American Scientist Online

Bringing Back San Juan Capistrano's Swallows Is One Tough Mission

Wed, 16 May 2012 10:07:00 EST

A bird's call rings endlessly inside the adobe walls at Mission San Juan Capistrano as tourists wander through the courtyard--ablaze with flowers in full bloom--and a handful of fourth-graders snap pictures and take notes for class projects...

from the Los Angeles Times (Registration Required)

Method to Find New Moons Uncovers Hidden Planet

Wed, 16 May 2012 10:04:00 EST

The search for distant planets in the Milky Way is now so sophisticated that astronomers are searching for unseen moons around the planets that the Kepler mission's scientists have discovered...

from the San Francisco Chronicle

Vesta Confirmed as a Venerable Planet Progenitor

Wed, 16 May 2012 10:01:00 EST

NASA's Dawn spacecraft won't end its 13-month-long visit to Vesta, the Solar System's second-biggest asteroid, until August, but researchers have now solidified the rock's reputation as an archetype for understanding planetary evolution. In six reports in the 11 May edition of Science, Dawn mission scientists have confirmed several long-held assumptions about Vesta, and detailed some puzzles about the roughly 520-kilometre-diameter body...

from Nature News

Viruses Used to Power Tiny Device

Wed, 16 May 2012 09:59:00 EST

Scientists in the US have developed a way to generate electricity using viruses. The researchers built a generator with a postage stamp-sized electrode and based on a small film of specially engineered viruses. When a finger tapped the electrode, the viruses converted the mechanical energy into electricity...

from BBC News Online

Testing a Drug That May Stop Alzheimer's Before It Starts

Wed, 16 May 2012 09:56:00 EST

In a clinical trial that could lead to treatments that prevent Alzheimer's disease, people who are genetically guaranteed to suffer from the disease years from now--but who do not yet have any symptoms--will for the first time be given a drug intended to stop them from developing it, federal officials announced Tuesday...

from the New York Times (Registration Required)

The Kilogram, Reinvented

Wed, 16 May 2012 09:53:00 EST

Once a year, three officials bearing three separate keys meet at the bottom of a stairwell at the International Bureau of Weights and Measures, in Sèvres, France. There they unlock a vault to check that a plum-size cylinder of platinum iridium alloy is exactly where it should be. Then they close the vault and leave the cylinder to sit alone, under three concentric bell jars, as it has for most of the past 125 years...

from IEEE Spectrum

Amber Preserves Insect Pollen Carriers

Wed, 16 May 2012 09:50:00 EST

What may be the earliest direct example of insect pollination has been identified by scientists. The evidence is seen in 100-million-year-old amber blocks from Spain that include tiny invertebrates whose bodies are coated with pollen grains...

from BBC News Online

DNA Sequencing of Sick Children Reinforces Wisconsin Work

Wed, 16 May 2012 09:48:00 EST

Researchers at Duke University have given a powerful new demonstration of the gene sequencing technique used successfully in Wisconsin to diagnose and treat Nic Volker, the young boy from Monona who suffered from a never-before-seen intestinal disease...

from the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel

Geoengineering Experiment Cancelled Amid Patent Row

Wed, 16 May 2012 09:45:00 EST

A field trial for a novel UK geoengineering experiment has been cancelled amid questions about a pre-existing patent application for some of the technology involved...

from Nature News

Dam Project Threatens a Way of Life in Peru

Wed, 16 May 2012 09:43:00 EST

BOCA SANIBENI, Peru -- Along the murky waters of the Ene River, in a remote jungle valley on the verdant eastern slopes of the Andes, the rhythmic humming of an outboard motor draws the stares of curious Ashaninka children. With encroachment from settlers and speculators, and after a devastating war against Shining Path rebels a decade ago, the indigenous Ashaninkas' hold is precarious. And they are now facing a new peril, the proposed 2,200-megawatt Pakitzapango hydroelectric dam, which would flood much of the Ene River valley...

from the New York Times (Registration Required)

Manta Rays Tracked by Satellite

Tue, 15 May 2012 09:10:00 EST

Very little is known about giant manta rays, the world's largest of the ray species reaching up to 25 feet wide. Now, in the first study using satellite tracking of the creatures, scientists have teased out a few secrets, including that the beasts travel a lot...

from Discovery News

Maya Artwork Uncovered in a Guatemalan Forest

Tue, 15 May 2012 09:07:00 EST

Archaeologists working in one of the most impenetrable rain forests in Guatemala have stumbled on a remarkable discovery: a room full of wall paintings and numerical calculations...

from NPR

'Sustainable' Seafood Labels Come Under Fire

Tue, 15 May 2012 09:04:00 EST

About one-quarter of seafood sold as `sustainable' is not meeting that goal, according to an analysis taking aim at the two leading bodies that grant this valuable label to fisheries...

from Scientific American

Quake Study Offers New Clues on a California Fault's Mystery

Tue, 15 May 2012 09:01:00 EST

Thanks to a new method of modeling earthquakes, scientists may now understand why the Parkfield segment of the San Andreas Fault--a carefully studied region known for producing moderate temblors every 20 years or so--has been behaving unexpectedly since around the time Ronald Reagan was in the White House...

from the Los Angeles Times (Registration Required)

Mathematicians Come Closer to Solving Goldbach's Weak Conjecture

Tue, 15 May 2012 08:58:00 EST

One of the oldest unsolved problems in mathematics is also among the easiest to grasp. The weak Goldbach conjecture says that you can break up any odd number into the sum of, at most, three prime numbers (numbers that cannot be evenly divided by any other number except themselves or 1)...

from Nature News

Rise and Fall of Underwater Volcano Revealed

Tue, 15 May 2012 08:56:00 EST

The violent rise and collapse of an underwater volcano in the Pacific Ocean is captured in startling clarity for the first time...

from BBC News Online

A Play about Astronomer Caroline Herschel Sets the Record Straight

Tue, 15 May 2012 08:54:00 EST

One of the least expected successes in London's West End last week was Stella by the Take the Space theatre company. The three actors wore their own clothes, hadn't learned any lines, and there were only about 20 people in the invited audience who met in a circular room high above the Aldwych...

from the Guardian (UK)

Sweden's Enormous Education Experiment Improved Longevity

Tue, 15 May 2012 08:51:00 EST

Shortly after the Second World War, the Swedish government conducted a vast social experiment to decide whether to implement educational reform. An examination of data from people who took part in the study, published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, has revealed that those lucky enough to have experienced the reformed system have been more likely than their contemporaries to live a long life...

from Nature News

A Global Standard for Peer Review

Tue, 15 May 2012 08:49:00 EST

Increasing collaboration between U.S. scientists and their counterparts in other countries has been a priority for Subra Suresh since he became director of the National Science Foundation in October 2010. But one thing about negotiating such bilateral agreements has frustrated him: The time it takes to reach an agreement on the scientific rules of the road...

from ScienceInsider

The Noah's Ark of Plants and Flowers

Tue, 15 May 2012 08:46:00 EST

Down a spiral staircase, deep inside the Millennium Seed Bank in West Sussex, an hour or so from London, you'll find the heart of the facility. Behind a massive airlock door you enter four 516-square-foot cold-room chambers, maintained at minus-20 degrees Celsius--sufficiently frigid to preserve botanical treasure, depending on the species, for 500 years...

from Smithsonian