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Dear EarthTalk: What are some of the leading proposed technological fixes for staving off global warming, and how feasible are they? – James Harris, Columbus, Ohio While most of the world fixates on how to reduce the amount of carbon dioxide (CO2) and other greenhouse gases we emit into the atmosphere, scientists and engineers around the world are busy working on various “geo-engineering” technologies—many of which are highly theoretical—to mitigate global warming and its effects....

Nineteenth-century English social scientist Herbert Spencer made this prescient observation: “Those who cavalierly reject the Theory of Evolution, as not adequately supported by facts, seem quite to forget that their own theory is supported by no facts at all.” Well over a century later nothing has changed. When I debate creationists, they present not one fact in favor of creation and instead demand “just one transitional fossil” that proves evolution. When I do offer evidence (for example, Ambulocetus natans, a transitional fossil between ancient land mammals and modern whales), they respond that there are now two gaps in the fossil record....

Robert Sorge was studying pain in mice in 2009, but he was the one who ended up with a headache. At McGill University in Montreal, Canada, Sorge was investigating how animals develop an extreme sensitivity to touch. To test for this response, Sorge poked the paws of mice using fine hairs, ones that wouldn’t ordinarily bother them. The males behaved as the scientific literature said they would: they yanked their paws back from even the finest of threads....

Extraordinary opportunities to study and to treat human diseases are provided by the recently acquired ability to derive stem cells from human embryos. Because these cells form all of the tissues that make up an adult, they afford a chance to study normal human development in the laboratory, to define the abnormalities associated with inherited disease and, in time, perhaps to treat diseases, many of which have no effective treatment at present....

SOWETO, SOUTH AFRICA—The Perinatal HIV Research Unit (PHRU) at the sprawling Chris Hani Baragwanath Hospital here is abuzz with activity. Young women with swelling bellies wait in plastic chairs to see nurses while pharmacists distribute antiretroviral drugs from an office behind a metal security gate. Upstairs, a fresh coat of paint is being applied to the walls of a new men’s clinic that offers HIV-testing, support and treatment. In the late 1990s PHRU pioneered research into using antiretroviral drugs to prevent and treat HIV, the virus that causes AIDS, in developing countries....

By Rosemarie Francisco MANILA (Reuters) - Thousands of people in the Philippines fled from their homes on Tuesday as the strongest typhoon to hit the country this year made landfall, toppling trees and cutting power as it made its way straight towards the capital, Manila. Parts of the Philippines are still recovering from Typhoon Haiyan, one of the biggest cyclones known to have made landfall anywhere, which killed more than 6,100 people last year, many in tsunami-like sea surges, and left millions homeless....

Despite steady progress since the year 2000 in reducing the overall spread of tuberculosis around the globe, TB still sickens nearly nine million men, women and children each year, killing at least 1.4 million, mostly in the poorer parts of the world. There is also worrisome evidence that some TB strains may be evolving into an even more dangerous cause of human suffering than most people, including many doctors, realize. Sally Lehrman marshaled the relevant data in her July Scientific American feature article “The Diabolical Genius of an Ancient Scourge....

UNITED NATIONS – The U.N. Security Council will debate climate change for the second time in four years, its current chair announced yesterday. The July 20 discussion, led by the German government, will be a repeat of a 2007 attempt by the United Kingdom to put climate change on the council’s agenda. That earlier move garnered sharp criticism from many developing country leaders, who accused the 15-member panel of attempting to strip power from other U....

As the international ITER project to develop an experimental nuclear fusion reactor eats into research budgets around the world, an advisory panel to the US Department of Energy recommends mothballing at least one of three major experiments and focusing on research necessary to bring ITER online. The Fusion Energy Sciences Advisory Committee (FESAC) released its report on 22 September at a meeting in Gaithersburg, Maryland. The document outlines a 10-year plan for US nuclear fusion research for various budget scenarios, the most optimistic of which calls for “modest growth”....

Robert Bindschadler, a senior fellow and glaciologist at NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center, explains. Both polar regions of the earth are cold, primarily because they receive far less solar radiation than the tropics and mid-latitudes do. At either pole the sun never rises more than 23.5 degrees above the horizon and both locations experience six months of continuous darkness. Moreover, most of the sunlight that does shine on the polar regions is reflected by the bright white surface....

If there are any men left who still believe that women are the weaker sex, it is long past time for them to think again. With respect to that most essential proof of robustness—the power to stay alive—women are tougher than men from birth through to extreme old age. The average man may run a 100-meter race faster than the average woman and lift heavier weights. But nowadays women outlive men by about five to six years....

Did you like this article? Editorial Review This article has been reviewed for accuracy, reliability and adherence to academic standards prior to publication. Doric Temple, SegestaMark Cartwright (CC BY-NC-SA) Characteristics of Sicilian Archaic Temples The large dimensions of the components, the presence of a propteron, an adyton, and other specific elements of the plan and elevation speak for an originally very autonomous development of Sicilian architecture. The large quantities of available and easy-to-work-with building materials at the sites of Syracuse, Megara Hyblaea, and Selinunte enabled the establishment of the first generation of stone temples in Sicily; the metropoleis were still busy with the process of becoming a city (polis) and had not formed monumental architecture yet....

As economic and political instability rocked Egypt, looters increasingly plundered the country’s archaeological sites, leaving holes across the nation’s ancient landscapes. That’s the trend reported today in the journal Antiquity by archaeologists who used satellite images to monitor sites in Egypt from 2002 to 2013. For the last several years, “space archaeologist” Sarah Parcak, an associate professor of anthropology at the University of Alabama at Birmingham, has pored over satellite images to discover lost pyramids, tombs and cities buried in Egypt....

Each year hundreds of the best and brightest researchers gather in Lindau, Germany, for the Nobel Laureate Meeting. There, the newest generation of scientists mingles with Nobel Prize winners and discusses their work and ideas. The 2013 meeting is dedicated to chemistry and will involve young researchers from 78 different countries. In anticipation of the event, which will take place from June 30 through July 5, we are highlighting a group of attendees under 30 who represent the future of chemistry....

GLASGOW, Scotland—As climate talks race toward their conclusion, a concerted push by vulnerable countries to shake the world into taking action against intensifying threats from the sea and sky might be inching forward on the world stage. For days negotiators have huddled in windowless rooms trying to hammer out deals about funding and winding down fossil fuels. Divisions between richer and poorer countries have widened and alliances hardened—resulting in one proposal to remove emissions reductions efforts out of the talks entirely....

“Could I come to the telescope with you?” I innocently asked the late astronomer Vera Rubin that question a few weeks after I met her in 2007. Even then, in her late 70s, Rubin continued her trips to places such as Kitt Peak National Observatory to scour the outermost edges of far-flung galaxies in order to clock how quickly the galaxies’ stars whipped around their cores. In our solar system, Mercury whips around the sun at high velocity, while Pluto merely plods along, and astronomers naturally assumed that stars close to a galaxy’s core would similarly move faster than stars out at the edge....

By Jane Qiu of Nature magazineThe Chinese government’s promise last week that researchers will enjoy another year of increased funding was not unexpected, given the country’s relatively buoyant economy and high regard for science. But some scientists fear that too little money will be spent on good-quality basic research, and that too much will be wasted in a funding system in which good connections often trump academic expertise.In a speech at the opening session of the annual National People’s Congress, China’s Premier, Wen Jiabao, lauded science and technology as key drivers of economic growth and individual prosperity, and backed up the rhetoric with hard cash....

SAM PAGED ME at 9 p.m., crying. It had started with his hair, which he was convinced was falling out. And although his work as a teacher’s aide had “filled him with love and joy,” he was sure his boss had given him a nasty look at the lunch break, and he felt utterly sick inside. Later Sam had phoned his partner, who had seemed distant. Afraid he was about to be dumped, Sam locked himself in the staff bathroom and cried for almost an hour, failing to finish his work and preventing others from using the facilities....

FEBRUARY 1955 BUBBLE CHAMBER–“In their exploration of the submicroscopic world of atomic nuclei, physicists are like men groping in a dark cave with a flashlight. It would help if they had a better flashlight. Physical chemists have long known that in a clean, smooth-walled vessel a very pure liquid may be heated above its usual boiling point without boiling. I wondered whether a flying particle might, under suitable conditions, trigger the formation of the microscopic bubbles that start the boiling process....

In July 2012 three of India’s regional electric grids failed, triggering the largest blackout on earth. More than 620 million people—9 percent of the world’s population—were left powerless. The cause: the strain of food production from a lack of water. Because of major drought, farmers plugged in more and more electric pumps to draw water from deeper and deeper belowground for irrigation. Those pumps, working furiously under the hot sun, increased the demand on power plants....