New Year, New Science
Nature looks ahead to the key findings and events that may emerge in 2013.
New Year, New Science
Nature looks ahead to the key findings and events that may emerge in 2013.
Similar Posts
Disease Outbreaks Predicted by Monitoring Cities from Space
The bright lights of a big city, as seen from space, may predict outbreaks of some diseases, such as measles, and help officials to prevent epidemics. By analyzing changes in the brightness of cities over time, researchers in a new study are estimating changes in population density—an important factor in disease spread. Seasonal changes in…
Nature Deficit Harming Children
British children are losing contact with nature at a “dramatic” rate, and their health and education are suffering, a National Trust report says. Traffic, the lure of video screens and parental anxieties are conspiring to keep children indoors, it says, resulting in a “nature deficit disorder”. Evidence suggests the problem is worse in the U.K….
Rights to Resources
Two safeguards for communities’ rights to resources can help implement the Nagoya Protocol, argues biodiversity specialist Krystyna Swiderska. As the recent UN Conference on Sustainable Development (Rio+20) showed, intergovernmental negotiations on the environment and development can be slow processes that lack ambition. But that is nothing new. One of the outcomes of the original Rio…
The First Oxygen Users?
None of us would be here today if, billions of years ago, a tiny, single-celled organism hadn’t started using oxygen to make a living. Researchers don’t know exactly when this happened, or why, but a team of scientists has come closer than ever before to finding out. They’ve identified the earliest known example of aerobic…
A Step-By-Step Guide to the Mars Rover Landing Plan
At 10:31 p.m. PDT on Aug. 5, after nearly nine months of travel, NASA’s Mars Science Laboratory mission (with a rover named Curiosity) will arrive at the Red Planet. The $2.5 billion rover will begin a two-year quest to explore the interior of Mars’ Gale Crater and hunt for evidence of an ancient ocean there….
Amateur Astronomers Discover 42 Alien Planets
A team of amateurs has discovered evidence for 42 alien planets, including a Jupiter-size world that could potentially be habitable, by sifting through data from a NASA spacecraft. Forty volunteers with the crowd-sourcing Planet Hunters project discovered the new planet candidates, which include 15 potentially habitable worlds and PH2 b, a Jupiter-size planet that the…