaired the world's largest atom smasher and plan by this weekend to restart the fault-ridden Large Hadron Collider. The 'Big Bang' machine was launched with great fanfare last year before its spectacular failure from a bad electrical connection...

from the Telegraph (UK)

Oceans Said to Absorb Fewer Emissions

Thu, 19 Nov 2009 11:17:00 EST

The Earth's oceans, which have absorbed carbon dioxide from fuel emissions since the dawn of the industrial era, have recently grown less efficient at sopping it up, new research suggests...

from the New York Times (Registration Required)

'Temporary' Heart Pumps Could Become Permanent

Thu, 19 Nov 2009 11:15:00 EST

Mechanical pumps originally designed to supplement the pumping action of a failing heart and keep the patient alive until a transplant could be found have taken a major step toward becoming a permanent treatment -- a development that could expand their use to tens of thousands of patients in the United States alone...

from the Los Angeles Times (Registration Required)

In Battle to Save Hemlocks, Hope Rests on a Beetle

Thu, 19 Nov 2009 11:13:00 EST

Armed with a Wiffle Ball bat and a canvas sheet, entomologist David Mausel is scouring forests across New England for an ally. That ally - a small jet-black beetle - feasts on the even tinier but voracious hemlock woolly adelgid, which is ravaging the region's hemlocks....

from the Boston Globe (Registration Required)

A Glut of Mercury Raises Fears

Thu, 19 Nov 2009 11:10:00 EST

Over the past decade, environmental groups have pressured U.S. chlorine plants to stop spewing mercury, the toxic heavy metal that settles in water and makes its way into the food chain by contaminating fish and shellfish...

from the Washington Post (Registration Required)

Bristlecone's Growth May Reflect Global Warming

Thu, 19 Nov 2009 11:08:00 EST

Bristlecone pines, those ancient and iconic trees on many of California's mountaintops, reflect the impact of global warming in a curious way - not by dying off like coral reefs in the world's oceans, but by growing faster than at any time in the past thousands of years, scientists have discovered...

from the San Francisco Chronicle

Tiny Chip Could Diagnose Disease

Thu, 19 Nov 2009 11:06:00 EST

Researchers have demonstrated a tiny chip based on silicon that could be used to diagnose dozens of diseases. A tiny drop of blood is drawn through the chip, where disease markers are caught and show up under light...

from BBC News Online

"Shangri-La" Caves Yield Treasures, Skeletons

Thu, 19 Nov 2009 11:04:00 EST

A treasure trove of Tibetan art and manuscripts uncovered in "sky high" Himalayan caves could be linked to the storybook paradise of Shangri-La, says the team that made the discovery. The 15th-century religious texts and wall paintings were found in caves carved into sheer cliffs in the ancient kingdom of Mustang--today part of Nepal...

from National Geographic News

Surprising Gamma-Ray Source

Thu, 19 Nov 2009 11:02:00 EST

Some 30,000 light-years from Earth, a tiny gravitational monster is tearing material from a companion star, blasting X-rays into space and sporadically hurling out jets of radio-wave-emitting blobs at close to the speed of light...

from Science News

10 Bioscapes Photo Contest Winners Revealed

Thu, 19 Nov 2009 10:59:00 EST

The entrants in the 2009 Olympus BioScapes Digital Imaging Competition provide fitting tribute to nearly 1,000 years of making the invisible visible...

from Scientific American