Science Group at NewsCloud.com http://www.newscloud.com/groups/Science Tue, 13 May 2008 11:31:56 +0100 FeedCreator 1.7.2 en-us Taking The Temperature Of Global Climate Change http://www.newscloud.com/read/Taking_The_Temperature_Of_Global_Climate_Change The daily observation from the Solar & Heliospheric Observatory (SOHO) clearly highlights a potential global problem. In 2008, nearly every day of each of the first four months of the year has recorded an observation of sunspot activity that is equal to zero. In fact, there have been only two days in the last four months when there has been any sunspot activity at all and each small event disappeared very quickly.....

]]> New idea in mortuary science: Dissolving bodies with lye http://www.newscloud.com/read/New_idea_in_mortuary_science_Dissolving_bodies_with_lye Can't they just make me into a green battery? ... Getting the public to accept a process that strikes some as ghastly may be the biggest challenge. Psychopaths and dictators have used acid or lye to torture or erase their victims, and legislation to make alkaline hydrolysis available to the public in New York state was branded "Hannibal Lecter's bill" in a play on the sponsor's name - Sen. Kemp Hannon - and the movie character's sadism.

]]> Conservatives Happier Than Liberals http://www.newscloud.com/read/Conservatives_Happier_Than_Liberals Regardless of marital status, income or church attendance, right-wing individuals reported greater life satisfaction and well-being than left-wingers, the new study found. Conservatives also scored highest on measures of rationalization, which gauge a person's tendency to justify, or explain away, inequalities.

]]> Bizarre DNA of Platypus tells a story about us http://www.newscloud.com/read/Bizarre_DNA_of_Platypus_tells_a_story_about_us There are genes for egg laying, evidence of the animal\\\\\\'s reptilian roots. Genes for making milk, which the platypus does in mammalian style despite not having nipples. Genes for making snake venom, which the animal stores in its legs. And there are five times more sex-determining chromosomes than scientists know what to do with.

]]> Abu Dhabi Aims to Build First Carbon-Neutral City : NPR http://www.newscloud.com/read/Abu_Dhabi_Aims_to_Build_First_CarbonNeutral_City_NPR Morning Edition, May 6, 2008 · In Abu Dhabi, there's an area of nothing but wind-swept desert. But 10 years from now, if all goes according to plan, a city of 6 square kilometers housing 50,000 people will rise in the United Arab Emirates - and it will be carbon neutral.

]]> Parachuting Dog Helped Win WWII | LiveScience http://www.newscloud.com/read/Parachuting_Dog_Helped_Win_WWII_LiveScience The Allied airmen and women of World War II were certainly brave and skilled in battle, but even they couldn't win the war on their own.

Plagued in the early, low-tech years of the war by dangerous afflictions such as altitude and decompression sickness, pilots got some help behind the front lines from a team of American physiologists who studied the effects on the body of flying.

Their research, which involved at least one parachuting dog, and the technology it initiated was a key to the Allied victory in the air, says Jay B. Dean of the University of South Florida College of Medicine.

]]> Balding penguin's wetsuit lets him swim again http://www.newscloud.com/read/Balding_penguin_s_wetsuit_lets_him_swim_again What's black and white and warm all over? A penguin in a wetsuit, naturally. Sounds like a joke, but it's quite serious for biologists at the California Academy of Sciences, who had a wetsuit created for an African penguin to help him get back in the swim of things.

]]> The Science of Sexuality | Sex and Relationships http://www.newscloud.com/read/The_Science_of_Sexuality_Sex_and_Relationships We should stop ignoring scientific findings that do not mesh with our political beliefs.

]]> A Developer, His Deals and His Ties to McCain http://www.newscloud.com/read/A_Developer_His_Deals_and_His_Ties_to_McCain David D. Kirkpatrick and Jim Rutenberg, of The New York Times, write:

]]> The pope's US visit: Media, White House, Congress embrace spokesman for religious obscurantism http://www.newscloud.com/read/The_pope_s_US_visit_Media_White_House_Congress_embrace_spokesman_for_religious_obscurantism It is a measure of the profound decay of American democracy that when the president of the United States welcomed the Roman Catholic pontiff to Washington last week, a major concern was that the representative of a 2,000-year-old religious institution, steeped in reaction and hostility to science and human progress, might seem to criticize the US government from the left.

]]> Clues To Ancestral Origin Of Placenta Emerge In Genetics Study http://www.newscloud.com/read/Clues_To_Ancestral_Origin_Of_Placenta_Emerge_In_Genetics_Study Researchers at the Stanford University School of Medicine have uncovered the first clues about the ancient origins of a mother's intricate lifeline to her unborn baby, the placenta, which delivers oxygen and nutrients critical to the baby's health.

]]> What the Humble Fruit Fly Can Teach Us About Sex http://www.newscloud.com/read/What_the_Humble_Fruit_Fly_Can_Teach_Us_About_Sex Research that traces bisexuality in fruit flies to a genetic variation challenges assumptions about sexual attraction.

]]> Witness This: A Lunar Eclipse http://www.newscloud.com/read/Witness_This_A_Lunar_Eclipse "Oh, I'm bein' followed by a moonshadow..." A videographer catches a breathtaking lunar eclipse from British Columbia, Canada.

]]> Will Yale return all 40,000 artifacts to Peru? http://www.newscloud.com/read/Will_Yale_return_all_40000_artifacts_to_Peru Yale University is holding some 40,000 artifacts from the famed Inca citadel of Machu Picchu, a government official heading efforts to return the pieces told the state news agency Andina on Sunday.

]]> The new statistical rhetoric of climate change. http://www.newscloud.com/read/The_new_statistical_rhetoric_of_climate_change 10 years' worth of new data have emboldened the researchers, and now they've replaced their hazy equivocations with percentage values. This shift in rhetoric-at base, from words to numbers-has made their conclusions more comprehensible and compelling. It's also made them less honest.

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