Science News

The Geobacter bacterium could be the biofuel-generating machine of the future, producing energy-rich butanol costing as little as $2 per gallon.

A project seeking to accomplish this, headed by Derek Lovley and colleagues at the University of Massachusetts, Amherst , received $1 million in funding today from the Department of Energy's Advanced Research Projects Agency-Energy (ARPA-E). It was not even the largest grant, with 37 projects receiving $106 million to further their research in this second round of funding.

Melting sea ice has accelerated warming in the Arctic, which in recent decades has warmed twice as quickly as the global average, according to a new study.

"The findings reinforce suggestions that strong positive ice-temperature feedbacks have emerged in the Arctic, increasing the changes of further rapid warming and sea ice loss," concludes the research published yesterday by the journal Nature .

More than 1,200 tornadoes rip through the U.S. Midwest in an average year, killing about 100 people and costing millions of dollars in damage. Currently the longest warning time meteorologists can give is a nerve-racking 13 minutes, with a 70 percent false alarm rate. [More]

Aphids can be a gardener’s nightmare. But they may be an evolutionary biologist’s dream. Because they’re pioneers in the history of life on Earth. For one thing, they’re now the only known animals to produce the chemical pigments called carotenoids, which help in cell repair and immunity. It’s the same stuff that makes tomatoes red.

More impressive, aphids got their ability to make carotenoids through a major shortcut. Millions of years back, they apparently grabbed the genes for making carotenoids directly from a carotenoid-producing fungus. And then incorporated those genes into the aphid genome. That’s according to a study in the April 30th issue of the journal Science . [Nancy Moran and Tyler Jarvik, http://bit.ly/928R4t ]

A tony social club in midtown Manhattan is not the place one might expect to find a verbal sparring match between famous physicists. But that was the case April 23 at the Harmonie Club , when Alan Guth and David Gross had a feisty off-the-cuff debate about Guth's model for the dawn of the universe. Perhaps in keeping with their genteel surroundings, the two kept their jabs mostly playful, but a few may have stung nonetheless. [More]

By Carlos Barria

VENICE, Louisiana (Reuters) - A massive oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico washed up to wildlife refuges and seafood grounds on the Louisiana coast on Friday, as authorities struggled to avert what could become one of the worst U.S. ecological disasters.

The benefits of breast milk for babies are numerous. Lower rates of childhood obesity, decreased incidence of asthma and even better brain development are all linked with drinking more of mother's milk in infancy, and despite decades of research and promising marketing claims, the formula industry has not caught up to mother nature in the milk department. [More]

For pianists and guitarists, small fingers are a curse. [More]

A pregnant woman knows she is shaping her child's future from the moment of conception. But she might not realize that the baby is already talking back. Mother and child are engaged in a silent chemical conversation throughout pregnancy, with bits of genetic material and cells passing not only from mother to child but also from child to mother. Scientists increasingly think these silent signals from the fetus may influence a mother's risk of cancer , rheumatoid arthritis and other diseases, even decades after she has given birth. [More]