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COMPUTER hackers have broken into Britain's leading climate science research centre, making public thousands of private emails between top climate change scientists. The messages – more than 2000 emails and 3000 documents – lay bare bitter disagreements about the cause of climate change. In one email, the head of Britain's Climatic Research Unit, Phil Jones, says he is "cheered" by news of the sudden death of a prominent Australian climate sceptic, John L. Daly, who died of a heart attack at his Launceston home in 2004. Others show scientists referring to sceptical colleagues as "prats", "charlatans" and "idiots". The emails...

British scientists are examining the strain of swine flu behind a deadly Ukrainian outbreak to see if the virus has mutated. A total of 189 people have died and more than one million have been infected in the country. Some doctors have likened the symptoms to those seen in many of the victims of the Spanish flu which caused millions of deaths world-wide after the World War One. An unnamed doctor in western Ukraine told of the alarming effects of the virus. He said: 'We have carried out post mortems on two victims and found their lungs are as black...

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. This time the European Organization for Nuclear Research, known as CERN, is taking a cautious approach with the super-sophisticated equipment, said James Gillies, a spokesman. It cost about $10 billion, with contributions from many governments and universities around the world. Scientists expect to send beams of protons around the 27-kilometer (17-mile) circular tunnel housing the Large Hadron Collider, or LHC,...

Amidst much furor, French anti-terrorism judge Christophe Tessier announced that year-old Algerian-French scientist Dr. Adlene Hicheur had been brought up on charges of “association with terrorists” on October 12. Allegedly in contact with al-Qaeda’s North African affiliate, al-Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb (AQIM), Dr. Hicheur was arrested with his 25-year old brother (later released) in Vienne, France on October 8 after an 18-month investigation headed by France’s internal security service, the Direction centrale du renseignement intérieur (Central Directorate of Interior Intelligence - DCRI) (Le Monde, October 14). Large Hadron Collider, CERN A scientist involved in the Large Hadron Collider project...

A British nuclear expert has fallen to his death from the 17th floor of the United Nations offices in Vienna. The 47-year-old man died after falling more than 120ft to the bottom of a stairwell. He has not been named. He worked for the Comprehensive Nuclear-Test-Ban Treaty Organization, an international agency charged with uncovering illicit nuclear tests. A UN spokesman in the Austrian capital said there were no "suspicious circumstances" surrounding the man's death. Police said no other person was believed to have been involved. No suicide note has been found. Four months ago another UN worker also believed to...

As the world focused on President Barack Obama winning the Nobel Peace Prize on Friday, a small group of determined scientists gathered in a Senate office building to present evidence backing their claim that climate change is caused not by man but by nature, and that carbon dioxide is not a pollutant but the hope for a greener planet. John Kwapisz, organizer and moderator at the panel discussion, recalled Obama’s speech at the G20 summit in Pittsburgh, Pa., last month as a way of illustrating the dramatic tone used by those who embrace global warming as a dire and eminent...

An Italian scientist says he has reproduced the Shroud of Turin, a feat that he says proves definitively that the linen some Christians revere as Jesus Christ's burial cloth is a medieval fake. The shroud, measuring 14 feet, 4 inches by 3 feet, 7 inches bears the image, eerily reversed like a photographic negative, of a crucified man some believers say is Christ. "We have shown that is possible to reproduce something which has the same characteristics as the Shroud," Luigi Garlaschelli, who is due to illustrate the results at a conference on the para-normal this weekend in northern Italy,...

An Italian scientist says he has reproduced the Shroud of Turin, a feat that he says proves definitively that the linen some Christians revere as Jesus Christ's burial cloth is a medieval fake.ntist Reproduces the Shroud

Netanyahu, has handed the Kremlin a list of Russian scientists believed by the Israelis to be helping Iran to develop a nuclear warhead. He is said to have delivered the list during a mysterious visit to Moscow.

Haifa scientists have adapted an innovative Japanese gene-implantation technique and succeeded in "turning back the clock" for human skin cells, reprogramming them into artificial embryonic stem cells and then switching them into heart cells in the lab. Although implementing this clinically to repair damaged human hearts is at least a decade or two away, the Israeli accomplishment can already be utilized for in-depth study of genetic diseases and the development of personalized drugs for inherited disorders, such as those involving irregular heartbeat.

magine if Pope Benedict gave a speech saying the Catholic Church has had it wrong all these centuries; there is no reason priests shouldn't marry. That might generate the odd headline, no? Or if Don Cherry claimed suddenly to like European hockey players who wear visors and float around the ice, never bodychecking opponents. Or Jack Layton insisted that unions are ruining the economy by distorting wages and protecting unproductive workers. Or Stephen Harper began arguing that it makes good economic sense for Ottawa to own a car company. (Oh, wait, that one happened.) But at least, the Tories-buy-GM aberration...

(CHICAGO) (WLS) -- There was word Saturday that the death of a University of Chicago scientist may be linked to a bacteria that causes the plague. The University of Chicago says there doesn't appear to be any threat to the public, and no other illness related to the case has been reported. The modified strain of "y-pestis" has been approved by the Centers for Disease Control for routine laboratory studies, and it is not known to cause illness in healthy adults.

VIENNA (AFP) – They can make fabric resistant to stains, improve the taste of food and help drug research, but nanoparticles could also pose a danger to human health, experts warned Wednesday. Susanne Stark, of the Consumer Information Association, told a seminar in the Austrian city of Salzburg that companies should be forced to indicate on labels whether a product contains the tiny particles. "There are more questions than answers on the effects of nanoparticles" on human health, the chemist said. Cosmetic and food products should indicate whether their products contain nanoparticles by 2012, she said. Nanoparticles, measuring no more...

Scientists have now levitated mice using magnetic fields. Other researchers have made live frogs and grasshoppers float in mid-air before, but such research with mice, being closer biologically to humans, could help in studies to counteract bone loss due to reduced gravity over long spans of time, as might be expected in deep space missions or on the surfaces of other planets. Scientists working on behalf of NASA built a device to simulate variable levels of gravity. It consists of a superconducting magnet that generates a field powerful enough to levitate the water inside living animals, with a space inside...

OOP, Better Buy a new winter coat. At the UN's World Climate Change Conference in Geneva one of the worlds top climate change scientists, predicted that we are facing 10-20 years of global cooling. The Scientist, named Mojib Latif said the cooling would be the result of changes to ocean currents and temperatures in the North Atlantic, a feature known as the North Atlantic Oscillation (NAO). Latif also said that the NAO may be partly the cause of warming during the past 30 years. Latif says that he is not a global warming skeptic, and says that after the cooling,...

(IsraelNN.com) Scientists at the Technion in Haifa have created a device that they hope will be able to detect cancer with a simple breath test. In an initial trial, the “breathalyzer” test was able to detect lung cancer with 86 percent accuracy. The new device was revealed this week in the journal Nature Nanotechnology. Researchers hope the test will provide a simple, cost-effective and non-invasive method of detecting cancer. In addition, the test is capable of detecting cancers that are not yet large enough to show up on X-rays or CT scans, allowing for earlier diagnosis that could save lives.

A NOAA-led team of scientists has found that the apparent increase in the number of tropical storms and hurricanes since the late 19th and early 20th centuries is likely attributable to improvements in observational tools and analysis techniques that better detect short-lived storms. The new study, reported in the online edition of the American Meteorological Society’s peer-reviewed Journal of Climate, shows that short-lived tropical storms and hurricanes, defined as lasting two days or less, have increased from less than one per year to about five per year from 1878 to 2008. “The recent jump in the number of short-lived systems...

Yeast cell surrogate may help scientists to engineer synthetic life.A modified genome from one bacteria has been inserted into another.J. Craig Venter Institute. Scientists have devised a way to modify an organism that was previously impossible to genetically engineer in the lab.The method, developed by researchers at the J. Craig Venter Institute in Rockville, Maryland, and San Diego, California, could aid the development of biomaterials and biofuels by helping scientists to genetically engineer species that have so far been beyond their reach. It could also aid the Venter institute's project to create synthetic life. In their paper, published today in...

Longer term Solar Minimum could lead to Little Ice Age __________________  15 Aug 09 – “Many scientists are believing that a Dalton-like solar minimum appears a real possibility given the recent solar behavior,” says this article on Icecap.** “Even David Hathaway of NASA has recently conceded that ‘possibility’ to the New York Times.” “In EOS* of 28 July 2009 there is a very well written feature-length article by astronomer Emeritus Dr. William Livingston and Associate Astronomer Dr Matthew Penn entitled ”Are Sunspots Different During This Sunspot Minimum?” Livingston and Penn answer yes. Their central finding is that regardless of...

Hollywood takes up a social issue, hard data and clarity can be elusive. My Sister’s Keeper, a drama in theaters this summer, provides a handy example of Tinseltown’s tendency to let tears trump truth. Told through a series of flashbacks, the plot is set in motion by a medical specialist’s shocking proposal to a mother desperate to save her gravely ill child: Create a genetically engineered sibling who can donate bone marrow and other vital tissue to cheat death. That suggestion would stop most parents in their tracks. But this mom grabs hold of the idea and runs with it....

Navy Chemist Trashes New York Times for 'Continuously regurgitating fear-mongering, anecdotal clap trap of global warming propagandists' 'Your coverage of the climate issues is a reflection of either extreme negligence or simply scientific illiteracy' Guest Essay By Dr. Martin Hertzberg, a retired U.S. Navy meteorologist with a PhD in physical chemistry. Hertzberg is featured on page 174 of the 2009 U.S. Senate Report of More Than 700 Dissenting Scientists on Global Warming. Dr. Hertzberg's August 19, 2009 Letter To The New York Times is Reprinted Below: Distortions and misrepresentations of your coverage of global warming/climate change I am a scientist...

NASA needs more cash in order to meet its goal of finding nearby space rocks that could hit Earth in a devastating impact, a new report says. Congress ordered NASA in 2005 to find and track 90 percent of the large asteroids near Earth by 2020, but did not set aside the necessary funds required to do the job, according to a report released Wednesday by the National Academy of Sciences. Without that funding, NASA will not be able to build the new facilities and telescopes required to track potentially threatening asteroids down to the size of about 460 feet...

WASHINGTON -- Imagine a carbon sheet that's only one atom thick but is stronger than diamond and conducts electricity 100 times faster than the silicon in computer chips. That's graphene, the latest wonder material coming out of science laboratories around the world. It is creating tremendous buzz among physicists, chemists and electronic engineers. "It is the thinnest known material in the universe and the strongest ever measured," Andre Geim, a physicist at the University of Manchester, England, wrote in the June 19 issue of the journal Science. "A few grams could cover a football field," Rod Ruoff, a graphene researcher...

More than 60 prominent German scientists have publicly declared their dissent from man-made global warming fears in an open letter to German Chancellor Angela Merkel. The more than 60 signers of the letter include several United Nations IPCC scientists. The scientists declared that global warming has become a “pseudo religion” and they noted that rising CO2 has “had no measurable effect” on temperatures. The German scientists, also wrote that the “UN IPCC has lost its scientific credibility.” This latest development comes on the heels of a series of inconvenient developments for the promoters of man-made global warming fears, including new...

'Consensus' Takes Another Hit! More than 60 German Scientists Dissent Over Global Warming Claims! Call Climate Fears 'Pseudo 'Religion'; Urge Chancellor to 'reconsider' views 'Growing body of evidence shows anthropogenic CO2 plays no measurable role' Tuesday, August 04, 2009 - By Marc Morano – Climate Depot More than 60 prominent German scientists have publicly declared their dissent from man-made global warming fears in an Open Letter to German Chancellor Angela Merkel. The more than 60 signers of the letter include several United Nations IPCC scientists. The scientists declared that global warming has become a “pseudo religion” and they noted that...

DES MOINES, Iowa — This has been an unusually mild year in Tornado Alley, which is good news, of course, for the people who live here, but a little frustrating to scientists who planned to chase twisters as part of a $10 million research project. "You're out there to do the experiment and you're geared up every day and ready. And when there isn't anything happening, that is frustrating," said Don Burgess, a scientist at the University of Oklahoma. Meteorologists are attributing the relative calm not to anything dire, like global warming, but to the shifts in the jet stream...

Back in April Paul Sheehan, till then a member of the Church of Global Warming Hysterics and a writer for the Sydney Morning Herald read and reviewed Ian Plimer's latest book, Heaven and Earth, Global Warming: The Missing Science and emerged from the experience a changed man: Much of what we have read about climate change, [Plimer] argues, is rubbish, especially the computer modeling on which much current scientific opinion is based, which he describes as "primitive."… "Heaven and Earth is an evidence-based attack on conformity and orthodoxy, including my own, and a reminder to respect informed dissent and beware...

Scientists have long suspected that the sex chromosome that only males carry is deteriorating and could disappear entirely within a few million years, but until now, no one has understood the evolutionary processes that control this chromosome's demise. Now, a pair of Penn State scientists has discovered that this sex chromosome, the Y chromosome, has evolved at a much more rapid pace than its partner chromosome, the X chromosome, which both males and females carry. This rapid evolution of the Y chromosome has led to a dramatic loss of genes on the Y chromosome at a rate that, if maintained,...

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The Pew Research Center has come out with a poll comparing scientists’ attitudes (on scientific and other matters) with those of the general public. Among its revelations was that Republicans comprise 6 percent of scientists. That’s not a typo. Meanwhile, 55 percent of the scientists polled were Democrats, 32 percent were independents, and others were none of the above. Throw in the scientists who are independents but lean toward a party, and the numbers change only modestly: the GOP figure goes up to 12 percent, while the Democrats get 81 percent. By contrast, Pew puts the Republican share of the...

NEW DELHI — India's only satellite orbiting the moon came close to failure after overheating but scientists improvised to save it and have achieved more than 90 percent of the mission's objectives, an official said Friday. The launch of Chandrayaan-1 in October 2008 put India in an elite group to have lunar missions along with the U.S., Russia, the European Space Agency, Japan and China. But on May 16, the satellite lost a critical instrument called the star sensor, the Indian Space Research Organization's chief Madhavan Nair told reporters. The sensor helps the satellite stay oriented so its cameras and...

About one out of every three scientists in the United States professed believing in God, a recent survey found. That figure is strikingly lower than the proportion of the general American public that say they believe in God (83 percent), according to the report by the Pew Research Center for the People and the Press and the American Association for the Advancement of Science. However, a Christian biochemist after examining the report said the comparably small number of scientists who believe in God is nothing to be alarmed over. Dr. Fazale Rana, vice president of research and apologetics at Reasons...

Reston ebolavirus (Rebov) has only been seen in monkeys and humans previously and, unlike other types of Ebola, it is not known to cause illness in people. Researchers say it is theoretically possible for the virus to mutate in pigs into a form that might sicken people. The Philippines had tested 141 people, the researchers said, and six of them who either worked on pig farms or with swine products were found with antibodies to the Ebola-Reston virus, which means they might have been infected by pigs at some time. However, they showed no signs of illness. Rebov belongs to...

Very entertaining commentary by John Coleman, founder of the Weather Channel.

NOTE: Article is a cut-and-paste "interview-type" presentation. Here are excerpts: BOB ABERNETHY: Several recent best-selling books have sharpened the old debate between some scientists and some religionists over creation, evolution and, among other issues, stem cell research. We want to re-run today a story we carried this past summer about a man who is both a research scientist and an evangelical Christian, and sees no conflict between the two fields. He is Dr. Francis Collins, who led the massive effort to discover the human genetic code. His book is called "The Language of God." ... Dr. COLLINS (at Press Conference):...

President Obama's appointment of Francis Collins to run the National Institutes of Health is significant as a culture war statement. A devout Christian, Collins is one of the foremost advocates for the notion that science and faith are compatible. The former head of the Human Genome Project, Collins is also the author of The Language of God. He's a strong believer but he doesn't let that weaken his scientific rigor (for instance, he's been critical of Creationism and Intelligent Design). Continued

PARIS (AFP) – Climate change has caused a flock of wild sheep on a remote northern Scottish island to become smaller, according to an unusual investigation published on Thursday. The study explains a mystery that has bedevilled scientists for the past two years. The wild Soay sheep live on Hirta, in the St. Kilda archipelago in the storm-battered Outer Hebrides, and have been closely studied for nearly a quarter of a century. The law of evolutionary theory says the brown, thick-coated ungulates should have got progressively bigger. Tough winters mean that bigger sheep have a better chance of survival and...

A team of scientists with years of expertise in climate issues has written an open letter to Congress, warning members that, "The sky is not falling," and global warming alarmism is unproven. The letter was signed by physics professors Robert H. Austin and William Happer of Princeton, environmental sciences professor S. Fred Singer of the University of Virginia, retired manager for strategic planning at ExxonMobil Roger Cohen, physics professor (emeritus) Harold W. Lewis at UC-Santa Barbara and others. Their names trail long lists of initials including APS or the American Physical Society, AAAS or the American Association for the Advancement...

At the Canadian Science Writers’ Association convention in Sudbury, Ontario, our Sunday dinner speaker was American theoretical physicist Lawrence Krauss of Arizona State University, who presented sample clips from famous sci-fi films. And a whole lot more. Would you be astonished to learn that the films portray implausible or impossible physics? No? Filmmakers value audience numbers more than atomic numbers. His clips entertained, but did not surprise:. However, his talk frequently targeted religion and politics: although he professed to respect theists, he offered snarky asides suggesting that fear of science is growing in Canada (because it might damage religion), adding,...

The Obama administration's long-awaited scientific report on the sweeping and life-altering consequences of a failure to act on global warming – Global climate change impacts in the United States – is released today.It provides the most detailed picture to date of the impacts on the US in the worst case scenarios, when no action is taken to cut emissions. Examples include: floods in lower Manhattan; a quadrupling of heatwave deaths in Chicago; withering on the vineyards of California; the disappearance of wildflowers from the slopes of the Rockies; the extinction of Alaska's wild polar bears in the next 75 years.What...

A team of scientists say they have evidence that a "super volcano" may be brewing underneath Mount St. Helens, NewScientist.com reports. Researchers say indicators suggest Mount St. Helens and other northwest volcanoes are plugged into a huge subterranean pool of magma that could one day burst to the surface in a "super" eruption. If what they believe is true, the structure beneath the mountain would be comparable in size to the biggest magma chambers ever discovered, such as the one below Yellowstone National Park.

You worry a lot about the environment and do everything you can to reduce your carbon footprint -- the emissions of greenhouse gases that drive dangerous climate change. So you always prefer to take the train or the bus rather than a plane, and avoid using a car whenever you can, faithful to the belief that this inflicts less harm to the planet. Well, there could be a nasty surprise in store for you, for taking public transport may not be as green as you automatically think, says a new US study. SNIP These are hidden or displaced emissions that...

Faking scientific data and failing to report commercial conflicts of interest are far more prevalent than previously thought, a study suggests. One in seven scientists says that they are aware of colleagues having seriously breached acceptable conduct by inventing results. And around 46 per cent say that they have observed fellow scientists engage in “questionable practices”, such as presenting data selectively or changing the conclusions of a study in response to pressure from a funding source. However, when scientists were asked about their own behaviour only 2 per cent admitted to having faked results. Daniele Fanelli, of the University of...

May 27, 2009: The Phantom Torso is back, and he has quite a story to tell. He's an armless, legless, human-shaped torso, a mannequin that looks like he's wrapped in a mummy's bandages. Scientists at the European Space Agency call him Matroshka, and like his NASA counterpart Fred, this mannequin is an intrepid space traveler. Now that he's spent four months on the International Space Station, scientists are learning about the space radiation that Matroshka endured. Lessons learned from Fred and Matroshka have major implications for NASA's plans to set up a manned outpost on the Moon and eventually to...

PARIS (AFP) – In a controversial achievement, Japanese scientists announced on Wednesday they had created the world's first transgenic primates, breeding monkeys with a gene that made the animals' skin glow a fluorescent green. The exploit opens up exciting prospects for medical researchers, they said. It could eventually lead to lab monkeys that replicate some of humanity's most devastating diseases, providing a new model for exploring how these disorders are caused and how they may be cured. "Great advances in pre-clinical research can be expected using these models," the team said. But other voices warned of a potential ethics storm,...

SYDNEY (AFP) – Australian and US scientists have successfully tested hypersonic aircraft technology which could revolutionise international flight, officials said. The trial was the first of up to 10 tests to be conducted at the Woomera desert range as part of a joint US-Australian military research operation, said Defence Science Minister Warren Snowdon. The programme, called Hypersonic International Flight Research Experimentation (HIFiRE), is investigating hypersonics technology and its potential for next generation aeronautics. "Hypersonics is the study of flight exceeding approximately five times the speed of sound, and this trial has successfully tested the flight and mission control systems that...

A series of state and federal lawsuits have blocked the opening of a lab complex in Boston. Neighbors are nervous that toxins could get out, and some scientists are likewise skeptical.Klare Allen, a once-homeless mother turned community activist, was stunned at a public meeting in 2002 when she and her friends learned that Boston University Medical Center officials planned to build a biological defense laboratory in one of the city's poorest neighborhoods. "We heard anthrax and Roxbury-South End," she recalled. "Then we heard Ebola. The last thing we heard was bubonic plague. We looked at each other and said, 'No...

Now a Creationist CMI Ph.D. scientist and author explains to an outside website what turned him to biblical creation How does someone with an essentially secular upbringing and secular education become a staunch supporter of biblical creation? (See also previous Boundless article A Theory of Creation). There was no single reason, but many pieces of evidence that accumulated into an overwhelming case...

LONDON – Scientists unveiled on Tuesday what they hope will be one of the world's fastest biofuel vehicles, powered by waste from chocolate factories and made partly from plant fibers. Its makers hope the racer will go 145 mph and give manufacturers ideas about how to build more ecologically friendly vehicles. The car runs on vegetable oils and chocolate waste that has been turned into biofuel. The steering wheel is made out of plant-based fibers derived from carrots and other root vegetables, and the seat is built of flax fibre and soybean oil foam. The body is also made of...

Scientists are gradually downgrading their worst-case scenarios for the swine flu outbreak, the Los Angeles Times report. The H1N1 strain initially appeared to have disturbing similarities to the 1918 flu virus, but researchers analyzing genetic data released this week say the strain is less lethal than feared—and may in fact be less harmful than seasonal flu. Health officials say the virus is still spreading and is likely to cause more deaths in the US, but nothing on the scale of the annual flu season, which kills tens of thousands of Americans yearly. Scientists, while beginning to relax about the current...