Summaries of this week's top stories, from Science Magazine

Total news: 144
Last news: January 2, 2009 22:02:36

Total news: 19
Last news: December 17, 2008 13:09:13

After dropping out of high school, Zack Booth Simpson became a video game programmer. Now hes at a university working with cutting-edge synthetic biology labs.

Author: Mitch Leslie - [Read more]

At the Materials Research Society Fall Meeting, several teams reported setbacks in efforts to sharply increase the electrical output of future solar cells using light-absorbing nanoparticles that can generate more than one electron for every photon of light they absorb.

Author: Robert F. Service - [Read more]

The U.S. government lacks an effective plan for ensuring the safety of nanotechnology, a new report by the National Research Council concludes.

Author: Robert F. Service - [Read more]

Read highlights from Sciences new policy blog, ScienceInsider, which provides news and analysis on science policy around the world that doesnt appear in the magazine.

Author: - [Read more]

Planetary scientists are in the final stretch of a first-time competition designed to get the most science for the buck from the next big planetary mission while avoiding the fiscal debacles of the past.

Author: Richard A. Kerr - [Read more]

In the wake of severe fighting in Virunga National Park in the Democratic Republic of the Congo, worried rangers began a painstaking census late last month of the parks highly endangered mountain gorillas, nearly a third of the worlds known population.

Author: Robert Koenig - [Read more]

According to several worrisome studies presented here last week at the annual meeting of the American Society of Tropical Medicine and Hygiene, resistance against artemisinin-based combination therapies, the gold standard in fighting malaria, seems to be developing in western Cambodia, along the Thai border.

Author: Martin Enserink - [Read more]

The U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) announced last week that it would build the Facility for Rare Isotope Beams at the National Superconducting Cyclotron Laboratory at Michigan State University instead of at its own Argonne National Laboratory.

Author: Adrian Cho - [Read more]

Nobel laureate Steven Chu has been tapped to become the first career scientist to run the Department of Energy (DOE). Hell be carrying on his back the hopes of U.S. researchers to jump-start stagnating science budgets at DOE and retain U.S. leadership in the face of rising overseas competition.

Author: Eli Kintisch - [Read more]

Scientists and environmental activists applauded President-elect Barack Obamas pick for head of the Environmental Protection Agency: 16-year agency veteran Lisa Jackson.

Author: Lila Guterman - [Read more]

Luckily, scientific research did not take a direct hit from this falls global economic crisis, but scientists are feeling the consequences like everyone else, and research budgets could get caught in the fallout next year.

Author: Eliot Marshall - [Read more]

In 2009, Sciences editors will be watching plant genomics, ocean acidification, neuroscience in court, the next international climate summit, dark-matter annihilations, "speciation genes," and the Tevatron.

Author: - [Read more]

By most objective measures, U.S. research still leads the world, but in their ability to pool resources in the pursuit of "big science," European nations are showing increasing ambition and success.

Author: Daniel Clery - [Read more]

The Large Hadron Collider came on smoothly in just a few hours, in keeping with last years prediction; unfortunately, our warning that a mishap would take it out of action for months also came true. Last years other predictions were a mixed bag.

Author: - [Read more]

By inserting genes that turn back a cells developmental clock, researchers are gaining insights into disease and the biology of how a cell decides its fate.

Author: Gretchen Vogel - [Read more]

The first direct detections of exoplanets topped the list of this years runners-up for Breakthrough of the Year. Other notable discoveries included cancer genes, new high-temperature superconductors, and a new water-splitting catalyst.

Author: - [Read more]

Со среды, 17 декабря, на сайте авиакомпании AirAsia туристам предлагают забронировать бесплатный билет в Таиланд. Авиаперевозчик пытается привлечь путешественников обратно в "страну улыбок" после ноябрьской эпопеи с закрытыми столичными аэропортами и политическими беспорядками.

Dense plants are taking over grasslands in many areas; researchers in the U.S. Southwest are studying how they tap into water supplies--and how to keep them in check.

Author: Michael Tennesen - [Read more]

European researchers have enlisted a fleet of ferries to inexpensively gather valuable data about the regions waters.

Author: Claire Ainsworth - [Read more]

Researchers are using old maritime logbooks to reconstruct a record of the weather stretching back to the 17th century.

Author: Claire Ainsworth - [Read more]