North America puts carbon on the map

US, Canada and Mexico agree to map their biggest emitters and best spots for carbon capture and storage


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Did asteroids flock together to build planets?

Swarms of boulders may have collapsed spontaneously under their own gravity in the early solar system, forming the building blocks of the planets


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Agricultural methods of early civilizations may have altered global climate, study suggests

Massive burning of forests for agriculture thousands of years ago may have increased atmospheric carbon dioxide enough to alter global climate and usher in a warming trend that continues today, according to a new study that appears online Aug. 17 in the journal Quaternary Science Reviews.
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A New Test for Business and Biofuel

One of the nation’s wealthiest American Indian communities is a major investor in a start-up with the twin goals of making fuel from algae and reducing emissions.


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WHO chief urges swine flu vigilance (Reuters)

DAR ES SALAAM, Aug. 16, 2009 (Reuters) -- The world must remain on its guard against H1N1 influenza, which has been mild so far but could become more serious as the northern hemisphere heads into winter, the head of the World Health Organization said on Sunday. ... > read full story
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Needle-free, inhalant powder measles vaccine could save thousands of lives

The first dry powder inhalable vaccine for measles is moving toward clinical trials next year in India, where the disease still sickens millions of infants and children and kills almost 200,000 annually, according to a report presented here today at the 238th National Meeting of the American Chemical Society (ACS).
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New Biomarker Predicts Response to Hepatitis C Treatment

(PhysOrg.com) -- Researchers have identified the first genetic marker that predicts response to hepatitis C treatments, and a single letter of DNA code appears to make a huge difference. Duke University Medical Center scientists says the biomarker not only predicts who is most likely to respond to treatment and who isn't, but also may explain why there are such different rates of response among racial and ethnic groups, a phenomenon that has puzzled physicians for years.
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UGA researchers propose model for disorders caused by improper transmission of chromosomes

Parents of healthy newborns often remark on the miracle of life. The joining of egg and sperm to create such delightful creatures can seem dazzlingly beautiful if the chromosome information from each parent has been translated properly into the embryo and newborn.

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Tribal effort to fix broken world hinges on condor (AP)

AP - The tribes of the lower Klamath River have since ancient times decorated themselves with condor feathers when they performed the dances designed to heal a world gone wrong.

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Legislation restricting Internet access

Laws aimed at tackling illegal use of wireless internet connections are restricting attempts to increase broadband access, according to research published today.
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Some mice stem cells divide in unexpected ways

(PhysOrg.com) -- Using new genetic tools, Cornell researchers have found that some stem cells in mice behave dramatically different than in fruit flies, where most of the pioneering stem cell work has been conducted. The findings could have important implications for understanding how some cancers might be initiated, say the researchers.
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Bionanomachines -- proteins as resistance fighters

A Dresden research team used laser tweezers to measure the friction between a single motor protein molecule and its track. The team found that also within our cells, motors work against the resistance of friction and are restrained in its operationâ€"usually by far not as much though as their macroscopic counterparts. These first experimental measurements of protein friction could help researchers to better understand key cellular processes such as cell division which is driven by such molecular machines.

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We have a 'right to starlight,' astronomers say (AFP)

AFP - The public's "right to starlight" is steadily being eroded by urban illumination that is the bane of astronomers everywhere, the International Astronomical Union said on Friday.

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Night-time photos shed light on growing economies

Satellite images of artificial lighting could help provide more accurate measurements of economic growth for developing countries


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Warner Bros. to impose delay on Redbox, others

(AP) -- Warner Bros. on Thursday joined studios Universal Pictures and 20th Century Fox in demanding shipments be delayed to $1-per-night DVD rental kiosks like Redbox in an attempt to preserve demand for higher-priced disc purchases.
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Book Review : Kinematics: The Lost Origins of Einstein’s Relativity by Alberto A. Martínez

This often-overlooked branch of mechanics, which describes objects’ motion, provided the foundation for special relativity, a historian argues. Johns Hopkins Univ., 2009, 464 p., $65.
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Ground beetles produce lemon/orange-scented aromas as predator repellents

(PhysOrg.com) -- In a paper to appear in the journal `Naturwissenschaften,` Stevens Institute of Technology Professor Athula Attygalle and his research student, Xiaogang Wu, report for the first ...
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FAA Suspends 2 Over Hudson Crash

A video shot by a New York City tourist shows a small plane and a sightseeing helicopter colliding over the Hudson River, killing nine people. The accident was caught on video Saturday by an Italian tourist who was practicing with a new camera. It was aired Thursday on "NBC Nightly News."
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Likely culprits to check when wireless connection crawls

Q: I have a problem with our Dell laptop computer's wireless connection using Internet Explorer. At various times, the speed drops down to sloth and then stops altogether. At the same time, other computers, a desktop connected directly to the router and another laptop which is connected through the wireless connection both function. When the Dell is taken to another wireless site location, it works.
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NASA should avoid a straight shot to Mars, panel says

The committee tasked with reviewing NASA's plans thinks the agency should go to other destinations first – but it may not get very far without a major budget boost


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Ancient toothed whale remains found near Santa Cruz

A 1,000-pound slab of sandstone lifted off a beach in Santa Cruz County, Calif., Wednesday may provide a better glimpse of what plied the seas 5 million years ago.
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Raising the alarm when DNA goes bad

Our genome is constantly under attack from things like UV light and toxins, which can damage or even break DNA strands and ultimately lead to cancer and other diseases. Scientists have known for a long time that when DNA is damaged, a key enzyme sets off a cellular 'alarm bell' to alert the cell to start the repair process, but until recently little was known about how the cell detects and responds to this alarm. In a study published today in Nature Structural and Molecular Biology, researchers at the European Molecular Biology Laboratory (EMBL) in Heidelberg, Germany, have identified a whole family of proteins capable of a direct response to the alarm signal.

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Pay-per-email plan to beat spam and help charity

Yahoo! researchers are resurrecting the idea that paying to send emails will hurt spammers – this time with a charitable twist they hope will make it succeed


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Molecules wrestle for supremacy in creation of superstructures

Research at the University of Liverpool has found how mirror-image molecules gain control over each other and dictate the physical state of superstructures.
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ADA publishes practice guidelines for nutrition care for patients with spinal cord injury

The American Dietetic Association has published new evidence-based nutrition practice guidelines for registered dietitians on nutrition care for patients with spinal cord injury.
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Planet found orbiting its star backwards for first time

The planet is also the most bloated yet detected – its low density and strange path might both be traced back to a close encounter with a planetary sibling


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Facebook testing Twitter-like 'Lite' version

The Internet was buzzing Wednesday with talk of Facebook testing a streamlined "Lite" version of the social-networking service that could challenge microblogging sensation Twitter.
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Stanford researchers call for drug labels to disclose lack of comparison with existing medications

The labeling information that comes with prescription drugs tells you what's known about the medication, but researchers from the Stanford University School of Medicine think it's high time that the labeling tell you what isn't known.
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Late light reveals what space is made of

"Quantum foam" â€" grainy bumps in the fabric of space-time â€" might explain why light from a distant galaxy arrived four minutes later than expected, offering clues about the real nature of gravity


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Mobile phone sales down six pct in second quarter

Worldwide mobile phone sales fell by 6.1 percent in the second quarter from a year ago but smartphone sales were up sharply in the period, market research firm Gartner reported Wednesday.
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Researchers reveal the internal dance of water

(PhysOrg.com) -- Water is familiar to everyone - it shapes our bodies and our planet. But despite this abundance, the molecular structure of water has remained a mystery, with the substance exhibiting many strange properties that are still poorly understood. Recent work at the SLAC National Accelerator Laboratory and several universities in Sweden and Japan, however, is shedding new light on water's molecular idiosyncrasies and offering insight into its strange bulk properties.
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Uncovering the secrets of ulcer-causing bacteria

A team of researchers from Boston University, Harvard Medical School and Massachusetts Institute of Technology recently made a discovery that changes a long held paradigm about how bacteria move through soft gels. They showed that the bacterium that causes human stomach ulcers uses a clever biochemical strategy to alter the physical properties of its environment, allowing it to move and survive and further colonize its host.

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Film review: The Yes Men Fix the World

Serial pranksters the Yes Men are taking on the power of huge corporations, but their tricks may push the boundaries of morality


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Boy, 6, Saves Sister, 2, From House Fire

Police say a 6-year-old boy rescued his 2-year-old sister from a fire at a Long Island house where three adults later were found dead. Neighbor Jessie Scott says the Central Islip house burned "like a matchbox."
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Judge rules against RealNetworks DVD copy software

(AP) -- A federal judge has barred RealNetworks Inc. from selling a device that allows consumers to copy DVDs to their computer hard drives, pending a full trial.
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Heart transplant record holder dies of cancer

(AP) -- A heart transplant recipient who lived a record 31 years with a single donated organ has died at age 51 of cancer, his heart still going strong, his widow said.
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Rovers rev up for Google's moonshot jackpot

Two years after a $20m competition to send a robot to the moon was announced, we report on the prototypes being tested here on Earth


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Discovery may lead to powerful new therapy for asthma

University of Texas Medical Branch at Galveston researchers have found that a single enzyme is apparently critical to most allergen-provoked asthma attacks - and that activity of the enzyme, known as aldose reductase, can be significantly reduced by compounds that have already undergone clinical trials as treatments for complications of diabetes.
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Ytterbium gains ground in quest for next-generation atomic clocks

An experimental atomic clock based on ytterbium atoms is about four times more accurate than it was several years ago, giving it a precision comparable to that of the NIST-F1 cesium fountain clock, the nation's civilian time standard, scientists at the National Institute of Standards and Technology report in Physical Review Letters.
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UCF scientists control living cells with light; advances could enhance stem cells' power

University of Central Florida researchers have shown for the first time that light energy can gently guide and change the orientation of living cells within lab cultures. That ability to optically steer cells could be a major step in harnessing the healing power of stem cells and guiding them to areas of the body that need help.

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Particles as tracers for the most massive explosions in the Milky Way

Astronomers recently observed a mysterious flux of particles in the universe, and the hope was born that this may be the first observation of the remnants of "dark matter".

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Shedding old light on archaeological artefacts ((send by free-web-host.me user))

Modern lighting is bright and harsh compared with the lamps of antiquity, but computer reconstructions are letting us see archaeological sites as their creators did


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Mexican Cartels Smuggle Oil to US ((send by free-web-host.me user))

U.S. refineries bought millions of dollars worth of oil siphoned from Mexican government pipelines and smuggled across the border -- in some cases by drug cartels expanding their reach.
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What's the semantic organization of human language? ((send by free-web-host.me user))

A Chinese semantic network with semantic (argument structure) annotation was built and investigated for finding its global statistical properties. The results show that semantic network is also small-world and scale-free but it is different from syntactic network in hierarchical structure and correlation between the degree of a node and that of its neighbors.
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Wide range of mental disorders increase the chance of suicidal thoughts and behaviors ((send by free-web-host.me user))

Although depression is the mental disorder that most people associate with suicidal behavior, a new study reveals that a wide range of mental disorders increase the odds of thinking about suicide and making suicide attempts. Whereas depression is indeed one of the strongest predictors of suicidal thoughts across many different countries, it is disorders characterized by anxiety and poor impulse-control that best predict which people act on such thoughts -- especially in developing countries, says a multi-country study published in this week's open access journal PLoS Medicine.
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First Wi-Fi pacemaker in U.S. gives patient freedom (Reuters) ((send by free-web-host.me user))

NEW YORK, Aug. 11, 2009 (Reuters) -- After relying on a pacemaker for 20 years, Carol Kasyjanski has become the first American recipient of a wireless pacemaker that allows her doctor to monitor her health from afar -- over the Internet. ... > read full story

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Bone-cell control of energy generation is regulated by the protein Atf4 ((send by free-web-host.me user))

Bone cells known as osteoblasts were recently shown to have a role in controlling the biochemical reactions that generate energy via secretion of the molecule osteocalcin. Gerard Karsenty and colleagues, at Columbia University College of Physicians and Surgeons, New York, therefore hypothesized that osteoblasts express a regulatory gene(s) that controls this osteoblast function and then identified Atf4 as this regulatory gene in mice.
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Weight Loss Among Widows More Harmful to Health Than Post-Wedding Weight Gain, Research Shows ((send by free-web-host.me user))

(PhysOrg.com) -- The death of a spouse has a much more profound effect on weight change than marital status, according to new research by sociologists at The University of Texas at Austin.
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How mice and humans differ immunologically ((send by free-web-host.me user))

Edith Hessel and colleagues, at Dynavax Technologies Corporation, Berkeley, have identified the reason that humans and rodents respond differently to a molecule that is being developed to treat allergic diseases.
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Genome sequence for the price of a car ((send by free-web-host.me user))

Sequencing the first human genome cost billions and required an army of scientists, but now a trio of researchers in the United States have matched that feat for a fraction of the cost.
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First U.S. wireless pacemaker gives patient freedom (Reuters) ((send by free-web-host.me user))

NEW YORK, Aug. 10, 2009 (Reuters) -- After relying on a pacemaker for 20 years, Carol Kasyjanski has become the first American recipient of a wireless pacemaker that allows her doctor to monitor her health from afar -- over the Internet. ... > read full story

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Passengers Trapped Overnight on Plane ((send by free-web-host.me user))

It was supposed to be a routine flight from Houston to Minneapolis. But 47 passengers ended up enduring a travel "nightmare" after a storm diverted their jet and the airline forced them to spend nine hours sitting on a tarmac, the Minneapolis Star-Tribune reported.
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Saturn to Pull Celestial Houdini on August 11 ((send by free-web-host.me user))

(PhysOrg.com) -- In 1918, magician extraordinaire Harry Houdini created a sensation when he made a 10,000 pound elephant disappear before a mystified audience of over 5,200 at New York's famed Hippodrome theatre. But a vanishing pachyderm is nothing compared to the magnificent illusion to be performed by our solar system's own sixth rock from the sun on Aug. 11. On that day, ladies and gentlemen, boys and girls, children of all ages, the planet Saturn, with no help from either Jupiter or Uranus, will make its 170,000-mile-wide ring system disappear.
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Taking the needle's sting out of diabetes ((send by free-web-host.me user))

Found in 30% of all human cancer tumors, the Ras protein literally "drives cells crazy," says Prof. Yoel Kloog, the dean of the Faculty of Life Sciences at Tel Aviv University. Prof. Kloog was the first in the world to develop an effective anti-Ras drug against pancreatic cancer, currently in clinical trials. Now, new research published in the June issue of the European Journal of Pharmacology shows that the drug might be able to slow the progression of diabetes as well.
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Exploring the standard model of physics without the high-energy collider ((send by free-web-host.me user))

Scientists at the University of California, Berkeley, and Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory in the US, have performed sophisticated laser measurements to detect the subtle effects of one of nature's most elusive forces - the "weak interaction". Their work, which reveals the largest effect of the weak interaction ever observed in an atom, is reported in Physical Review Letters and highlighted in the August 10th issue of APS's on-line journal Physics (physics.aps.org).

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Research reveals how science changed methods of execution ((send by free-web-host.me user))

A University of Cincinnati sociologist combed through newspaper accounts of 19th and 20th century Ohio executions to understand how executions became more "professional and scientific" in character. Annulla Linders, an associate professor of sociology, presented the paper Aug. 9 at the 104th annual meeting of the American Sociological Association in San Francisco.

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New class of compounds discovered for potential Alzheimer's disease drug ((send by free-web-host.me user))

A new class of molecules capable of blocking the formation of specific protein clumps that are believed to contribute to Alzheimer's disease pathology has been discovered by researchers at the University of Pennsylvania School of Medicine. By assaying close to 300,000 compounds, they have identified drug-like inhibitors of AD tau protein clumping, as reported in the journal Biochemistry.

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Miniature gravity detector could peer inside planets ((send by free-web-host.me user))

A device designed from a single wafer of silicon could help planetary scientists study the gravitational fields of Mars and other planets in unprecedented detail


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Hyundai chief heads to NKorea to discuss detainee (AP) ((send by free-web-host.me user))

AP - The chairwoman of South Korea's Hyundai Group conglomerate headed to Pyongyang on Monday to try to win the release of a detained employee and to discuss restarting joint projects in North Korea.

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