Taming the Butterfly

More than 440 endangered Saiga antelopes were found dead in western Kazakhstan last week, suspected victims of the same epidemic that killed 12,000 animals last year, officials said on Monday.

How many times do we hear that some scientific view is "only theory" or that it is "not proven"? The hidden implication is that if we have not "proven" the case, then we do not know anything for certain about it, and any idea is as good as any other. A recent and vivid example of this problem is the ongoing argument in the popular media about global warming. Do we need to be absolutely certain before we take action?

Research being carried out at Carlos III University of Madrid analyzes the key factors in climate change and the risks to public policies that it implies. This study approaches the issue from the perspective of Sociology, Economics and Law.

A University of Washington project sees a role for programmers to reduce the energy appetite of the ones and zeroes in the code itself. Researchers have created a system, called EnergJ, that reduces energy consumption in simulations by up to 50 percent, and has the potential to cut energy by as much as 90 percent. They will present the research next week in San Jose at the Programming Language Design and Implementation annual meeting.

Germany on Monday announced plans to become the first major industrialised power to shut down all its nuclear plants in the wake of the disaster in Japan, with a phase-out due to be wrapped up by 2022.

A year after an oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico, scientists and biologists are getting their first real idea of how much damage was done to the regionís population of sea turtles as the females begin heading to coastal shores to nest. The greatest concern has been for the Kemps ridley, the smallest sea turtle and the most endangered.

In an event flanked with all the electric cars that have recently come to market, and a handful of those that are poised for sale later this year, U.S. Energy Secretary Steven Chu and L.A. Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa flipped the switch May 13 on the 500th electric-vehicle charging station installed by Coulomb Technologies as part of its ChargePoint America network.

Carbon emissions are at their highest ever levels, stoking fears of a global temperature rise over the "dangerous" two degrees Celsius threshold, according to data cited by the Guardian newspaper.

Neala Kendall, a graduate student from the University of Washington in Seattle, after studying cannery data on sockeye salmon harvested from Bristol Bay in Alaska, has discovered that the length of the average sockeye caught there, has been dropping for the past half century.

An international team of scientists has undertaken a study, the results of which have been published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, to better understand the link between climate conditions and the disease known as plague. Their results indicate that the amount of rain an area receives over a given time can greatly affect the spread of the disease.

Women have been left defenceless and at the mercy of militia groups in the aftermath of the Iraq war in 2003 according to research from the University of Birmingham.

Does climate change seriously threaten to wipe out the human species if left unchecked? Examining our evolutionary past suggests it might once have been the perfect catalyst for our extinction. But now?

Diseases that ravage wheat fields are as old as time itself. The ancient Romans even had a legend to explain the terrible plagues.

By 2050, the coolest summers in the tropics and parts of the northern hemisphere will still be hotter than the most scorching summers since the mid-20th century if global warming continues apace, according to a new study.

Natural gas is important in many sectors of the economy: for generating electricity, as a heat source for industry and buildings, and in chemical feedstock. Given the abundance of natural gas available through large global resources and the recent emergence of substantial unconventional supplies in the United States, worldwide usage of the fuel is likely to continue to grow considerably and contribute to significant reductions of greenhouse gas emissions for decades to come, according to a comprehensive, multidisciplinary study carried out over the last three years by MIT researchers.

Collectively, malaria, TB & HIV/AIDS cause more than five million deaths per year - nearly the entire population of the state of Washington - and represent one of the world's major public health challenges as we move into the second decade of the 21st century. In the May 26, 2011, edition of scientific journal Nature, Seattle BioMed Director Alan Aderem, Ph.D., along with Rino Rappuoli, Ph.D., Global Head of Vaccines Research for Novartis Vaccines & Diagnostics, discuss recent advances in vaccine development, along with new tools including systems biology and structure-based antigen design that could lead to a deeper understanding of mechanisms of protection. This, in turn, will illuminate the path to rational vaccine development to lift the burden of the world's most devastating infectious diseases.

There are many avenues of research being pursued in the quest for new power sources, but the most far-out idea is (literally) space-based solar power. Traditional solar photovoltaic (PV) arrays are attractive for a number of reasons, but there are also a number of problems with them. An interesting variation on the traditional, ground-based solar PV is discussed in detail in a recent article over at The Oil Drum. The article discusses the prospect of placing the PV arrays in orbit as geosynchronous satellites that collect solar power and beam it back down to ground stations as microwave energy.

Animals and plants may not be able to evolve their way out of the threat posed by climate change, according to a UC Davis study of a tiny seashore animal. The work was published today (June 8) in the journal Proceedings of the Royal Society B.

The Deakin University invention uses waste heat to reduce friction by warming the engine oil. A prototype has been built and tested and the inventors are now talking to the car manufacturers and developing an aftermarket conversion kit. The system, which can be retrofitted, works by diverting waste heat to bring engine oil up to its optimal operating temperature. It was developed by researchers at Deakin University led by Mr Frank Will of the School of Engineering during his PhD project.

Climate change is expected to alter the global industry in fruits and nuts dramatically as tree crops such as pistachios and cherries struggle in the rising temperatures, researchers said.