The Sciences
Lawmakers and Farmers Clash on Food Safety Bill
The Food Safety Enhancement Act (H.R. 2749), a bill currently being moved through the House of Representatives and gaining attention over the summer, could give the U.S.
News Blog
Health
Contrary to past thinking, the simian version of HIV can kill chimpanzees
Wild chimpanzees can become ill and die from a simian version of the AIDS virus, according to a paper to be published tomorrow in Nature ( Scientific American is part of the Nature Publishing Group)...
Space & Physics
New NASA chief keen on humans going to Mars and beyond
The U.S. space program is at a crossroads, with NASA's defining programs for human spaceflight being phased out (the space shuttle) or nearing completion (the International Space Station)...
The Sciences
Should Major League Baseball be allowed to use DNA tests to determine the true age of prospects?
The young baseball phenom, Esmailyn Gonzalez, received a $1.4-million bonus when he signed with the Washington Nationals in 2006. This February, the player who was misrepresenting himself as only 19 years old turned out to be a 23-year-old by the name of Carlos David Alvarez Lugo...
Environment
How do you stop San Francisco Bay from flooding the city? Hold a contest
Waters in San Francisco Bay will likely be 40 centimeters higher in 40 years thanks to climate change. That may sound like a drop in the bucket for the famously hilly city, but the upper estimate for the next century—tides up 1.4 meters—could threaten buildings and city infrastructure, especially in the case of warming-fueled storm surges...
Environment
Meteorologists say "yes" to geoengineering
Pumping sulfur dioxide into the stratosphere to block the sun, brightening clouds with reflective sea salt, or fertilizing the oceans with iron are just some of the way-out schemes some scientists have proposed to fight global warming if all else fails...
The Sciences
Watchdogs: Feds buried data proving that handheld tech dangerously distracts drivers
The National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA) put politics above public safety in 2003 when it suppressed research estimating that cell phone use—both phone calls and text messaging—while driving had caused hundreds of thousands of car accidents and hundreds of crash-related deaths the previous year, the New York Times reports...
Health
As the First H1N1 human vaccine trials get underway, the U.S. earmarks $1.8 billion for the flu's anticipated resurgence
The first vaccines against H1N1 in humans will be put to the test starting tomorrow. The Australia-based pharmaceutical company CSL, Ltd., will commence the trials in Adelaide by giving 240 healthy volunteers the shot, Bloomberg News reported today...
Health
New Jersey beaches: Sun, sand, surf--and E. coli?
It’s well known that the human body is crawling with bacteria—from the ankle to the, well, armpit. But unbeknown to New Jersey bathers, their beaches might be, too.
Environment
Swine stench spurs multimillion-dollar settlements
Pigs are plummeting in popularity, and there’s more to blame than just the H1N1 virus. Swine’s smell alone is irking many people.
For Ed and Ruth McEowen, who live across the road from six barns filled with 7,500 hogs and their excrement, a gaseous smell was enough to fuel a nuisance lawsuit against the barns’ owner and hog supplier...
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