BBC Science/Nature

Mammals facing extinction threat
About 25% of the world's mammal species are at risk of extinction, according to a global assessment.
6 Oct 2008 at 7:03am

Nobel prize for viral discoveries
The discovery of HIV and work linking a virus to cervical cancer jointly win the Nobel Prize for Medicine.
6 Oct 2008 at 4:57am

EU's climate package 'in crisis'
The EU's attempt to lead the world on climate change will crumble unless its current policy crisis is resolved, a study warns.
6 Oct 2008 at 12:00pm

Companies 'need green directors'
Businesses must change their attitude to green issues, the World Conservation Congress is told as it opens.
5 Oct 2008 at 7:29pm

Big cat kill caught on BBC webcam
BBC webcams in Kenya's Masai Mara Reserve catch some remarkable pictures of lions in action.
4 Oct 2008 at 5:53am

Greens welcome new climate dept
Green groups welcome the creation of a new energy and climate department in Gordon Brown's government reshuffle.
3 Oct 2008 at 6:38am

Single jab cancer therapy backed
A major study has proved a single dose of chemotherapy is the best way to cure testicular cancer in many patients.
5 Oct 2008 at 6:00pm

Help red squirrels, public urged
Conservationists urge the public to report sightings of red squirrels in an attempt to protect them from a deadly virus.
3 Oct 2008 at 8:25pm

Brazil's air force picks up hundreds of lost penguins
Hundreds of penguins lost along Brazil's coast are returned to native territory in the south Atlantic ocean by an air force plane.
3 Oct 2008 at 10:32pm

The 'knot' so astonishing research honoured with Ig Nobel Prizes
Why wires tie themselves in knots and other astonishing research are honoured with Ig Nobel Prizes.
3 Oct 2008 at 4:00am

Space.com

Galaxy Diversity Reveals Clues to Cosmic Evolution
A star survey shows that galaxies may only seem similar on the surface.
6 Oct 2008 at 5:06pm

European Defence Agency Has Growing Interest in Military Space
The European Defence Agency moves toward the military-space sector.
6 Oct 2008 at 5:06pm

Dim but Visible: Seeking Out Uranus
This week will be a fine time to seek out planet Uranus.
6 Oct 2008 at 5:06pm

Small Asteroid to Streak into Earth's Atmosphere Tonight
A very small asteroid will streak into the skies over Sudan tonight, astronomers announced. It is expected to burn up in the atmosphere.
6 Oct 2008 at 5:06pm

Elite Club Lets Space Tourist Cut to Front of Line
The first two-time space tourist snagged his next launch via an elite spaceflyer club.
6 Oct 2008 at 5:06pm

NASA Primes Spacecraft to Probe Solar System's Fringe
The IBEX spacecraft plans to study the farthest edge of the solar system.
6 Oct 2008 at 5:06pm

Huge Planet Defies Explanation
Astronomers find a puzzling planet-sized object around another star.
6 Oct 2008 at 5:06pm

New Stellar Speedometers Probe Universe's Mysteries
The twinkling night sky is not just pretty to look at - it also carries the secrets of distant suns.
6 Oct 2008 at 5:06pm

Spacecraft Zooms by Mercury for Second Time
A NASA spacecraft zoomed past Mercury for the second time early Monday.
6 Oct 2008 at 5:06pm

Comet Capture Capsule Goes On Display
NASA's Stardust capsule went on view at the National Air and Space Museum.
6 Oct 2008 at 5:06pm

ScienceDaily

U.S. Navy Sonar Linked To Whale Strandings, Environmental Scientists Argue
With the U.S. Supreme Court due to review a series of lower court rulings that restrict the Navy's use of sonar in submarine detection training exercises off the coast of Southern California, George Mason University professor Chris Parsons discusses the links between mass strandings and military exercises worldwide in a paper in the Marine Pollution Bulletin.
6 Oct 2008 at 10:00pm

Patients Who Recover From Coma But Cannot Communicate Feel Pain
Do patients who survive a severe brain injury but fail to recover speech or non-verbal communication perceive pain? After their remarkable publication where they showed that a patient in a vegetative state in reality was conscious, scientists in Belgium were able to tackle the very difficult issue of pain perception in coma survivors.
6 Oct 2008 at 10:00pm

Researchers Document World's Mammals In Crisis
From majestic African elephants to tiny and often unappreciated rodents, mammals on Earth are in a state of crisis. One in four mammal species on Earth is being pushed to extinction, according to the Global Mammal Assessment, the most comprehensive assessment of the world's mammals.
6 Oct 2008 at 10:00pm

A Little Exercise Goes A Long Way For Severely Obese
A little exercise goes a long way toward helping severely obese individuals improve their quality of life and complete important daily tasks, according to researchers at the Duke Diet and Fitness Center.
6 Oct 2008 at 10:00pm

Peer-to-peer Networking Takes Internet Out Of The Equation
When people working on a project get together with their laptops and PDAs, they share information via the internet and a client server. But new software developed by European researchers allows independent, ad hoc, secure networking anywhere.
6 Oct 2008 at 10:00pm

Effects Of Disclosing Financial Interests On Participation In Medical Research
Knowing how an investigator is paid for running a research study surprisingly plays a small role in patients' willingness to take part in clinical trials. However, according to a new study more participants are troubled when they are told that the investigator could profit or lose money depending on the results.
6 Oct 2008 at 10:00pm

Most Alaskan Glaciers Retreating, Thinning, Or Stagnating
Most glaciers in every mountain range and island group in Alaska are experiencing significant retreat, thinning or stagnation, especially glaciers at lower elevations, according to U.S. Geological Survey research.
6 Oct 2008 at 7:00pm

Food For Thought: Regulating Energy Supply To The Brain During Fasting
If the current financial climate has taught us anything, it's that a system where over-borrowing goes unchecked eventually ends in disaster. It turns out this rule applies as much to our bodies as it does to economics. Instead of cash, our body deals in energy borrowed from muscle and given to the brain.
6 Oct 2008 at 7:00pm

Visualizing Election Polls: An Animated, Interactive Way To Analyze Opinion Data
Do you want to know the percentage of white women who support vice presidential candidate Sarah Palin? What about college-educated versus high school-educated white women? Or those who also hunt? University of Utah computer scientists have written software they hope eventually will allow news reporters and citizens to easily, interactively and visually answer such questions when analyzing election results, political opinion polls or other surveys.
6 Oct 2008 at 7:00pm

New Study Finds Summer Is Peak Season For Diagnosis Of Esophagus Disorder
Two new studies examine eosinophilic esophagitis, a condition that can mimic symptoms of GERD, in a small proportion of people. The first study finds that the diagnosis of EoE, previously termed "allergic esophagitis," peaked during the summer months. The second analysis reviews a case series of heartburn patients who underwent surgery to treat GERD, but who were found later actually to suffer from EoE.
6 Oct 2008 at 7:00pm

New Scientist

Early birds do best with changing climate
Birds that haven't adjusted to the realities of a warming world are worse off than their more flexible counterparts, suggests a first-of-a-kind study


6 Oct 2008 at 4:00pm

Blood tests could eliminate Down's miscarriage risk
Thanks to two new genetic tests, a drop of mum's blood could soon be all it takes to tell whether an unborn baby has Down's syndrome


6 Oct 2008 at 4:00pm

Space rock found on collision course with Earth
For the first time, astronomers have found an object on a certain collision course with Earth – fortunately, it is too small to cause damage


6 Oct 2008 at 3:06pm

Hurricane-sized whirlpools spotted on the Sun
The whirlpools had been predicted to occur when hot plasma cools and sinks back into the Sun – now they have been seen for the first time


6 Oct 2008 at 12:47pm

Satellite galaxies cling onto their haloes
A simulation of the way outsider galaxies like the Milky Way are drawn into larger clusters explains how they can cling onto their star-forming ability


6 Oct 2008 at 11:50am

West putting climate treaty in jeopardy, China warns
Rich countries are failing to deliver on promises and threaten "son of Kyoto" global warming pact with failure, top climate envoy says


6 Oct 2008 at 10:03am

AIDS and cervical cancer discoveries scoop Nobel prize
Two virologists who discovered HIV, and a third who showed that a virus causes cervical cancer, share this year's Nobel prize for medicine


6 Oct 2008 at 9:15am

Invention: Aviation special
looks at the latest patents that could take the world of aviation and space exploration to new heights


6 Oct 2008 at 7:29am

World's mammals are in crisis, Red List reveals
A massive assessment of the planet's mammals finds one in three marine species, and one in four on land, are being pushed towards extinction


6 Oct 2008 at 7:00am

Why nature can't be reduced to mathematical laws
A team of physicists claim to have a mathematical proof that some things will always be impossible to describe computationally (full text available to subscribers)


6 Oct 2008 at 4:31am

Scientific American

Ranking Candidates Is More Accurate than Voting

Editor's note: This story was originally posted in the March 2004 issue, and has been reposted to highlight the long history of Nobelists publishing in Scientific American.

Most American and French citizens--indeed, those of democracies the world over--spend little time contemplating their voting systems. That preoccupation is usually left to political and electoral analysts. But in the past few years, a large segment of both these countries’ populations have found themselves utterly perplexed. People in France wondered how a politician well outside the political mainstream made it to the final two-candidate runoff in the presidential election of 2002. In the U.S., many voters asked why the most popular candidate lost the election of 2000.

George Yancopoulos: Doing Well by Trying to Do Good

His finalist year: 1976 [More]

Of Survival and Science

Editor's note: This story was originally posted in the August 1999 issue, and has been reposted to highlight the long intertwined history of the Nobel Prizes in Scientific American.

In 1996 Japan's Inamori Foundation asked Mario R. Capecchi to review his life and work in an acceptance speech for the prestigious Kyoto Prize. Capecchi dutifully described his pathbreaking research on a precision method for insertion or deletion of genes in mice. The most compelling part of the talk, however, had nothing to do with mouse chimeras or positive-negative selection. Rather Capecchi recounted memories of a childhood with the makings of a script Italian actor/director Roberto Benigni might use as an encore for his Academy Award-winning Life Is Beautiful.

The Physical Science behind Climate Change

Editor's note: This story was originally posted in the July 2007 issue, and has been reposted to highlight the long history of Nobelists publishing in Scientific American.

For a scientist studying climate change, “eureka” moments are unusually rare. Instead progress is generally made by a painstaking piecing together of evidence from every new temperature measurement, satellite sounding or climate-model experiment. Data get checked and rechecked, ideas tested over and over again. Do the observations fit the predicted changes? Could there be some alternative explanation? Good climate scientists, like all good scientists, want to ensure that the highest standards of proof apply to everything they discover.

Celebrating The Nobel Prizes
More than 130 Nobelists have written more than 200 articles for Scientific American. Here's a sampling, along with a look at the prizes themselves [More]
6 Oct 2008 at 1:45pm

Gut Microbe Strikes Again: Ulcer-Causing Bug May Also Prevent Cancer

The common ulcer-causing bug linked this summer to reduced rates of childhood asthma and allergies may also help protect adults against one type of cancer, according to a new analysis. Researchers report today in the journal Cancer Prevention Research that they found the stomach microbe Helicobacter pylori (H. pylori) may help prevent a major form of cancer of the esophagus (the muscular tube that carries food and drink from the throat to the stomach).    [More]

Musicians Think Differently from the Rest of Us

 [Below is the original script. But a few changes may have been made during the recording of this audio podcast.]

At the top of The New Yorker magazine’s entertainment listings is this warning:  “Musicians live complicated lives…; it’s advisable to call ahead to confirm engagements.” [More]

No Nobel for You: Top 10 Nobel Snubs

Every year, the Nobel Foundation in Stockholm, Sweden, announces up to three winners each in the scientific disciplines of chemistry, physics, and physiology or medicine. As of this morning, since 1901, 780 individuals have joined the hallowed ranks of Nobel laureates in these and other categories. And every year, there are murmurings--some louder than others--about the Nobel-worthy scientists who were overlooked. In 1974, when Jocelyn Bell Burnell was left out of the physics prize, her fellow astronomer and Nobel reject, Fred Hoyle, told reporters it was a "scientific scandal of major proportions." Physician-inventor Raymond Damadian famously took out full-page newspaper ads protesting his omission from the 2003 Nobel for MRI technology. This year, some will be asking questions about Robert Gallo, who did not share today's Nobel for medicine or physiology with Luc Montagnier and Francoise Barre-Sinoussi. [More]

AIDS in 1988

Editor's Note: Luc Montagnier shared the 2008 Nobel Prize in Medicine or Physiology, awarded on October 6. The new Nobel laureate co-authored this article, originally published in the October 1988 issue of Scientific American. We are making it available here due to its historical significance.

As recently as a decade ago it was widely believed that infectious disease was no longer much of a threat in the developed world. The remaining challenges to public health there, it was thought, stemmed from noninfectious conditions such as cancer, heart disease and degenerative diseases. That confidence was shattered in the early 1980's by the advent of AIDS. Here was a devastating disease caused by a class of infectious agents--retroviruses--that had first been found in human beings only a few years before. In spite of the startling nature of the epidemic, science responded quickly. In the two years from mid-1982 to mid-1984 the outlines of the epidemic were clarified, a new virus-the human immunodeficiency virus (HN)-was isolated and shown to cause the disease, a blood test was formulated and the virus's targets in the body were established. [More]

Montagnier, Barre-Sinoussi and zur Hausen Share Nobel

A pair of French scientists who isolated the AIDS-causing human immunodeficiency virus (HIV) and a German scientist who determined that human papillomavirus (HPV) causes cervical cancer were awarded the Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine today. 

The Nobel committee's decision to give the prize to Luc Montagnier and Francoise Barre-Sinoussi, who isolated HIV in 1983, caps a long, bitter dispute between the Pasteur Institute in Paris, where they made their discovery, and American scientist Robert Gallo, who linked HIV to AIDS separately but was snubbed by the Nobel committee. 

USGS Earthquake Activity

M 2.6, Andreanof Islands, Aleutian Islands, Alaska
October 06, 2008 21:30:31 GMT
6 Oct 2008 at 4:30pm

M 4.8, Fiji region
October 06, 2008 20:56:29 GMT
6 Oct 2008 at 3:56pm

M 3.4, Southern Alaska
October 06, 2008 20:38:15 GMT
6 Oct 2008 at 3:38pm

M 2.5, Central California
October 06, 2008 20:22:32 GMT
6 Oct 2008 at 3:22pm

M 2.6, Southern Alaska
October 06, 2008 18:24:37 GMT
6 Oct 2008 at 1:24pm

M 2.6, Nevada
October 06, 2008 17:58:37 GMT
6 Oct 2008 at 12:58pm

M 3.2, southern Xinjiang, China
October 06, 2008 17:21:53 GMT
6 Oct 2008 at 12:21pm

M 3.0, Central California
October 06, 2008 17:04:53 GMT
6 Oct 2008 at 12:04pm

M 2.9, Puerto Rico region
October 06, 2008 16:33:53 GMT
6 Oct 2008 at 11:33am

M 2.5, Kyrgyzstan
October 06, 2008 16:33:38 GMT
6 Oct 2008 at 11:33am

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