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3-D Printing and the Race for Space
It lets aerospace engineers develop high-quality parts much faster than they could with traditional fabrication methods
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Observations
It's Time to Get Serious about Tick-Borne Diseases
The U.S. vanquished malaria and beat back AIDS, but Lyme and other illnesses are raging unchecked
Observations
Scientists Have Been Underestimating the Pace of Climate Change
A book entitled Discerning Experts explains why—and what can be done about it
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Carbon capture and storage: Absolute necessity or crazy scheme?
Does the world really need the ability to trap carbon dioxide before it invisibly billows from power plant smokestacks or out car tailpipes and bury it permanently to slow global warming?...
Because They're Worth It: 15 women receive research grants from UNESCO and L'Oreal
Fifteen female researchers are celebrating International Women's Day (March 8) a few days early. They've received fellowships of up to $40,000 each to pursue doctoral or post-doctoral research through the United Nations Education, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO)-L'Oréal For Women in Science International Fellowship program, announced this week in Paris...
Legislation pushes Obama's vision of "green" power lines
Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D–Nev.) yesterday introduced legislation that would give the feds the authority to build so-called "green" power lines to carry renewable energy, such as solar, wind and geothermal, from remote sources to the nation's electric grid...
Companies voluntarily banish BPA from bottles
As politicos bandy about the issue of banning bisphenol A (BPA), the hard-plastic additive that's been linked to a host of health problems, several companies have recently announced that they will banish it from their baby products...
Pluto fans, Illinois stands with you: State senate reinstates full planetary status
In 2006 the International Astronomical Union (IAU) agreed on a controversial definition of the word "planet," which included the criterion that a planet must have cleared the neighborhood around its orbit...
How to find out that Borneo's snake monster was a fake
As many readers pointed out, the images that surfaced in London's Telegraph last month of a massive river snake in Borneo looked a slight slither less than authentic.
First domesticated horses in central Asia more than 5,000 years ago
It's pretty hard to milk a wild mare. So researchers attempting to determine whether ancient Botai in northern Kazakhstan had domesticated horses tested their pottery for evidence that they were as fond as their modern descendants of mare's milk (you can see [ left ] a modern mare being milked by a Kazakh woman)...
Gupta sticks to TV, bags shot at becoming surgeon general
CNN is reporting that its chief medical correspondent Sanjay Gupta today withdrew from consideration as the nation's surgeon general. The network said that its go-to health guy declined to comment...
Are doctors zapping patients with too much radiation?
A new study says that the average American is exposed to six times more radiation from medical tests than in the early 1980s, prompting warnings that physicians may be upping patients' cancer risk by giving them unnecessary exams.
A study by The National Council of Radiation Protection and Measurements (NCRP) shows that the average American's overall radiation exposure jumped from 3.6 millisieverts (mSv) to 6.2 mSv per year -- almost entirely a result of radiation-based medical tests...
Kepler spacecraft, hunter of habitable planets, set to go
Late tomorrow night, NASA's Kepler spacecraft will—conditions permitting—lift off from Cape Canaveral Air Force Station in Florida on its unprecedented mission to find habitable, Earth-like planets around distant stars...
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