Ok, is it just me or is that headine really funny? If I was one of the award winners, I’d express that the least they could do is have someone with a brain give me the award. Not to mention the guy has no respect for science……..

From Boston.com

WASHINGTON –President Bush awarded 30 science and technology medals Friday for breakthroughs in such fields as astrophysics, laser technology, climatology and tissue engineering.
[tag]
The National Science Foundation[/tag] administers the Medal of Science, which was established by Congress in 1959. The Medal of Technology was established by Congress in 1980 and is administered by the Commerce Department.

“We have researchers who have drilled into glaciers, isolated the DNA of mobile genes and pioneered the distributed feedback laser,” Bush said before presenting the medals in the White House’s East Room. “In other words, we’ve got some smart people here. And we’re glad you’re Americans.”

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By RANDOLPH E. SCHMID, AP Science Writer
7/16/07

WASHINGTON - Why did humans evolve to walk upright? Perhaps because it’s just plain easier. Make that “energetically less costly,” in science’speak, and you have the conclusion of researchers who are proposing a likely reason for our modern gait.

Bipedalism - walking on two feet - is one of the defining characteristics of being human, and scientists have debated for years how it came about. In the latest attempt to find an explanation, researchers trained five chimpanzees to walk on a treadmill while wearing masks that allowed measurement of their oxygen consumption.

[…]

It turns out that humans walking on two legs use only one-quarter of the energy that chimpanzees use while knuckle-walking on four limbs. And the chimps, on average, use as much energy using two legs as they did when they used all four limbs.

(Read the rest of the article here.)

When asked for comment, Senator Sam Brownback (R-Kansas) scoffed, “I object to this study and its findings. One, it promotes the Theory of Evolution. Two, it promotes the conservation of energy. This is nothing more than the liberal media reporting liberal scientific research.” The presidential hopeful continued, “If man weren’t meant to drill for oil in coral reefs, the Bible wouldn’t have said man was granted “dominion” over the earth. Think of all the classic, gas-guzzling cars that would be outlawed if liberals got their way. Unnecessary energy consumption is a fundamental American right, and the reason I want to be president.”

Brownback has accordingly vowed to scuffle around on all fours for the remainder of his campaign.

(By the way, the Brownback stuff is satire. Questionable satire, perhaps, but not to be taken seriously.)

(Cross-posted at Vagabond Scholar)

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By Maggie Fox
Reuters Health and Science Editor

The U.S. tuberculosis patient who set off international alarms after fleeing across borders does not have the most dangerous form of TB but instead a strain that is easier to treat, his doctors said on Tuesday.

They said Andrew Speaker, a 31-year-old lawyer, has multi-drug-resistant tuberculosis, known as MDR TB — and not a form of the disease known as extensively drug-resistant, or XDR.

“It allows us to change the way we treat him. We have put surgery on hold for the time being,” Dr. Charles Daley of National Jewish Medical and Research Center in Denver said at a news conference. “We can use drugs not originally available.”

Nonetheless, Daley said Speaker has a serious condition and it is important to track down anyone he may have infected.

“It is fatal,” he said. “MDR TB is very difficult to treat. The cure rate is nowhere near what we would expect with just standard TB therapy.”

Dr. Mitchell Cohen of the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention said it is not clear why one CDC test indicated Speaker had XDR TB.

read more at REUTERS

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from United Press International

CHICAGO, (UPI) — A new study shows seniors who have trouble identifying scents are more likely to develop Alzheimer’s disease than people who knew soap smell from cinnamon.

They also were at higher risk of mild cognitive impairment, a condition that often strikes before Alzheimer’s, the Chicago Sun-Times reported Tuesday.

Researchers followed 589 Chicago-area people who were an average age of 80 and began the study with no cognitive impairments.

The odors volunteers were asked to identify were banana, onion, soap, cinnamon, lemon, black pepper, smoke, paint thinner, pineapple, gasoline, rose and chocolate.

Test subjects who got four out of 12 wrong were 50 percent more likely to develop mild cognitive impairment than those who got only one wrong.

Although there is no way to prevent Alzheimer’s, there are several drugs in development that might be able to slow the progression of the disease if it is detected early enough, which is one reason why scientists are looking into ways to test who is at risk for the illness.

The Rush University Medical Center study is published in the Archives of General Psychiatry.

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By PAUL FOY, Associated Press Writer
from YAHOO!

SALT LAKE CITY - If it weren’t for the hot rocks down below Earth’s crust, most of North America would be below sea level, report researchers who say the significance of Earth’s internal heat has been overlooked.

Without it, mile-high Denver would be 727 feet below sea level, the scientists calculate, and New York City, more than a quarter-mile below. Los Angeles would be almost three-quarters of a mile beneath the Pacific.

In fact most of the United States would disappear, except for some major Western mountain ranges, according to research at the University of Utah.

“Researchers have failed to appreciate how heat makes rock in the continental crust and upper mantle expand to become less dense and more buoyant,” said Derrick Hasterok, a graduate student in geology and geophysics.

Hasterok and his professor, David Chapman, published their findings in the June online issue of Journal of Geophysical Research-Solid Earth.

In what they said was the first calculation of its kind, the researchers said heat inside the planet accounts for half the reason land rises above sea level or higher to form mountains.

Scientists previously gave other factors greater weight in explaining elevation differences, such as the density and makeup of rocks and tectonic forces.

The Utah team calculated how much of North America would sink if the engine of heat was taken away, leaving regions as relatively cold as the bottom of the vast Canadian shield - bedrock that hasn’t changed for billions of years.

They did it by estimating temperatures under the North American plate based on previous experiments that bounced seismic waves deep underground. The waves travel faster through colder, denser rock. That data allowed the researchers to calculate how much of an area’s elevation is due to the thickness and composition of its rock and how much is due to the heating and expansion of rock.

Their measurements showed that among coastal cities, New York would drop to 1,427 feet below the Atlantic ocean, Boston and Miami even deeper. Los Angeles would rest 3,756 feet below the surface of the Pacific ocean.

read more at YAHOO!

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By ALICIA CHANG, AP Science Writer
from YAHOO! NEWS

EDWARDS AIR FORCE BASE, Calif. - Atlantis and its seven astronauts returned to Earth safely Friday, ending a two-week mission to deliver an addition to the international space station and bring a crew member home from the outpost.

Atlantis crossed the Pacific and glided to a stop at 12:49 p.m. on a runway at Edwards Air Force Base in California. NASA managers had hoped to land the shuttle in Florida, but bad weather forced them to abandon that plan.

“Welcome back,” Mission Control told Atlantis. “Congratulations on a great mission.” Controllers praised the crew for providing a “stepping stone to the rest of NASA’s exploration plan.”

Atlantis’ return from NASA’s first manned flight of the year was marked by its trademark twin sonic booms that were heard from San Diego to Los Angeles. After deploying its parachute, the shuttle came to rest on the concrete runway under mostly sunny skies.

Astronaut Sunita “Suni” Williams returned to Earth on Atlantis after spending more than six months at the space station. She set an endurance record for the longest single spaceflight by a woman at 195 days. During her stay, she also set the record for most time spacewalking by a woman.

She told reporters two days before landing that she looked forward to a slice of pizza and walking on the beach with her husband and dog, Gorby. But she was going to miss the space station.

read more at YAHOO! NEWS

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from United Press International

LEICESTER, England, June 20 (UPI) — A British study says chemicals from secondhand cigarette smoke have been found in infants who live with smokers.

Traces of the chemical cotinine, a chemical released when the body breaks down nicotine, is more abundant in urine samples from smokers’ babies than from non’smokers’ children, WebMD said Wednesday.

Dr. Mike Wailoo, a senior lecturer in the child health department of England’s University of Leicester, said the babies of parents who smoked had cotinine levels more than five times higher than babies of non’smoking parents.

The effects of cotinine on infants is not known, WebMD said.

The researchers said maternal smoking quadrupled the babies’ cotinine levels. Paternal smoking nearly doubled the levels.

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By Eric Alterman and Mark Green

from

What if the research agenda of the University of Texas College of Natural Sciences were drafted not by the professors who actually conduct the studies but by, say, the alumni who funded the department? We might end up with research on the stickiness of Mr. Big’s brand of glue instead of the development of an AIDS vaccine. Luckily, most research universities don’t work that way. The federal government, however, occasionally does. In the Bush Administration, when the religious right or big business weighs in on a matter of science, politics usually prevails. So while this President may lack the powerful eloquence of William Jennings Bryan, in the world of science he’s the modern equivalent of the Great Orator defeating the infidels of evolution in the Scopes Trial of 1925.

Scientific panels and committees have proven especially susceptible to political manipulation by the White House. In one revealing case, Bush & Co. intervened at the precise moment that the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s Advisory Committee on Childhood Lead Poisoning Prevention was set to consider once again lowering acceptable blood-lead levels in response to new scientific evidence. The Administration rejected nominee Bruce Lanphear and dumped panel member Michael Weitzman, both of whom previously advocated lowering the legal limit. Instead, Health and Human Services Secretary Tommy Thompson appointed William Banner–who had testified on behalf of lead companies in poison-related litigation–and Joyce Tsuji, who had worked for a consulting firm whose clients include a lead smelter. (She later withdrew.) Banner and another appointee, Sergio Piomelli, were first contacted about serving on the committee not by a member of the Administration but by lead-industry representatives who appeared to be recruiting favorable committee members with the blessing of HHS officials.

The supposedly nonpartisan President’s Council on Bioethics–a panel whose creation Bush announced during his much publicized stem-cell speech of August 2001–proved susceptible to a different arm of his political base, the far right. The council is the organization charged with leading America through the murky waters of cloning and other genetic research. But instead of appointing a calm voice to lead those difficult discussions, President Bush chose Leon Kass, a University of Chicago bioethicist who opposed in vitro fertilization in the 1970s on the basis of Brave New World-esque fears of reproduction run amok and likes to refer to abortion as “feticide.” In a recent issue of The Public Interest, Kass lamented that today’s young women live “the entire decade of their twenties–their most fertile years–neither in the homes of their fathers nor in the homes of their husbands; unprotected, lonely….” He is hostile to everything from “woman on the pill” to sex education and believes children of divorce are “maimed for love and intimacy.”

read more at The New Democracy Project

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By Jeff Franks

HOUSTON (Reuters) - The space shuttle Atlantis winged toward a rendezvous with theInternational Space Station on Sunday, lugging the heaviest payload ever for the orbital outpost and troubled only by a small tear in a heat-protecting thermal blanket.

Atlantis was scheduled to link up with the station at 3:38 p.m. EDT (1938 GMT) for a week-long stay in which the shuttle crew will install electricity-generating solar panels on the half-finished station.

On Saturday night, Atlantis astronauts tested tools for the planned rendezvous more than 200 miles above the earth and fired the ship’s engines to speed it on its way after it launched from Florida on Friday.

The shuttle is carrying a 45-foot-(14-metre) long, 35,678-pound (16,183 kg) aluminum structure that will become part of the station’s structural backbone and includes the solar panels. Its crew members are scheduled to perform three spacewalks to install the new parts and retract an old solar array.

Among the seven Atlantis astronauts is Clayton Anderson, of Ashland, Nebraska, who will join Russian cosmonauts Fyodor Yurchikhin and Oleg Kotov on the station, replacing Sunita Williams.

Williams, after six months on the $100 billion outpost that is a joint project of 16 nations, will catch a ride home on Atlantis.

NASA plans to fly 12 more missions to complete the station. It also wants to make two flights to store spare parts and service the Hubble Space Telescope a final time before its three’shuttle fleet is retired in 2010.

read more at YAHOO! NEWS

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from National Geographic Magazine Online

by Brian Handwerk
for National Geographic News

How did humans learn to walk the walk that sets us apart from our closest kin-the apes?

A new study of Sumatran orangutans in Indonesia suggests that ancient apes may have developed upright walking while still living in the trees-well before human ancestors, known as hominids, ever descended to the ground.

The study authors spent many hours observing Sumatran orangutans as they moved about the canopy of their rain forest home in Gunung Leuser National Park.

The critically endangered animals-which number about 7,300 in the wild-live nearly their whole lives aloft.

On sturdier branches the orangutans use all four limbs. But on thinner branches in search of fruit, the apes move on two legs and use their arms for balance.

“When they are on the very fine stuff, they are using bipedalism,” said study co-author Robin Crompton of the University of Liverpool in England.

“It shows that bipedalism can be adaptive in the trees,” Crompton said. “People have suspected that it evolved in the trees, but no one has been able to see a sensible reason why it should happen.”

The researchers think they’ve uncovered that sensible reason: Upright bipedalism in human ancestors was quite likely an adaptation to moving and feeding on ripe fruit in the peripheries of trees, they say.

A Unique Ability

The ability to walk on two legs is one of the things that make humans unique and separates them from close relatives like chimps and bonobos.

Many theories seek to explain just when-and why-our ancestors first developed an upright gait.

read more at NATIONAL GEOGRAPHIC

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HOBART, Australia - Warner Bros. will donate money from the sale of DVDs featuring Bugs Bunny and Daffy Duck to help efforts to save the Tasmanian Devil from extinction, an Australian official said Saturday.

The Looney Tunes character Taz - a whirling, growling rival to Bugs Bunny - is based on the Australian marsupial, which is being threatened by contagious cancer in its homeland, the island state of Tasmania.

State Tourism, Arts and Environment Minister Paula Wriedt said Warner Bros. had struck a deal with the government to donate one Australian dollar - the equivalent of 82 cents - for each sale from a new series of DVDs to be released in Australia featuring the company’s cartoon characters.

Proceeds would be donated to a fund managed by the University of Tasmania to help the animals, Wriedt said in a statement.

“This partnership will go a long way to assist in raising funds, awareness and future opportunities to ensure the survival of the Tasmanian Devil,” she said.

A spokesman for Warner Bros. did not immediately return calls for comment on Saturday.

The fox-like animals with powerful jaws and a bloodcurdling growl are being wiped out by a contagious cancer that creates grotesque facial tumors.

The disease was first noticed in the mid-1990s in Tasmania’s northeast, where 90 percent of the devils have since perished. It is spreading south and west, and scientists estimate that within five years, there will be no disease-free population in Tasmania - the only place in the world where the devils exist outside zoos.

Programs to try to save them include plans to relocate breeding pairs to island sanctuaries.

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By OLIVIA MUNOZ, Associated Press Writer

FRESNO, Calif. - Sightings of the light brown apple moth - which can ruin everything from tomatoes to citrus fruit to alfalfa - have shot up into the thousands since the insect was first discovered in the San Francisco Bay area three months ago, agriculture officials said Friday.

The half-inch moth with an indiscriminate appetite has prompted a federal quarantine, brought together scientists from around the world and worried farmers in California, where agriculture brings in more than $30 billion in revenue a year.

Many fear the pesky little moth’s habits: chomping on the leaves of more than 250 plants species and ruining crops from the inside out by burrowing when it’s in caterpillar form.

The quarantine, imposed earlier this month on eight counties in California’s north and central coastal areas as well as the entire state of Hawaii, restricts the interstate movement of nursery stock, cut flowers and other plants. The moths usually spread by laying their eggs in nursery plants, or traveling hidden inside fruit or plant clippings.

About 80 percent of the moths trapped so far have been in Santa Cruz County, though the first report came in February when a retired entomologist spotted one in his Berkeley backyard. It was fortunate the unremarkable-looking light brown apple moth appeared in the yard of an expert, said Larry Hawkins, a spokesman for the Animal and Plant Health Inspection Service, an agency of the U.S. Department of Agriculture.

read more at YAHOO! NEWS

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According to this study, I was born without fingers! - JS

from LiveScience.com

A quick look at the lengths of children’s index and ring fingers can be used to predict how well students will perform on SATs, new research claims.

Kids with longer ring fingers compared to index fingers are likely to have higher math scores than literacy or verbal scores on the college entrance exam, while children with the reverse finger-length ratio are likely to have higher reading and writing, or verbal, scores versus math scores.

Scientists have known that different levels of the hormones testosterone and estrogen in the womb account for the different finger lengths, which are a reflection of areas of the brain that are more highly developed than others, said psychologist Mark Brosnan of the University of Bath, who led the study.

Exposure to testosterone in the womb is said to promote development of areas of the brain often associated with spatial and mathematical skills, he said. That hormone makes the ring finger longer. Estrogen exposure does the same for areas of the brain associated with verbal ability and tends to lengthen the index finger relative to the ring finger.

To test the link to children’s scores on the College Board’s Scholastic Assessment Test (for which the name has changed a number of times in the past 100 years), Brosnan and his colleagues made photocopies of children’s palms and measured the length of their index and ring fingers using calipers accurate to 0.01 millimeters. They used the finger-length ratios as a proxy for the levels of testosterone and estrogen exposure.

The researchers then looked at boys’ and girls’ test performances separately and compared them to finger-length ratio measurements. They found a clear link between high prenatal testosterone exposure, indicated by the longer index finger compared to the ring finger, and higher scores on the math SAT.

more at YAHOO! NEWS

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A great, short video of where we live.

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Whatta ya think about this Snarlin Arlen?

In a collision of 21st-century science and decades-old conspiracy theories, a research team that includes a former top FBI scientist is challenging the bullet analysis used by the government to conclude that Lee Harvey Oswald acted alone in assassinating President John F. Kennedy in 1963.

The “evidence used to rule out a second assassin is fundamentally flawed,” concludes a new article in the Annals of Applied Statistics written by former FBI lab metallurgist William A. Tobin and Texas A&M University researchers Cliff Spiegelman and William D. James.

The researchers’ re-analysis involved new statistical calculations and a modern chemical analysis of bullets from the same batch Oswald is purported to have used. They reached no conclusion about whether more than one gunman was involved, but urged that authorities conduct a new and complete forensic re-analysis of the five bullet fragments left from the assassination 44 years ago.

More at MSNBC

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