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Enlarge Image Nuclear fallout. Radioactive carbon-14 atoms released by atomic bombs are helping scientists determine the birthdays of new neurons in the hippocampus (inset). Credit: Spalding et al., Cell (2013);(inset) Weissman, Livet, Sanes, and Lichtman/Harvard University The mushroom clouds produced by more than 500 nuclear bomb tests during the Cold War may have had a silver lining, after all. More than 50 years later, scientists have found a way to use radioactive carbon isotopes released into the atmosphere by nuclear testing to settle a long-standing debate in neuroscience: Does the adult human brain produce new neurons? After working to...

Defense: The administration proudly reveals a state secret to our enemies before a U.N. conference on nuclear nonproliferation. It wants to lead by example on disarmament, but Iran and North Korea aren't following. Not since the 1928 Kellogg-Briand Pact that sought to outlaw war as an instrument of national policy has there been such a stunning display of dangerous naivete. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton disclosed U.S. nuclear secrets to the U.N. conference while proudly proclaiming it showed America is sending "a clear, unmistakable signal" that this nation is committed to nuclear disarmament. Kellogg-Briand laid the groundwork for Munich in...

Arms Deal: President Obama signs away U.S. nuclear security and gives the Russians a veto over whether we can defend ourselves. Our nuclear umbrella is in tatters as another piece of paper proclaims peace in our time. Completing a process of disarmament and appeasement that manifested itself in the dismantling and defunding of U.S. military power that began with his inauguration, President Obama signed a new strategic arms limitation treaty with a grinning and very happy Russian President Dmitry Medvedev on Thursday in the Czech capital. How fitting this document was signed in Prague, which isn't far from Munich where...

National Security: Aiming at a world where nuclear weapons are obsolete, the administration's nuclear posture review leaves a world without American nuclear weapons and the backbone to use them. After his stunning bombing of Pearl Harbor in 1941, Japanese Adm. Isoroku Yamamoto lamented that all that had been accomplished was to awaken a sleeping giant and fill him with a terrible resolve. Under policies announced by the Obama administration, a devastating chemical or biological attack on this country might merely awaken our very own Hamlet and fill him with a terrible sense of angst. We have said before that rather...

A British nuclear expert has fallen to his death from the 17th floor of the United Nations offices in Vienna. The 47-year-old man died after falling more than 120ft to the bottom of a stairwell. He has not been named. He worked for the Comprehensive Nuclear-Test-Ban Treaty Organization, an international agency charged with uncovering illicit nuclear tests. A UN spokesman in the Austrian capital said there were no "suspicious circumstances" surrounding the man's death. Police said no other person was believed to have been involved. No suicide note has been found. Four months ago another UN worker also believed to...

Defense: President Obama dreams of a world without nuclear weapons. Unless testing and maintenance of our nuclear deterrent is resumed, it will be a world without American nuclear weapons.In his Prague speech this spring, the president spoke of "America's commitment to seek the peace and security of a world without nuclear weapons," ignoring the fact that before 1945 we lived in such a world and it was neither peaceful nor secure. We recently observed the anniversaries of the atomic bombs dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki, actions that brought an abrupt end to the carnage of World War II and arguably...

LAS VEGAS (AP) - Government scientists conducted an underground nuclear materials experiment Friday at the Nevada Test Site, the National Nuclear Security Administration said. The subcritical experiment, dubbed Piano, involved detonating high explosives to chart the behavior of plutonium in a non-nuclear explosion. It did not trigger a self-sustaining nuclear reaction, NNSA spokesman Kevin Rohrer said. Scientists from the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory in California completed the test at 1:44 p.m. in a cavern 960 feet below ground, Rohrer said. No abnormalities and no surface damage were reported at the vast site, about 85 miles northwest of Las Vegas....