Science may be one step closer to understanding how a limb can be grown or a spinal cord can be repaired. Forsyth Institute scientists have discovered that some cells have to die for regeneration to occur. Research may provide insight into mechanisms necessary for therapeutic regeneration in humans, potentially addressing tissues that are lost, damaged or non-functional as a result of genetic syndromes, birth defects, cancer, degenerative diseases, accidents, aging and organ failure. Read more…

It's been shown that the left side of the brain processes language and the right side processes music; but what about a language like Mandarin Chinese, which is musical in nature with wide tonal ranges? Read more…

Recent experiments on the properties of water by Ph.D. Anatoli Bogdan, University of Helsinki, reveal information relevant for cloud physics and even cryopreservation science. Read more…

Men and women who lose weight by cutting calories also may be losing bone density, but weight loss through exercise does not seem to produce the same effect, according to a report in the December 11/25 issue of Archives of Internal Medicine, one of the JAMA/Archives journals. Read more…

A University of Illinois at Chicago study has been stopped early due to dramatic preliminary results indicating that medical circumcision reduces the risk of acquiring HIV during heterosexual intercourse by 53 percent. Read more…

UNL chemist Xiao Cheng Zeng and his team discovered double helixes of ice molecules that resemble the structure of DNA and self-assemble under high pressure inside carbon nanotubes. This discovery could have major implications for scientists in other fields who study the protein structures that cause diseases such as Alzheimer's and bovine spongiform ecephalitis. It could also help guide those searching for ways to target or direct self-assembly in nanomaterials. Read more…

University of Minnesota tobacco researchers have found that heavy smokers who reduce their number of daily cigarettes still take in two to three times more total toxins per cigarette than light smokers. Read more…

How does an organism know when it must produce a protein and in what amount? Michael Famulok and his team at the University of Bonn have now taken a meaningful step toward a better understanding of this process by successfully producing hairpin-shaped RNA molecules that are able to differentiate between riboswitches in the on and off states. Read more…

Almost a quarter of all mothers have problems with exertion incontinence one year after childbirth, according to a new doctoral thesis from Karolinska Institutet. However, despite many physical ailments, new mothers have better self-rated health than other women in the same age group. Read more…

A multicenter study on treating common ear infections in children with ear tubes adds to a growing body of evidence that favors antibiotic ear drops over antibiotics swallowed in pill or liquid form in such cases, a UT Southwestern Medical Center researcher reports. Read more…

Researchers from Spain have developed a new test that may rapidly detect the variola virus, the etiological agent of smallpox, as well as differentiate it from other orthopoxviruses while avoiding false-negative results. Their findings appear in the December 2006 issue of the Journal of Clinical Microbiology. Read more…

Hawaii has been hit with a 6.6 mag earthquake. You can see the location here on the USGS website and here on the IRIS Seismic Monitor website. The USGS is calling this a 6.3 despite reports that the earthquake was a 6.5. There was also a second earthquake that registered at 5.8. MSNBC.com reports that the quake hit at 7.07 local time near the west coast of the Big Island. The quake hit at 7:07 a.m. local time, 10 miles north-northwest of Kailua Kona, a town on the west coast of the Big Island, said Don Blakeman, a geophysicist at the National Earthquake Information Center, part of the U.S. Geological Survey. The Pacific Tsunami Center reported a preliminary magnitude of 6.5, while the U.S. Geological Survey gave a preliminary magnitude of 6.3. It was followed by several strong aftershocks, including one measuring a magnitude of 5.8, the Geological Survey said. There is no tsunami risk. More information can be obtained on a live broadcast from KITV Honolulu. Update: Now a 6.6 according to a new USGS report. Read more…

Writers Write, Inc. announces the launch of VideoNacho.com. VideoNacho.com features the Web's hottest short videos and film clips. Video Nacho's editors find the best videos on the Web so you don't have to: music, comedy, pets antics, social commentary: it just has to be entertaining. Enjoy a delicious short new video snack every afternoon. Calorie-free, it's sure to give you a lift! VideoNacho.com is the twentieth blog to join the Writers Write Lifestyle Network. It follows the launch in May, 2006 of WatchersWatch.com, a blog covering what's hot in movies and television. Read more…

Greg Landsberg at Brown University in Providence, R.I. told LiveScience that the risk of destruction from a manmade black hole or "black hole factory" is "totally minimal." Apparently, a group called The Lifeboat Foundation considers black holes that could be created by particle accelerators, like CERN's Large Hadron Collider, a risk to humanity. A number of models of the universe suggest extra dimensions of reality exist that are each folded up into sizes ranging from as tiny as a proton, or roughly a millionth of a billionth of a meter, to as big as a fraction of a millimeter. At distances comparable to the size of these extra dimensions, gravity becomes far stronger, these models suggest. If this is true, the collider will cram enough energy together to initiate gravitational collapses that produce black holes. If any of the models are right, the accelerator should create a black hole anywhere from every second to every day, each roughly possessing 5,000 times the mass of a proton and each a thousandth of a proton in size or smaller, Landsberg said. Still, any fears that such black holes will consume the Earth are groundless, Landsberg said. For one thing, theoretical physicist Stephen Hawking calculated all black holes should emit radiation, and that tiny black holes should lose more mass than they absorb, evaporating within a billionth of a trillionth of a trillionth of a second, "before they could gobble up any significant amount of matter," Landsberg said. Landsberg also said that the vast majority of any black holes that were created would escape Earth's gravity. CERN spokesman and former research physicist James Gillies also pointed out that Earth is bathed with cosmic rays powerful enough to create black holes all the time, and the planet hasn't been destroyed yet. "Still, let's assume that even if Hawking is a genius, he's wrong, and that such black holes are more stable," Landsberg said. Nearly all of the black holes will be traveling fast enough from the accelerator to escape Earth's gravity. "Even if you produced 10 million black holes a year, only 10 would basically get trapped, orbiting around its center," Landsberg said. Let's hope the CERN, Hawkings and the other experts are correct and we aren't doomed. Space.com has more about black holes here including a list of dozens of recent articles about black holes. Read more…

The BBC reports that scientists have developed a device that translates silently mouthed words into another language. Users simply have to silently mouth a word in their own language for it to be translated and read out in another. The researchers said the effect was like watching a television programme that had been dubbed. The system, detailed in New Scientist, is not yet fully accurate, but experts said it showed the technology was "within reach". The translation systems that are currently in use work by using voice recognition software. The BBC says the scientists are working on a Chinese into English version and an English to Spanish or German version. They hope that eventually the device will let you mouth words into the device in English and it will speak them in Chinese, Spanish or German. The ultimate goal would be a device that could translate any language. The New Scientist article calls the device the "closest thing to the babel fish." The article says the device still has trouble with sequence of words it has never heard before. The researchers use software that has been taught to recognise which phonemes are most likely to appear next to each other and in what order. When it encounters a string of phonemes it is unfamiliar with or has only partially heard, it uses this knowledge to come up with a range of sequences that make sense given the surrounding phonemes and words, assigns a probability to each one, and then picks the one with the highest probability. The system still has some way to go. Faced with a sequence of words it has never heard before, it picks the right phoneme sequence only 62 per cent of the time. This nevertheless ranks as "a very significant achievement" according to Chuck Jorgensen, who is working on using sub-vocal speech recognition to control robots at NASA's Ames Research Center in Moffett Field, California. "This is showing that the technology is really within reach." The universal translator is not far away. Read more…

The Washington Post reports that elephants have passed the mirror test. They are the only other animals besides humans and apes to do so. An elephant-proof mirror was constructed and the elephants eventually recognized that it was their own reflections in the mirror they were seeing. Some of the elephants even conducted oral self-exams. In a series of experiments, the elephants first explored the mirror -- reaching behind it with their trunks, kneeling before it and even trying to climb it -- gathering clues that the mirror image was just that, an image. That was followed by an eerie sequence in which the animals made slow, rhythmic movements while tracking their reflections. Then, like teenagers, they got hooked. All three conducted oral self-exams. Maxine, a 35-year-old female, even used the tip of her trunk to get a better look inside her mouth. She also used her trunk to slowly pull her ear in front of the mirror so she could examine it -- "self-directed" behaviors the zookeepers had never seen before. Moreover, one elephant, Happy, 34, passed the most difficult measure of self-recognition: the mark test. The researchers painted a white X on her left cheek, visible only in the mirror. Later, after moving in and out of view of the mirror, Happy stood directly before the reflective surface and touched the tip of her trunk to the mark repeatedly -- an act that, among other insights, requires an understanding that the mark is not on the mirror but on her body. It is a fascinating discovery. It is more proof that we must protect Asian elephants -- not that there was ever any doubt that we should protect these magnificent and intelligent creatures. Read more…

The Environment News Service reports that a new study from the National Research Council has found that honeybees and other pollinators are declining in North America. The report sounds a specific warning for the honeybee, which are vital to U.S. agriculture, pollinating more than 90 commercially grown crops. It can take a massive amount of bees to ensure a crop is suitably pollinated. For example, it takes about 1.4 million colonies of honeybees to pollinate 550,000 acres of almond trees in California. U.S. honeybee populations have declined at least 30 percent since the 1980s, when a non-native parasitic mite was introduced. The committee said that the full extent of the decline is unclear because of problems with the way the federal government collects statistics on the beekeeping industry. Antibiotic-resistant pathogens and encroachment by Africanized honeybees also are hurting North American honeybee levels, the committee said, and there is clear evidence of a honeybee shortage. The populations of other pollinators like butterflies, bats and hummingbirds are also on the decline. Read more…

Reuters reports that a shocking study published in Science found that ocean life and seafood could be depleted by as early as 2048. The scientific data also indicates that marine biodiversity has already crashed by as much as 29% since 1960. In an analysis of scientific data going back to the 1960s and historical records over a thousand years, the researchers found that marine biodiversity -- the variety of ocean fish, shellfish, birds, plants and micro-organisms -- has declined dramatically, with 29 percent of species already in collapse. Extending this pattern into the future, the scientists calculated that by 2048 all species would be in collapse, which the researchers defined as having catches decline 90 percent from the maximum catch. This applies to all species, from mussels and clams to tuna and swordfish, said Boris Worm, lead author of the study, which was published in the current edition of the journal Science. Ocean mammals, including seals, killer whales and dolphins, are also affected. "Whether we looked at tide pools or studies over the entire world's ocean, we saw the same picture emerging," Worm said in a statement. "In losing species we lose the productivity and stability of entire ecosystems. I was shocked and disturbed by how consistent these trends are -- beyond anything we suspected." Boris Worm, the lead author on the study, told Reuters that most of the destruction to ocean life is from over-fishing and habitat destruction. It was not a completely bleak outlook. The study did say that techniques like marine-life reserves and no-fishing zones could be helpful. Some types of aquaculture involving vegetarian fish could also be helpful. They better be implemented quickly because a planet without fish or very scarce in ocean-life is not going to be pleasant and will probably have serious repercussions for the land dwelling life forms on Earth. Read more…

The Daily Mail reports that Nick Pope, a former Ministry of Defence chief, is concerned that Britain is no longer monitoring UFO sightings leaving the country vulnerable to an alien invasion. During his time as head of the Ministry of Defence UFO project, Nick Pope was persuaded into believing that other lifeforms may visit Earth and, more specifically, Britain. His concern is that "highly credible" sightings are simply dismissed. And he complains that the project he once ran is now "virtually closed" down, leaving the country "wide open" to aliens. Mr Pope decided to speak out about his worries after resigning from his post at the Directorate of Defence Security at the MoD this week. "The consequences of getting this one wrong could be huge," he said. "If you reported a UFO sighting now, I am absolutely sure that you would just get back a standard letter telling you not to worry. ''Frankly we are wide open - if something does not behave like a conventional aircraft now, it will be ignored. It is a fair question to ask. Why isn't there more concern about UFO sightings? We watch for asteroids which are concerned a rare threat. We don't actually know how likely an alien invasion is so it would make since to gather information about all ufo sightings at a bare minimum. ADVERTISEMENT Find the latest Cyber Monday Deals from online retailers at ShoppersShop.com. Read more…

The BBC reports that the Shetland Museum and Archives has reconstructed the grice with the help of taxidermists. The grice is an extinct pig that live in Shetland about around 100 years ago. A model of the grice - which was the size of a large dog and had tusks - has been created after work by researchers and a taxidermist. The pig, which attacked lambs, was kept domestically until the 1800s, when landowners forced islanders to keep fewer swine and the breed died out. The model will go on display at the new Shetland Museum and Archives. The grice was covered with long stiff bristles over a fleece of coarse wool. The exhibit featuring the grice will go on display at the Shetland Museum and Archives in spring 2007. Read more…

Cristoforo Barbato (received many emails and) In those letters, there was interesting information and in one of these he advised me that I would receive a video tape about observations of a presumed 10th Planet coming closer to our Solar System. Read more…

SPACE.com - A large sunspot that has been kicking up storms in recent days erupted again overnight with an X-3 solar flare. All X-flares are major. Read more…

SPACE.com - HOUSTON--Astronauts aboard the International Space Station and shuttle Discovery slept in protected areas of their respective spacecraft overnight to avoid the effects of a radiation storm kicked up my a massive solar flare, NASA officials said Wednesday. Read more…

Scientists have identified the first biochemical marker linked to sleep loss, an enzyme in saliva known as amylase whose activity goes up as sleep deprivation is prolonged.Channel: Science Tags: Saliva Test Drivers Safety Sleep Deprivation Read more…

In an annual message for peace, Benedict strongly emphasized a theme rarely taken up in his nearly two years as pope: what he called the "ecology of peace," the idea that protecting the environment and finding alternative energy sources could reduce conflict.Channel: Science Tags: pope ecology of peace environment energy Read more…