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Flu pandemics have been linked to fluctuations in climate, and new research connects the world’s four most recent pandemics to the cyclical cooling of the Pacific Ocean near the equator. The connection? Changes in ocean temperature affect migrating birds, which are major contributors to the spread and mixing of flu viruses. An earlier study had…
A national organization best known for its defense of teaching evolution has added climate change to its agenda in a move that highlights a brewing controversy inside the classroom. Across the country, teachers and schools boards are being pressured to teach that the science of climate change is controversial when, in fact, it is not,…
A hail of Martian meteorites crashed to Earth last July, and collectors and scientists around the world are snapping up the ultra-rare rocks for display and study. The meteorites fell in the Moroccan desert in July and were recovered a few months later. Scientists confirmed that the rocks are Martian, presumably blasted off the Red…
An evolutionary transition that took several billion years to occur in nature has happened in a laboratory, and it needed just 60 days. Under artificial pressure to become larger, single-celled yeast became multicellular creatures. That crucial step is responsible for life’s progression beyond algae and bacteria, and while the latest work doesn’t duplicate prehistoric transitions,…
CodeHeart, a mobile application to speed diagnosis of heart attacks, has been under development in the Washington DC area for two years, but it’s still struggling to enlist emergency medical crews’ participation for a pilot project. The slow going reflects the complicated nature of mobile solutions for the health-care-provider market, which has generally taken a…
Scientists’ greatest pleasure comes from theories that derive the solution to some deep puzzle from a small set of simple principles in a surprising way. These explanations are called “beautiful” or “elegant”. Historical examples are Kepler’s explanation of complex planetary motions as simple ellipses, Bohr’s explanation of the periodic table of the elements in terms…
A flash point has emerged in American science education that echoes the battle over evolution, as scientists and educators report mounting resistance to the study of man-made climate change in middle and high schools. Although scientific evidence increasingly shows that fossil fuel consumption has caused the climate to change rapidly, the issue has grown so…
“I have a dream,” declared Martin Luther King, in a speech that has lost none of its power to inspire. And some of that dream has come true. When King spoke in the summer of 1963, America was a nation that denied basic rights to millions of its citizens, simply because their skin was the…
Members of the public are being asked to join the hunt for nearby planets that could support life.Volunteers can go to the Planethunters website to see time-lapsed images of 150,000 stars, taken by the Kepler space telescope. They will be advised on the signs that indicate the presence of a planet and how to alert…
Simple, inexpensive measures to cut emissions of two common pollutants will slow global warming, save millions of lives and boost crop production around the world, an international team of scientists. The climate-change debate has centered on carbon dioxide, a gas that wafts in the atmosphere for decades, trapping heat. But in recent years, scienti have…