News Articles

Offshore wind has potential to help the United States meet its growing energy needs, but the U.S. marine renewable energy industry has lagged behind Europe for decades.
Recent government subsidies have accelerated renewable energy development in U.S. waters, particularly along the East Coast, but a critical challenge is finding space for a growing number of turbines in an ocean crowded with fishing, marine transportation and recreational boating.

Why is the world so full of "morons" and "degenerates" and what, if anything, can be done to fix them?

These are questions that Robert W. Sussman, PhD, a professor of anthropology in Arts&Sciences at Washington University in St. Louis, explored Feb. 15th at the AAAS meeting in Boston.

Recognition of early-career women scientists helps encourage participation in medical research, builds strong research cultures, and inspires a new generation of scientists.
 In that light, five medical and life science researchers from Africa, the Middle East, Asia, Latin America and the Caribbean Basin today received the 2013 Elsevier Foundation Awards for Early Career Women Scientists in the Developing World for work that could contribute to life-saving knowledge and therapies worldwide. The prizes were awarded by The Elsevier Foundation, the Organization for Women in Science for the Developing World and TWAS, the academy of sciences for the developing world, to build research capacity and advance scientific knowledge throughout the developing world. 

Given the enormous increase in government funding and control of science and technology in the U.S. during the last few decades, it is surprising that more attention isn't paid to the policy decisions that drive the enterprise, said Daniel Sarewitz, 
Arizona State University
co-director of the Consortium for Science, Policy and Outcomes (CSPO) at the AAAS meeting in Boston. What appears to be missing from the equation, he added, is a focus on outcomes. 
Sarewitz has commented for more than 20 years on science policy, dating back to his time working on Capitol Hill as a staff member for former Democratic congressman George E. Brown, Jr., and has written numerous articles and books on this subject. 

The National Football League is facing lawsuits by 4,000 former players who allege the organizations failed to protect them from the long-term consequences of concussions.
A psychologist that consulted with the Montreal Canadiens hockey team and treated players with concussions for 15 years undertook research into the effects of concussions on children and young athletes as well as older athletes. 
To study the effects of concussions,
Dr. Maryse Lassonde, a neuropsychologist and the scientific director of the Quebec Nature and Technologies Granting Agency
had athletes perform specific visual and auditory tasks and also mapped their brains with the help of EEG and MRI equipment, in addition to testing brain chemistry.

Heightened regulation, increased lawsuits and a resulting lack of venture capital has meant the western pharmaceutical industry faces a looming crisis but companies outside America and Europe may pick up the slack - new targets/drugs remain an evergreen medical idea elsewhere, especially to address the unmet need of drug resistance in the treatment of cancer.  

Bisphenol A, widely known as BPA, has recently become a controversial science issue, along with climate change and every food, energy and medicine study. In the modern world, the only legitimate science is the science that agrees with well-funded activist organizations. BPA is a component of plastic bottles and canned food linings that have helped make the world's food supply safer but has recently come under attack because some studies have found it has the potential to mimic the sex hormone estrogen if blood and tissue levels are high enough.
An analysis of almost 150 BPA exposure studies shows that in the general population, people's exposure may be many times too low for BPA to effectively mimic estrogen in the human body. 

The world produces a lot of food, but it is not produced equally. Agriculturally rich areas like American and Europe can fret about whether natural or synthetic toxins are on their food, and how much water a toilet flush should be, while a billion people elsewhere have inconsistent diets.
Paul Ehrlich, legendary doomsday prophet, now has a new concern that will kill the planet if it is not addressed - equal rights for women. 

A group of political scientists says a growing field of research has found links to genetics and political preferences - well, sort of.

Forcepflies, commonly known as earwigflies, because the males have a large genital forceps that resembles the cerci of earwigs, are part of a family that was widespread  from Australia to Antarctica and over the Americas during the Jurassic period and extant members are rare now.

Pediatric Crohn's Disease is a chronic, debilitating condition of the gastrointestinal (GI) tract that affects up to 200,000 children worldwide. CD, which is a type of inflammatory bowel disease (IBD), most commonly involves the end of the small intestine and the beginning of the large intestine. The disease can pose a substantial psycho-social burden to younger patients and is associated with reduced quality of life for both patients and their caregivers. 

In the ongoing quest to optimize alternative energy sources like biofuels, researchers are looking more to plants that grow in the wild, such as switchgrass. But domesticating wildgrowing plants has a downside - it could make them more susceptible to any number of plant viruses.
"Most wild plants are perennials, while most of our agriculture crops are annuals,"  Michigan State University plant biologist Carolyn Malmstrom
said in her statement regarding her talk at the AAAS meeting in Boston. "Sometimes when you mix the properties of the two, unexpected things can happen."