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There has been a great deal of confusion and obfuscation surrounding the news this week that scientists have cloned human embryos for the first time. Embryonic stem-cell research advocates have been distorting basic facts about cloning for well over a decade. As Wesley J. Smith aptly notes, the basic biological distinction between cloning embryos and deriving stem cells from those embryos is perhaps the first thing that journalists and research advocates forget or conceal when discussing therapeutic cloning. What the Oregon cloning researchers reported this week was that they had cloned embryos and then destroyed those embryos to create...

THERE HAS BEEN MUCH WRINGING OF HANDS over how the Obama campaign’s use of big data and technology was (and is still) so much more advanced than anything we have on the right. Much of this concern is grounded in reality. The left has a big advantage here, and it’s one post-election problem that the GOP must tackle. The Obama campaign used a data analytics program that had been perfected over six years, and which broke the electorate down into very small and targeted subsets of demographics (think single Hispanic women living in Colorado). This approach was unprecedented in presidential...

Researchers have made a significant first step with newly engineered biomaterials for cell transplantation that could help lead to a possible cure for Type 1 diabetes, which affects about 3 million Americans. Georgia Tech engineers and Emory University clinicians have successfully engrafted insulin-producing cells into a diabetic mouse model, reversing diabetic symptoms in the animal in as little as 10 days. The research team engineered a biomaterial to protect the cluster of insulin-producing cells -- donor pancreatic islets -- during injection. The material also contains proteins to foster blood vessel formation that allow the cells to successfully graft, survive and...

Scientists in Canada have made a super-strong cell membrane adhesive and used it to stick red blood cells together. The polymer, based on the phospholipid head group phosphatidyl choline, could be used to secure cells in particular positions for tissue engineering and wound closure. Don Brooks, from the Centre for Blood Research at the University of British Columbia, who led the study, says inspiration for the work came after trying to understand the chemistry of cell membranes. ‘Phosphatidyl choline [PC] is found in every cell membrane, except for some primitive bacteria, so we wondered what would happen if we were...

The products of thermally exfoliating graphite oxide to make graphene are much more complex than previously thought, new research shows. The volatile compounds formed vary with reaction conditions, and may influence the graphene’s structure.The most common way to prepare graphene is by thermally reducing – or ‘exfoliating’ – graphite oxide. But the graphene produced often contains defects and lacks the perfect honeycomb structure. One explanation is that these defects may be the result of organic by-products forming and escaping as gases during the reaction.‘It has been commonly believed that the only gaseous products of graphite oxide exfoliation are water, carbon...

Do you dream of living on Mars? Then turn on your webcam. You've got an application video to make. Mars One, a Netherlands-based group that wants to turn the colonizing of Mars into a reality television phenomenon, has started accepting applications for its astronaut selection program. In just two weeks, more than 78,000 people from more than 120 countries have applied. You don't need previous experience in rocket science, astronomy or really anything to apply for the Mars One astronaut selection program - but you will need to be at least 18 years old and have nerves of steel. Mars...

Scientists used 3-D printing to merge tissue and an antenna capable of receiving radio signals.Scientists at Princeton University used off-the-shelf printing tools to create a functional ear that can "hear" radio frequencies far beyond the range of normal human capability. The researchers' primary purpose was to explore an efficient and versatile means to merge electronics with tissue. The scientists used 3D printing of cells and nanoparticles followed by cell culture to combine a small coil antenna with cartilage, creating what they term a bionic ear. "In general, there are mechanical and thermal challenges with interfacing electronic materials with biological materials,"...

There are now 322 million cell phone subscribers in the U.S. and 4 billion worldwide with over 5 million cell towers and antennas scattered across the planet. 20 million Americans currently use wireless laptops, tablets, and routers, and according to the Wireless Association, that number has increased by 50% in just the last two years. Wireless devices emit radio frequency radiation (RFR) that consists of low intensity high frequency radio waves of non-ionizing radiation in the microwave range of approximately 900 MHz to 2.4 GHz. Wireless RFR now permeates most cities and rural areas and is spreading at lightning speed...

Shi Zhengrong was called a “hero of the environment” by Time Magazine. He was a billionaire who ran the worlds largest seller of solar PV cells. But the glory days of 2008 – 2011 are gone. Another bubble bursts. Wiped out in two years. How fast was this fall? In 2008, CNN named Shi “China’s Sunshine Boy.” In 2009, Fortune anointed him “China’s new king of solar.” That year, New York Times columnist Thomas Friedman also cited Shi and Suntech as models of China’s green leap forward — which he called “the Sputnik of our day” and a spur for...

Pond scum – algae – gained prominence a few years ago, emerging from research obscurity to hog the green limelight. With questions over growing food crops for biodiesel and concerns over fuel security and global warming, algae seemed to offer a renewable, carbon-neutral source of fuel. Algal cultivation could use a large amount of non-arable land without harming food production, said the sales pitch, and its demand for water could be met with non-potable supplies, even saline or wastewater. As algal biochemist Alison Smith of the University of Cambridge, UK, explains, ‘I was being phoned up every five minutes by...

A graphene inspired electrode material that could help batteries hold more power has been developed by Chinese scientists. The large surface area of these cobalt oxide nanosheets is key to their electrochemical performance.Batteries are a cornerstone of modern life with most smartphones and laptops using rechargeable lithium ion batteries. As technology advances, the search is on for batteries that can pack more energy into the same space. Graphitic electrodes are commonly used in lithium ion batteries but suffer from low theoretical capacity. A viable alternative is to use metal oxides which have significantly higher theoretical capacities but in practice are...

A handheld, battery-powered detector will help officials identify counterfeit antimalarial drugs in a trial in Ghana. The trial will test how effective the device is at identifying suspect medicines. The CD-3 detector compares the look of medicines and packaging under different wavelengths of light to spot fakes © US FDAThe CD-3 counterfeit detection device(PDF) uses a variety of different wavelengths of light to visually compare tablets, capsules and their packaging with genuine reference samples. The different colourings and compounds in counterfeit formulations, and different inks and materials in their packaging, reflect or fluoresce differently to the real thing. Comparing them...

Breakthrough approach to rapid detection of Candida species directly from whole blood with T2 Magnetic resonance demonstrated in first patient samples Lexington, MA, April 24, 2013 (Embargoed until 2:00 PM US Eastern Time) – T2 Biosystems, a company developing direct detection products enabling superior diagnostics, today announced the publication of research supporting the Company's flagship diagnostic test, T2Candida®, in Science Translational Medicine. The research highlights T2Candida as a breakthrough approach to rapid and sensitive identification of species-specific Candida, a sepsis-causing fungus, directly from whole blood in approximately three hours, or up to 25 times faster than the current gold standard...

If you think 3D printers have given would-be gun controllers the vapors already, just wait until you hear the latest from Cody Wilson, the head honcho of Defense Distributed. He told reporters at the Inside 3D Printing Conference in New York City that the group's latest project — a gun made entirely with 3D-printed parts (except for a metal firing pin) — is just weeks away from success. If Wilson and company can deliver on the promise, it would be an important step beyond their already impressive accomplishments in producing functioning AR-15 lower receivers and "high-capacity" magazines for AR-15s and...

Gangnam style is trouncing Cupertino’s when it comes to high tech pre-eminence. You may remember the wild popularity of Psy’s video celebrating the upscale Gangnam shopping district of Seoul, Korea. And a look at Samsung’s latest financial report suggests that Cupertino-based Apple is falling behind fast. After all Samsung — the world’s leader in computer memory chips, televisions, mobile handsets and LCD panels — took a huge chunk out of Apple’s hide in the first three months of 2013. How so? According to Strategy Analytics, Samsung took about 33% of the global smartphone market in the first quarter to Apple’s...

A federal court in Seattle issued a ruling Thursday that could help settle the question of just how much a company can expect to reap from standards-essential patents. In the highly anticipated court ruling, U.S. District Judge James Robart determined that Google’s Motorola Mobility unit is entitled to about $1.8 million a year from Microsoft for its use of certain patents. Motorola had been seeking in excess of $4 billion in the case, which centered around patents related to the the H.264 video standard and the 802.11 wireless standard. In making its determination, the court noted that there are some...

Newly created “micro-batteries” that are only a few millimeters in size are now the most powerful batteries in the world. The new batteries, created by researchers at the University of Illinois, greatly out-power “even the best supercapacitors,” while being only a fraction of their size. “The graphic illustrates a high power battery technology from the University of Illinois. Ions flow between three-dimensional micro-electrodes in a lithium ion battery.” “They pack such a punch that a driver could use a cellphone powered by these batteries to jump-start a dead car battery – and then recharge the phone in the blink of...

The research team of Antti Oulasvirta at the Max Planck Institute for Informatics has created a new keyboard called KALQ that enables faster thumb-typing on touchscreen devices. They used computational optimization techniques in conjunction with a model of thumb movement to search among millions of potential layouts before identifying one that yields superior performance. A user study confirmed that, after a short amount of practice, users could type 34% faster than they could with a QWERTY layout. Typing on today's mobile phones and tablets is needlessly slow. One limitation is that the QWERTY layout is ill-suited for tablets and other...

During a House hearing this morning, Department of Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano criticized the Drudge Report for highlighting stories about the department’s purchases of ammunition and MRAP (Mine-Resistant Ambush Protected) vehicles.

Proposed amendment to CISPA says Internet companies' promises to protect customer privacy were legally enforceable. But then Republicans vote it down.

Enlarge Image Future food? Cellulose from switchgrass and other nonfood plants might be converted into edible starch to feed the hungry. Credit: Peggy Greb/ARS/USDA The main ingredient of wood, cellulose, is one of the most abundant organic compounds on Earth and a dream source of renewable fuel. Now, bioengineers suggest that it could feed the hungry as well. In a new study, researchers have found a way to turn cellulose into starch, the most common carbohydrate in the human diet. Ethanol is today's most common biofuel used to power vehicles. It's typically made using sugars from crop plants such...

The massive Thirty Meter Telescope will be able to image objects 13 billion light years away, near the beginning of time. Set atop Mauna Kea, the Thirty Meter Telescope will be able to observe planets outside our solar system. (Credit: Courtesy TMT Observatory Corporation) If you love eye-popping images of space, here's welcome news: the Hawaiian Board of Land and Natural Resources has backed building what's to be the world's largest, most powerful optical telescope above the clouds atop the volcano Mauna Kea. The Thirty Meter Telescope (TMT) will have a primary mirror of 492 segments measuring some 100 feet...

Note to journalists: Please report that this research was presented at a meeting of the American Chemical Society. NEW ORLEANS, April 11, 2013 — In a classic case of turning an enemy into a friend, scientists have engineered a protein from flesh-eating bacteria to act as a molecular “superglue� that promises to become a disease fighter. And their latest results, which make the technology more versatile, were the topic of a report here today at the 245th National Meeting & Exposition of the American Chemical Society, the world’s largest scientific society. “We’ve turned the tables and put one kind of...

The polyoxometalate acts as a sink, storing the protons and electrons released when water is split © NPGUK scientists say that they have developed the first widely-useable electrolysis system that splits water and releases hydrogen and oxygen in separate stages. Lee Cronin and Mark Symes from the University of Glasgow used a phosphomolybdate anion buffer to store protons and electrons generated when oxidising water to oxygen. Instead of directly producing hydrogen, as electrolysis normally does, the buffer lets the scientists choose where and when they do the second step. That could aid efforts to store renewable energy as hydrogen fuel...

As Mark Malkowski watched Gov. Dannel P. Malloy sign the gun control bill into law on April 4, he sat in his office with three military-style rifles. Nothing unusual there, since Malkowski’s New Britain company, Stag Arms, makes the AR-15-style guns. But one of the black weapons was a bit different – it had a sawed-off pistol grip. The de-gripped rifle was the first go-around in Stag’s effort to design a gun that’s legal for sale in Connecticut, and still has the core of the AR-15, the wildly popular type of rifle that represents fully one-quarter of all firearms sales...

A demon has been revealed in twenty-first-century Philadelphia, and the three broadcast networks have been enforcing a policy of silence about the discovery. So have most major newspapers. One reason may be that the trial of late-term abortion doctor Kermit Gosnell for multiple counts of murder is about an African-American killing mainly African-American babies -- and so the common sense among liberals, or, as a friend of mine would say, the "coven-sense," is that such a story disparages that community. This is something newspapers are loath to do. In much the same manner that they cannot dwell upon the causes...

<p>By ALEXA VALIENTE April 12, 2013 Audrie Pott, the 15-year-old California girl who killed herself after photos of her alleged sexual assault appeared online, felt "tortured" by the experience of being betrayed by suspects whom she once considered friends, the family's attorney, Robert Allard, said today.</p>

It has been widely reported that the killer in the shootings at Sandy Hook Elementary School in Newtown, Connecticut last year was a semi-automatic AR-15 stolen from its rightful owner. In fact, it was for precisely that reason that President Obama said that gun control will be a "central issue" of his last four years in office. But on Thursday, reports began circulating that at a Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee fundraiser in San Francisco on Wednesday, Obama claimed that the AR-15 used in the Connecticut crime was a fully-automatic firearm. At first, we wondered if the reports were accurate, or...

Scientists have found further evidence for the existence of an elusive intermediate implicated in chemical reactions that degrade atmospheric pollutants. A new method of directly detecting the simplest form of this intermediate, as well as more measurements of the intermediate’s reactivity, provide indications that atmospheric models need to improve how they account for them.More than 50 years ago, German chemist Rudolf Criegee proposed that alkenes in the atmosphere, released either by plants or human activities, degrade by reacting with ozone to form a cyclic ozonide. One of the products formed when this ozonide falls apart is a carbonyl oxide called...

The Wisconsin Department of Natural Resources and Oak Creek police say they have identified five men who recorded trapping a deer on private land and wrestling it to the ground to put a T-shirt on it, WTMJ-TV reports. The video the men posted last week has since been removed from YouTube but snippets of it are available on WTMJ. The men could each face at least a $303 fine. The deer has been spotted around Oak Creek and is believed to be healthy.

Source: courtesy Best Buy Co. Inc. Brand reputations are among the most prized assets major corporations have. A look at relevant surveys shows that brand valuations are often so high that they compare to the market values of the public companies that own them. But brands can fall as fast and as hard as they have climbed.While a reputation can take years to build, it can be battered or ruined in a very short time. This certainly happened to J.P. Morgan after it reported a $6.2 billion trading loss in its London office. It happened to Hyundai after it overstated...

Researchers in China have shown that the organic component of mother of pearl can help repair damaged teeth, by acting as a template for the mineralisation of tooth enamel.Tooth enamel is made up of rod-like crystals of hydroxyapatite, a calcium phosphate mineral. It is the hardest tissue in the body, but is susceptible to erosion by food and bacterial acids. Once gone, it never naturally reforms, and cavities must be fixed using manmade materials. Methods of artificially rebuilding enamel often involve extreme temperature, pressure or pH conditions that make them impractical for clinical use.Researchers from the Chinese Academy of Sciences...

The analysis revealed the image of an upturned face underneath the fresco © Bianca Jackson and Dominique Martos-LevifA collaboration between analytical scientists and the Louvre in France has revealed a hidden work under one of the museum’s frescoes. The research is an example of the broadening field of terahertz spectroscopy, using wavelengths of electromagnetic radiation between microwave and infrared.The fresco, Trois hommes armes de lances, is part of the Louvre’s Campana collection – pieces that once belonged to Giampietro Campana, an excavator and collector of ancient artifacts in the 19th century. Campana was known to restore the pieces he obtained...

A natural biochemical pathway that produces the antimalarial drug artemisinin in the sweet wormwood plant has been fully reconstructed in yeast. The engineered yeast cells churn out high concentrations of a precursor that can be converted in a few steps into the first-line malaria drug. According to the team behind the advance, their semi-synthetic route should help smooth out seasonal variations in supply.Semi-synthetic artemisinin has been in the pipeline since 2006, when Jay Keasling’s group at the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory in California, US, reported rewriting the genome of ordinary brewer’s yeast to encourage it to make artemisinic acid.1 But...

Volcanic vents off the coast of Italy are home to microbes that can produce a bulk industrial chemical © Science Photo LibraryUS researchers have engineered a heat-loving microbe to produce a bulk chemical from carbon dioxide and hydrogen. Their results may provide a viable industrial alternative to blue-green algae, which have a much lower efficiency for such chemical transformations.Microbes are principally used by industry to turn larger organic compounds into smaller, more useful ones – fermenting corn sugars to produce ethanol, for instance. More desirable, though, is direct conversion of carbon dioxide into organic compounds.Current methods that use blue-green algae...

Superheated Bose-Einstein condensate exists above critical temperature April 10, 2013 by Lisa Zyga Physicists created a BEC that can persist at up to 1.5 times hotter than the critical temperature at which it normally decays. The BEC can survive in the superheated regime for more than a minute when different components of the boson gas are not in equilibrium. Credit: Alexander L. Gaunt, et al. ©2013 Macmillan Publishers Limited (Phys.org) — At very low temperatures, near absolute zero, multiple particles called bosons can form an unusual state of matter in which a large fraction of the bosons in a...

The same material that formed the first primitive transistors more than 60 years ago can be modified in a new way to advance future electronics, according to a new study. Chemists at The Ohio State University have developed the technology for making a one-atom-thick sheet of germanium, and found that it conducts electrons more than ten times faster than silicon and five times faster than conventional germanium. The material's structure is closely related to that of graphene—a much-touted two-dimensional material comprised of single layers of carbon atoms. As such, graphene shows unique properties compared to its more common multilayered counterpart,...

Though its name sounds better suited to fantasy or sci-fi, researchers have recently gathered evidence that something called dark lightning exists, the Washington Post reported. Like any evil twin, dark lightning appears to "compete" with the ordinary lightning during thunderstorms. A person could be struck by dark lightning and not even know it. Like ordinary lightning, dark lightning brews inside thunderclouds. In fact, it may be a competing way for the clouds to release their energy, says Joseph Dwyer, a lightning researcher at the Florida Institute of Technology. Dwyer has come up with a model explaining how dark lightning arises....

Within hours of South Korean news sources breaking a story that several Sang-Ho class submarines had disappeared from their North Korean bases, a ham radio operator named Tim, picked up a “numbers station” broadcasting on the same frequency as “The Voice of Korea” propaganda station. What makes this even more interesting is that at the tail end of the numbers transmission there was a long duration digital transmission as well. So why is this important and alarming?There are several reasons why this new development is particularly alarming. The first being the existence of the numbers station coming online shortly after...

© ShutterstockChinese chemists have developed a new nacre-like material which is stronger than natural nacre and most other composites.Nacre, which is also known as mother of pearl, is a naturally occurring composite formed from calcium carbonate and biopolymers that create a brickwork structure. It is also nearly a thousand times stronger than any of its component parts and a major target for biomimetic synthesis.Design of the brickwork structure is central to developing nacre-like materials with enhanced properties. Gaoquan Shi, and colleagues, at Tsinghua University, Beijing, began by making a hydrogel from graphene and a silk protein, called fibroin.Solution casting and...

America won’t be repeating that historic one small step anytime soon -- not according to NASA chief Charlie Bolden, anyway. “NASA is not going to the Moon with a human as a primary project probably in my lifetime,” Bolden told a joint meeting of the Space Studies Board and the Aeronautics and Space Engineering Board in Washington last week, according to Jeff Foust of SpacePolitics.com. “And the reason is, we can only do so many things.”

Computational biologist Sergei Maslov of Brookhaven National Laboratory worked with graduate student Tin Yau Pang from Stony Brook University to compare the frequency with which components "survive" in two complex systems: bacterial genomes and operating systems on Linux computers. Their work is published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. Maslov and Pang set out to determine not only why some specialized genes or computer programs are very common while others are fairly rare, but to see how many components in any system are so important that they can't be eliminated. "If a bacteria genome doesn't have a...

Experimental Results on Sub-Micro Structured Cu-Ni Alloys under High Temperature Hydrogen/Deuterium Interaction Francesco Celani * E. F. Marano1, A. Spallone1 A. Nuvoli1 B. Ortenzi1 S. Pella1 E. Righi1 G. Trenta1 F. Micciulla1 S. Bellucci1 S. Bartalucci1 M. Nakamura2 E. Purchi2 G. Zangari2 S. Cupellini2 A. Mancini3 F. Maggiore3 A.Ovidi4 1. INFN-LNF, Via E. Fermi 40, Frascati (RM) 00044, Italy 2. Latium Group, ISCMNS, Via Cavour 26, Ferentino (FR) 03013, Italy 3. ORIM SpA, Via Concordia 65, Piediripa (MC) 62100, Italy 4. Kresenn Ltd, 5a Frascati Way, Maidenhead SL6 1PA, United Kingdom * E-mail of the corresponding author: Francesco.Celani@lnf.infn.it Abstract...

Producing soft networks of droplets is now much less laborious and time consuming © Science/AAASBack in 2007, Hagan Bayley’s lab at the University of Oxford, UK, created bionetworks made from small droplets all linked together.1 Each of the aqueous droplets were individually pipetted into an oily phase, where they linked together to create a chain of droplets with a lipid bilayer at each interface. Into those bilayers Bayley’s postdoc at the time, Matt Holden, introduced the alpha-haemolysin (α-HL) protein that the group do a lot of their work on, and showed that the linked droplets could conduct a current. But...

Across the world, millions of people cannot access fresh, clean water. With global populations rising and freshwater supplies regularly becoming overdrawn or contaminated, the ability to purify sea water is becoming increasingly important.Now, scientists from South Korea have modified a water treatment method called capacitive deionisation, with the aim of desalinising sea water on a large scale. Capacitive deionisation uses an electric field to remove cations and anions from water flowing past two oppositely placed electrodes. The team, led by Moon Hee-Han from Chungnam National University and Dong Kook-Kim from the Korea Institute of Energy Research, have developed flow electrodes...

NTU scientist develops a multi-purpose wonder material to tackle environmental challenges Published on: 20-Mar-2013 A new wonder material that can generate hydrogen, produce clean water and even create energy. Science fiction? Hardly, and there’s more - It can also desalinate water, be used as flexible water filtration membranes, help recover energy from desalination waste brine, be made into flexible solar cells and can also double the lifespan of lithium ion batteries. With its superior bacteria-killing capabilities, it can also be used to develop a new type of antibacterial bandage. Scientists at Nanyang Technological University (NTU), led by Associate Professor...

The Chinese government helped finance a massive expansion of the solar industry, helping to create a glut of solar panels—and leading to rapidly reducing prices for solar. But now it has let the main subsidiary of its most prominent solar panel manufacturer, Suntech Power, go bankrupt. That could be a good sign for the solar industry and for innovation.

Can you give us a sneak preview of your Pittcon plenary lecture ‘Exameter objects to nanometer ones and back again’?What I want to emphasise in this lecture is that the discovery of C60 started off from an interest in massive clouds of gas in interstellar space – some of them are 100 light years across. The chemistry in those clouds is quite fascinating and, in some parts of them, you find carbon is rather abundant. I thought that this carbon was coming out of stars and my interest led to the experiments that uncovered C60. That prompted conjectures about whether...

Facebook no longer supports a controversial federal cybersecurity bill that would let U.S. companies share personal information with government agencies in ways currently prohibited by privacy laws. The social-networking company had previously applauded the Cyber Intelligence Sharing and Protection Act, or CISPA, which was reintroduced last month. Facebook Vice President Joel Kaplan wrote a letter (PDF) last February to Rep. Mike Rogers, a Michigan Republican, "to commend you on your legislation," and Rogers sent out his own press release noting Facebook's "strong support" for the bill. But then groups including the American Civil Liberties Union, the Electronic Frontier Foundation, the...

For decades scientists around the world have attempted to regenerate primary liver cells known as hepatocytes because of their numerous biomedical applications, including hepatitis research, drug metabolism and toxicity studies, as well as transplantation for cirrhosis and other chronic liver conditions. But no lab in the world has been successful in identifying and growing liver stem cells in culture -- using any available technique – until now. In the journal Nature, physician-scientists in the Papé Family Pediatric Research Institute at Oregon Health & Science University Doernbecher Children's Hospital, Portland, Ore., along with investigators at the Hubrecht Institute for Developmental Biology...