A sporting chance for active total knee replacement patients

Total knee arthroplasty patients may be able to participate in high-impact sports without increasing risk of early implant failure, according to a new study.
Source: ScienceDaily: Latest Science News | 14 Mar 2010 | 3:00 pm

Why surprises temporarily blind us

New research reveals for the first time how our brains coordinate two different types of attention and why we may be temporarily blinded by surprises.
Source: ScienceDaily: Latest Science News | 14 Mar 2010 | 3:00 pm

Different fat types can help or hinder obese girls' bone health

Obese teenage girls with a greater ratio of visceral fat (fat around internal organs) to subcutaneous fat (fat found just beneath the skin) are likely to have lower bone density than peers with a lower ratio of visceral to subcutaneous fat, according to a new study.
Source: ScienceDaily: Latest Science News | 14 Mar 2010 | 3:00 pm

Mars constantly loses part of its atmosphere to space due to solar wind

Space physicists have identified the impact of the Sun on Mars' atmosphere. The scientists report that Mars is constantly losing part of its atmosphere to space. The new study shows that pressure from solar wind pulses is a significant contributor to Mars's atmospheric escape.
Source: ScienceDaily: Latest Science News | 14 Mar 2010 | 3:00 pm

'World's most useful tree' provides new low-cost water purification method for developing world

A low-cost water purification technique could help drastically reduce the incidence of waterborne disease in the developing world. The procedure, which uses seeds from the Moringa oleifera tree, can produce a 90.00% to 99.99% bacterial reduction in previously untreated water.
Source: ScienceDaily: Latest Science News | 14 Mar 2010 | 3:00 pm

Stem cell research shows promise for tissue-engineered vascular grafts

Researchers are the first to fully characterize a special type of stem cell, endothelial progenitor cells (EPCs) that exist in circulating blood, to see if they can behave as endothelial cells in the body when cultured on a bioengineered surface. The results show promise for a new generation of tissue-engineered vascular grafts which could improve the success rate of surgery for peripheral arterial disease.
Source: ScienceDaily: Latest Science News | 14 Mar 2010 | 3:00 pm

Discovery of cellular 'switch' may provide new means of triggering cell death, treating disease

Scientists have discovered a previously unknown cellular "switch" that may provide researchers with a new means of triggering programmed cell death, findings with implications for treating cancer.
Source: ScienceDaily: Latest Science News | 14 Mar 2010 | 9:00 am

New tool for operations on people with severe or profound auditory loss

Engineers and doctors have designed a new tool for operating on the inner ear with maximum precision, reducing the possibility of damage to the auditory function during the surgery. This is the first micromanipulator specifically for operations involving cochlear and middle ear implants, of which about a hundred are carried out in this hospital annually.
Source: ScienceDaily: Latest Science News | 14 Mar 2010 | 9:00 am

Quantum dots spotlight DNA-repair proteins in motion

Repair proteins appear to efficiently scan the genome for errors by jumping like fleas between DNA molecules, sliding along the strands, and perhaps pausing at suspicious spots, say researchers who tagged the proteins with quantum dots to watch the action unfold.
Source: ScienceDaily: Latest Science News | 14 Mar 2010 | 9:00 am

Designer nano luggage to carry drugs to diseased cells

Scientists have succeeded in growing empty particles derived from a plant virus and have made them carry useful chemicals. The external surface of these nano containers could be decorated with molecules that guide them to where they are needed in the body, before the chemical load is discharged to exert its effect on diseased cells. The containers are particles of the Cowpea mosaic virus, which is ideally suited for designing biomaterial at the nanoscale.
Source: ScienceDaily: Latest Science News | 14 Mar 2010 | 9:00 am

APNewsBreak: Probe questions runaway Prius story (AP)

AP - A memo drafted for a congressional panel says that investigators with Toyota Motor Corp. and the federal government were unable to make a Prius speed out of control as its owner said it did on a California freeway, casting doubt on the driver's story.

Source: Yahoo! News: Science News | 14 Mar 2010 | 3:57 am

The nation's weather (AP)

AP - A complex of storms in the eastern portion of the country were forecast to continue providing the most active weather in the country Sunday.
Source: Yahoo! News: Science News | 14 Mar 2010 | 3:01 am

Rio's zoo a maternity ward for endangered species (AFP)

AFP - Rio's zoo has been abuzz with activity in recent months, welcoming new arrivals to its collection of animals as it battles to try to save many of the nation's endangered species.

Source: Yahoo! News: Science News | 14 Mar 2010 | 12:05 am

New Zealand activist brought to Tokyo prosecutors (AFP)

AFP - Japan's coast guard on Sunday handed over a detained New Zealand anti-whaling activist to Tokyo prosecutors, who will decide whether to indict him for boarding a Japanese whaling ship.

Source: Yahoo! News: Science News | 13 Mar 2010 | 8:53 pm

Powerful quake hits Indonesia: seismologists (AFP)

AFP - A powerful quake with a magnitude of 7.0 hit off the eastern Indonesian island of Maluku on Sunday, seismologists said, but no tsunami warning was issued.

Source: Yahoo! News: Science News | 13 Mar 2010 | 7:23 pm

My Bright Idea: Robin Dunbar

Evolutionary anthropologist Robin Dunbar talks to Aleks Krotoski

Source: Science news, comment and analysis | guardian.co.uk | 13 Mar 2010 | 5:51 pm

History of the natural world in six objects

The Natural History Museum has one of the world's greatest collections, capturing the earth's huge biodiversity. Ahead of a major new BBC TV series – Museum of Life – six members of their world-class team of 300 scientists each pick a treasure

The statistics defy comprehension. The mammal collection on its own contains 860,000 items, ranging from the skeleton of a blue whale to a dormouse. Yet this array of old bones and fur represents a mere slice of the contents of the Natural History Museum.

Over the three acres of storage space that forms a labyrinth around the museum in South Kensington, London, there are rooms that contain the remains of 58 million animals, drawers of five million pressed plants, and cupboards filled with nine million fossils. For good measure, this magnificent terracotta edifice – designed by Alfred Waterhouse and opened in 1881 – also provides a home for 300,000 rocks and minerals as well as 2,000 meteorites. This, quite simply, is one of the planet's most important natural history collections, a repository of the biological and geological wonders that have appeared on earth over its 4.6 billion-year history.

Yet only a tiny minority of these marvels is ever seen by the public. The rest are kept behind the scenes at the museum, although these artefacts are still of tremendous importance to researchers, as a new BBC2 TV series, Museum of Life, intends to show. Six documentaries examine some of the star specimens among the museum's scientific treasures and will demonstrate how they are being used as tools to understand, and improve, the planet's threatened ecology. Thus we will learn of the importance of giant tortoise excrement to the regeneration of the ebony forests of Mauritius and come to understand the usefulness of making moulds of dinosaur skeletons.

As Richard Fortey, one of the museum's most important palaeontologists, explains: "The golden rule of museum life is simple. Don't throw anything away. You never know – a technique or technology could come into existence and reveal a new scientific use for it."

As to the identity of the greatest treasures to be found within the walls of this scientific Hogwarts, there is, inevitably, disagreement. So the Observer asked some of the museum's personnel to name their favourites and explain why they have selected them.

Of course, opinions change over time and future generations will no doubt take a very different view – a point demonstrated by the museum's own walls. Waterhouse stipulated there should be carved images of living species on the west wing's walls while the east would only have those of extinct creatures. These included the coelacanth, then thought to be extinct, but which was discovered, very much alive, in 1934. As a result the coelacanth now finds itself commemorated on the wrong wall.

Museum of Life starts on Thursday

The diplodocus

Mike Dixon, director of the Natural History Museum

"It is hard to believe that the great skeleton of Dippy, our fossil diplodocus, has not always dominated the museum's entrance hall. The two look as if they had been made for each other: a vast cathedral-like space filled by that wonderful 26m-long skeleton of a long-extinct dinosaur. It is a sight that never fails to hypnotise youngsters when they first set foot in the museum.

"Yet we were without Dippy for the first 24 years of our existence. Indeed, it might never have ended up here at all had not King Edward VII asked for a copy of the newly discovered dinosaur when he visited the Carnegie Museum in America. Over the next 18 months, casts of the fossilised bones were made from five different diplodocus skeletons and shipped to Britain in 36 crates. Dippy was assembled and formally introduced to the public on 12 May, 1905, in the reptile gallery before ending up in the great hall in 1979.

"He has also changed over the years. For a long time we reckoned the diplodocus must have lumbered about in swamps because its body would have been too heavy to move about on dry land and would have needed water or mud for support. However, our ideas about sauropod dinosaurs have changed and we now believe they were much more dynamic and active than we had thought. So we have raised Dippy's head and also his tail, which would have acted as a counterbalance. Essentially, though, he is the same old Dippy that has entranced visitors to the museum for more than 100 years."

The Nakhla meteorite

Caroline Smith, curator of meteorites

"There are about 38,000 meteorites in museum and private collections in the world but this one is special because it's one of only a handful that are known to have come from another planet: Mars. About 12m years ago an asteroid or comet crashed on to Mars. The resulting blast blew pieces of rock into space and into orbit round the Sun. Then, in 1911, the Earth passed through that orbit and swept up some of those pieces of rock and these fell over the Nakhla area of Egypt. There was a fireball, a detonation and then a shower of stones. Locals claimed a dog was killed – which would have made the animal the only known victim of an interplanetary attack. However, the story is pretty suspect.

"The piece, which is a star specimen in our vault gallery, has a beautiful shiny black exterior. This is known as a fusion crust and was created by the intense heat of the meteorite's fiery passage through the atmosphere. Its interior is mostly a mixture of iron and magnesium silicates called pyroxene and olivine. Some scientists say they can see signs of fossil bacteria-like entities in the meteorite but I am not convinced. On the other hand, it is now clear some of that the minerals that make up the meteorite could only have been created in the presence of water. This shows that Mars – at least in the distant past – must have been a wet, fairly hospitable place."

Archaeopteryx

Angela Milner, research associate in the palaeontology department

"Archaeopteryx has unique, iconic importance for a very simple reason: it is a perfect example of evolution in action. It looks half-way between a bird and a small meat-eating dinosaur which, of course, is exactly what it is.

"It was found inside a piece of limestone in southern Germany and brought in 1862 to the museum, where Thomas Huxley recognised it is a transitional fossil that links modern birds with dinosaurs. Thus it became a key piece of evidence in the debate about natural selection. Our specimen is 147m years old and is the earliest known fossil of an animal that we can definitely call a bird. In other words, its lineage had only relatively recently evolved from dinosaur predecessors. It is wonderfully preserved despite the age, however. You can see its feathers in perfect detail.

"Archaeopteryx would have been about the size of a magpie and would have had a long tail like a magpie's. However, in its case this tail was made out of bone. Since then, birds have evolved tails that are made out of feathers. Intriguingly, we actually have two versions of this particular archaeopteryx. It was preserved in a slab of lithographic limestone which was split apart to reveal the bird inside.

"Both sides reveal detailed impressions of the bird. A copy of one is displayed in the earth gallery and another in the bird gallery."

The Broken Hill Skull

Chris Stringer, research leader of human origins at the museum

"This is a beautifully preserved skull of an early human being who we think lived about 300,000 years ago. It is also a fossil of special historical importance. In the 19th century, Charles Darwin had predicted science would show that the origins of humanity lay in Africa. But for the next 50 years the only fossils dug up were in Europe and Asia. The Broken Hill Skull – which was found in a mine in Zambia (then Rhodesia) in 1921 - changed that perspective and helped show our birthplace is, indeed, an African one. It has personal importance as well. When I saw a replica of the skull in the museum when I was a youngster, I was captivated, and decided, there and then, to study evolution.

"The skull of Broken Hill Man – we believe it is male from its size – was coated in ore when it was dug up. However, the huge brow-ridges over its eyes marked it out as special and it was sent to the museum.Today we now believe it belongs to a species called Homo heidelbergensis: big-brained, powerfully built hunter-gatherers who may also have been our direct ancestors.

"The skull – a replica is displayed in our human evolution gallery - also reveals clear evidence of illness among ancient people. It has a hole at the back which was probably caused by a small tumour or brain abscess which burst through the skull wall. However, to judge from the subsequent bone growth around the hole, this appears to have partly healed.

"In fact, it is more likely his teeth killed Broken Hill Man. These, and his upper jawbone, were riddled with abscesses that would have caused him immense pain and may even have led to the spread of a fatal infection."

The arapaima fish

Oliver Crimmen, lead curator in the fish group in the zoology department

"When I was young I was fascinated by the aquarium at London zoo and, in particular, by the tank that contained marine creatures from the Amazon. There was one fish, called the arapaima, which I thought was especially exciting. It was huge, around two metres, and looked truly spectacular.

"Then one day I found the tank had been closed and was being cleaned out. I never found out what happened to the arapaima – until I went to work for the Natural History Museum. There I came across a specimen preserved in alcohol. It was only when I checked the label that I discovered it had come from the zoo. It was, in fact, the very fish that had drawn me to the aquarium a decade earlier and begun my fascination with marine biology. The arapaima seems to have haunted my life.

"In fact, it is a really intriguing fish – not just because of its unusual size. For example, the adult arapaima looks after its young by keeping a shoal of them in its mouth to protect them. The fish is also rare in that it breathes oxygen from the water - and from the air.

"Unfortunately, the arapaima is easily harpooned because of its size and because it swims near the surface. As a result, it is suffering a serious loss of numbers in the wild. On the other hand, it is also being bred today in fish farms. I doubt if I could eat one though."

Darwin's pigeon

Jo Cooper, curator of anatomical collections in the museum's bird group

"Charles Darwin collected many bird specimens on his voyage on the Beagle. However, his research had only just begun when he returned to Britain in 1836. Still seeking evidence years later, he began studying domestic animals – and the pigeon turns out to be a surprising favourite. Darwin brought together many different breeds of the bird – which helped to demonstrate the general point that a wide variety of animals can be created from a single originating type. Between 1855 and 1858, Darwin devoted a large part of his time to pigeon breeding – just as fellow scientists, such as Charles Lyell and Joseph Hooker, were pressing him to publish his ideas about evolution. Just write something - 'pigeons, if you please' - but make sure you get your theory into print, Lyell urged.

"Then, in 1858, Darwin got a letter from Alfred Russel Wallace outlining his own version of natural selection, and he dropped everything to write On The Origin of Species. Crucially, this includes many observations about domestic animals – including the pigeon. Later Darwin left his pigeon specimens to the museum and these have turned out to be some of the best preserved items in all his collections. My favourite is a skeleton that has been carefully labelled, in Darwin's own handwriting, and dates back to 1856, just when his ideas about natural selection were crystallising. It is not on permanent display but it is usually included in most, behind-the-scenes tours of the museum."

Source: Science news, comment and analysis | guardian.co.uk | 13 Mar 2010 | 5:06 pm

The world's smallest sea horse

Hippocampus satomiae, little bigger than a pea, has been found on reefs in Indonesia

Little bigger than a pea, the smallest known sea horse, Hippocampus satomiae, was discovered at a depth of about 15 metres on reefs in Indonesia, from Derawan island to northern Sulawesi and Borneo. Like other pygmy sea horses, its size and camouflage make it difficult to spot. This species resembles, in texture and colour, the sea fans with which it lives. It has a pouch in which it carries its young, which are only 3mm in length. Animal names ending in -ae honour women, in this case Satomi Onishi, a diving guide who collected the first specimen.

Quentin Wheeler International Institute for Species Exploration, Arizona State University, www.species.asu.edu/

Source: Science news, comment and analysis | guardian.co.uk | 13 Mar 2010 | 5:05 pm

Selling off Africa's resources isn't 'development'. It's greed | The big issue

Governments rich and poor have failed to support smallholder farmers in the developing world

Sovereign African governments are complicit in the new scramble for Africa ("How food and water drive a new foreign land grab in Africa", News). The result will be recently disenfranchised farmers working for wages. Oil supplies are being depleted and soon the major land grab in Africa will be to grow sugar cane and palm oil to keep the gas guzzlers running. The African governments may call it development but the fact is they are selling off their resources to line their own pockets – just as the chiefs once sold off their human resource.

Vali Jamal

Nairobi, Kenya

One billion people live with hunger and there are more than 100 million hungry people today than there were 18 months ago. This is in stark contrast to the global promise to halve world hunger by 2015.

Governments rich and poor have failed to support smallholder farmers in the developing world. Between 1980 and 2006, aid to agriculture was cut almost in half with disastrous effects. Some 50m hectares of fertile land in developing countries have now been acquired or are being negotiated to grow food crops and biofuels, most of which will be exported to richer nations. To put that into perspective, ActionAid estimates that 50m hectares could be the equivalent of some 75-100m tonnes of maize if grown in East Africa. This would be enough to feed the 1 billion hungry people for about four months of every year. The right kind of investment can end hunger, but these landgrabs will only make things worse.

Meredith Alexander,

Head of Trade & Corporates,

ActionAid

London N19

What is wrong with turning Africa into the "food basket" for parts of the world that do not have sufficient land to feed their people? When farms in the UK sold out to the Dutch farmers, were we being "colonised" by the Dutch? Most of these African countries do not have the finance or technical knowledge to carry out development. The statement that hundreds of people lose their jobs is not quite accurate, as, although the farmer whose land has been "grabbed" may not till his subsistence farm, he is employed in the packing areas, tractor driving, irrigation etc, so all is not bad.

Peter Heal

Clare, Suffolk

Unlike in the past, African nations are not being compelled at gunpoint to cede their land to foreign invaders. The socio-political context of some African countries such as Ghana or Mali is propitious enough for civil society groups to ensure that before deals are signed, the locals' interests are safeguarded.

In Ethiopia, Sudan and other repressive African countries, the presence of foreign investors is not the problem. The problem lies in the existence of dictatorial governments. They know that they do not need the support or approval of their people to perpetuate themselves in power, as they rely on foreign aid, funds and support to do so. As a result, they do not hesitate to subordinate their people's interests and needs to those of foreigners.

Sylvie Aboa-Bradwell

Executive director, African Peoples Advocacy

Gillingham, Kent

The key to a land grab is its title. Who owns the land? Actually, nobody, and everybody. Customarily, land in Africa is not held in title by any single person, but by its population's consensual usage of it. The country's government might think it "owns" the land, but it certainly does not. What it does "own" is the power to arbitrarily decree to itself title to land previously untitled, and the power to enforce that title, to the great detriment of the people who are living on it, and who won't be living on it (and off it) for very much longer.

Then, where do they go, and what do they do? Lorenzo Cotula says: "Lack of transparency... opens the door to corruption." Get real, pal. The door's already wide open.

Hugh Edwards

Benbecula

Outer Hebrides

Source: Science news, comment and analysis | guardian.co.uk | 13 Mar 2010 | 5:05 pm

Jon Venables and dangerous dogs have more in common than you think

Animal stories and murders are interesting, but people read about them to be entertained, not because you can infer something important from them

Everyone likes an animal story. They fill up the nooks and crannies of newspapers like socks in a tightly packed suitcase. On TV, they're a grace note between the empathic rage brought on by proper news and the despair induced by the weather.

Ducks that deliver letters, cats that like dogs, chimpanzees that play scrabble, squirrels that conquer assault courses and pandas that refuse to copulate. From the geese saving the capitol, to some chickens murdering a fox last week, they've always raised an eyebrow, albeit over a slightly glazed eye. Like Harry Potter and The One Show, they're what passes for a massive hit in the 21st century: something to which nobody particularly objects.

Why don't we scream "Stop telling me about some donkey that can count! I don't care! It doesn't matter!"? Until donkeys discover calculus or a gerbil finds the Higgs Boson, save it for an episode of Animals Do the Funniest Things, because all any of this really shows is that contact with the weird sophistication of human society can blow an animal's tiny mind. The parrot that squawks the national anthem and the pitbull that savages a toddler are two sides of the same coin of bestial confusion.

This last type of animal story is increasingly common, with more than 100 people admitted to hospital every week after being attacked by dogs, hardly any of which subsequently said "Sausages!" This doesn't surprise me. It seems to me there are more dogs about nowadays, and I don't think that's just an effect of getting older, like shadow chancellors looking younger. I'm convinced dog shit is back to early-80s levels and every street corner seems to have a scrawny teenager idly texting with one hand while a slavering wolf strains on a bit of string from the other.

So last week the government proposed a raft of new measures to deal with the problem, including the notion that every dog owner should have to take out insurance to cover the consequences of their dog attacking someone. That doesn't make me feel any safer. I want dog owners to be thinking: "If my dog bites anyone, I'm for the high jump!" not: "Whatever Killer does, I'm covered." The fact that I'd get a guaranteed cash bonus do

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esn't make me any keener to be penetrated by a Pedigree Chum-caked fang.

It's insurance against irresponsibility. Where would it end? Adding 20p to the price of every pint of lager to cover your costs in case you glass someone later? Putting 10% on parking fines to deal with any issues arising from traffic wardens being bludgeoned to death? Still, it was the first animal story to arouse my interest since some wag at the BBC website came up with the headline: "Great tits cope well with warming". I clicked on that like a sucker and now I'm a little better informed about the challenges facing the RSPB.

But the news isn't just about informing people of things that matter. It's also about entertainment. That's why they're called stories. Everyone likes a story before bedtime – some are funny, some are sweet, some are scary. Which brings me to Jon Venables.

The main reason that Jon Venables's reincarceration has been all over the papers is that people enjoy reading about it – it's another episode in a horrific but gripping story. The parts of people's brains that it engages are, largely, the same parts that are turned on by a harrowing but compelling movie, and not a million miles away from those that flicker into life at an episode of Midsomer Murders.

Saying this is probably going to piss some people off. They could claim that I'm accusing them of enjoying child murder. Of course I'm not. But I am saying that many of us enjoy hearing the ghoulish details of horrible crimes, whether they're real or not. Newspapers have always sold copies by sensationalising small-scale atrocities, and that's fine. It's perfectly possible to be appalled by a crime and its consequences – genuinely to empathise for the victims – and still to find hearing more about it fun. There's no harm in that.

The harm only comes when we're dishonest about our reasons for wanting to find out about it – when we lie to ourselves that we're reading about a crime only with heavy-hearted regret and to keep ourselves informed of important events. The Venables/Thompson/Bulger horrors aren't important events – they're just interesting ones. They're a bizarre and awful series of incidents – of a kind that hardly ever happen but, on a planet populated by billions, are occasionally bound to – from which almost nothing coherent or useful can be inferred. They are no more globally consequential than Josef Fritzl on the one hand, or the Bristol zoo rhino having triplets on the other.

Except of course I'm forgetting the cracking public debate about rehabilitation of criminals that the Venables speculation has spawned. That's something which all the supporters of throwing keys away have got enthusiastically stuck into, shaking their heads at the naivety of the advocates of mercy. But the Venables case is so horrifying, unusual and unrepresentative, such an outlier on the graph, that making it the focus of a discussion about how convicted criminals should be treated not only perilously weights the debate against clemency but is logically absurd. You may as well cite Adolf Hitler as a reason for not encouraging children to paint.

Newspapers are fond of giving different sorts of story, like sport, fashion or finance, their own section. Well, they need a new one, separate from news, to which I'm giving the working title: "Interesting Things that Aren't Important". It would be for celebrity stomach staples, animal hilarity, the guy with the record-breaking number of Christmas lights and anecdotes about gruesome criminals.

That's where the Venables reporting belongs, next to Ashley Cole's indiscretions, not Michael Foot's achievements – with the world's biggest pizza, not its most destructive earthquake. That way we can be gripped and appalled by it without being lured into thinking that, other than to the handful of people tragically involved, it's particularly significant.

Source: Science news, comment and analysis | guardian.co.uk | 13 Mar 2010 | 5:05 pm

As Video Games Become Ubiquitous, So Do Hand Health Problems (LiveScience.com)

LiveScience.com - In gaming, a few seconds of uninterrupted rest or the simultaneous application of the entire contents of a first aid kit can heal most injuries. However, the ever-increasing numbers of gamers, their crossing of both age and gender boundaries, and the hours they put into their namesake activity can lead to some real world consequences to their health that can't be cured with a bottled fairy.

Source: Yahoo! News: Science News | 13 Mar 2010 | 2:32 pm

Former astronauts criticize US moon decision (AP)

AP - Two former astronauts have said they are disappointed with the U.S. government's decision to cancel NASA's moon landing program.
Source: Yahoo! News: Science News | 13 Mar 2010 | 1:50 pm

Comet-Kaze Strikes The Sun

The SOHO observatory catches a comet crashing into the sun.
Source: Discovery News - Top Stories | 13 Mar 2010 | 11:53 am

Why Do We Have Daylight Savings Time?

It's a question people are probably more likely to ask themselves this time of year when we go to bed and then lose an hour. It can feel wildly unfair for the clock to say 7:00 a.m. when it actually ...
Source: Discovery News - Top Stories | 13 Mar 2010 | 11:43 am

Bluefin tuna tops CITES conference agenda in Doha (AP)

AP - A contentious battle between Asia and the West over the fate of the Atlantic bluefin tuna prized by sushi lovers overshadowed a United Nations conference that opened Saturday in the Gulf state of Qatar.

Source: Yahoo! News: Science News | 13 Mar 2010 | 11:29 am

As Video Games Become Ubiquitous, So Do Hand Health Problems

We investigate the causes of Carpal Tunnel Syndrome and more gaming-related injuries, as well as prevention
Source: Livescience.com | 13 Mar 2010 | 10:31 am

'World's Strongest Chicken' Pulls Chariot

The alleged "world's strongest chicken" is appearing at a Green Bay rodeo where he will pull trainer and rodeo clown Rory Meeks in a specially designed chicken chariot.
Source: Discovery News - Top Stories | 13 Mar 2010 | 8:57 am

Climate change adverts draw mild rebuke from advertising watchdog

Leaked adjudication largely clears government over campaign that some thought 'scary, inaccurate and too political'

Read the full text of the ASA adjudication

The advertising watchdog has mildly rebuked the government over the phrasing of a claim in two advertisements on the danger of climate change, while dismissing the rest of the complaints against the controversial television and newspaper campaign.

The campaign, run by the Department of Environment and Climate Change last winter, brought in 939 complaints. Various groups said the adverts were political, too scary, and factually misleading.

The vast majority of these complaints have now been dismissed by the authority.

The Advertising Standards Authority's only criticism was that a claim that "flooding, heat waves and storms will become more frequent and intense" should have be phrased more tentatively.

The environment secretary, Ed Miliband, said the authority had "comprehensively vindicated" the accuracy of the department's TV advert and had rebuffed those who attempted to use the advertising standards process to question the reality of man-made climate change.

"Science tells us it is more than 90% likely there will be more extreme weather events if we don't act.

"In any future campaign, as requested by the ASA, we will make clear the nature of this prediction."

Source: Science news, comment and analysis | guardian.co.uk | 13 Mar 2010 | 7:41 am

Read the ASA adjudication on climate change adverts

Ruling leaked to the Guardian mildly rebukes government over print and TV campaign

Source: Science news, comment and analysis | guardian.co.uk | 13 Mar 2010 | 7:39 am

Mysterious Speed Record May Explain Mystery of Sun (SPACE.com)

SPACE.com - A new study reports that the top of the gigantic conveyor belt of plasma moving inside the sun has been running at record-high speeds for the past five years.
Source: Yahoo! News: Science News | 13 Mar 2010 | 5:01 am