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While greenhouse gases like carbon dioxide and methane warm the Earth's surface, tiny particles in the air can have the reverse effect on regional scales. "What we've shown is that particulate pollution over the eastern United States has delayed the warming that we would expect to see from increasing greenhouse gases," says lead author Eric Leibensperger (Ph.D. '11), who completed the work as a graduate student in applied physics at SEAS. "For the sake of protecting human health and reducing acid rain, we've now cut the emissions that lead to particulate pollution," he adds, "but these cuts have caused the...

In 2009, an earthquake devastated the Italian city of L'Aquila and killed more than 300 people. Now, scientists are on trial for manslaughter...When the charges were first aired in June 2010 by public prosecutor Fabio Picuti, the case was likened to a frivolous attempt by overzealous local prosecutors to make scapegoats out of some of Italy's most respected geophysicists..."This isn't a trial against science," insists Vittorini, who is a civil party to the suit. But he says that a persistent message from authorities of "Be calm, don't worry", and a lack of specific advice, deprived him and others of an...

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The Senate gave final approval to the first major overhaul of the nation’s patent law in more than a half century Thursday, sending the America Invents Act to President Barack Obama for his signature. The legislation won overwhelming approval in an 89-9 vote. Continue Reading Text Size * - * + * reset POLITICO 44 Get Adobe Flash player “This bill is an opportunity to show the American people that Democrats and Republicans can come together to enact meaningful legislation for the American people,” said Sen. Patrick Leahy (D-Vt.). “The time to do that is now.” The America Invents Act...

ONE MIDSUMMER'S NIGHT, a student at the University of Helsinki posted a query to the newsgroup comp.os.minix asking, "What would you like to see most in minix?" The student's name was Linus Torvalds, and that Usenet post was the beginning of the Linux operating system (OS). The date was 25 August 1991, exactly 20 years ago today. Pictured-used-and-licensed-under-the-GNU-Free-Distribution-License-by-linuxmag-com-Martin-StreicherIn 1991 Unix had existed for about 20 years since the early 1970s, Apple had come out with its Mac OS in 1984, and Microsoft had been flogging Windows since 1985. Torvalds' ambitions for his "new (free) operating system" were modest. It was...

In the 15th century, when Europeans first began moving people and goods across the Atlantic, a microscopic stowaway somehow made its way to the caves and monasteries of Bavaria. The stowaway, a yeast that may have been transported from a distant shore on a piece of wood or in the stomach of a fruit fly, was destined for great things. In the dank caves and monastery cellars where 15th century brewmeisters stored their product, the newly arrived yeast fused with a distant relative, the domesticated yeast used for millennia to make leavened bread and ferment wine and ale. The resulting...

metallic glass is an ideal material for everything from cell-phone cases to aircraft parts. Now, researchers at the California Institute of Technology have developed a new technique that allows them to make metallic-glass parts utilizing the same inexpensive processes used to produce plastic parts. With this new method, they can heat a piece of metallic glass at a rate of a million degrees per second and then mold it into any shape in just a few milliseconds. "We've redefined how you process metals," says William Johnson, the Ruben F. and Donna Mettler Professor of Engineering and Applied Science. "This is...

AMMAN (Reuters) – Security forces arrested hundreds of pro-democracy sympathisers in cities across Syria after taking control of the city of Deraa, cradle of the uprising against President Bashar al-Assad's autocratic rule. Looking for men under 40 years old, security forces broke into houses Sunday in the old quarter of Deraa, which a tank-backed force led by Assad's brother Maher shelled into submission the day before, witnesses told Reuters by telephone. Prominent rights campaigners were also arrested in the eastern cities of Qamishli, Raqqa and in suburbs of Damascus, along with scores of ordinary Syrians active in mass protests demanding...

Australian researchers have done the impossible -- they’ve found the sixty-trillionth binary digit of Pi-squared! The calculation would have taken a single computer processor unit (CPU) 1,500 years to calculate, but scientists from IBM and the University of Newcastle managed to complete this work in just a few months on IBM's "BlueGene/P" supercomputer, which is designed to run continuously at one quadrillion calculations per second. Their work was based on a mathematical formula discovered a decade ago in part by the Department of Energy's David H. Bailey, the Chief Technologist of the Computational Research Department at the Lawrence Berkeley National...

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PESHAWAR, Pakistan — Seven people are dead after an explosion in a district next to the troubled Swat Valley. Local Mayor Bakhte Alam says many more are wounded in the Monday blast in a Shangla district market. Police official Tahir Khan says it may have been a car bombing. The explosion is the latest in a string of attacks in the country, signaling the Taliban are still strong. Swat has been the focus of an intense military offensive against the Taliban. The army says it has largely cleared the valley of the insurgents, though some were on the run. Many...

(PhysOrg.com) -- Biologists have long wondered why the embryonic heart begins beating so early, before the tissues actually need to be infused with blood. Two groups of researchers from Children's Hospital Boston, Brigham and Women's Hospital, and the Harvard Stem Cell Institute (HSCI) -- presenting multiple lines of evidence from zebrafish, mice and mouse embryonic stem cells -- provide an intriguing answer: A beating heart and blood flow are necessary for development of the blood system, which relies on mechanical stresses to cue its formation.

London (IANS): India is looking at President Barack Obama to signal renewed US global leadership and engagement by rejecting protectionist pressures at the coming summit of the Group of 20 (G20) countries. The April 2 summit, which will be attended by Prime Minister Manmohan Singh - a respected economist who has dealt with international economic issues for four decades - has been called to combat the global financial crisis. But the success of the summit in coming up with an action plan that will lay the roadmap to a recovery will depend largely on US leadership, according to sources at...

TEHRAN (AFP) — Iran said on Monday that a freelance US journalist with Iranian nationality who is reportedly being detained in the Islamic republic has been gathering news "illegally." Foreign ministry spokesman Hassan Ghashghavi did not confirm or deny whether Roxana Saberi, 31, was being detained by the Iranian authorities, but said her activities were "illegal". US-based National Public Radio and Fox News, citing Saberi's father, reported last week that the US-born journalist was arrested in late January on charges of buying alcohol, which is prohibited in the Islamic republic. "Ever since her credentials were revoked by Ershad, her activities...

Hollywood figures from the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences arrive in Iran to hold filmmaking and movie marketing seminars. "I can confirm that a group of Academy members ... are currently in Iran" on a "completely private initiative for educational and creative exchange and with no political agenda," Academy communications director Leslie Unger told AFP on Friday. According to Unger, the top-level Hollywood delegation includes AMPAS president Sid Ganis, American screenwriter and film director Frank Pierson, actress Annette Bening and producer William Horberg. "The Academy group did receive visas and is currently in Tehran," she confirmed. The Hollywood...

Vice President Biden today defended the Obama administration's massive stimulus package and ambitious policy goals, vowing to "follow the money" and publicly track any missteps among decision makers "to embarrass them into doing what they are supposed to do." Appearing on all three network morning shows the day after President Obama outlined his plans before a joint session of Congress, Biden explained the role he will play as the chief overseer of the government's stimulus plan. He said a simultaneous effort to revive the economy and reform health care, education and energy is a vital part of recovering from the...

WASHINGTON (AP) — President Barack Obama, following a tradition dating to at least Franklin D. Roosevelt, is calling his first address to Congress simply a speech, not a State of the Union address. Since 1930, the only presidents to deliver a State of the Union speech immediately after taking office were Dwight Eisenhower in 1953, John F. Kennedy in 1961 and Lyndon B. Johnson in 1963. Others have chosen to focus on more narrow topics, such as energy in Jimmy Carter's first speech and the economy shortly after Ronald Reagan took office. Obama is appearing before a joint session of...

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Secretary of State Hillary Clinton plans to announce a "substantial" pledge of U.S. aid for Gaza and the Palestinian Authority at a donors' meeting in Egypt next week, a State Department official said on Monday. The official, who was not authorized to speak on the record, said the U.S. Congress still must approve the money and a final figure had not been set, but it could run into hundreds of millions of dollars. "The United States will announce a substantial pledge of humanitarian assistance and support for the Palestinian Authority," said the official. The March 2 donors...

"Dear CNBC, Santelli is the man. good day, aston p.s. The rest of you are morons." That's an actual e-mail that a viewer just sent us, at 11:22 this morning. There are about 5,000 others just like it that have flooded our e-mail box since yesterday morning, when Rick Santelli issued the shot heard round the world. And that's just in the Squawk e-mail box. Close to 1.4 million people have relived the moment on CNBC.com ... hundreds of thousands more have checked out bootleg copies on YouTube and other Web sites. One viewer sent us a special "Santelli For...

WASHINGTON -- Invoking his own name-and-shame policy, President Barack Obama warned the nation's mayors on Friday that he will "call them out" if they waste the money from his massive economic stimulus plan. "The American people are watching," Obama told a gathering of mayors at the White House. "They need this plan to work. They expect to see the money that they've earned _ they've worked so hard to earn _ spent in its intended purposes without waste, without inefficiency, without fraud." In the days since the White House and Congress came to terms on the $787 billion economic package,...