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Call them the Silicon Valley garages of climate policy.

Traces of chemicals known to cause human cancer lurk everywhere. But after decades of research, figuring out how many people might contract cancer because of them remains an elusive goal.

New observations from the Hubble Space Telescope appear to confirm a dour prognosis for a scorching hot extrasolar planet--the distant world is being consumed by its host star. [More]

By Elie Dolgin

The HIV-like virus that infects monkeys is at least 100,000 if not millions of years old, scientists reported this week at a meeting of the New York Academy of Sciences. [More]

Understanding the nuances of infectious diseases--in particular malaria , which killed about one million people worldwide in 2008 --is a crucial step toward wiping them out. However, getting a clear picture of how malaria spreads and how it responds to eradication efforts means accessing a daunting amount of data from a variety of sources, the type of job best suited to a number-crunching supercomputer. [More]

While climate change may increase the occurrence of malaria , the effect can be almost completely offset by adopting control strategies such as bed netting, spraying and anti-malarial drugs, according to a paper published in the journal Nature .

"There are many claims about malaria increasing over the future climate change scenario," said Pete Gething, a co-author of the paper and a researcher at the Department of Zoology at the University of Oxford . "But it will be a small, negligible factor compared to present measures to counter it."

With a scan through a sample of genomes from several individuals, researchers can tease out links among genetic variations and particular diseases . These genome-wide association studies have clarified some of the genes involved in predisposing people for  rheumatoid arthritis, bipolar disorder, Crohn's disease, diabetes and other disorders, paving the way for new study and better treatments. [More]

Editor's Note: William Gilly , a professor of cell and developmental biology and marine and organismal biology at Stanford University, is traveling with a group of students on board the Don José in the Sea of Cortez. They will monitor and track Humboldt squid and sperm whales in their watery habitats. This is the group's ninth blog post. [More]