The state of California is embarking on a ground-breaking effort to curb global warming, following an agreement between Arnold Schwarzenegger, the state’s movie star Republican Governor, and the Democrat-dominated state legislature, to cut greenhouse gas emissions by 25 per cent by 2020
Gene therapy has eradicated cancer from two dying men using genetically modified versions of their own cells. Both were suffering from advanced melanoma but the technique could be customised to attack other common cancers
Engineers moved the giant statute of Pharaoh Ramses II from a congested square in downtown Cairo to its new home near the more peaceful Great Pyramids. Contractors moved the more than 3,200-year-old statue from Ramses Square in an effort to save it from exhaust fumes and other environmental hazards that were causing the 83-ton structure to deteriorate
Millions of textbooks and wall-charts across the world will have to be revised, after astronomers yesterday declared that Pluto could no longer be considered a planet. Under historic new guidelines, the solar system has shrunk from nine planets to eight. Scientists decided that tiny Pluto was too puny for its own gravity to pull its orbit into a nearly spherical shape — the orbit is erratic — and so could not be considered a classical planet. Instead, it will be reclassified in a new category of dwarf planets
. This leaves eight classical
planets in the solar system: Mercury, Venus, Earth, Mars, Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus and Neptune
It’s a big day for astrophysics. After much speculation, scientists now have conclusive proof of dark matter. This result doesn’t rule out alternate gravity theories like MOND, but it does mean those theories will have to account for exotic forms of dark matter
Some geologists are ticked off at the International Astronomical Union for using the word pluton
to describe a round object orbiting the sun with a period more than 200 years. A pluton, it seems, is a common type of rock formation that exists in most Geology 101 curricula. IAU head Owen Gingerich is quoted as saying that he was only peripherally aware of the definition, and because it didn’t show up on MS Word’s spell check, he didn’t think it was that important — via Slashdot
Scientists have found tasmanian devils in the state’s far north-west coast area remain cancer free, despite the spread of the disease across the rest of the state. In a recent survey, more than 100 devils were caught in the area over 10 days. Government wildlife biologist Clare Hawkins says not one was found to have the facial tumour disease, which has already wiped out about 40 per cent of the state’s devil population. Dr Hawkins believes the survey results, combined with a trial now under way, may provide avenues for keeping the north-west disease-free
Fourteen-year-old Ben Underwood of Sacramento, California, is one of the few people known to use echolocation as a primary means of navigating the world on land. There’s not even a hint of light reaching his brain. His eyes are artificial, but his brain has adapted to allow him to appraise his environment. He makes a clicking
sound to communicate with objects and people around him — via Warren Ellis
The first phase of clinical trials indicates China’s first AIDS vaccine is safe and possibly effective, government officials announced at the press conference after a two-month-odd assessment
Television screens and computer displays capable of producing a wider range of visible colours could someday be built incorporating tiny sections of electrically-activated polymer. This polymer contracts and relaxes, like a muscle, in response to a current
Entrepreneurs are creating companies that exploit the creative opportunities in other people’s junk, sparing the environment in the process
There will be at least 12 planets in our solar system, and probably many more, if a new definition of the word planet
is adopted. Next week the International Astronomical Union will vote on a draft definition of what distinguishes a planet from lesser space rocks. The new scheme would retain Pluto — previously threatened with ejection from the club — but it would also admit several new members, including the former asteroid Ceres, and even Charon, which until now has been classed as Pluto’s moon. Writers John Scalzi and Scott Westerfield have been having something of an on-going barney over whether or not Pluto is a planet and the whole thing resulted in Cthulhu adjudicating
Descendants of extinct mammals such as the giant woolly mammoth might one day walk the Earth again. It isn’t exactly Jurassic Park, but Japanese researchers are looking at the possibility of using sperm from frozen animals to inseminate living relatives.
Nuclear bombs can kill people even if they’re not used. In the US alone, the Department of Energy estimates that more than 2,500 billion litres of groundwater are contaminated with uranium as a consequence of nuclear weapons production. In Uranium ‘pearls’ before slime
, scientists from the Pacific Northwest National Laboratory say they discovered that some common bacteria could convert deadly heavy metal into less threatening nano-spheres
. In fact, these bacteria can convert soluble radioactive uranium into a non-toxic solid form called uraninite. Still, more research needs to be done before using these bacteria on a large scale, but it’s a step in the good direction. Read more for additional references and photos showing how Shewanella oneidensis can help us to decontaminate groundwater at nuclear waste sites — via Slashdot
Scientists in England have gathered definitive evidence that a kind of cancer in dogs, known as Sticker’s sarcoma, is contagious. It is spread by tumour cells getting passed from dog to dog through sex or from animals biting or licking each other. Robin Weiss and his colleagues did genetic studies on the tumour cells from 40 dogs with Sticker’s sarcoma, collected from five continents, which showed that all the tumour cells are clones of each other. The parent cell probably arose in a domesticated dog of Asian origin — perhaps a husky — hundreds of years ago, and perhaps more than 1,000 years ago. A similarly transmissible cancer has recently been discovered spreading through populations of Tasmanian devils
US scientists at Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory say detecting biowarfare agents will become a lot easier thanks to a new barcode
system based on biosensing nanowires
Researchers at the University of Washington have discovered a possible nonvolatile magnetic semiconductor and are investigating its use for spintronics
, an emerging technology that is concerned with manipulating and controlling the charge, flow and magnetism of electrons. The possibilities for the material cobalt green
, a paint developed by American Revolution era artists, as a spintronics material is exciting. Should the magnetic properties of the paint at room-temperature prove able to reliably control the wild spinning of excited electrons in a processor, not only could the size of processors reduce substantially, but the constant limiting factor, how to keep things cool, could disappear
Brazil has published a list of more than 5,000 generic terms from the Portuguese language related to Brazilian plant biological diversity to raise awareness and prevent further misuse of trademarks that hinder Brazilian exports. The Brazilian government has been, and is, involved in a number of trademark disputes with companies that, for example, take a name of a fruit in Brazilian Portuguese and trademark it to get exclusive rights to commercialise it under that name in a certain country or region. This hinders Brazilian exports, especially when it happens in larger markets, Cristiano Franco Berbert of the Permanent Mission of Brazil in Geneva told Intellectual Property Watch
French scientists demonstrated that seaweed, when burned to a crisp, is a great material for making supercapacitors that could provide more power than traditional batteries — via Boing Boing
A shape-shifting lens has been developed that alters its focal length when squeezed by an artificial muscle, rather like the lens in a human eye. The muscle, a ring of polymer gel, expands and contracts in response to environmental changes, eliminating the need for electronics to power or control the devices
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