Science articles

The Washington Post reports that Dick Cheney, who has been discussing his years as vice president with colleagues as he pens a memoir, feels that former President George W. Bush began ignoring him while becoming more independent-minded during their second White House stint.
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Emergency physicians should trust their judgment when evaluating patients who report with chest pain symptoms, said a group of researchers led by Abhinav Chandra, M.D., at Duke University Medical Center.
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Researchers the world over are striving to develop organic solar cells that can be produced easily and inexpensively as thin films that could be widely used to generate electricity.

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The Integrated Ocean Drilling Program (IODP), in collaboration with industry partner AGR Drilling Services, has engineered an ultra-deepwater drilling technology for use by IODP drilling vessels in scientific research. Originally developed for shallow-water oil and gas exploration, the "riserless mud recovery" technology (RMRâ„¢) holds great promise for scientists striving to reach the long-held goal of Project Mohole in the 1950s: drilling all the way through ocean crust into the Earth's mantle; a frontier not yet explored today. Drilled cores from the mantle could provide scientists with answers to questions about the structure, composition, mineralogy, and in situ physical properties of oceanic crust and the geological nature of the seismic Moho.

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AP - Yukon River smokehouses should be filled this summer with oil-rich strips of king salmon — long used by Alaska Natives as a high-energy food to get through the long Alaska winters. But they're mostly empty.
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The rover Opportunity is studying a 60-centimetre-wide iron meteorite that may shed light on the history of water on the Red Planet


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Developing a product for people over the age of 40 as they progressively lose the ability to focus on close objects.


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Researchers estimate that ocean mixing caused by small marine creatures is roughly equal to that contributed by winds and tides.


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With the epidemic of childhood obesity in the United States, there is concern that overweight and obese children need to be screened for chronic medical conditions, including high cholesterol levels.
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Nearly two-thirds of parents reported they felt the need to watch over their child's care to ensure that medical errors are not made during their hospital stay, according to a study led by Beth A. Tarini, M.D., M.S., assistant professor of pediatrics at the University of Michigan Medical School.
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A Massachusetts mom discovers her son for sale on the popular classifieds site, Craigslist. Jenni Brennan says she was "horrified" to see her son's picture used in an e-mail for an adoption scam and she has notified the authorities.
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Spanish researchers said Monday they have discovered evidence of a type of giant worm that lived 475 million years ago and was up to one metre (three feet) in length.
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Unlicensed stem cell operations continue to thrive, despite offering dangerous, unproven and expensive treatments


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Geologists of the University of Granada, Spain, have described for the first time ever the biological mechanism that explains how calcareous red algae grow on rocky substrates.
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Human skin is a phenomenon â€" small scratches and cuts heal quickly, leaving no trace of a scar after just a few days. It's a different matter with materials, such as metals â€" if the electroplated layer protecting the metals from corrosion is scratched, rust protection is lost. Engineers are working on transferring the self-healing effect of skin to materials. The idea behind this is to introduce evenly distributed fluid-filled capsules into the electroplated layer â€" rather like raisins in a cake. If the layer is damaged, the pellets at the point of damage burst, the fluid runs out and 'repairs' the scratch. Until now, these plans have failed due to the size of the capsules â€" at 10 to 15 micrometers they were too large for the electroplated layer, which is around 20 micrometers thick. The capsules altered the mechanical properties of the layer.

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NASA satellites do some really cool things, like take a sideways look at a slice of a tropical depression. That's what CloudSat did with Lana in the Central Pacific.

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With their scarlet wings speckled with seven small black spots, a few ladybirds are generally welcome visitors to the garden. But a couple of million are not.
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The Obama administration may create a courtroom-within-a-prison complex somewhere inside the United States to house the hundreds of suspected terrorists currently held at the Guantanamo Bay detention camp in Cuba, top officials say.
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Two weeks after something slammed into Jupiter, creating a cloud of debris that is still easy to see through backyard telescopes, researchers are wondering ... what was the impactor?
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Researchers have pinpointed a specific gene variation that causes increased risk of urinary bladder cancer, according to a scientific team led by The University of Texas M. D. Anderson Cancer Center.
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(AP) -- Coming soon to your TV: More advertising, in places you might not expect. The ads are showing up where people used to enjoy a break from advertising, such as video on demand and on-screen channel guides. Even TiVo, which became popular for its technology that lets people skip TV commercials, is developing new ways to show ads.
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Patients with second primary lung cancers (SPLC), when compared to those with one primary lung cancer (OPLC), are more likely to have localized disease at the time of diagnosis and are more likely to receive surgical treatment rather than radiation treatment. However, patients with SPLC have a 12% higher lung cancer specific mortality, Fox Chase Cancer Center researchers reported today at the annual meeting of the International Association for the Study of Lung Cancer.
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Opposition political activists and protesters are in court in Tehran Saturday on charges of rioting and conspiring against the ruling system in the country's first trial following the disputed presidential election, Iran's state media reported.
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WASHINGTON, July 31, 2009 (Reuters) -- Thousands of bats in a cave in Uganda are infected with Marburg virus, a cousin of the Ebola virus, researchers said on Friday, strengthening the theory the mammals are natural carriers of the deadly viruses. ... > read full story
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Wired reports that researchers have discovered that the toucan's enormous bill helps the bird regulate its body temperature. The toucan can use its bill to regulate its temperature by as much as 18 Fahrenheit degrees in a few minutes. Scientists have been intrigued by the oversize toucan bill for centuries. In 1780, French naturalist Georges-Louis Buffon called it a "grossly monstrous" appendage, and Darwin puzzled over its potential role in sexual selection in The Descent of Man. Toucans have the biggest beak-to-body ratio of any bird on the planet, but no one has figured out why the animal evolved a bill one-third the length of its body.

Now, using infrared thermography, a type of temperature-sensing video originally developed by the U.S. military, scientists have tracked the pattern of heat distribution across the toucan's body under changing outside temperatures. When the bird got too hot, it released heat by sending blood to its highly vascular but uninsulated beak. In cooler weather, the toucan constricted blood vessels in its beak to conserve heat and stay warm.

"I am not aware of another example of this sort in birds," wrote developmental biologist Arhat Abzhanov of Harvard University, who was not involved in the research. "This is a fascinating study that shows how bird beaks, in addition to their already multiple important functions, can perform rather unexpected roles, such as helping to control heat exchange." The infrared thermography video below (no audio) from Wired shows a toucan lowering its body temperature by radiating heat from its beak as it falls asleep.



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There's a new type of evolution going on and it may not be to our liking, says Susan Blackmore
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Former President Corazon Aquino, who swept away a dictator with a "people power" revolt and then sustained democracy by fighting off seven coup attempts in six years, died on Saturday, her son said. She was 76.
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(AP) -- EBay Inc. is developing software it might use to continue running the online telecommunications service Skype if it cannot resolve a legal dispute with a separate company run by the service's founders.
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(PhysOrg.com) -- College students who major in the social sciences and humanities are likely to become less religious, while those majoring in education are likely to become more religious.
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Current methods for estimating greenhouse gas emissions have limitations that make it difficult to monitor CO2 emissions and verify an international climate treaty, says a new National Research Council letter report to the administrator of NASA, Charles F. Bolden Jr.

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AFP - The shuttle Endeavour descended safely to Earth on Friday, ending a successful 16-day assembly mission to the International Space Station (ISS) with the final piece of Japan's Kibo science laboratory.

AFP - Cyprus on Friday signed a deal with local company DK Windsupply to build one of the largest wind parks in the east Mediterranean, to boost its renewable energy sources, officials said.

National Geographic researchers are trying to collect DNA samples from the platypus to determine whether there are separate subspecies of the duck-billed mammals. The male platypus has a spur on its hind foot that can deliver painful venom so they have to be handled carefully.



Posted in Animals

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Histiophryne psychedelica is new species of fish that appears to bounce on the ocean floor like a rubber ball. Live Science says the carnivorous frogfish has eyes like ours as well as a fleshy chin and cheeks. More articles about the fish can be found at The Guardian, Science Daily, USA Today and Seattle Times.



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Certainly there is strength in numbers, but only if those numbers can effectively communicate with one another. Now, a new study finds that administration of a novel small molecule which effectively ...
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People are increasingly turning to the internet for health advice, but experts worry about the quality of the information they are receiving
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Poor Pluto was demoted, to the dismay of its many fans, but it could soon be returned triumphantly to full planet status
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When rushing to catch your plane, is it faster to hop on a moving walkway or not? A new mathematical study tackles the answer
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More than 100 extra planets may be hiding in the existing telescope data, but spotting them could be tricky
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