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Here is your customized PHYSorg.com Newsletter for July 31, 2011:
Spotlight Stories Headlines
- Obama unveils new car efficiency standards- Dissecting the genomes of crop plants to improve breeding potential
- Innovative hand-held lab-on-a-chip could streamline blood testing
- Researchers discover the mechanism that determines cell position in the intestinal epithelium
- Discovery of a new magnetic order
- History's normal rate of species disappearance is accelerating, scientists say
- Eco-goats are latest graze in Maryland
- Computational chemistry shows the way to safer biofuels
- Facebook offers rewards to security bug hunters
- Google buys IBM patents to beef up portfolio
- NASA's Juno to circle Jupiter for 'planetary recipe'
- Google launches 'Hotel Finder'
- Skeptic's small cloud study renews climate rancor
- Chemists make first molecular binding measurement of radon
- BMW rolls out electric i3 and i8 models
Space & Earth news
Tropical Storm Don analyzed in 3 NASA satellite images
NASA is analyzing Tropical Storm Don from all angles, inside and out, using three different satellites. Don is expected to make landfall in southeastern Texas tonight or early Saturday.
State sets goal for limiting drinking water pollutant
The California Environmental Protection Agency has issued the nation's first public health goal for hexavalent chromium, the cancer-causing heavy metal made infamous after activist Erin Brockovich sued in 1993 over contaminated groundwater in the Mojave Desert town of Hinkley, about 100 miles northeast of Los Angeles.
Yosemite to thin out young trees
National parks tend to be a tree hugger's paradise. Layers of federal laws, strict park service rules and even the disapproving scowls from some visitors prohibit so much as driving a nail into a tree, much less cutting one down.
Skeptic's small cloud study renews climate rancor
(AP) -- A study on how much heat in Earth's atmosphere is caused by cloud cover has heated up the climate change blogosphere even as it is dismissed by many scientists.
NASA's Juno to circle Jupiter for 'planetary recipe'
The US space agency plans to launch next week a solar-powered spacecraft called Juno that will journey to the gassy planet of Jupiter in search of how the huge, stormy giant was formed.
Backup plan for the International Space Station
The space shuttle flew to the International Space Station 37 times, but its retirement leaves NASA reliant on the Russian Soyuz for future trips, raising the question of what would happen if the Soyuz is grounded for an accident or another problem.
Technology news
Japan denies censorship over nuclear crisis
Japan on Friday denied that a government project to monitor online news reports and Twitter posts about the Fukushima nuclear crisis was an attempt to censor negative information and views.
Phone companies present rural broadband plan
(AP) -- AT&T Inc., Verizon Communications Inc. and four other telecom companies are offering a proposal to overhaul the $8 billion federal phone subsidy program to pay for high-speed Internet connections in rural and other underserved areas.
Amazon.com sales-tax issue taken up by Congress
Congress is weighing into the roiling dispute between states and giant Internet retailer Amazon.com over collecting sales taxes on online purchases.
AT&T to throttle data speeds for 'unlimited' hogs
(AP) -- AT&T Inc. said Friday that it's going to start limiting speeds for the 5 percent of its customers with "unlimited" data smartphone plans who clog the airwaves the most.
Obama unveils new car efficiency standards
US President Barack Obama on Friday unveiled a new deal with automakers on fuel economy standards that he said would be a crucial step towards reducing US dependence on foreign oil.
BMW rolls out electric i3 and i8 models
German luxury carmaker BMW presented two electric models on Friday, signalling its arrival to a segment that is key to the industry's fortunes.
Icelanders hand in draft of world's first 'web' constitution
A group of 25 ordinary citizens on Friday presented to Iceland's parliamentary speaker a new constitution draft, which they compiled with the help of hundreds of others who chipped in online.
Google launches 'Hotel Finder'
Google, which purchased a leading flight software company earlier this year, has launched a new tool for finding hotels.
Facebook offers rewards to security bug hunters
Facebook began offering rewards of $500 or more on Friday to security researchers who identify vulnerabilities in the social network.
Google buys IBM patents to beef up portfolio
Google has bought more than 1,000 technology patents from IBM as the Internet giant seeks to build up its portfolio and head off potential intellectual property suits.
Medicine & Health news
Myriad can patent breast cancer genes: US court
A federal appeals court on Friday ruled in favor of Myriad Genetics after a legal battle over whether the US company could keep its patent on genes linked to an inherited form of breast cancer.
70 percent of 8-month-olds consume too much salt
Seventy per cent of eight-month-old babies have a salt (sodium chloride) intake higher than the recommended UK maximum level, due to being fed salty and processed foods like yeast extract, gravy, baked beans and tinned spaghetti.
Genome-wide study reveals 3 new susceptibility loci for adult asthma in Japanese population
Researchers at the RIKEN Center for Genomic Medicine (CGM), together with colleagues at Kyoto University, Tsukuba University, Harvard University, and other medical institutions have identified three new loci associated with susceptibility to adult asthma in the Japanese population. The findings appear in Nature Genetics and derive from a genome-wide study of 4836 Japanese individuals.
Innovative hand-held lab-on-a-chip could streamline blood testing
Samuel K. Sia, assistant professor of biomedical engineering at Columbia Engineering, has developed an innovative strategy for an integrated microfluidic-based diagnostic device—in effect, a lab-on-a-chip—that can perform complex laboratory assays, and do so with such simplicity that these tests can be carried out in the most remote regions of the world. In a paper published in Nature Medicine online on July 31, Sia presents the first published field results on how microfluidics—the manipulation of small amounts of fluids—and nanoparticles can be successfully leveraged to produce a functional low-cost diagnostic device in extreme resource-limited settings.
Biology news
Official: Suspension unrelated to polar bear paper
(AP) -- The recent suspension of Alaska wildlife biologist Charles Monnett is unrelated both to an article that he wrote about presumably drowned Arctic polar bears and to his scientific work, a federal official said Friday.
Eco-goats are latest graze in Maryland
Cities and organizations in the US state of Maryland have found an original and ecologically sound method to cut the weeds from their parks and gardens: Bring in the goats.
Researchers discover the mechanism that determines cell position in the intestinal epithelium
How do cells know where to position themselves and where to accumulate in order to carry out their functions correctly within each organ? Researchers with the Colorectal Cancer Lab at IRB Barcelona have revealed the molecular mechanisms responsible for organizing the intestinal epithelium into distinct comportments, defined by frontiers or territories. The study, headed by Eduard Batlle, coordinator of the Oncology Programme at IRB Barcelona and ICREA Research Professor, is published in online version of the Journal Nature Cell Biology.
Dissecting the genomes of crop plants to improve breeding potential
Scientists on the Norwich Research Park, working with colleagues in China, have developed new techniques that will aid the application of genomics to breeding the improved varieties of crop needed to ensure food security in the future. By dissecting the complicated genome of oilseed rape they have been able to produce maps of the genome that are needed for predictive breeding.
History's normal rate of species disappearance is accelerating, scientists say
Biologist E.O. Wilson once pondered whether many of our fellow living things were doomed once evolution gave rise to an intelligent, technological creature that also happened to be a rapacious carnivore, fiercely territorial and prone to short-term thinking.
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