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Scientists Debate Moving Polar Bears to Antarctica as Arctic MeltsJuly 24, 2008 Scientists are obviously reaching a point of true desperation. While the world still debates whether climate change is even real (eye roll), the scientific community is coming back to an idea that was once considered wrongheaded and dangerous: moving species to new areas of the world as their natural habitats become inhabitable. First up: moving the polar bears to the other side of the globe. From Wired: Caught between climate change and human pressure, species are going extinct 100 times faster than at any point in human history....

In a major step in understanding how the nervous system and the immune system interact, scientists at The Feinstein Institute for Medical Research have identified a new anatomical path through which the brain and the spleen communicate. The spleen, once thought to be an unnecessary bit of tissue, is now regarded as an organ where important information from the nervous reaches the immune system. Understanding this process could ultimately lead to treatments that target the spleen to send the right message when fighting human disease. Mauricio Rosas-Ballina, MD, working with colleagues in the laboratory of Kevin J. Tracey, MD, figured...

PARIS (AFP) - New evidence has emerged that a large plate of floating ice shelf attached to Antarctica is breaking up, in a troubling sign of global warming, the European Space Agency (ESA) said on Thursday. Images taken by its Envisat remote-sensing satellite show that Wilkins Ice Shelf is "hanging by its last thread" to Charcot Island, one of the plate's key anchors to the Antarctic peninsula, ESA said in a press release. "Since the connection to the island... helps stabilise the ice shelf, it is likely the breakup of the bridge will put the remainder of the ice shelf...

Deep inside the dusty university store room, three scientists struggle to lift a huge fossilised bone. It is from the leg of a dinosaur. For many years, this chunky specimen has languished cryptically on a shelf. Interesting but useless — a forgotten relic of a lost age. Now, with hammer and chisel poised, the academics from Montana State University in America gather round. They are about to shatter this rare vestige of the past. Why would they do such a thing? Dinosaurs from When Dinosaurs Roamed Lost age: Scientists now believe it is possible to resurrect the dinosaur after the...

Russian scientists in bid to solve Tunguska Event Last Updated: 1:18AM BST 02/07/2008 Russian scientists will this week attempt to solve the mystery of a giant explosion 100 years ago that turned night to day across western Europe and flattened a large swathe of Siberia. Trees lay strewn across the Siberian countryside, in 1953, 45 years after an 'unexplained explosion' near Tunguska, Russia A century after reindeer herdsmen saw a column of light that shone with the intensity of the Sun moving across the Siberian dawn sky, the Tunguska Event remains one of the modern era's most abiding scientific riddles....

It can turn anything from job interviews to the most routine of family gatherings into a sweat-inducing ordeal. But a 'love drug' produced naturally by the body during sex and childbirth could offer hope to the millions of people blighted by shyness, scientists have said.Investigators believe oxytocin - a natural hormone that assists childbirth and helps mothers bond with newborn babies - could become a wonder drug for overcoming shyness.  Trials have found that oxytocin can reduce anxiety and ease phobias. Researchers say the hormone offers a possible, safe, alternative to alcohol as a means of overcoming the problem....

James Hansen, one of the world's leading climate scientists, will today call for the chief executives of large fossil fuel companies to be put on trial for high crimes against humanity and nature, accusing them of actively spreading doubt about global warming in the same way that tobacco companies blurred the links between smoking and cancer. Hansen will use the symbolically charged 20th anniversary of his groundbreaking speech to the US Congress - in which he was among the first to sound the alarm over the reality of global warming - to argue that radical steps need to be taken...

Scientists: 115-year-old's brain worked perfectly By ANRICA DEB , Associated Press WriterJune 13, 2008 Hendrikje van Andel-Schipper, who died at age 115 in 2005, is seen in this May 26, 2004 photo at de Westerkim, home for the elderly, in Hoogeveen, Netherlands. Scientists say that Henrikje van Andel-Schipper's mind was probably as good as it seemed: a post-mortem analysis of her brain revealed few signs of Alzheimer's or other diseases commonly associated with a decline in mental ability in old age. "This is the first (extremely old) brain that did not have these problems," Professor Gert Holstege of Groningen University...

Scientists confirm that parts of earliest genetic material may have come from the stars Scientists have confirmed for the first time that an important component of early genetic material which has been found in meteorite fragments is extraterrestrial in origin, in a paper published on 15 June 2008. The finding suggests that parts of the raw materials to make the first molecules of DNA and RNA may have come from the stars. The scientists, from Europe and the USA, say that their research, published in the journal Earth and Planetary Science Letters, provides evidence that life's raw materials came from...

"This is a different kind of war." --Representative Harry Mitchell Student-Veterans Come Marching Home: A New GI Bill for Scientists Alan Kotok United States 6 June 2008 Since World War II, the U.S. government has offered education benefits to veterans through a series of "GI Bills" both as an incentive to encourage military enlistment and as a "gesture of gratitude" to young men and women who serve in the military. But, since the WWII era, these benefits have failed to keep up with the increasing cost of higher education. A new bill--it has passed both houses of Congress but...

Green Swindle by: Ben Giles, June 09, 2008 Since Martin Durkin’s controversial documentary The Great Global Warming Swindle originally aired on the United Kingdom’s Channel 4 on March 8, hundreds of complaints have been filed to Ofcom, the independent regulator of communications industries in the UK. In one case, Carl Wunsch and Eigil Friis-Christensen, both featured in Swindle, said they felt their contributions were “completely misrepresented.” Wunsch alleges that global-warming has occurred and must be addressed. “I had never before encountered a filmmaker who clearly quite deliberately understood my point of view but set out to imply, through the way...

9 Pakistani N-scientists might be in N Korea SEOUL: Missing Pakistani nuclear scientists may be staying in North Korea helping develop its uranium-based nuclear weapons programme, reports said on Sunday. Yonhap news agency, citing a report from the state-run Korea Institute for National Unification (KINU) in Seoul, said North Korea might have achieved a higher level of technology for enriched uranium with the help of foreign scientists. “Nine Pakistani nuclear scientists have been missing since they left their country six years ago and we cannot rule out the possibility that some of them are in North Korea,” KINU researcher Jeon...

Two top nuclear scientists of Pakistan Atomic Energy Commission (PAEC) are currently in Taliban custody. The two were working at PAEC’s facility in North West Frontier Province. Zee News investigations reveal that the two scientists were kidnapped about six months ago. To avoid international embarrassment Pakistan Government has kept this information under wraps. According to information available with Zee News, nuclear scientists have been kidnapped by Taliban at the behest of Al-Qaeda.

Cold Fusion, the act of producing a nuclear reaction at room temperature, has long been relegated to science fiction after researchers were unable to recreate the experiment that first "discovered" the phenomenon. But a Japanese scientist was supposedly able to start a cold fusion reaction earlier this week, which—if the results are real—could revolutionize the way we gather energy. Yoshiaki Arata, a highly respected physicist in Japan, demonstrated a low-energy nuclear reaction at Osaka University on Thursday. In front of a live audience, including reporters from six major newspapers and two TV studios, Arata and a co-professor Yue-Chang Zhang, produced...

Environmental extremists routinely assert a "scientific consensus" that global warming is occurring and that human activity somehow causes it. Environmentalists' mythical "scientific consensus" has served as a shroud by which they falsely claim a closed consensus to prevent any objective, scientific debate that might inhibit their POLITICAL agenda. That shroud was further torn asunder by a 31,000-strong petition organized by the Oregon Institute of Science and Medicine (OISM). It stated, "a review of the research literature concerning the environmental consequences of increased levels of carbon dioxide leads to the conclusion that increases during the 20th century have produced NO deleterious...

31,000 Signatures Prove ‘No Consensus’ About Global WarmingBRIEFING | BY MELINDA ZOSH - INTERN | MAY 22, 2008 Presidential candidate Barack Obama said on Monday that “we have to get used to the idea that we can’t keep our houses at 72, drive our SUVs and eat all we want.” Arthur B. Robinson, president and professor of chemistry at the Oregon Institute of Science and Medicine, has a different response. “I don’t want to give up eating all I want because of a failed hypothesis,” said Robinson at the National Press Club here on May 19. Robinson said global warming...

LISTEN ON KFIRobert Felix is the first guest. London is paying $10 per equivalent gallon for gas.

Women make up almost half of today's workforce, yet hold just a fraction of the jobs in certain high-earning, high-qualification fields. They constitute 20 percent of the nation's engineers, fewer than one-third of chemists, and only about a quarter of computer and math professionals. Over the past decade and more, scores of conferences, studies, and government hearings have been directed at understanding the gap. It has stayed in the media spotlight thanks in part to the high-profile misstep of then-Harvard president Larry Summers, whose loose comment at a Harvard conference on the topic in 2005 ultimately cost him his job....

32,000 deniers That's the number of scientists who are outraged by the Kyoto Protocol's corruption of scienceQuestion: How many scientists does it take to establish that a consensus does not exist on global warming? The quest to establish that the science is not settled on climate change began before most people had even heard of global warming. The year was 1992 and the United Nations was about to hold its Earth Summit in Rio. It was billed as -- and was -- the greatest environmental and political assemblage in human history. Delegations came from 178 nations -- virtually every nation...

This morning at the National Press Club, The Petition Project will release the names of more than 31,000 scientists who reject the Gore Theory of Manmade Global Warming. Dr. Arthur Robinson of the Oregon Institute of Science and Medicine spearheaded the project:

WASHINGTON (May 18) - Global warming isn't to blame for the recent jump in hurricanes in the Atlantic, concludes a study by a prominent federal scientist whose position has shifted on the subject. Not only that, warmer temperatures will actually reduce the number of hurricanes in the Atlantic and those making landfall, research meteorologist Tom Knutson reported in a study released Sunday. In the past, Knutson has raised concerns about the effects of climate change on storms. His new paper has the potential to heat up a simmering debate among meteorologists about current and future effects of global warming in...

31,000 Scientists Rejecting Global Warming Theory to be Named Monday Photo of Noel Sheppard. By Noel Sheppard | May 18, 2008 - 17:12 ET The names of over 30,000 American scientists that reject the theory of anthropogenic global warming are to be revealed on Monday at the National Press Club in Washington, DC. Somehow it seems a metaphysical certitude media will completely ignore this event. As announced Thursday by PR Newswire via StreetInsider.com: Oregon Institute of Science and Medicine (OISM) Who: Dr. Arthur Robinson of the OISM What: release of names in OISM "Petition Project" When: 10 AM, Monday May...

Who: Dr. Arthur Robinson of the OISM What: release of names in OISM "Petition Project" When: 10 AM, Monday May 19 Where: Holeman Lounge at the National Press Club, 529 14th St., NW, Washington, DC Why: the Oregon Institute of Science and Medicine (OISM) will announce that more than 31,000 scientists have signed a petition rejecting claims of human-caused global warming. The purpose of OISM's Petition Project is to demonstrate that the claim of "settled science" and an overwhelming "consensus" in favor of the hypothesis of human-caused global warming and consequent climate damage is wrong. No such consensus or settled...

snip- Yet many scientists — 40 percent according to a 1997 poll cited by Shermer — believe in God. This isn't big news to scientists, but might surprise people who rely on mainstream views of science. A handful of those folks — including Jerome Groopman, a professor of medicine at Harvard, and William D. Phillips, Nobel laureate in physics and a fellow of the Joint Quantum Institute of the University of Maryland and the National Institute of Standards and Technology — are also represented in the booklet, arguing that the natural world and the world of faith are relatively separate,...

WASHINGTON - While global warming is expected to be strongest at the poles, it may be an even greater threat to species living in the tropics, scientists say. Tropical species are accustomed to living in a small temperature range and thus may be unable to cope with changes of even a few degrees, according to an analysis in Tuesday's edition of Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. "There's a strong relationship between your physiology and the climate you live in. In the tropics many species appear to be living at or near their thermal optimum, a temperature that lets...

Scientists Discover Why Plague Is So Lethal ScienceDaily (May 5, 2008) — Bacteria that cause the bubonic plague may be more virulent than their close relatives because of a single genetic mutation, according to research published in the May issue of the journal Microbiology.Yersinia pestis, direct fluorescent antibody stain (DFA), at 200x magnification. (Credit: CDC / Courtesy of Larry Stauffer, Oregon State Public Health Laboratory) "The plague bacterium Yersinia pestis needs calcium in order to grow at body temperature. When there is no calcium available, it produces a large amount of an amino acid called aspartic acid," said Professor Brubaker...

Scientists to capture DNA of trees worldwide for database By DEEPTI HAJELA, Associated Press Writer Graduate student Natalia Pabon-Mora works at The New York Botanical Garden's Pfizer Plant Research Laboratory at the Bronx, New York facility Tuesday, April 15, 2008. A team of researches there is leading a global effort to barcode the DNA of every tree species on Earth, all 100,000 of them. The laboratory, with sweeping views of trees and a pond, reflects the work going in indoors. (AP Photo/Craig Ruttle) (AP) -- The New York Botanical Garden may be best known for its orchid shows and colorful...

Scientists discover new ocean current The North Pacific Gyre Oscillation explains changes in salinity, nutrients and chlorophyll seen in the Northeast Pacific. Credit: Emanuele Di Lorenzo Scientists at the Georgia Institute of Technology have discovered a new climate pattern called the North Pacific Gyre Oscillation. This new pattern explains, for the first time, changes in the water that are important in helping commercial fishermen understand fluctuations in the fish stock. They’re also finding that as the temperature of the Earth is warming, large fluctuations in these factors could help climatologists predict how the oceans will respond in a warmer world....

Global warming may 'stop', scientists predict By Charles Clover, Environment Editor Last Updated: 6:01pm BST 30/04/2008 Global warming will stop until at least 2015 because of natural variations in the climate, scientists have said. Researchers studying long-term changes in sea temperatures said they now expect a "lull" for up to a decade while natural variations in climate cancel out the increases caused by man-made greenhouse gas emissions. Melting icebergs: The study predicts the IPCC's 0.3ºC temperature rise for the next decade may not happen The average temperature of the sea around Europe and North America is expected to cool slightly...

The Deniers: The World-Renowned Scientists Who Stood Up Against Global Warming Hysteria, Political Persecution, and Fraud Author: Lawrence Solomon About the Program Lawrence Solomon talks about prominent scientists who have dissented from the view of global warming championed by Al Gore and other environmentalists. Mr. Solomon spoke at an event hosted by the Competitive Enterprise Institute and the Cooler Heads Coalition at the Dirksen House Office Building. About the Author Lawrence Solomon is a columnist for the National Post (Canada) and is executive director of the Urban Renaissance Institute, a division of Energy Probe Research Foundation. He is the author...

An evolutionist professor from Antelope Valley College on Wednesday conceded the strong probability of intelligent design in life's earliest forms. The announcement came at the end of a 3-hour presentation at the LPAC by scientists from Reasons to Believe, a Christian ministry that creates and tests scientific models based on the Bible. Matthew Rainbow, a biology professor with a Ph.D. in molecular biology and biochemistry, told a crowd of several hundred that he had been persuaded to change his view of the origins of life about six months earlier, after reading books by the evening's two Reasons to Believe presenters,...

Scientists say pyramids could be concrete April 23, 2008 Scientists are taking a new look at Egypt's pyramids to see if some of the blocks could have been made from concrete. Linn W. Hobbs, a materials science professor at Massachusetts Institute of Technology, told The Boston Globe there is a chance ancient Egyptians could have cast the blocks from synthetic material instead of carving them from quarries. Scientists have long believed Romans were the first to use structural concrete. Undergraduates in MIT's Materials in Human Experience class are building a scale-model pyramid made of quarried limestone and blocks cast from...

Scientists find a fingerprint of evolution across the human genome The Human Genome Project revealed that only a small fraction of the 3 billion “letter” DNA code actually instructs cells to manufacture proteins, the workhorses of most life processes. This has raised the question of what the remaining part of the human genome does. How much of the rest performs other biological functions, and how much is merely residue of prior genetic events? Scientists from Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory (CSHL) and the University of Chicago now report that one of the steps in turning genetic information into proteins leaves genetic...

WELLINGTON, New Zealand -- The price of beer is likely to rise in coming decades because climate change will hamper the production of a key grain needed for the brew -- especially in Australia, a scientist warned Tuesday. Jim Salinger, a climate scientist at New Zealand's National Institute of Water and Atmospheric Research, said climate change likely will cause a decline in the production of malting barley in parts of New Zealand and Australia. Malting barley is a key ingredient of beer. "It will mean either there will be pubs without beer or the cost of beer will go up,"...

PARIS (AFP) - An extra hour between the sheets at night might be the key to shedding excess weight and fighting obesity, according to recent research. "More sleep could be the ideal way of stabilising weight or slimming," said neuro-scientist Karine Spiegel, of France's INSERM, a public organisation dedicated to biological, medical and public health research. While poor eating habits and lack of exercise clearly play a role in the global rise of obesity, recent data indicates that lack of sleep may also be a factor, and one that is often under-estimated. Around 30 surveys carried out on wide population...

HUMAN-cow embryos have been created in a world first at Newcastle University in England, hailed by the scientific community, but labelled "monstrous" by opponents. A team has grown hybrid embryos after injecting human DNA into eggs taken from cows' ovaries, which had most of their genetic material removed...

Scientists Discover 356 Animal Inclusions Trapped In Opaque Amber 100 Million Years OldExamples of virtual 3D extraction of organisms embedded in opaque amber: a) Gastropod Ellobiidae; b) Myriapod Polyxenidae; c) Arachnid; d) Conifer branch (Glenrosa); e) Isopod crustacean Ligia; f) Insect hymenopteran Falciformicidae. (Credit: M. Lak, P. Tafforeau, D. Néraudeau (ESRF Grenoble and UMR CNRS 6118 Rennes)) ScienceDaily (Apr. 1, 2008) — Paleontologists from the University of Rennes (France) and the ESRF have found the presence of 356 animal inclusions in completely opaque amber from mid-Cretaceous sites of Charentes (France). The team used the X-rays of the European light source...

Terror threat sparks scientist check By Richard Alleyne Last Updated: 2:03am BST 31/03/2008 Police and secret service officers are carrying out background checks on thousands of scientists without their knowledge, amid fears terrorists are targeting British laboratories to obtain deadly viruses. The vetting, which includes checks on family backgrounds, political views and associates, is part of a review of some 800 laboratories in hospitals, universities and private firms where staff have access to incurable viruses such as ebola. Whitehall sources confirmed the operation by MI5 and the National Counter Terrorism Security Office. A series of spot checks and detailed inspections...

LOS ANGELES (Reuters) - His mother suffered dark depressions and tried to dominate his life. His sister and daughter had severe mental problems, his father and wife died young and a beloved uncle committed suicide in his arms. So what did Peter Mark Roget, the creator of Roget's Thesaurus, do to handle all the pain, grief, sorrow, affliction, woe, bitterness, unhappiness and misery in a life that lasted over 90 years?He made lists.The 19th century British scientist made lists of words, creating synonyms for all occasions that ultimately helped make life easier for term paper writers, crossword puzzle lovers and...

By Andrea Thompson updated 12:20 p.m. MT, Tues., March. 25, 2008 A vast ice shelf hanging on by a thin strip looks to be the next chunk to break off from the Antarctic Peninsula, the latest sign of global warming’s impact on Earth's southernmost continent. Scientists are shocked by the rapid change of events. Glaciologist Ted Scambos of the University of Colorado was monitoring satellite images of the Wilkins Ice Shelf and spotted a huge iceberg measuring 25 miles by 1.5 miles that appeared to have broken away from the shelf.

Hundreds of embryonic stem-cell lines that provide hope for treating devastating disorders such as sickle cell anemia and Down syndrome are available for research but are off-limits to federal scientists because of White House restrictions, scientists said Wednesday. The three presidential candidates - Republican John McCain and Democrats Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama - all support expanded federal funding of human embryonic stem cell research. Their actions would lift a restriction imposed by President Bush in 2001 that limits federally funded research to fewer than two dozen embryonic stem cell lines. --snip-- Wednesday's first-ever conference of the Global Forum of...

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - An organic molecule has been spotted for the first time in the atmosphere of a planet outside our solar system, a key step toward possibly finding signs of life on a distant world, scientists said. Astronomers using the Hubble Space Telescope found methane in the atmosphere of a planet called HD 189733b, which is about the size of Jupiter and is 63 light-years from Earth, they said in research published on Wednesday in the journal Nature. Organic molecules contain carbon-hydrogen bonds and can be found in living things. Methane, for instance, is found in natural gas and...

According to a pioneering study by a Czech Republic scientist, beer is bad for science because the inebriating effects of beer lower creativity in scientific research. Could this problem be carried over to college students and the general population? Behavioral ecologist Tomáš Grim, of the Department of Zoology at Palacký University (Olomouc, Czech Republic) wrote the 2008 paper, “A possible role of social activity to explain differences in publication output among ecologists.” It appears in the Oikos, the journal of The Nordic Ecological Society. Grim, like all scientists, knew that the number of scientific papers produced each year is a major...

Archaeological sensation in Austria. Scientists from the University of Vienna unearth the earliest evidence of Jewish inhabitants in Austria Archaeologists from the Institute of Prehistory and Early History of the University of Vienna have found an amulet inscribed with a Jewish prayer in a Roman childÂ’s grave dating back to the 3rd century CE at a burial ground in the Austrian town of Halbturn. Gold Scroll. The 2.2-centimeter-long gold scroll represents the earliest sign of Jewish inhabitants in present-day Austria. This amulet shows that people of Jewish faith lived in what is today Austria since the Roman Empire. Up to...

Mysterious Meteorites Stymie Scientists Anne Minard for National Geographic NewsMarch 12, 2008 A pair of mysterious meteorites discovered in Antarctica is baffling scientists who are struggling to determine the origin of the space rocks. The meteorites, dubbed GRA 06128 and GRA 06129, were found in the Graves Nunataks region of Antarctica in 2006 (see an interactive map of Antarctica). The rocks were oddly rusty and salty and smelled like rotten eggs, its discoverers said. Initially, a team at the University of New Mexico (UNM) caused a stir when its analysis hinted that the pair may hail from Venus or the...

Every climate scientist in the world has known beyond any doubt, for at least several years now, that late 20th century warming was driven almost entirely by the very high levels of solar activity between 1940 and 2000. They also know the corollary: that when solar activity drops into a down phase, the earth will get cold, possibly even precipitating the next ice age (due any century now). It seems certain at this point that we are in for at least a substantial dip in global temperature. ... If global cooling is known to be the real and impending danger,...

Using DNA, Scientists Hunt For The Roots Of The Modern Potato ScienceDaily (Feb. 4, 2008) — More than 99 percent of all modern potato varieties planted today are the direct descendants of varieties that once grew in the lowlands of south-central Chile. How Chilean germplasm came to dominate the modern potato-which spread worldwide from Europe-has been the subject of a long, contentious debate among scientists. While some plant scientists have maintained that Chilean potatoes were the first to be planted in Europe, a more widely accepted story holds that European potatoes were originally descended from plants grown high in the...

WELLINGTON (AFP) - Scientists in New Zealand and Japan have created a "tear-free" onion using biotechnology to switch off the gene behind the enzyme that makes us cry, one of the leading researchers said Friday. The discovery could signal an end to one of cooking's eternal puzzles: why does cutting up a simple onion sting the eyes and trigger teardrops? The research institute in New Zealand, Crop and Food, used gene-silencing technology to make the breakthrough which it hopes could lead to a prototype onion hitting the market in a decade's time. Colin Eady, the institute's senior scientist, said the...

VATICAN CITY (AFP) - - More than 100,000 people filled St Peter's Square on Sunday in a show of support for Pope Benedict XVI after protests by scientists forced him to cancel a university speech. The pilgrims gave a roar of approval when the Pope Benedict, speaking after his weekly blessing, said: "I encourage all of you, dear academics, to always be respectful of the opinions of others, and to seek the truth and the good with an open and responsible mind." The 80-year-old head of the Roman Catholic Church cancelled a planned speech at Rome's La Sapienza university Thursday...

Scientists learn how we find our way By Richard Gray, Science Correspondent Last Updated: 12:01am GMT 20/01/2008 Scientists have discovered why some people get lost more often than others when trying to pick a way through city streets. Researchers have found that two key parts of the brain work together to help humans plan and follow routes in a familiar city. A part of the brain called the hippocampus stores memories about key locations and landmarks while other brain cells - grid cells - provide our internal sense of space and distance, rather like a GPS system. The two parts...