Not buying it?  Global warming is becoming a much tougher sell. A new Pew Research poll says the percentage of people surveyed, who believe climate change is a very serious problem, has dropped from 44 percent last year to 35 percent.
 

Cambrothyra fossil.

The fossil remains of some of the first animals with shells, ocean-dwelling creatures that measure a few centimeters in length and date to about 520 million years ago, provide a window on evolution at this time, according to scientists. Their research indicates that these animals were larger than previously thought.

Low-income Americans with no more than a high school education appear more likely to get vaccinated against H1N1 swine flu than people with more money and better schooling, according to a poll released on Friday.   A telephone survey of 3,003 U.S. adults conducted by Thomson Reuters found that 49.8 percent of people with lower education [...]

Microscopic image of a human cell (green cytoplasm, blue nucleus) loaded with mini-magnets (red).
Microscopic magnetic particles have been used to bring stem cells to sites of cardiovascular injury in a new method designed to increase the capacity of cells to repair damaged tissue, UCL scientists have announced.

This is a false-color scanning electron microscope image of the zigzag nanowires in which the straight sections are separated by triangular joints and specific device functions are precisely localized at the kinked junctions in the nanowires.
Taking nanomaterials to a new level of structural complexity, scientists have determined how to introduce kinks into arrow-straight nanowires, transforming [...]

Soybean sprouts struggling in dry conditions. Biologists have now solved the structure of a critical molecule that helps plants survive during droughts.
A team of biologists in California led by researchers at The Scripps Research Institute and the University of California (UC), San Diego has solved the structure of a critical molecule that helps plants survive [...]

In a small study of 54 young adults, UF researchers found eating more plant-based foods, which are rich in substances called phytochemicals, seems to prevent oxidative stress in the body, a process associated with obesity and the onset of disease
The cheeseburger and French fries might look tempting, but eating a serving of broccoli or leafy [...]

Tomato seeds exposed to carbon nanotubes (right) sprouted and grew faster than unexposed seeds (left).
With potential adverse health and environmental effects often in the news about nanotechnology, scientists in Arkansas are reporting that carbon nanotubes (CNTs) could have beneficial effects in agriculture. Their study, scheduled for the October issue of ACS Nano, found that tomato [...]

The World of Goo is a physics-based puzzle game released in October of 2008.  It was favorably received by the gaming community, receiving many awards.
On the one-year anniversary of the product’s release, the developers decided to undertake an e-commerce experiment.  They offered to sell the game (previously retailing at $20) to anyone for whatever price [...]

Last year, procrastinators were rewarded when they finally got around to booking flights for holiday travel. Back then, airlines were not prepared for the sharp falloff in travel and offered last-minute deals to fill up empty planes.  This year? Dilly-dallying, even waiting just a few days, could carry a steep price. Fares, though still lower [...]

Ad pricing down across the board
The first half of 2009 has drops in ad spending across all media—even online—but advertisers are more optimistic about the latter part of the year, according to JPMorgan.
 

Sanwei Bookshop in central Beijing
China has excelled in recent years at producing Olympic gold medalists, skilled factory workers and more billionaires than any country other than the United States. But authors are another story. The influence of China’s novelists and other writers has long been stunted by the country’s history of censorship and custom of [...]

Students use digital materials instead of traditional textbooks
The dread of high school algebra is lost here amid the blue glow of computer screens and the clickety-clack of keyboards.   A fanfare plays from a speaker as a student passes a chapter test. Nearby, a classmate watches a video lecture on ratios. Another works out an equation [...]

Sheri West lost her home in Cleveland last year and had to sleep in her car
The first night after she surrendered her house to foreclosure, Sheri West endured the darkness in her Hyundai sedan. She parked in her old driveway, with her flower-print dresses and hats piled in boxes on the back seat, and three cherished [...]

Scientists have developed new technique that is 200 times more efficient and twice as fast as conventional methods for transforming adult human cells into induced pluripotent stem cells.
A team led by scientists from The Scripps Research Institute has developed a method that dramatically improves the efficiency of creating stem cells from human adult tissue, without [...]

Man juggling several small balls.
Learning to juggle leads to changes in the white matter of the brain, an Oxford University study has shown.

One of the 32 new exoplanets recently discovered using the HARPS spectrograph is surrounding the star Gliese 667 C, which belongs to a triple system. The 6 Earth-mass exoplanet circulates around its low-mass host star at a distance equal to only 1/20th of the Earth-Sun distance. The host star is a companion to two other [...]

Soccer mom in decline
Married, middle-class but working suburban moms whose primary concern is how to enrich their children while they are away at work are declining in numbers, in influence and even as a key swing vote.  New preliminary 2008 census figures show that the percentage of households with their own kids under 18 has [...]

Bans on smoking in places like restaurants, offices and public buildings reduce cases of heart attacks and heart disease, according to a report  by a federally commissioned panel of scientists.
 

 
Yak About It
Yak About It – featured products all started off as ideas, ideas culminated from ordinary people like you and me. The people behind these inventive products had the courage to change their lives as they once knew them and take a risk on their dreams. This vision to bring a product to market [...]

Astronomers obtained this portrait of Barnard’s Galaxy using the Wide Field Imager attached to the 2.2-m MPG/ESO telescope at ESO’s La Silla Observatory in northern Chile.
A stunning new image reveals one of our nearest galactic neighbors, Barnard’s Galaxy, also known as NGC 6822. The galaxy contains regions of rich star formation and curious nebulae, such [...]

Fruit flies.
When Professor Joel Levine’s team genetically tweaked fruit flies so that they didn’t produce certain pheromones, they triggered a sexual tsunami in their University of Toronto Mississauga laboratory. In fact, they produced bugs so irresistible that normal male fruit flies attempted to mate with pheromone-free males and even females from a different species-generally a [...]

Tool transfer upon recipient’s request.
The evolution of altruism has long puzzled researchers and has mainly been explained previously from ultimate perspectives—”I will help you now because I expect there to be some long-term benefit to me”. However, a new study by researchers at the Primate Research Institute (PRI) and the Wildlife Research Center (WRC) of [...]

Adult female Bagheera kiplingi eats Beltian body harvested from ant-acacia.
There are approximately 40,000 species of spiders in the world, all of which have been thought to be strict predators that feed on insects or other animals. Now, scientists have found that a small Central American jumping spider has a uniquely different diet: the species Bagheera [...]

Humpback whales in southern populations are poorly understand in terms of their population structure. The new research will help researchers understand these populations and how they are connected, which in turn will help inform management decisions.
After 15 years of research in the waters of the South Atlantic and Indian Oceans, scientists from the Wildlife Conservation [...]