Free Republic

Scores of scientists work for the Interior Department on issues involving birds and bees, foxes and foxgloves, and all manner of other species and their habitats. But in the eyes of the general public they tend to be virtually anonymous, at best names in italics at the end of a Federal Register notice. Nonetheless, a spotlight has been trained recently on a few department employees: some National Park Service scientists at Point Reyes National Seashore on California’s northern coast, and an Arctic wildlife biologist working for the Anchorage office of the Bureau of Ocean Energy Management. And this week, two...

BRUSSELS (AP) — Warning: The warming of the world's oceans can cause serious illness and may cost millions of euros (dollars) in health care. That is the alarm sounded in a paper released online Tuesday on the eve of a two-day conference in Brussels. The 200-page paper is a synthesis of the findings of more than 100 projects funded by the European Union since 1998. It was produced by Project CLAMER, a collaboration of 17 European marine institutes. The paper says the rising temperature of ocean water is causing a proliferation of the Vibrio genus of bacteria, which can cause...

Malaria-carrying mosquitoes are disappearing in some parts of Africa, but scientists are unsure as to why. Figures indicate controls such as anti-mosquito bed nets are having a significant impact on the incidence of malaria in some sub-Saharan countries. But in Malaria Journal, researchers say mosquitoes are also disappearing from areas with few controls. They are uncertain if mosquitoes are being eradicated or whether they will return with renewed vigour. Data from countries such as Tanzania, Eritrea, Rwanda, Kenya and Zambia all indicate that the incidence of malaria is dropping fast. Researchers believe this is due to effective implementation of control...

Three years after the release of the remake The Day the Earth Stood Still, a team of American researchers has made the film’s theme a scientific theory: They are suggesting that an alien race might destroy man to stop our release of greenhouse-gas emissions and global warming. Writes Fox News: The thought-provoking scenario is one of many envisaged in a joint study by Penn State and the NASA Planetary Science Division, entitled "Would Contact with Extraterrestrials Benefit or Harm Humanity? A Scenario Analysis." It divides projected close encounters into "neutral," those that cause mankind "unintentional harm" and, more worryingly, those...

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,...