Science Pictures + News

Pediatricians: Kids Not Getting Enough Vitamin D From Milk

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“To meet the new recommendation of 400 units daily, millions of children will need to take daily vitamin D supplements, the American Academy of Pediatrics said. That includes breast-fed infants — even those who get some formula, too, and many teens who drink little or no milk.” [Link]

Science War Rages: Are Overweight People Always Unhealthy?

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“Much of the research linking excess weight and an increased risk of diabetes, heart disease, and cancer, among other chronic diseases (the list goes on and on), has been done on people who are obese, with a BMI of 30 or more. When the merely overweight folks are separated out, the health risks [...]

MIT Scientists Building “Artificial Noses”

“Artificial noses could one day replace dogs that sniff out drugs and explosives, and could have numerous medical applications including identifying diseases that have distinct odors, according to Shuguang Zhang, associate director of MIT’s Center for Biomedical Engineering and senior author of a study on the subject.” [Link]

Shuttle Endeavour Prepped As Rescue Craft For Hubble Mission

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“The shuttle Endeavour is on standby in case the seven astronauts who go up on Atlantis next month need a safer ride home. Atlantis and its crew are headed into space for one last repair job on the 18-year-old Hubble Space Telescope. It’s a venture that was canceled when first proposed a few [...]

Cell Phones In Pockets Can Affect Sperm Quality

“‘We believe that these devices are used because we consider them very safe, but it could cause harmful effects due to the proximity of the phones and the exposure that they are causing to the gonads,’ says lead researcher Ashok Agarwal, the Director of the Center for Reproductive Medicine.” [Link]

Researcher: Social Networking Now More Popular Than Porn

“Bill Tancer, general manager of global research at Hitwise, an Internet tracking company, said one of the major shifts in Internet use in the past decade had been the fall off in interest in pornography or adult entertainment sites. He said surfing for porn had dropped to about 10 percent of searches from 20 percent [...]

Baby Madison Decker Born From Frozen 21 Year Old Sperm

“Madison Decker has just celebrated her 1-month birthday, but the roots of her birth go back some 21 years: Her father, Ken, had his sperm frozen before undergoing chemotherapy for Hodgkin’s disease in the 1980s.” [Link]

Large Hadron Collider Operational

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“After 14 years of preparation, a new scientific wonder of the world opened for business Wednesday with the official startup of Europe’s Large Hadron Collider. The $10 billion particle accelerator is the biggest, most expensive science machine on earth, designed to probe mysteries ranging from dark matter and missing antimatter to the [...]

Global Warming Continues Arctic Sea Ice Decline

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“This year will see the second-biggest loss on record of Arctic sea ice — a sign that the area of ice coverage is shrinking at a pace faster than once expected. The trend also suggests that global warming is likely to increase, polar bear habitat will decline and previously icebound areas [...]