Science News

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When Comet LINEAR broke apart last year it revealed what many scientists thought all along: Water in Earth's oceans could have come from outer space.

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Carnegie Mellon University's Language Technologies Institute will host experts in computerized speech recognition, speech translation, machine translation, datamining and more at a meeting of the North American Chapter of the Association for Computational Linguistics, June 2-7

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North America has been sprinkled with a dash of Asia! A dust cloud from China crossed the Pacific Ocean recently and rained Asian dust from Alaska to Florida.

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Astronomers seeking to chart the solar system's evolution reaped a windfall of information when a comet disintegrated just as it made its closest approach to the sun and they were able to observe the comet's contents and, possibly, its origin.

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New findings do not support a recent analysis of the rough draft of the human genome that suggests that bacterial genes have been laterally transferred into the human genome.

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Enlisting a new technological tool to understand the complex interactions of Arctic ice and global climate, researchers are conducting flight tests and gathering scientific data with small, pilot-less planes that can fly under conditions poorly suited for manned aircraft and that have incredible range, due to their fuel efficiency.

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The Maya were talented astronomers, religiously intense in their observations of the sun, moon and planets. Now, new research shows that something in the heavens may have influenced their culture and ultimately helped bring about their demise.

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In some of the strongest evidence yet to support the RNA world--an era in early evolution when life forms depended on RNA--scientists at the Whitehead Institute have created an RNA catalyst, or a ribozyme, that possesses key properties needed to sustain life in such a world.

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Detailed analysis of Comet LINEAR's disintegration last summer has left astronomers still wondering what triggered the breakup and how much of the comet broke into pieces too small for them to see.

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Hurtling toward Mars at 22,000 mph, Earth is heading for its closest encounter with the Red Planet in a dozen years. Mars is already a brilliant morning star and it will soon become a dazzling all-night spectacle.

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By moderately raising the temperature of cells, biologists have broken through what was considered an impermeable barrier that kept half the genes in some cells "silent." The surprising results, in which these heated genes reached 500 times their normal rate of expression, could lead to better understanding of cellular processes involved in aging, fever and toxicity.

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The Pacific Division of the AAAS, the United States' largest scientific organization, will hold its annual meeting on the UC Irvine campus. Its 16 symposia and 15 topical lectures will feature 80 leading Western scientists, with topics ranging from the biological and physical sciences to engineering, education and social ecology.

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Journalists are invited to visit Poland June 6 - 8 to see evidence of the increasing threat of potato late blight, the fungus-like pathogen responsible for the Irish potato famine. As the pathogen gains resistance to metalaxyl, the commonly applied fungicide, it is again becoming virulent.

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Though the subject of much media hand-wringing, the cyberwar upon the US by Chinese hackers is over.

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The National Science Board will host a two-day public symposium May 21-22 to discuss priority-setting and coordination in the development of federal budgets for research. The symposium will focus on this document, and will also hear from top policy analysts and political leaders.

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An LSU doctoral candidate's research which has shed light on the history and cultural traditions of the Northwest Coast Indians will likely affect their future.

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Scientists have been trying for several years to understand just how the "normal" action of the famous gene prevents development of breast and ovarian cancer and why mutated versions are associated with both breast cancer and ovarian cancer.

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Increasing environmental regulations can decrease production costs and increase corporate profits, according to a University of Arkansas economist.

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Researchers at Louisiana State University have discovered that a bovine virus not previously believed to cause respiratory-tract infections in cattle is associated with several outbreaks of shipping-fever pneumonia, the most fatal form of bovine respiratory-tract disease.

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Desert dust can choke rain clouds, cutting rainfall hundreds of miles away. This discovery, made with the help of NASA satellites, suggests that droughts in such areas as central Africa, are made worse by land use practices that expand the desert.

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A OWU Assistant Professor of Zoology received a $100,000 three-year grant from the National Institutes of Health for his research on mosquitoes' roles in the transmission of LaCrosse virus, the leading cause of pediatric viral encephalitis in the Midwest.

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A point-and-shoot portable instrument to protect people and the environment is a product of some 20 years of research by a Department of Energy's Oak Ridge National Laboratory scientist.

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Researchers at the University of Georgia have, for the first time, successfully transferred DNA into genetically uncharacterized species of the important bacterium Streptomyces.

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The University of Utah, the U.S. Geological Survey and Yellowstone National Park have agreed to establish the Yellowstone Volcano Observatory to strengthen long-term monitoring of earthquakes and the gigantic, slumbering volcano beneath Yellowstone National Park.

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One and two-person teams will participate in the 6th running of the International Human-Powered Submarine Races (ISR), a biennial engineering design competition June 11- 15 at the Naval Surface Warfare Center's Carderock Division in Bethesda, Maryland.

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Recently, members of the Federation of American Societies for Experimental Biology (FASEB) were asked by the Public Library of Science (PLoS) to sign a petition that calls for a boycott of society journals that do not comply with demands made by the PLoS. FASEB denounces this coercive action.

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This week students, scientists, and astronauts will join forces to learn more about how plants grow on the International Space Station.

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Usually, getting sucked into a vortex signals the death of a good idea. But two Michigan State University professors hope a giant sucking sound will signal a revolution in gathering crime evidence. The Trace Evidence Concentrator started as an idea to clean roots for plant research now promises to quickly unearth minutia to solve crimes.

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A Purdue University researcher known for his studies on evolution and the extinction of the dinosaurs has developed a tool that unmasks short-term events previously overlooked in the geologic record.

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Today's rapid technology advance has raised concerns about its impact on society and environment. To help increase dialogue between scientists at the forefront of biology and senior policy makers throughout government, the Whitehead Institute and the Center for Strategic & International Studies are hosting a series of public forums.

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Scientists at the Whitehead Institute have found that SNPs -- the single letter DNA differences that underlie disease susceptibility and individual variation -- in northern Europeans travel together in blocks that are much larger than previously thought. The finding has major implications for mapping disease genes and dissecting human population history.

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A new study led by the Whitehead Institute traces the origin of two major problems plaguing the field of animal cloning. They report that poor survival rate of clones is influenced by the genetic background of the donor cell, and the gross overgrowth of clones results from the cloning procedure.

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Officials from Myanmar (formally Burma) recently declared a remote valley surrounding the old Ledo Road -- a once vital supply route for the Allies in WWII -- the nation's largest wildlife sanctuary, according to the Bronx Zoo-based Wildlife Conservation Society.

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Along with derailing the body's rapid disposal of dying cells, defective functioning of a gene identified at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill also may contribute to tissue inflammation and the development of autoimmune diseases such as systemic lupus erythematosus.

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A mass extinction about 200 million years ago, which destroyed at least half of the species on Earth, happened very quickly and is demonstrated in the fossil record by the collapse of one-celled organisms called protists, according to new research led by a University of Washington paleontologist.

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Lynne Talley, a research oceanographer and professor at Scripps Institution of Oceanography at the University of California, San Diego, has been chosen as the recipient of the 25th annual Rosenstiel Award.

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Princeton and Bell Labs scientists have devised a simple but powerful method for analyzing brain anatomy, providing the first reliable measure of how brains of humans and other mammals are related to one another across evolution.

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The larvae of Manduca sexta, a moth nicknamed the tobacco hornworn, can become so chemically dependent to one of their favorite foods -- the leaves of eggplant, or potato and tomato plants -- that they would rather starve to death than eat leaves from other plants.

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Scientists at the Carnegie Institution of Washington reported they have created a new form of nitrogen by subjecting ordinary nitrogen gas, which makes up about 75 percent of the earth's atmosphere, to pressures of up to 2.4 million times the atmospheric pressure at sea level.

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What makes the Red Planet red? Right now the answer is iron oxide, but one day it could be roses say NASA scientists debating the prospects for plant life on Mars.

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The U.S. Navy's warships in the future will be safer, high-tech vessels able to sustain power and continue in battle even after taking a missile hit. That's the goal of University of Missouri-Rolla researchers who are working with the Navy to develop new power-distribution systems for these warships.

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1) Protecting plant biodiversity helps safeguard ecosystems, 2) At the "moving edge of discovery," pushing the frontier without a map, 3) Students' robots perform surgery on ... A grape?

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Over the next few weeks Cornell University biology students and members of the campus Herpetology Society will gather along a road about six miles from campus to stop and slow down automobile traffic, giving frogs and salamanders right of way to cross from the forest to a mating pond.

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After 11 years of research, Mississippi State University scientists now can speak with authority about the two black bear suspecies native to the state.

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An unusual space traveler named Fred is orbiting Earth on board the International Space Station. His job? To keep astronauts safe from space radiation.

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A new study by scientists at Scripps Institution of Oceanography at the University of California, San Diego, has dramatically elevated the importance and influence of oceanic whitecaps on global climates. Whitecaps, the bright, wind-driven result of breaking wave crests, have been mostly ignored by climate models.

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A zoologist at North Carolina State University is using a 19th century device called a "fishwheel" to study the spawning migration of striped bass and other Atlantic Ocean species on North Carolina's Roanoke River.

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For nearly 25 years, scientists have wondered how giant red-tipped tube worms and other exotic marine life found at hydrothermal vents on the deep sea floor get from place to place and how long their larva survive in a cold, eternally dark place. Now a Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution Biologist and colleagues have helped answer those questions.

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Purdue University engineers have discovered that a device commonly used to untangle signals sent over fiberoptic lines might ultimately be used to make the Internet faster and more powerful. They will present their findings Tuesday (5/8), during the "Conference on Lasers and Electro-Optics" in Baltimore.

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By comparing computer simulations of a galaxy collision with actual observations, astronomers at the University of Illinois have found discrete star-formation episodes that may help explain the prodigious star-formation rates that occurred in the early universe.