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By Gopal Sharma KATHMANDU (Reuters) - Conservationists must try to reduce the demand for tiger parts in China as part of a campaign to save the big cats, wildlife experts warned at an anti-poaching conference in Kathmandu. Thousands of tigers once roamed forests in South and Southeast Asia but numbers have plummeted to about 3,000 worldwide. Experts say poaching is fueled by a thriving trade in China, where tiger parts are prized as status symbols and often used in traditional medicine....

Some federal appeals court judges aren’t happy with EPA’s pace in either repealing or replacing the Clean Power Plan. Yesterday, two judges on the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit stated they would no longer vote to keep litigation over the Clean Power Plan on hold. A third judge said he was concerned about how the Supreme Court stay of the rule was allowing EPA to avoid regulating greenhouse gases....

Carbon nanotubes–and their spherical cousins known as buckyballs–are proving to have myriad uses, finding employ in improved solar cells, electronics and medical probes. But the production volume of the tricky nanomaterials remains nanoscale when compared with the production volume of other industrial components. Nevertheless, environmental engineers have begun investigating how such materials might interact with natural environments if accidentally released and have discovered that at least some of the hydrophobic (water fearing) materials persist quite readily in natural waters....

In the villages outside Bangalore in southern India “there’s a lot of fear around cancer”, says social epidemiologist Suneeta Krishnan. “Women know other women who have breast cancer, or died of cervical cancer. They have little awareness that early detection can lead to good outcomes — and a feeling that they’d rather just not know, because they couldn’t afford treatment.” The concerns noted by Krishnan, who works with RTI International’s Women’s Global Health Imperative in San Francisco, California, are common in the developing world, where prevalence of cancer is climbing rapidly....

Brain conditions such as schizophrenia and autism spectrum disorder have long been known to have an inherited component, but pinpointing how gene variants contribute to disease has been a major challenge. Now, some of the first findings from the most comprehensive genomic analysis of the human brain ever undertaken are shedding light on the roots of these disorders. Among the discoveries are elements buried in the genome’s ‘dark matter’ that seem to regulate gene expression....

“What’s for dinner?” is becoming a complicated question. The world’s population is projected to top nine billion by 2050, a 28 percent leap that will greatly increase the demand for food just as climate change is altering rainfall patterns and causing more frequent and widespread droughts. The colliding trends have serious implications for agriculture and food security. Food producers are finding surprising ways to adapt – and while some sound cool, others err on the creepy side....

The following essay is reprinted with permission from The Conversation, an online publication covering the latest research. How chemical reactions on a lifeless planet floating around in the cold darkness of space can suddenly give rise to living organisms is one of the biggest questions in science. We don’t even know whether the molecular building blocks of life on Earth were created here or whether they were brought here by comets and meteorites....

His finalist year: 1974 His finalist project: Writing a computer program to image the structure of different compounds based on their chemical name What led to the project: In the early 1970s Michael First’s Philadelphia-area high school (Cheltenham High School in Wyncote) purchased some computer terminals and subscribed to a local time-sharing service. As a student there, he loved the challenge of trying to program on these early machines, and he hunted around for practical applications....

In the past several years scientists have delivered a slew of advances in wiring prosthetic limbs directly to the brain. A number of studies have reported that severely disabled patients—or monkeys employed as research surrogates—have used bionic limbs controlled by thought to, say, pick up a cup or hold up a hand and give a high five. Many of these devices have yet to become more than sophisticated laboratory showpieces that require constant fine-tuning to preserve a clear connection to the brain....

As Congress debates ways to encourage coal-fired power plants to capture carbon dioxide emissions and store it underground, scientists are racing to find cleaner and more efficient ways of collecting the greenhouse gas. Currently, the few coal plants that are capturing CO2 on a commercial scale use technology that employs monoethanolamine, a general-purpose solvent that has been around for 75 years that is nonselective, corrosive, requires large equipment and is not effective under all conditions....

Climate change caused by rising levels of atmospheric carbon dioxide (CO2) is now widely recognized. But the other side of the equation—the massive absorption of CO2 by the ocean—has received far less attention. The planet’s seas quickly absorb 25 to 30 percent of humankind’s CO2 emissions and about 85 percent in the long run, as water and air mix at the ocean’s surface. We have “disposed” of 530 billion tons of the gas in this way, and the rate worldwide is now one million tons per hour, faster than experienced on earth for tens of millions of years....

The resting brain is actually pretty busy, with nerve cells firing nearly as often as they do in a waking state. One common explanation for this activity holds that during sleep neural circuits replay important memories, a process that strengthens the connections among cells in those circuits, thereby aiding learning. In the August 2013 Scientific American University of Wisconsin–Madison researchers Giulio Tononi and Chiara Cirelli propose quite a different theory of what happens in the sleeping brain....

A diverse array of ecosystems piles into the folds and faults of central Appalachia, a chain of peaks extending through Pennsylvania, Maryland, West Virginia and Virginia. Floodplain forests and river shore grasslands dot the lower reaches, while high-elevation swamps, shale barrens and stands of dwarf oak mark the highland places. The complex geology and high rates of biodiversity in the region – currently home to an estimated 7,452 plant and animal species – make it a potential “natural stronghold” in the fight against climate change, according to a new, multimillion-dollar study by the Nature Conservancy....

The Artful Planet series is produced in partnership with the University of Washington’sConservation Magazine. It’s not all fun and games when it comes to games featuring the environment. With some green game apps, not only can you live in your world and play in it, you can learn stuff too. The Nature Deficit Judging from the amount of time my grandkids hunch over their iPhones and iPads for game time, I’d have to say games have garnered a major portion of the younger set’s mindshare....

IN THE 1954 foundational text of the Age of Aquarius, The Doors of Perception, Aldous Huxley describes his encounters with mescaline, a psychoactive substance derived from the peyote cactus and traditionally used by Native Americans for religious purposes. Huxley’s experiences include profound changes in the visual world, colors that induce sound, the telescoping of time and space, the loss of the notion of self, and feelings of oneness, peacefulness and bliss more commonly associated with religious visions or an exultant state: “A moment later a clump of Red Hot Pokers, in full bloom, had exploded into my field of vision....

Boulder smells of peppermint…and crisp snow. The frozen water smells pure, as if still trapped in the clouds hanging just overhead. The sun glints off the Rocky Mountains, their iron musk mixes with mountain pine. Before crossing the road to enter the University of Colorado Boulder, a truck dashes by, muffling these scents with sulfuric exhaust. As I approach, John Crimaldi, a fluid mechanist, pushes open an eastern door, so he can show me what these smells look like....

Every now and then a prominent religious zealot proclaims that the end is nigh. Harold Camping is the most recent example of such a doomsayer. He declared that judgment day commenced on May 21, 2011, and he also predicted that the destruction of the universe would follow on October 21. Wouldn’t it be nice to know which day of the week our universe would end? After all, if it were to fall on a Tuesday, why bother going to work that week?...

Full question: In several recent articles, reference was made to the amount of carbon dioxide (CO2) released from burning some quantity of fuel. It seemed that the tons of CO2 exceeded the weight of the fuel. What is the ratio of CO2 released to fuel burned by weight? Susan Trumbore, professor in and chair of the earth system science department at the University of California, Irvine, calculates an answer to this question....

By Victoria Cavaliere(Reuters) - A band of severe weather from tornadoes to icy blasts left at least seven people dead as winter storms and severe weather pushed up the East Coast on Sunday, bringing record high temperatures to Philadelphia and New York City but ice storms to parts of New England.The eastern half of the country was getting a “plethora of winter weather” just days before the Christmas holiday, according to the National Weather Service....

Did you like this article? Editorial Review This article has been reviewed for accuracy, reliability and adherence to academic standards prior to publication. History is not predictable; in many ways it can take on a life of its own. But sometimes, an individual’s sheer presence is enough to bend history to his will. One such individual was Alexander the Great. Through his conviction, vision, mental dexterity, oratory, and superb physical endurance he was able to shape destiny, for himself and for the lands he conquered....