Новости за 08.11.2010

The Los Angeles Times story about climate scientists fighting back has gotten tons of attention today--but it's misleading. It combines together multiple activities and makes it sound like they're centered at the American Geophysical Union. That's not the case and the AGU has put out a press release to clarify: An article appearing in the Los Angeles Times, and then picked up by media outlets far and wide, misrepresents the American Geophysical Union (AGU) and a climate science project the AGU i

Every year, the coming of warmer weather in the spring brings with it the scientific parlor game of predicting how many storms the impending Atlantic hurricane season will bring. But could meteorological prognosticators soon begin to predict storms years in advance, and not just months, with some accuracy? It is possible, a team led by Doug Smith of the U.K.'s Met Office says. In a study in Nature Geoscience, Smith essentially modeled the climate of past to see if the team's system accurately p

Visual Science readers may be way ahead of me on this, but I was psyched to find out that the International Space Station astronauts are on Twitter, where they are posting fresh images and updates. On Oct 29th 2010, from 220 miles above Earth, an Expedition 25 crew member onboard the ISS shot this nighttime image of the Gulf Coast. Mobile Bay and the city of Mobile (beneath the solar panels of the docked Russian Soyuz spacecraft), New Orleans, and Houston are visible toward the southwest (dow

Lauren Lynch reports the latest news in tennis. Flavia Pennetta clinch Italy's second straight Fed Cup championship and third Fed Cup crown in the past five years against the USA. The USA which will face host Belgium in the 2011 first round in February. Captain Fernandez says she will call on Venus and Serena Williams. Rafael Nadal who withdrew from this week's Paris Masters due to tendinitis in his left shoulder, says he plans to play the season-ending ATP World Tour Finals
in London starting on November 21st. Читать дальше...

The Deepwater Horizon spill in the Gulf of Mexico brought us those gut-wrenching pictures of pelicans covered in oil, but up to now there have been mercifully few reports of the disaster causing specific large-scale damage to the Gulf environment. That may be beginning to change: This week oceanographers report a vast swath of coral about seven miles southwest of the Deepwater Horizon site that are coated in brownish-black gunk and dying off. The team says the evidence points to the oil spill as

Polar bears have become a poster child for the impacts of climate change on wildlife. Their future may be bleak but their past is altogether more glorious. Polar bears are an evolutionary success story. They’re a recent addition to life’s repertoire, splitting off from their closest relatives – the brown bears – as recently as 150,000 years ago. Within just 20,000 years, they accumulated many adaptations that have made them the masters of their icy realm. But some of these same adaptations cou

You may remember a recent article that Michael Webber and I composed for New Scientist regarding the energy we lose embedded in food waste. Turns out that Michael's related interview as well as our piece inspired Neil Wagner's latest Science Friday comic strip!