Free Republic

NEW YORK (AP) — Scientists have grown human cells inside pig embryos, a very early step toward the goal of growing livers and other human organs in animals to transplant into people. The cells made up just a tiny part of each embryo, and the embryos were grown for only a few weeks, researchers reported Thursday. Such human-animal research has raised ethical concerns. The U.S. government suspended taxpayer funding of experiments in 2015. The new work, done in California and Spain, was paid for by private foundations. Any growing of human organs in pigs is "far away," said Juan Carlos...

Speaking at the National Press Club Wednesday, outgoing Energy Secretary Ernest Moniz announced a new “scientific integrity” policy for an agency recently wracked by concerns about how an administration led by President-elect Donald Trump will treat employees who worked on climate change and other sensitive energy-related issues. “It’s part of establishing the environment that allows scientist to do their work, to stay with us, and to recruit new people,” Moniz said in announcing the new policy. Moniz, a physicist, gave an example of his own role in negotiating the Iran nuclear deal. “Seven of our laboratories were providing near real-time...

If all of Greenland's ice melted, it would raise sea level ~23 ft. That's enough to put coastlines throughout the world under water. pic.twitter.com/0C5fpTRhdl — NASA Climate (@NASAClimate) December 13, 2016 The tweet above is from @NASAClimate, a real official account from the real government organization that shoots rockets. (By the way, serious question: does anyone know why NASA does this instead of NOAA?) If all of Greenland's ice melted, it would raise sea level ~23 ft. That's enough to put coastlines throughout the world under water. As a bald statement, it sounds fairly reasonable. I wouldn't disbelieve it if...

The radiation expert who discovered the poison that killed Alexander Litvinenko "committed suicide" by stabbing himself repeatedly with two knives months after a trip to Russia, a coroner ruled. Matthew Puncher, 46, bled to death at his home after receiving multiple stab wounds across his body from two kitchen knives, an inquest heard. A pathologist said he could not completely exclude the possibility that someone else had been involved in the death of the father, but came to the conclusion that the injuries were self-inflicted.

Dead and dying are two very different things. If a person is diagnosed with a life-threatening illness, their loved ones don't rush to write an obituary and plan a funeral. Likewise, species aren't declared extinct until they actually are. In a viral article entitled "Obituary: Great Barrier Reef (25 Million BC-2016)," however, writer Rowan Jacobsen proclaimed ― inaccurately and, we can only hope, hyperbolically ― that Earth's largest living structure is dead and gone.

U.S. QUESTIONS EGYPT ON WMD, MISSILES WASHINGTON [MENL] -- The United States has again launched an examination of Egypt's missile and weapons of mass destruction programs. U.S. Undersecretary of State John Bolton held talks over the weekend in Cairo with Egyptian leaders on a range of what U.S. officials termed were sensitive subjects. They said the issues included Egypt's WMD and missile programs and Cairo's cooperation with Saddam Hussein's Iraq and North Korea. "All of the testimony and evidence found in Iraq have shown significant Egyptian involvement in Iraq's missile and WMD programs," a U.S. official said. "The issue has...

Scientists to Trump: Human-caused climate change is real — and don’t mess with the hard-won Paris Agreement. That’s the message of a new letter co-drafted by a prominent Bay Area climate scientist and signed by 375 members of the prestigious National Academy of Sciences, including famed physicist Stephen Hawking, biologist E.O. Wilson and 30 Nobel Prize winners.

SNIPPET: "Midway through the trial, two jurors were excused after they told the judge that a man in the visitor's gallery made a hand motion as if he were firing a gun at them and mouthed an obscenity. One of the jurors told the judge he was "really freaked out" by the incident and another said he could not remain impartial "anything anyone makes what I view as a death threat." The guilty verdict on all counts means that at sentencing the judge could order Siddiqui spend the rest of her life in a federal prison."

(Phys.org)—A team of researchers from Belgium and the U.S. has identified the active site of an iron-containing catalyst that has raised hopes for designing a practically useful catalyst that might make converting methane to methanol a possibility. In their paper published in the journal Nature, the researchers describe their efforts, what they discovered and why they believe their findings may lead to a practical way to convert methane to a more efficient energy resource. Jay Labinger, with the California Institute of Technology offers a News & Views piece outlining the work done by the team in the same journal issue....

Since the mid-1970s, modern physics has rested on the knowledge of four fundamental forces of nature: gravity, electromagnetism, the strong nuclear force, and the weak nuclear force. Now scientists are on the verge of discovering a fifth force of nature, which could change the field of physics forever. According to a recent paper published by University of California physicists in the peer-reviewed journal Physical Review Letters, what physicists thought was a new particle of matter could be a new force altogether.

A new study reveals that genetic manipulation of mice, rats, cows and pigs has increased threefold since 2004. Between 2004 and 2013, the number of tests conducted using genetically modified animals in Germany nearly tripled, according to reports by Funke Mediengruppe, citing a study by research group Testbiotech, which investigates the “consequences of genetic engineering”. In total nearly 950,000 animals, mainly mice and rats, were genetically tested in 2013 alone — one third of all animals on which scientific testing was conducted during that year in Germany. …

Tom Cotton: Hillary Clinton’s Email Sealed the Fate Of An Iranian Scientist (VIDEO) Posted at 3:38 pm on August 7, 2016 by streiff Back in 2009, an Iranian nuclear scientist, Shahram Amiri, defected to the United States. What ensued was a complicated story that resulted in Amiri claiming he'd been abducted by the CIA, tortured, released, and finally repatriated to Iran. His heroic welcome from the Great Satan in 2010 was followed by his arrest for treason. Today the Iranians announced they had executed him. Arkansas Senator Tom Cotton was on Face the Nation and the subject came up.

Hillary Clinton recklessly discussed, in emails hosted on her private server, an Iranian nuclear scientist who was executed by Iran for treason, Sen. Tom Cotton, R-Ark., said Sunday. "I'm not going to comment on what he may or may not have done for the United States government, but in the emails that were on Hillary Clinton's private server, there were conversations among her senior advisors about this gentleman," he said on "Face the Nation." Cotton was speaking about Shahram Amiri, who gave information to the U.S. about Iran's nuclear program.

Must be nice to be above the law and never have to suffer any consequences for your actions — and indeed, to be on the verge of being rewarded with the Presidency of the United States after years of treasonable carelessness (at best). “Cotton: Clinton discussed executed Iranian scientist on email,” by Jacqueline Klimas, Washington Examiner, August 7, 2016: Hillary Clinton recklessly discussed, in emails hosted on her private server, an Iranian nuclear scientist who was executed by Iran for treason, Sen. Tom Cotton, R-Ark., said Sunday. “I’m not going to comment on what he may or may not have...

Scientists have discovered a powerful new strain of fact-resistant humans who are threatening the ability of Earth to sustain life, a sobering new study report. The research, conducted by the University of Minnesota, identifies a virulent strain of humans who are virtually immune to any form of verifiable knowledge, leaving scientists at a loss as to how to combat them. “These humans appear to have all the faculties necessary to receive and process information,” Davis Logsdon, one of the scientists who contributed to the study, said. “And yet, somehow, they have developed defenses that, for all intents and purposes, have...

The federal government announced plans Thursday to lift a moratorium on funding of certain controversial experiments that use human stem cells to create animal embryos that are partly human. The National Institutes of Health is proposing a new policy to permit scientists to get federal money to make embryos, known as chimeras, under certain carefully monitored conditions. The NIH imposed a moratorium on funding these experiments in September because they could raise ethical concerns. One issue is that scientists might inadvertently create animals that have partly human brains, endowing them with some semblance of human consciousness or human thinking abilities....

"Have a look at that dark purple blob on the left, there." With those words, scientists aboard the Exploration Vessel Nautilus uncovered a marine mystery: a small purple orb tucked halfway under a rock off the coast of California. Researchers are so far stumped as to what the colorful, bumpy little ball might be. Their best guess is that it might be a gastropod (a mollusk such as a snail or slug that belongs to the class Gastropoda) called a pleurobranch — and possibly a new species.

Suffice to say that neither being a U.S. Senator nor signing a petition by the UCS makes you a scientist. That "App" needs (much) more work! No need for you to feel “scientifically challenged” anymore; there’s an App for nearly everything now. It appears that one of the easiest ways to become a “scientist” (concerned or not, my personal view) is to join the Union of Concerned Scientists (UCS). That group has already millions of members (so it claims) and you are most welcome to join. No experience or other credentials required—if anything, just a few dollars from your wallet....

Exercising may help boost memory because it triggers a protein which boosts brain cell growth, scientists believe. For several years, researchers have noticed that aerobic exercise, of the kind which gets the heart pumping, also appears to improve memory and learning. But nobody knew how. Now researchers at the National Institute on Ageing in the US have discovered that when muscles exercise they produce a protein called cathepsin B which travels to the brain and triggers neuron growth. The team has also shown that the levels of the protein soars when humans exercise. "Overall, the message is that a consistently...

An Australian university recently censured marine scientist Paul Ridd for “failing to act in a collegial way and in the academic spirit of the institution,” because he questioned popular claims among environmentalists about coral reefs and global warming. What was Ridd’s crime? He found out two of the world’s leading organizations studying coral reefs were using misleading photographs to make the case that global warming was causing a mass reef die-off. Ridd wasn’t rewarded for checking the facts and blowing the whistle on misleading science. Instead, James Cook University censured Ridd and threatened to fire him for questioning global warming...