Current Science News and Events
The following is a collection of the latest news available on the world wide web. These links will lead you to sites outside of Visionlearning.
Current feeds as of 11/21/09 12:00am EST include the following.
- New York Times
- BBC
- Science Daily News
- Science Magazine News Summaries
- Science Magazine This Week in Science
BBC Science
Restart for 'Big Bang' experiment
The Large Hadron Collider experiment, designed to shed light on the cosmos, restarts after 14 months of repairs.
UK climate unit's e-mails hacked
The e-mail system of one of the world's leading climate research units has been breached by hackers.
Mammoth dung clue to extinction
A study of mammoth dung is helping unravel the mystery of what caused the great mammals to die out.
New skin 'may help burns victims'
French researchers say they have found a way of using human embryonic stem cells to create new skin which could help serious burns victims.
First test for record solar plane
The prototype of a solar-powered plane destined for a record round-the-world journey makes its first trip across a runway.
Spacewalk for shuttle astronauts
Two astronauts from the space shuttle Atlantis have embarked on the first spacewalk of their mission.
Science Daily News
Saliva proteins change as women age
In a step toward using human saliva to tell whether those stiff joints, memory lapses, and other telltale signs of aging are normal or red flags for disease, scientists are describing how the protein content of women's saliva change with advancing age. The discovery could lead to a simple, noninvasive test for better diagnosing and treating certain age-related diseases in women, they suggest.
Hidden threat: Elevated pollution levels near regional airports
Scientists are reporting evidence that air pollution -- a well-recognized problem at major airports -- may pose an important but largely overlooked health concern for people living near smaller regional airports. Those airports are becoming an increasingly important component of global air transport systems. The study, one of only a handful to examine airborne pollutants near regional airports, suggests that officials should pay closer attention to these overlooked emissions, which could cause health problems for local residents.
Barn personnel experience higher-than-average rates of respiratory symptoms
The estimated 4.6 million Americans involved in the equine industry may be at risk of developing respiratory symptoms due to poor air quality in horse barns, according to a questionnaire study.
Software knowledge unnecessarily lost
All too often the knowledge acquired by software architects is unnecessarily lost. Moreover, it is difficult to simply and quickly assess the quality of software. According to researchers these problems can, however, be easily resolved. They investigated how architectural knowledge can be better disseminated and retrieved.
Why can't some people give up cocaine?
Drug dependency is a recurrent but treatable kind of addiction. However, not all people who are drug dependent progress in the same way once they stop taking drugs. A new study shows that, in the case of cocaine, a high score on the so-called ‘scale of craving’, an antisocial personality type and previous heroin abuse are the factors most commonly involved in people falling back into the habit.
Science Magazine News Summaries
[News of the Week] Japan: Belt-Tightening Could Claim Some Scientific Scalps
Attempting to rein in Japan's yawning budget deficit, a government task force last week recommended tens of millions of dollars in cuts in science spending in the fiscal year beginning next April that would hit everything from research grants to big-ticket items such as a next-generation supercomputer.
Author: Dennis Normile
[News of the Week] Astrophysics: Galactic Glare Reveals Birthplace of Cosmic Rays
Two new astronomical results—one in this week's issue of Science and the other published online this month in Nature—suggest that cosmic rays acquire their tremendous velocities from exploding stars.
Author: Yudhijit Bhattacharjee
[News of the Week] Oil Resources: Splitting the Difference Between Oil Pessimists and Optimists
World production of conventional oil is likely to peak before 2030 and could reach its limits before 2020, a major report from a new voice in the debate over oil depletion warns. In view of the daunting task of weaning the world's transportation off oil, the risk of a peak before 2030 "needs to be given serious consideration," the report says.
Author: Richard A. Kerr
[News of the Week] Cell Therapies: Clean Pigs Offer Alternative to Stem Cell Transplants
Within a couple of years, a scientific team hopes to start clinical trials using cells from the first swine herd in the country specially bred to supply insulin-secreting pancreatic islets for people with diabetes. But they face immunological and regulatory challenges, as well as the challenge of overcoming public aversion to the idea.
Author: Constance Holden
[News of the Week] ScienceNOW.org: From Science's Online Daily News Site
ScienceNOW this week reported that meditation halves the risk of heart disease, empathy is in our genes, holes can block light, and new neurons make room for new memories, among other stories.
Science Magazine This Week in Science
Cosmic rays are thought to be accelerated in the shock waves produced by supernova explosions and can generate gamma rays when they interact with interstellar particles and radiation. Starburst galaxies, … [Read more]
One consequence of the historically unprecedented level of CO2 in the atmosphere that fossil fuel burning has caused, in addition to a warmer climate, is higher concentrations of dissolved CO2 … [Read more]
The speed of light is constant, reduced by a fraction from its vacuum level as it propagates through a material with a refractive index. In most transparent materials, the refractive … [Read more]
Ore deposits contain most of the world's metal resources, from commonly used metals such as iron, to precious and expensive metals such as platinum. Understanding how these ancient deposits form … [Read more]
The oxidation state of intracellular and extracellular proteins are carefully managed by cellular redox machineries. Depuydt et al. (p. 1109) discovered a reducing system that protects single cysteine residues from … [Read more]
