Free Republic

Extra, extra read all about it (hat tip Andrew Bolt): Aliens may destroy humanity to protect other civilisations, say scientists Rising greenhouse emissions may tip off aliens that we are a rapidly expanding threat, warns a report for Nasa Is it April Fools’ Day, or is someone playing the alien card? The scare report was brought to us by the Guardian’s science correspondent, Ian Sample. One threat – preemptive strikes: The authors warn that extraterrestrials may be wary of civilisations that expand very rapidly, as these may be prone to destroy other life as they grow, just as humans have...

MINNEAPOLIS – U.S. scientists discovered a naturally-occurring agent that destroys the bacteria that cause meat, fish, eggs and dairy products to rot. Researchers at the University of Minnesota reported the discovery of bisin -- a naturally-occurring compound produced by some types of bacteria. The agent reduces the growth of bacteria including E. coli, salmonella and listeria and could lead to sandwiches that stay fresh for more than a year, The (London) Sunday Times reported

Robots will soon be able to feel heat or gentle touching on their surfaces. Researchers at Technische Universitaet Muenchen are now producing small hexagonal plates which when joined together form a sensitive skin for "machines with brains." This will not only help robots to better navigate in their environments, it will also enable robot self-perception for the first time. A single robotic arm has already been partially equipped with sensors and proves that the concept works.Our skin is a communicative wonder: The nerves convey temperature, pressure, shear forces and vibrations – from the finest breath of air to touch to...

Threats could have chilling effect on climate research, science group says By Andrew Restuccia - 06/29/11 10:39 AM ET Personal attacks — including legal challenges and even death threats — on climate scientists have created a “hostile environment” that could result in a “chilling effect” on much-needed research, one of the country’s leading scientific organizations said this week. The board of directors of the American Association for the Advancement of Science issued a rare statement Tuesday underscoring that it “vigorously opposes” personal attacks on climate scientists. It's the organization's strongest rebuke of efforts by conservative groups to criticize climate scientists....

Five Russian scientists who died in a plane crash on Tuesday had been helping Iran with nuclear secrets, it has been revealed. They were among 45 killed when the plane's lights failed in heavy fog and careered into a motorway before bursting into flames - leading conspiracy theorists to believe it was a deliberate plot to kill the nuclear experts. Russian security sources confirmed that the dead scientists worked at the controversial Bushehr nuclear plant on the Iranian Persian Gulf.

Cold shoulder for climate changeBy DARREN SAMUELSOHN | 5/24/11 4:28 AM EDT Climate scientists are in a tough spot. They have never been more certain about what they know. Powerful new satellites can hone in on mountainous regions to measure ice melt. Stronger computers model changes in disruptive weather patterns. Scientists are even more comfortable attributing climate change to visible effects around the globe, from retreating Himalayan glaciers to southwestern U.S. droughts and acidifying oceans. **SNIP** For instance, National Research Council members got a collective shrug earlier this month when they went to Capitol Hill to share their work —...

NEW YORK (CBSNewYork/AP) — Hate insects? Afraid of germs? Researchers are reporting an alarming combination: bedbugs carrying a staph “superbug.” Canadian scientists detected drug-resistant staph bacteria in bedbugs from three hospital patients from a downtrodden Vancouver neighborhood.

A rumor is floating around the physics community that the world's largest atom smasher may have detected a long-sought subatomic particle called the Higgs boson, also known as the "God particle." The controversial rumor is based on what appears to be a leaked internal note from physicists at the Large Hadron Collider (LHC), a 17-mile-long particle accelerator near Geneva, Switzerland. It's not entirely clear at this point if the memo is authentic, or what the data it refers to might mean — but the note already has researchers talking. The buzz started when an anonymous commenter recently posted an abstract...

The butcher. The baker. The Candlestick maker. They are not just three guys in a tub. They're probably tax cheats. Tax day comes three days late in 2011 on Monday, April 18th, instead of April 15th. But even after the deadline to file your taxes comes and goes, there will be hundreds of thousand of Americans who haven't fully paid what they owe to Uncle Sam. The annual tax gap is estimated at about $350 billion. That's the difference between what is owed in taxes every year and what gets paid on time. So who isn't paying? Scientists, it appears....

Scientists predict strong thirst for 'human milk'08:31, March 22, 2011 Genetically modified (GM) dairy products that are similar to human milk will appear on the Chinese market in two years, an expert in biotechnology has predicted. Li Ning, a scientist from the Chinese Academy of Engineering and director of the State Key Laboratories for AgroBiotechnology at China Agricultural University, said progress in the field is well under way. Li said Chinese scientists have successfully created a herd of more than 200 cows that is capable of producing milk that contains the characteristics of human milk. He said the technology is...

SALMON, Idaho (Reuters) – A trio of top solar scientists said on Wednesday they had solved the mystery behind the disappearance of sunspots, a phenomenon that has stumped astrophysicists worldwide for more than two centuries. The research, which will be published on Thursday in the journal Nature, shows that unusually weak magnetic fields on the sun paired with reduced solar activity cause sunspots to disappear. Sunspots appear to the human eye as dark spots on the sun, some as wide as 49,000 miles, according to NASA. They are caused by intense magnetic activity, or storms, on the sun's surface, which...

(PhysOrg.com) -- Wormholes are one of the stranger objects that arise in general relativity. Although no experimental evidence for wormholes exists, scientists predict that they would appear to serve as shortcuts between one point of spacetime and another. Scientists usually imagine wormholes connecting regions of empty space, but now a new study suggests that wormholes might exist between distant stars. Instead of being empty tunnels, these wormholes would contain a perfect fluid that flows back and forth between the two stars, possibly giving them a detectable signature. The scientists, Vladimir Dzhunushaliev at the Eurasian National University in Kazakhstan and coauthors,...

Japanese scientists believe they have the technology and know-how to create a living woolly mammoth, a clone of a species that died thousands of years ago. Finding a fully intact frozen woolly mammoth isn’t enough, it seems. Now, a professor at Kyoto University in Japan is planning to bring the species back from extinction through cloning, reports the AFP. Dr. Akira Iritani plans to insert the nuclei of mammoth cells into a modern elephant’s egg cell, creating a woolly mammoth embryo that will be brought to term by an elephant mother. The elephant was chosen because it is the nearest...

Despite the binary title, Science vs. Religion is about the need for greater nuance, informed communication, and mutual understanding within the complicated intertwining spaces of religious belief and scientific research. Using social science research methods, Ecklund aims to map the contours of religious belief and spirituality in the lives and minds of natural and social scientists at 21 elite research universities in the United States. Her research included 1,700 web and phone surveys and 275 personal interviews (and the survey instruments are included in the book). One of the dominant themes that emerges from this primary research is the extraordinary...

Proposed by British scientists as a joint effort of NASA and the European Space Agency, the mission would offer the first close-up view of Uranus in 25 years.British space scientists are leading plans to send a probe to explore giant ice planet Uranus. They have put forward a detailed proposal to the European Space Agency to launch a joint mission with NASA to the distant world, 1.8 billion miles from the sun. It would give scientists their first close-up views of Uranus since NASA’s Voyager 2 flew past and captured fleeting pictures 25 years ago. The £400million mission is designed...

HONG KONG (AFP) – The US' national archives occupy more than 500 miles (800 kilometres) of shelving; France's archives stretch for more than 100 miles of shelves, as do Britain's. Yet a group of students at Hong Kong's Chinese University are making strides towards storing such vast amounts of information in an unexpected home: the E.coli bacterium better known as a potential source of serious food poisoning. "This means you will be able to keep large datasets for the long term in a box of bacteria in the refrigerator," said Aldrin Yim, a student instructor on the university's biostorage project,...

ANCHORAGE, Alaska (AP) - Two groups of scientists are suggesting a sliver of hope for the future of polar bears in a warming world. A study published online Wednesday rejects the often used concept of a "tipping point," or point of no return, when it comes to sea ice and the big bear that has become the symbol of climate change woes. The study optimistically suggests that if the world dramatically changed its steadily increasing emissions of greenhouse gases, a total loss of critical summer sea ice for the bears could be averted. Another research group projects that even if...

What may be a new outermost layer of the Earth's core has been found, geoscientists have revealed. This discovery could help solve mysteries of the planet's magnetic field, researchers say. The Earth's core is composed mainly of iron, divided into a solid inner center roughly 1,500 miles (2,440 kilometers) wide covered by a liquid outer layer about 1,400 miles (2,250 km) thick. Even though the bulk of the core is iron, researchers also knew it contained a small amount of lighter elements such as oxygen and sulfur. As the inner core crystallized over time, scientists think this process forced out...

WE'RE NOT in the habit of writing movie reviews. But the recently released film "Fair Game" - which covers a poisonous Washington controversy during the war in Iraq - deserves some editorial page comment, if only because of what its promoters are saying about it. The protagonists portrayed in the movie, former diplomat Joseph C. Wilson IV and former spy Valerie Plame, claim that it tells the true story of their battle with the Bush administration over Iraqi weapons of mass destruction and Ms. Plame's exposure as a CIA agent. "It's accurate," Ms. Plame told The Post. Said Mr. Wilson:...

Which do you think is less expensive, not to mention preferable: a cure for cancer, Alzheimer's disease and diabetes, or caring for people with these diseases? Wouldn't it be better medical and public policy to direct more resources toward finding a cure for diseases that cost a lot to treat than to rely on a government insurance program, such as Obamacare, which seeks mainly to help pay the bills for people after they become ill? Isn't the answer obvious? Apparently not to many politicians trapped in an old paradigm that focuses too much on hospitals, doctors and medicines and too...