Scientific American Online

One of the world's last Javan rhinos ( Rhinoceros sondaicus annamiticu s) has been shot and killed by poachers in Vietnam, the World Wildlife Fund said Monday. The animal was shot and its horn, valued in traditional Asian medicine, was cut off.

No one knows exactly how many Javan rhinos remain in the world, but estimates for the population range from 40 to 60 animals, with possibly eight existing in Vietnam's Cat Tien National Park . The critically endangered species is elusive, rarely photographed and almost never observed in the wild. None exist in captivity.

By Erwin Seba

ROBERT, Louisiana (Reuters) - The huge slick from the Gulf of Mexico oil spill threatened Louisiana shores west of the Mississippi Delta on Monday as BP Plc said it was trying several options to control the leak without being sure they would work.

At the spinning heart of the modern electric grid lies what used to be called the dynamo--a generator composed of stacks of copper rotating in an electromagnetic field. But it's a turbine that spins the dynamo--and efforts to squeeze more efficiency and cut greenhouse gas emissions and other pollution from a smart grid may rest on improving this core technology. [More]

Only one thing is worse than the lights not coming on when the switch is flicked--and that's the lights going out right afterward. The fact that the problem is most often a burned-out lightbulb is testimony to the reliability of what's sometimes called the world's largest machine--the U.S. transmission and distribution grid for electricity . [More]

In the past two decades, the roster of known planets in the galaxy has mushroomed. Astronomers have added to the handful in our own solar system roughly 450 so-called exoplanets orbiting other stars. Most of those planets are more massive than Saturn, which makes them unpromising from a habitability standpoint--such giants tend to be gaseous bodies without a surface to walk on. [More]

Addiction has long been considered a man’s disease. Men are far more likely to use illicit substances, and partly for that reason, research on addiction for decades included only male users. Thus, far more is known about drug dependence in men than in women, and treatment programs and centers have been based on the needs of men.

But there are signs that the gender gap is closing, as drug and alcohol use have become more socially acceptable for girls and women. Indeed, drinking and alcohol dependence have grown increasingly prevalent among women in recent decades, but not among men, reported psychiatrist Richard A. Grucza of Washington University in St. Louis in a 2008 study.

[More]

The diet of more than 800 million people revolves around neither wheat, nor corn, nor rice. Instead in many countries the main staple consists of the starchy roots of a plant variously called cassava, tapioca, manioc or yuca (not to be confused with the succulent plant yucca). Indeed, cassava contributes more to the world’s calorie budget than any other food except rice and wheat, which makes it a virtually irreplaceable resource against hunger. Throughout the tropics, families typically cultivate it for their own consumption on small parcels of land, although in Asia and in parts of Latin America the plant is also grown commercially for use in animal feed and starch-based products. The root’s nutritional value, however, is poor: it contains little protein, vitamins or other nutrients such as iron. Better varieties of cassava could thus effectively alleviate malnutrition in much of the developing world.

Because of that promise, the two of us and our colleagues at the University of Brasilia and others are devoted to creating hardier, more productive and more nutritious varieties and making them widely available to farmers in developing countries. Our team focuses largely on applying traditional breeding techniques to form hybrids between cassava and its wild relatives, taking advantage of traits that have evolved in the wild plants over millions of years. This approach is less costly than genetic engineering and does not raise the safety concerns that make some people wary of genetically modified crops. Meanwhile researchers and nonprofit organizations in the developed world have begun to take an interest and have produced genetically modified cassava varieties for the same purposes. The recent completion of a draft genome sequencing of cassava may open the way to further improvements.

By Erwin Seba

ROBERT, Louisiana (Reuters) - BP Plc said on Monday it had incurred $350 million in costs so far from the huge oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico as fears mounted of a prolonged and growing environmental and economic disaster.

By Janelle Weaver

Humans are not the only ones to grimace when they are in pain, scientists have found. [More]

By Erwin Seba

ROBERT, Louisiana (Reuters) - BP Plc engineers on Sunday desperately explored options to control oil gushing from a ruptured Gulf of Mexico well after a setback with a huge containment dome fueled fears of a prolonged and growing environmental disaster.

By Erwin Seba

ROBERT, Louisiana (Reuters) - BP Plc engineers searched on Sunday for ways to control gushing oil from a ruptured Gulf of Mexico well after a setback with a huge metal containment dome dashed hopes for a quick, temporary solution to a growing environmental disaster.

By Erwin Seba

Genetically, children are a blend of code from both of their parents. But for the first nine months of development, a fetus gets just about everything else from its mother. The two individuals' systems are so intertwined that even after birth, material from a fetus can linger in the mother's body for decades. [More]

The U.S. Coast Guard is chronicling BP's efforts to contain a massive oil leak 1,524 meters down in the Gulf of Mexico and corral the extensive oil slick heading toward the coast. The oil, as much as 757,000 liters per day, has been spewing into the gulf since April 20, when an explosion aboard the mobile offshore drilling unit Deepwater Horizon destroyed and later sunk the rig. [More]

ARGONNE, Ill.--Twenty miles southwest of Chicago, government researchers are pursuing the automotive version of Mr. Right.

He's powerful. He has endurance. He isn't too expensive to have around. And he never, ever explodes.

The work involved in shutting down the nearly 200,000 gallons of crude oil spewing up into the Gulf of Mexico daily for the past two weeks has demanded a tremendous amount of coordination involving, among others, BP, the U.S. Coast Guard and local fishermen. But given the depth of the damaged Macondo well--1,524 meters below the Gulf's surface--the use of undersea robots is the only way to cut off the flow of escaping oil. [More]