The BBC is to revamp its science coverage after an independent review highlighted weaknesses and concluded that journalists boosted the apparent controversy of scientific news stories such as climate change, GM crops and the MMR vaccine by giving too much weight to fringe scientific viewpoints — via redwolf.newsvine.com
A rare bog sun-jumper spider has been discovered at a nature reserve near Stirling.
The tiny creature — which has distinctive fluorescent green legs and mouthparts — has only been recorded at three other places in the UK — via redwolf.newsvine.com
The first step out of bed could have been a big one.
A woman in Guatemala City reports that a sinkhole, 40 feet deep and almost 3 feet across, opened under her bed Monday.
When we heard the loud boom we thought a gas canister from a neighbouring home had exploded, or there had been a crash on the street,
Inocenta Hernandez, 65, said in an Agence France-Presse report — via redwolf.newsvine.com
Scientists say they expect to soon restore sight to people suffering from one of the most common forms of blindness.
Amblyopia, or lazy eye, is the largest cause of single-eye blindness in adults affecting about 3 per cent of the population.
It can also cause the loss of vision in one eye in early childhood — via redwolf.newsvine.com
Pluto’s tiny new moon needs a real name.
Right now astronomers are using two boring designators for it – P4 and S/2011 P1.
Ironically, the body tasked with approving an official name for the new moon is the same one that stripped Pluto of its planet status in 2006 — the International Astronomical Union (IAU) — via redwolf.newsvine.com
In a shed in Richmond, surrounded by grazing cows and green pastures, police crime scene investigators are searching for murder weapons in an upturned lounge room.
Next door, Senior Constable John Smallgood is dusting for fingerprints in a child’s blood-spattered bedroom.
The crime scenes are both simulated, part of Australia’s first and only specially built forensic science facility. The joint venture between NSW Police and the University of Western Sydney was unveiled at the university’s Hawkesbury campus yesterday.
The centre has a classroom and five scenario rooms
. It will be used to train police officers and UWS forensic science students to navigate crime scenes ranging from backyards to illegal drug labs — via redwolf.newsvine.com
Stick insects have lived for one million years without sex, genetic research has revealed.
Scientists in Canada investigated the DNA of Timema stick insects, which live in shrubland around the west coast of the US.
They traced the ancient lineages of two species to reveal the insects’ lengthy history of asexual reproduction.
The discovery could help researchers understand how life without sex is possible — via redwolf.newsvine.com
Egypt’s antiquities minister has been fired after months of pressure from critics who attacked his credibility and accused him of having been too close to the regime of ousted president Hosni Mubarak.
Zahi Hawass, known for his trademark Indiana Jones hat, lost his job along with about a dozen other ministers in a Cabinet reshuffle meant to ease pressure from protesters seeking to purge remnants of Mr Mubarak’s regime — via redwolf.newsvine.com
The team led by Langer and Zeitels has now developed a polymer gel that they hope to start testing in a small clinical trial next year. The gel, which mimics key traits of human vocal cords, could help millions of people with voice disorders — not just singers such as Andrews and Steven Tyler, another patient of Zeitels’ — via redwolf.newsvine.com
Scientists are reporting development of a new approach for producing large quantities of human-derived gelatin that could become a substitute for some of the 300,000 tons of animal-based gelatin produced annually for gelatin-type desserts, marshmallows, candy and innumerable other products.
Their study appears in American Chemical Society’s Journal of Agriculture and Food Chemistry — via redwolf.newsvine.com
Scientists have proposed an intriguing new way to fight malaria: turning people into human time bombs for mosquitoes.
A cheap deworming pill used in Africa for 25 years against river blindness was recently shown to have a power that scientists had long suspected but never before demonstrated in the field: When mosquitoes bite people who have recently swallowed the drug — called ivermectin or Mectizan — they die — via redwolf.newsvine.com
Researchers from North Carolina State University have developed a memory device that is soft and functions well in wet environments — opening the door to a new generation of biocompatible electronic devices — via redwolf.newsvine.com
A gene has been linked to 70% of hard-to-treat breast cancers which are resistant to hormone therapies, in US research.
The study published in Nature used a new technique which tested hundreds of genes at once, rather than one at a time.
Scientists said there was a lot of potential for significant impact
if drugs could be developed.
Cancer Research UK said it would be interesting to see where the study led — via redwolf.newsvine.com
Four days on from Julia Gillard’s policy announcement, and the most striking characteristic of the carbon tax debate is just how closely it resembles a dozen drunken idiots trying to root a doorknob. Really, everyone needs a few deep breaths and a spell in the quiet corner — via redwolf.newsvine.com
The ability to breathe has been restored to mice with spinal cord injuries, in what US researchers describe as a medical first — via redwolf.newsvine.com
A half-male, half-female butterfly has hatched at London’s Natural History Museum.
A line down the insect’s middle marks the division between its male side and its more colourful female side.
Failure of the butterfly’s sex chromosomes to separate during fertilisation is behind this rare sexual chimera — via redwolf.newsvine.com
What happened in the basement of the psych building 40 years ago shocked the world. How do the guards, prisoners and researchers in the Stanford Prison Experiment feel about it now?
It began with an ad in the classifieds.
Male college students needed for psychological study of prison life. $15 per day for 1-2 weeks. More than 70 people volunteered to take part in the study, to be conducted in a fake prison housed inside Jordan Hall, on Stanford’s Main Quad. The leader of the study was 38-year-old psychology professor Philip Zimbardo. He and his fellow researchers selected 24 applicants and randomly assigned each to be a prisoner or a guard — via redwolf.newsvine.com
The Therapeutic Goods Administration (TGA) has issued a warning about the latest generation of oral contraceptive pill.
The British Medical Journal recently published two reports warning that women on the fourth generation pill are more likely to develop life-threatening blood clots.
The studies looked at pills containing drospirenone, marketed in Australia as Yasmin and Yaz — via redwolf.newsvine.com
Snails are able to survive intact after being eaten by birds, according to scientists.
Japanese white-eyes on the island of Hahajima, Japan feast on tiny land snails.
Researchers found that 15% of the snails eaten survived digestion and were found alive in the birds’ droppings.
This evidence suggests that bird predation could be a key factor in how snail populations spread
A bioluminescent mushroom that was first found in 1840 and later forgotten has been rediscovered and reclassified by a team at San Francisco State University.
British botanist George Gardner first described the glowing mushroom — which shines so brightly that you can read by it — on a trip to Brazil in 1840. He sent it to the Kew Herbarium where it was named agaricus gardneri. The species was not seen again until 2009. Now a team led by Dennis Desjardin have collected new samples of the forgotten mushroom and reclassified it as neonothopanus gardneri after careful examination of the mushroom’s anatomy, physiology and genetic pedigree. The team hopes that by studying the Brazilian mushroom and its other bioluminescent cousins, they will be able to shed light on how and why some fungi glow — via redwolf.newsvine.com
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