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Scientists at the University of California, San Diego School of Medicine report that regeneration of central nervous system axons can be achieved in rats even when treatment delayed is more than a year after the original spinal cord injury...

Longer Toes And Shorter Legs Make You A Faster Runner Having longer toes and shorter legs increases your chances of being a fast runner, claim scientists. By Richard Alleyne, Science Correspondent 30 Oct 2009 Researchers found that sprinters had 12 per cent longer toes than their slower counterparts of the same height. Researchers found that sprinters had 12 per cent longer toes - around half an inch on average - than their slower counterparts of the same height. However the lower legs of speedy runners were shorter - about six per cent shorter on average - than more sluggish members...

The multiyear ice covering the Arctic Ocean has effectively vanished, a startling development that will make it easier to open up polar shipping routes, an Arctic expert said on Thursday. Vast sheets of impenetrable multiyear ice, which can reach up to 80 meters (260 feet) thick, have for centuries blocked the path of ships seeking a quick short cut through the fabled Northwest Passage from the Atlantic to the Pacific. They also ruled out the idea of sailing across the top of the world. But David Barber, Canada's Research Chair in Arctic System Science at the University of Manitoba, said...

-- All-New Episodes to Air Beginning Wednesday, January 20, 2010, at 9 PM (ET/PT) -- (Silver Spring, Md.) Science Channel has commissioned renowned production company LMNO Cable Group for six all-new episodes of the network's hit special METEORITE MEN. As production continues, the series will chronicle modern day treasure hunters Geoff Notkin and Steve Arnold as they traverse North America in search of rare, lost pieces of our universe. METEORITE MEN is scheduled to debut Wednesday, January 20, 2010, at 9 PM (ET/PT). Notkin and Arnold have searched the world for remnants of meteorites for years. The duo uses inventive,...

Believers in Intelligent Design have often been scorned as being opposed to science, but science itself is showing that it is the evolutionists who are opposed to rational inquiry.Though The New American has no official position on evolution, we have published a number of articles over the years pointing to flaws in the theory and arguing for academic freedom on the subject. We did this most recently in "Allow Intelligence" (May 12, 2008 issue), our very favorable review of Ben Stein's documentary Expelled. In the following article, Selwyn Duke suggests that it's possible to believe in both an evolution of...

Can we reliably, efficiently, and economically store energy to make solar and wind power viable options to replace fossil-fuel or nuclear plants?Few things get our attention more quickly than a loss of electric power. Many of our activities cease the instant energy from a generator many miles away stops supplying the electricity to light our homes or businesses, run our computers, lift our elevators, operate the industrial machinery on which our food supply depends, and countless other labor-saving tasks. While just a slap in the face at first, after a few hours, as food begins to spoil, sewage begins to...

...The hormone fuels sex-drive in both men and women and is associated with competitiveness and dominance.Prior research has shown that high levels of testosterone are also linked to risky behaviour such as gambling or excessive drinking.Scientists in the US measured the amount of testosterone in saliva samples taken from 500 male and female MBA business students at the University of Chicago.Participants in the study were asked to play a computer game that evaluated their attitude towards risk.A series of questions allowed them to choose between a guaranteed monetary reward or a risky lottery with a higher potential pay-out... play safe......

A husband and wife team of paleontologists has discovered a newfound species of armored dinosaur that lived 112 million years ago in what is now Montana. The duo, Bill and Kris Parsons of the Buffalo Museum of Science in New York, spotted the dinosaur's skull on the surface of a hillside in Montana in 1997. Over the next few years, they retrieved more of the now nearly complete skull along with skin plates, rib fragments, a vertebra and a possible limb bone from the dinosaur species. Now called Tatankacephalus cooneyorum, the beast is a type of ankylosaur, or a group...

Credit: Froese et al. 2009. The Klondike region of the Canadian Arctic isn't often thought of as an oasis for life. Today, the area is best known for its vast frozen wilderness, its goldfields, and as the namesake of a popular chocolate-coated ice cream treat. However, new research shows that the Klondike goldfields of Canada's Yukon Territory hold key records of a past environment that was much different than the harsh climate experienced by today's explorers, ice truckers and miners. The Klondike is part of a wider geographic area dubbed "Beringia," which includes parts of Siberia, Alaska and the Canadian...

The Swiss company ReVolt, from Staefa, plans to release the new batteries next year, initially as small batteries for use in hearing aids, and later for cell phones. Eventually much larger batteries are planned for electric vehicles. The new battery was developed in Trondheim in Norway by the SINTEF Group, the largest independent research institution in Scandinavia, and ReVolt was formed to market the device. Zinc-air batteries need oxygen from the air to generate the current. They are safer than lithium-ion batteries because they do not contain volatile materials, and therefore do not catch fire. Non-rechargeable zinc-air batteries have been...

We expect that the next fifteen days will be characterized by average amounts (70-130 percent) of activity relative to climatology. These new 15-day forecasts have replaced the monthly forecasts that we have been issuing in recent years.

The study, conducted by Aletha Akers, M.D., M.P.H., assistant professor of gynecology and reproductive sciences at the University of Pittsburgh School of Medicine, and colleagues, further links girls at weight extremes with an increased risk for engaging in sexual risk-taking behaviors. "This study will contribute to sexual health education prevention efforts, which can be tailored to address how cultural norms regarding body size may influence adolescent sexual decision making. Knowing how a girl perceives her weight may be just as important as knowing her actual weight," noted Dr. Akers. Of the nearly 7,200 high school girls asked about their sexual...

As we recently noted, Stephen Hawking has stepped down from the Lucasian Chair at Cambridge. The chair didn't stay empty for long. It has been announced that Michael Green will become the new Lucasian Professor. Green is one of the pioneers of string theory, and is already at Cambridge. I'm not sure he even switches offices, or chairs for that matter. Hawking did seminal work in general relativity. He proved a number of singularity theorems (with Roger Penrose). He wrote The Large Scale Structure of Spacetime (with George Ellis). John Wheeler conjectured that quiescent black holes have "no hair" (i.e.,...

As promised, Brian Cox was on The Colbert Report last night, and hit it out of the park. The whole show was better than average (which is saying a lot) but Brian truly rocked! If you missed it (and live in the States) the whole episode is online (Brian's segment is about 13:50 into the episode). Comedy Central won't allow embedding the whole show (sigh), and Brian's segment isn't separated out on the CC site, but right before he was on Colbert ragged on physics and the LHC... In the full segment, they talk about Brian's book Why E=mc2, which...

Scientific Conference Refuting Evolution Theory to be held in Rome, Italy November 9, 2009 9:30 a.m. to 5:00 p.m. St. Pius V University (Rome) Remnant Press Release FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE - OCTOBER 20, 2009CONTACT: H. M. OWEN (U.S.), noevolutioninfo@gmail.com or PETER WILDERS (Europe), wilderspeter@gmail.com The Scientific Impossibility of Evolution  November 9, 2009 9:30 a.m. to 5:00 p.m. St. Pius V University (Rome) In Response to Pope Benedict XVI’s Call for Both Sides to be Heard The 150th anniversary of Darwin’s "Origin of the Species" in November 2009 will be the occasion for a unique conference at Pope Pius V...

When the Fermi team did the calculations, using the most conservative estimates for how astrophysics plays into this, they determined that the mass scale must be at least 1.2 times the Planck mass, and by using reasonable but less conservative assumptions, they derived lower limits on the mass scale of up to 100 times the Planck mass. One way to interpret this is to say that there is no variation of the speed of light coming from any quantum gravity effects at less than 1.2 times the Planck mass. And given that some quantum gravity frameworks predict that effects should...

Many of the world's favourite ingredients have more to offer than just flavour, says Ned Stafford. Many also show health benefitsGarlicTo stink or not to stink, that's often the question when deciding how much garlic to pep up your dinner with. A few years ago, health-conscious cooks might also have wondered whether eating garlic would improve their health, or if such claims were just hype. Any such doubts have now been laid to rest by hundreds of scientific studies confirming garlic's powerful medicinal properties.'Garlic is one of the most researched medicinal plants ever - its health benefits are not anecdotal,...

PARIS (AFP) – It took 13 billion years to reach Earth, but astronomers have seen the light of an exploding mega-star that is the most distant object ever detected, two studies published Thursday reported. The stunning gamma-ray burst (GRB) was observed by two teams of researchers in April, and opens a window onto a poorly known period when the Universe was in its infancy.

<p>Wonder at the impressive technological prowess of the genius engineers at NASA, as brave Ares launches. Be amazed at the sheer beauty of the mighty rocket as it it breaks the sound barrier, thundering the skies of this glorious nation.</p> <p>OK, so it looks like a flying condom.</p>

People with gene variant perform more than 20 percent worse on driving test Bad drivers may in part have their genes to blame, suggests a new study by UC Irvine neuroscientists. People with a particular gene variant performed more than 20 percent worse on a driving test than people without it - and a follow-up test a few days later yielded similar results. About 30 percent of Americans have the variant. "These people make more errors from the get-go, and they forget more of what they learned after time away," said Dr. Steven Cramer, neurology associate professor and senior author...

When it comes to beauty products, sometimes ignorance is bliss. Snake venom, bird droppings, snail serum, cow dung and whale vomit are but a few of the industry's extreme and off-putting ingredients that one might be shocked to know can be slathered about your body. Hair products are no exception to this somewhat creepy phenomenon. Consumers hoping for a hair miracle are willing to pay extra for deep conditioners and conditioning "treatments" that promise an enviable crowning glory -- even when they contain rather odd-seeming ingredients such as placenta, caviar and hemp. Pushing the limits, Hari's, a well-known "celebrity" salon...

When I was a kid, I remember a certain yearly Halloween ritual that didn't involve candy, costumes or door-to-door trick-or-treating. My father and I would walk down to the end of our driveway, screwdrivers in hand, and remove our mailbox from its post. After several years of living in our house in suburban Westchester County in New York, my father had decided that our mailbox had simply taken enough abuse. Every Halloween, the mischief-making teens in our neighborhood would fill all the mailboxes on our road with a variety of goopy, stinky material, including rotten eggs, shaving cream, toilet paper,...

U.S. and international air forces are becoming interested and open to utilizing off-the-shelf equipment in low-intensity, counter-insurgency and counter-drug operations in remote areas. The U.S. Navy is already evaluating an armed version of Embraer’s EMB-314 Super Tucano under a classified evaluation program known as ‘Imminent Fury’. The Navy is currently evaluating a single aircraft and is seeking a budget of $44 million to embark on a larger program. The Special Operations Command, Air Force and US Marine Corps are also interested in employing off the shelf assets for low-intensity Intelligence, Surveillance and Reconnaissance and rapid target engagement. Armed Super Tucanos...

Those of you who have gazed on the various images I've posted here will remember that I have a particular fondness for columnar basalt: the geological formation found at Devil's Tower, the Devil's Postpile, Svartifoss waterfall in Iceland, New York's Palisades, Giant's Causeway in Iceland, etc. There's actually a good list here, with some I hadn't known about before (I know, what a surprise!) Basalt Now, this picture and this feature might not constitute actual unusual geology; in fact, itÂ’s probably rather conventional, though it does result from a fortuitous combination of geological processes; and as you might guess, it...

Mikhail Simonov, designer of the iconic fighter jets Su-27 and Su-30, has been at the forefront of aircraft design for more than 50 years. To celebrate his 80th birthday this month, we hear from the man who gave Russia the edge in aerial combat.

IMAGE: Most indoor household dust that collects on furniture and floors actually comes from outdoors, a new study finds. Where does it come from? Scientists in Arizona are reporting a surprising answer to that question, which has puzzled and perplexed generations of men and women confronted with layers of dust on furniture and floors. Most of indoor dust comes from outdoors. Their report is scheduled for the Nov. 1 issue of ACS' Environmental Science & Technology, a semi-monthly journal. In the study, David Layton and Paloma Beamer point out that household dust consists of a potpourri that includes dead skin...

"Climate Change" is good. It brings the 4 seasons. "Global Warming" gave us the nothern states and Canada. Now the FACTS are, the Climate has been in a cooling cycle for 12 years now. Here in central California at 7:45 A.M. this morning the air temperature was 5 degrees above freezing or 37 F. Carbon tax that morons.

Chimp dies, others mourn. Interesting picture and story.

A butterfly species equipped with tiny ears on its wings can distinguish between high and low pitch sounds, possibly as a way to listen in on nearby birds, new research suggests. Scientists thought butterflies were deaf until 1912 when the first butterfly ears were identified. Only in the past decade or so have researchers examined the anatomy and physiology of butterfly ears, which they are finding to be quite diverse and present in several butterfly species. The latest discovery was made with the blue morpho butterfly (Morpho peleides), which dazzles with its bright-blue wing coloration when it flits about in...

Today we will attempt to launch the Space Shuttle replacement again... "today's launch is the first test of the Ares I rocket NASA is designing to carry astronauts after the space shuttle is retired. The unmanned test rocket, called Ares I-X, is powered only by a four-segment shuttle solid rocket booster. Everything above that is a mock-up." Wednesday October 28, 2009 6:46 James Dean

Japan's Tokai Challenger solar vehicle has taken victory against a strong international field in the 2009 Global Green Challenge. After covering almost 1860 miles (3000km) in four days across Australia's baking red center, the entry from Japan's Tokai University crossed the finish line at 3.39pm local time. The team's run was nearly flawless, reporting only a single flat tire with just over 100 miles of the course to race and the win breaks a string of four consecutive victories by the Dutch Nuon team, which is currently battling it out for second place against University of Michigan Solar Car Team....

Alexandria was founded by Alexander the Great in 331 B.C. The city sits on the Mediterranean coast at the western edge of the Nile delta. Its location made it a major port city in ancient times; it was also famous for its lighthouse (one of the Seven Wonders of the Ancient World) and its library, the largest in the ancient world. But in the past few years, scientists have found fragments of ceramics and traces of lead in sediments in the area that predate Alexander's arrival by several hundred years, suggesting there was already a settlement in the area (though...

GPS device can track children Updated: Tuesday, 27 Oct 2009, 12:13 AM EDT Published : Tuesday, 27 Oct 2009, 12:13 AM EDT KELLY JOYCE | FOX 35 News ORLANDO, Fla. (WOFL FOX 35) - A GPS device the size of your pinky finger is about to hit store shelves and the web. Some parents say it's a good way to keep track of children given all of the children disappearing in central Florida. The "insignia little buddy tracker" is a Best Buy brand GPS system that's about to hit store shelves. It's already drawn so much interest it's on back...

The original makers of Côtes-du-Rhône are said to have descended from Greek explorers who settled in southern France about 2500 years ago... The study, by Prof Paul Cartledge, suggested the world's biggest wine industry might never have developed had it not been for a "band of pioneering Greek explorers" who settled in southern France around 600 BC. His study appears to dispel the theory that it was the Romans who were responsible for bringing viticulture to France. The study found that the Greeks founded Massalia, now known as Marseilles, which they then turned into a bustling trading site, where local...

Egypt's chief archaeologist, Zahi Hawass, announced that his country wanted its queen handed back forthwith, unless Germany could prove that the 3,500-year-old bust of Akhenaten's wife wasn't spirited illegally out of Egypt nearly a century ago... Then he said he was sure the work had been stolen... Mr. Hawass also recently fired a shot at France, demanding the Louvre return five fresco fragments it purchased in 2000 and 2003 from a gallery and at auction. They belonged to a 3,200-year-old tomb near Luxor and had been in storage at the museum. Egypt had made the demand before, but this time...

NEW SPECIES PICTURES: 850 Underground Creatures Found The newfound blind cave fish Milyeringa veritas, seen above, inhabits the same Cape Range aquifers as a blind cave eel found during the same survey of Australia's underground habitats. The only blind cave fish known in Australia, the 2-inch-long (5.1-centimeter-long) species is "remarkably versatile," living in freshwater or seawater in underground coastal regions during various stages of its life, researchers say."

Dinosaur experts in Dorset, England, are examining the fossilized skull of a sea monster so large they say it could have eaten a Tyrannosaurus rex for breakfast.

Man can indeed create life, vitalism arguments laid to restThroughout the centuries vitalism remained the dominant philosophy.  Many reasoned that there was something inherently unique to life, impossible to recreate.  Modern science, however, has shown that the makeup of a living organism is nothing more than a complex mix of biochemicals. Now a major scientific breakthrough has been made that may have profound impact on scientific research, and even how we view life itself.  John Craig Venter, founder of the The Institute for Genomic Research and the J. Craig Venter Institute, has, at last, achieved what he has been trying...

Two physicists who debunk global warming as a result of man - made carbon emissions.

LONDONDERRY TOWNSHIP, DAUPIN COUNTY - The Three Mile Island Nuclear Power station shut down its unit one reactor on Monday capping off a record run. The unit one reactor broke the world record for the longest continuous days of operation for all pressurized water reactors. The Dauphin County based plant operated for 705 days before shutting down for a scheduled refueling and maintenance outage on Monday. The old record of 692 days was set earlier this year by a nuclear power plant in Maryland. "We don't really set out to break world records, but they're a result of what we...

The fossilised skull of a colossal "sea monster" has been unearthed along the UK's Jurassic Coast. The ferocious predator, which is called a pliosaur, terrorised the oceans 150 million years ago. The skull is 2.4m long, and experts say it could belong to one of the largest pliosaurs ever found: measuring up 16m in length. The fossil, which was found by a local collector, has been purchased by Dorset County Council. It was bought with money from the Heritage Lottery Fund, and it will now be scientifically analysed, prepared and then put on public display at Dorset County Museum. Palaeontologist...

Drainage work in the construction of the second runway has been moved as a resultThe oldest Phoenician remains yet to be found in Málaga have been unearthed at the airport as land was moved as part of the construction of the second runway.

“There is a likely chance of tsunami waves reaching the shores of Israel,” says Dr. Beverly Goodman of the Leon H. Charney School of Marine Sciences at the University of Haifa following an encompassing geo-archaeological study at the port of Caesarea. “Tsunami events in the Mediterranean do occur less frequently than in the Pacific Ocean, but our findings reveal a moderate rate of recurrence,” she says. Dr. Goodman, an expert geo-archaeologist, exposed geological evidence of this by chance. Her original intentions in Caesarea were to assist in research at the ancient port and at offshore shipwrecks. “We expected to find...

No matter what conclusions one gravitates towards regarding climate change and potential solar impacts, the data is irrefutable: the sun is slowly becoming more active. The 10.7cm radio flux spiked in late September with its highest reading in 18 months; now, and this is very significant compared to the pattern since March 2008, it has spiked again, exceeding the late September number and reaching a Cycle 24 maximum of 76.9. This is still a very low value compared to the solar maximum flux numbers, which routinely exceed 200. However, it is an upward move from the “basement” numbers of the...

Meet the newest odd couple of the animal kingdom: the giant female and tiny male of the largest web-spinning spider known to science: Nephila komaci. The female of the species has a leg span of up to 5 inches (12 centimeters), while the male—which spends much of its time clambering on its partner's back—barely reaches an inch (2.5 centimeters), a new study says.Part of a well-known group of golden orb-weaver spiders—which can spin webs up to three feet (one meter) wide—N. komaci was first identified in a South African museum collection in 2000. But it wasn't until a 2007 field...

The tiniest dinosaur in North America weighed less than a teacup Chihuahua, a new study says. Seen above as an artist's reconstruction in front of a Tyrannosaurus rex skull at the Natural History Museum of Los Angeles County in California, the agile Fruitadens haagarorum was just 28 inches (70 centimeters) long and weighed less than two pounds (one kilogram). The diminutive dinosaur likely darted among the legs of larger plant-eaters such as Brachiosaurus and predators such as Allosaurus about 150 million years ago, during the late Jurassic period. Parts of the skulls, vertebrae, arms, and legs from four F. haagarorum...

LONDON (Reuters) – The amazing eyes of a giant shrimp living on Australia's Great Barrier Reef could hold the key to developing a new type of super high-quality DVD player, British scientists said on Sunday. Mantis shrimps, dubbed "thumb splitters" by divers because of their vicious claws, have the most complex eyes in the animal kingdom. They can see in 12 primary colors, four times as many as humans, and can also detect different kinds of light polarization -- the direction of oscillation in light waves.

BUENOS AIRES N.W.R., Arizona | Michael M. Hawkes, manager of the Buenos Aires National Wildlife Refuge, reaches across his desk and pulls out a homemade blue-and-red bumper sticker that reads, "Littering is always a crime." It turns out that here on the U.S.-Mexico border, even that is a controversial statement — because it's aimed at the humanitarian groups that drop gallon jugs of water on public lands to help illegal immigrants crossing the rugged borderlands.

Gene Therapy Transforms Eyesight Of 12 People With Rare Visual Defect A single injection in a patient's eye brings 'astounding' results. The findings may offer hope for those with macular degeneration and retinitis pigmentosa. Thomas H. Maugh II October 24, 2009 Pennsylvania researchers using gene therapy have made significant improvements in vision in 12 patients with a rare inherited visual defect, a finding that suggests it may be possible to produce similar improvements in a much larger number of patients with retinitis pigmentosa and macular degeneration. The team last year reported success with three adult patients, an achievement that was...

Being billed as the most comprehensive exhibition about the Vandal civilisation ever, a new show about the notorious Germanic tribe opens on Friday at Baden's state museum in Karlsruhe.The word “vandal” these days is associated with acts of senseless violence and destruction. However, this new exhibition explores the history behind the actual Vandals, a Germanic civilisation that stretched across Eastern Europe to North Africa in the 5th century. "The Vandal Kingdom" hopes to offer visitors a new perspective on this unfamiliar culture and infamous word. > Despite the Vandals' terrible reputation, Wenzel said the violence they administered across much of...