Humans
We summarize the week's scientific breakthroughs every Thursday.
- Climate
IPCC looks to vet, report climate-science better
Major U.S. science organizations aren’t the only ones to realize that the climate-science community has bungled – and badly – its portrayals of research on global change in recent months, if not years, and its responses to criticisms. Yesterday, the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (a group established by the United Nations and World Meteorological Organization) said: “we recognize the criticism that has been leveled at us and the need to respond.” So will be convening an “independent review” panel to investigate what the organization’s procedures should be to vet not only the data it uses and how to synthesize conclusions based on those data, but also how it should convey those conclusions (and any necessary caveats) in reports to the public and policymakers.
- Humans
Facebook users keep it real in online profiles
College students on Facebook display their real personalities, not reinvented selves, a new study suggests.
- Health & Medicine
Germs in tobacco are potential source of respiratory infections blamed on smoking
Tests find hundreds of bacterial species in major cigarette brands.
- Health & Medicine
Chip of tooth tells radiation dose
A two-milligram dot of tooth enamel serves as a radiation dosimeter.
- Health & Medicine
Carotid procedures test about equally
Study finds similar stroke risks after surgery or stents.
- Health & Medicine
U.S. women still have higher stroke incidence than men
Research suggests possible link to abdominal fat.
- Health & Medicine
Compound might facilitate stroke recovery
Animal study finds regrowth of brain cells with natural protein fragment.
- Health & Medicine
Coffee associated with lower stroke risk
Study finds java drinkers 71 percent as likely to have had stroke as nondrinkers.
- Health & Medicine
Cooling stroke patients from the inside out
A treatment that induces hypothermia proves safe in an early test.
- Chemistry
Naming an atomic heavyweight
More than a decade after its debut in a German lab, element 112 is officially named copernicium.
- Ecosystems
Sea of plastics
Oceanographers are finding more patches of floating polymers, some up to 20 meters deep.
- Animals
Whale hunts: Discussions on lifting the ‘ban’
The International Whaling Commission will formally address its future, next week, at a meeting in St. Petersburg, Fla. Once comprised of whaling nations, the IWC now includes member states just as likely to condemn any hunting of cetaceans. That internal tension is guiding the meeting’s agenda. On it’s plate: whether to overturn the organization’s long-standing moratorium on commercial whaling.
