Expanding waistlines may cause shrinking brains

Seeded on Tue Aug 25, 2009 9:19 AM EDT (New Scientist)

BRAIN regions key to cognition are smaller in older people who are obese compared with their leaner peers, making their brains look up to 16 years older than their true age.

health, obesity, dementia, brain

Plague Vaccine for Prairie Dogs Could Save Endangered Ferret

Seeded on Wed Aug 5, 2009 1:24 PM EDT (Wired News)

Wild prairie dogs may soon get a dose of something extra in their daily diet: an oral vaccine against the plague.

animals, science, endangered-species, biology, plague, ferrets, prairie-dogs

Fight Fat With More Fat

Seeded on Thu Jul 30, 2009 10:00 AM EDT (Wired News)

The latest candidate for an obesity-fighting wonder drug is not what you'd expect: It's fat.

health, obesity, research, medicine, fat, biology

Jellyfish Are the Dark Energy of the Oceans

Seeded on Thu Jul 30, 2009 9:38 AM EDT (Wired News)

The fluid dynamics of swimming jellyfish have provided a plausible mechanism for a once-wild notion: that marine animals, hidden from sight and ignored by geophysicists, may stir Earth's oceans with as much force as its wind and tides.

animals, global-warming, environment, science, ocean, climate-change

Nanotechnology: Are we risking too much?

Seeded on Wed Jul 29, 2009 10:58 AM EDT (The Ecologist)

Nanotechnology is already here and used in hundreds of everyday products from food packaging to computer keyboards.

science, nanotechnology, consumer-protection, government-regulation, product-labeling

Army Aims to Build "Zero Footprint" Camps

Seeded on Wed Jul 29, 2009 9:59 AM EDT (Popular Science - )

Going green makes military sense to the U.S. Army. Self-sufficient vehicles and base camps require fewer supply convoy runs that stretch logistics lines thin across hostile territory. The Army's new "zero-footprint" concept for a camp includes a package of very cool technologies.

army, military, science, conservation, zero-footprint

Early Human Relative Predates Dinosaurs

Seeded on Wed Jul 29, 2009 9:30 AM EDT (Discovery.com)

July 28, 2009 -- The world's first known tree-dwelling vertebrate has just been identified, according to a new study. The tiny, agile animal lived 30 million years before the first dinosaurs and was a distant relative of mammals, including humans.

evolution, science, paleontology

ACLU: Obama Administration Must Abandon Force-Feeding at Gitmo

Seeded on Tue Jul 28, 2009 6:55 PM EDT (AlterNet.org)

President Obama has promised to depart from the Bush administration's abusive national security polices. Although his administration abandoned some of the worst abuses (i.e.

obama, torture, us-news, aclu, gitmo, hunger-strikes, forced-feeding

Ireland Outlaws Blasphemy

Seeded on Tue Jul 28, 2009 12:38 PM EDT (The New York Times)

After some hesitation, Ireland's president, Mary McAleese, signed into law on Thursday a controversial new measure which makes it a crime, punishable by a fine of up to $35,000, to publish or utter blasphemous statements in the Irish Republic.

ireland, free-speech, world-news, blasphemy, atheists

Scientists Find a Microbe Haven at Ocean's Surface

Seeded on Tue Jul 28, 2009 9:15 AM EDT (The New York Times)

The world's oceans are like an alien world. The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration estimates that 95 percent of them remain unexplored. But the mysteries do not start a mile below the surface of the sea. They start with the surface itself.

science, ocean, carbon-dioxide, ecology, microbes

Colder Climate Tied to Longer Animal Lives

Seeded on Tue Jul 28, 2009 8:55 AM EDT (Yahoo! News)

The colder your environment, the longer you might live - if you're cold-blooded - a new study finds. This relationship between temperature and lifespan could have implications for cold-blooded species in our warming world, the study authors say.

global-warming, science, climate-change, ecology

Mutation Causing One Type Of Male Infertility Found: Contraceptive Pill For Men Next?

Seeded on Tue Jul 28, 2009 8:45 AM EDT (Science Daily)

ScienceDaily (July 27, 2009) — A genetic mutation that lies behind one type of male infertility has been discovered by researchers at Oxford University, Ghent University in Belgium, and the University of Massachusetts, Amherst in the USA.

science, genetics, infertility, male-contraception

Coral Bleaching Likely In Caribbean

Seeded on Mon Jul 27, 2009 2:00 PM EDT (Science Daily)

Scientists are concerned that bleaching may reach the same levels or exceed those recorded in 2005, the worst coral bleaching and disease year in Caribbean history.

global-warming, science, climate-change, coral, noaa

Money Relieves Pain

Seeded on Fri Jul 24, 2009 10:34 AM EDT (Live Science)

Money dulls physical pain and eases the sting of social rejection, new research shows. And the No @!$%# Sherlock Award goes to...!

money, science, brain, duh

Strong Evidence That Cloud Changes May Exacerbate Global Warming

Seeded on Fri Jul 24, 2009 9:56 AM EDT (Science Daily)

In a study published in the July 24 issue of Science, researchers Amy Clement and Robert Burgman from the University of Miami's Rosenstiel School of Marine and Atmospheric Science and Joel Norris from Scripps Institution of Oceanography at UC San Diego begin to unravel this myste …

global-warming, science, climate-change