Scientific American Online

By Peter Griffiths

LONDON (Reuters) - Scientists at a leading British climate research center had a culture of withholding information from global warming skeptics but did not deliberately manipulate data to support their case, lawmakers said on Wednesday.

Even as scientists and politicians from around the world debated in December how to deal with a practical problem of profound importance--global climate change--another international group of physicists was waiting with bated breath for a more esoteric development. In both cases, at the conclusion of events, the participants were left salivating and unsatisfied.

The Cryogenic Dark Matter Search (CDMS) experiment, located in the deep Soudan mine in Minnesota, is designed to directly detect new elementary particles that might make up the dark matter known to dominate our galaxy. In early December rumors started circulating that the CDMS experiment might actually have seen a signal.

Ford Motor Co. was in New York City on Tuesday (in anticipation of the upcoming International Auto Show that starts later this week) to show off its first attempt to go gas-free--the Transit Connect Electric .  Scientific American went for a spin in the all-electric compact van (about the size of a minivan but with much more headroom) on the rain-slicked streets of New York to get some idea of what the vehicle looks, sounds and feels like. [More]

In 1983, a Columbia University undergraduate named Barack Obama wrote an article, “Breaking the War Mentality,” for the school publication Sundial. Obama expressed the hope that someday humanity would abolish nuclear weapons and create a “nuclear free world.” Obama never abandoned that dream. The Nobel Foundation awarded him its Peace Prize last December in large part because of his “vision of and work for a world without nuclear weapons.” [More]

First Environmental Protection Agency administrator Lisa Jackson warned in September 2009 that reform of chemical regulations was coming and that bisphenol A, or BPA--a building block of many plastics--was among those that might be due for enhanced scrutiny. Then the U.S. Food and Drug Administration announced it had concerns about BPA and would conduct further testing of its safety in January. Now the EPA has made it official by designating BPA as a "chemical of concern" for its human health and environmental impacts. [More]

Editor's Note: Journalist and crew member Kathryn Eident is traveling on board the RV Atlantis on a monthlong voyage to explore undersea volcanism in the eastern tropical Pacific Ocean, among other research projects. This is the second blog post detailing this voyage of discovery for ScientificAmerican.com . [More]

By Quirin Schiermeier

Almost five years after watching a launch failure destroy their ice-measuring satellite, Europe's polar researchers are ready to try again. [More]

Digital video surveillance has become a staple of security systems used by banks, supermarkets and other businesses in the past few years because the technology produces better quality video that is easier and cheaper to archive than tapes. The technology's Achilles' heel, however, has been its rudimentary search capabilities that use video time stamps to help locate specific footage. This is changing, as technology companies pour resources into making video search engines that they hope will do for surveillance footage what Google, Yahoo and other search engines have done in making the Web's vast resources more accessible. [More]

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Some 20 percent of the human genome is already patented . But a court ruled yesterday that one company does not have the rights to some of its patents on two genes, BRCA1 and BRCA2 , commonly tested for mutations to determine risk for developing breast and ovarian cancers. [More]

Dear EarthTalk: Where do I recycle old ski boots (hard plastic)? My recycling center does not take hard plastic. --Beth Fitzpatrick, Stamford, Conn.

In Kiboko, Kenya, a barbed wire fence separates a field of hybrid corn from the surrounding lands. Inside the fence, food safety regulators are learning to grow the crop with little water. In recent years, droughts have hit the region between June and September, reducing yields.

But two new varieties of corn, also known as maize, are coming to sub-Saharan Africa. One of them is conventionally bred; the other, better-yielding variety is genetically modified . Both are drought-tolerant and the seeds are royalty-free. Together with other agricultural interventions, they have the potential to feed some of the 300 million people for whom the plant is a staple.

DISH, Tex.--A satellite broadcasting company bought the rights to rename this town a few years ago in exchange for a decade of free television, but it is another industry that dominates the 200 or so residents: natural gas. Five facilities perched on the north Texas town 's outskirts compress the gas newly flowing to the surface from the cracked Barnett Shale more than two kilometers beneath the surface, collectively contributing a brew of toxic chemicals to the air. [More]

Sean M. Carroll, theoretical physicist at the California Institute of Technology talks with podcast host Steve Mirsky [ left ] about his new book From Eternity to Here: The Quest for the Ultimate Theory of Time . Plus, we test your knowledge of some recent science in the news. Web sites related to this episode include preposterousuniverse.com  

[ The transcript of this episode will be available soon. ]

No turtle protections, no shrimp. That's the word from the U.S. Department of State, which ruled on Thursday to ban imports of wild-caught Mexican shrimp if they are collected in ways that threaten endangered sea turtles . The ban does not include aquacultural shrimp or those caught in shallow waters. [More]

SAN FRANCISCO - The green economy continues to show almost remarkable signs of vitality, business leaders say, despite the near-total collapse of global talks, stalemate in Washington, D.C., and polls showing decreased urgency to tackle climate change. [More]

LONDON (Reuters) - Global installed solar photovoltaic power grew by 44 percent in 2009 on the back of German subsidies now under threat, the European Photovoltaic Industry Association said on Tuesday.

The global industry added a record 6.4 gigawatts new capacity, bringing total capacity to more than 20 gigawatts (GW), the EPIA said, despite tightened credit which has particularly hit infrastructure and energy project finance.

Elephants. They’re the SUVs of the animal kingdom. They’re big and rugged, and can carry lots of cargo. And now a study in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences [See http://bit.ly/dBW7cY ] suggests they come equipped with the quadruped version of all-wheel drive. [More]

1 THE RINGS OF SATURN You are cruising in the troposphere of Saturn under the most magnificent ring structure in the solar system. Few sights are more astounding. The white, icy rings soar 75,000 kilometers above your head. Ring shine illuminates everything around you. No fewer than six crescent moons rise in the sky. The light from the setting sun scatters against a mist of ammonia crystals, forming a sun dog. You are buffeted by ammonia clouds that stream by you at speeds greater than 1,500 kilometers an hour. These are some of the fastest winds in the solar system. More than 30,000 kilometers below you, with pressures no human-made thing could survive, is a global ocean of liquid metallic hydrogen. There will be no landing on this planet.