Conventional wisdom says they’re safer. With wireless technology such as Bluetooth becoming commonplace, you can still conduct business, order pizza or talk to mom while keeping both hands on the wheel.
But is the mind on the road? A Dalhousie PhD student in experimental psychology says hands-free cellphones are not safer and indeed may even be more dangerous than hand-held.
Thousands of species were discovered or "newly described" in the past year, according to the annual "State of Observed Species" report produced by the International Institute for Species Exploration at Arizona State University and an international committee of taxonomists.
From among those thousands, 10 were selected for special recognition. It took an extra flair--like a jellyfish named after its victim, a shocking pink millipede, a 75-million-year-old dinosaur--to make the list.
Newly discovered genetic variations can impair an enzyme whose malfunction has been linked to birth defects and heart disease--but added nutrients can reverse the effect, according to new research. The findings could signify a step forward for nutrigenomics, a growing field examining how our diet and genes interact to affect our health. Scientists hope that nutrigenomics research will one day help people overcome some of their genetic foibles with personally tailored cocktails of vitamins.
The North Pole may be briefly ice-free by September as global warming melts away Arctic sea ice, according to scientists from the National Snow and Ice Data Center in Boulder, Colorado.
"We kind of have an informal betting pool going around in our center and that betting pool is 'does the North Pole melt out this summer?' and it may well," said the center's senior research scientist, Mark Serreze. It's a 50-50 bet that the thin Arctic sea ice, which was frozen in autumn, will completely melt away at the geographic North Pole, Serreze said.
The Phoenix lander's first taste test of soil near Mars' north pole reveals a briny environment similar to what can be found in backyards on Earth, scientists said Thursday. The finding raises hope that the Martian arctic plains could have conditions favorable for primitive life. Phoenix landed a month ago to study the habitability of Mars' northern latitudes.
"There's nothing about it that would preclude life. In fact, it seems very friendly," mission scientist Samuel Kounaves of Tufts University said of the soil. "There's nothing about it that's toxic."
Bizarre microbes flourish in the most punishing environments on Earth from the bone-dry Atacama Desert in Chile to the boiling hot springs of Yellowstone National Park to the sunless sea bottom vents in the Pacific.
Could such exotic life emerge in the frigid arctic plains of Mars?
NASA's Phoenix spacecraft could soon find out. Since plopping down near the Martian north pole a month ago, the three-legged lander has been busy poking its long arm into the sticky soil and collecting scoopfuls to bake in a test oven and peer at under a microscope.
UCLA researchers discovered that an FDA-approved drug reverses the brain dysfunction inflicted by a genetic disease called tuberous sclerosis complex (TSC). Because half of TSC patients also suffer from autism, the findings offer new hope for addressing learning disorders due to autism. Nature Medicine publishes the findings in its online June 22 edition.
When Neil Armstrong became the first man to set foot on the moon, he uttered unforgettable words. But the next visitor to roam the lunar landscape may send back e-mail instead.
Welcome to a new kind of space race, where the earthly guest will be a machine and the goal is as much exploration as seeking out new business ventures.
Photographic evidence settles the debate over the nature of the white material seen in photographs sent back by the craft. As seen in lower left of this image, chunks of the ice sublimed (changed directly from solid to gas) over the course of four days, after the lander's digging exposed them.
"It must be ice," said the Phoenix Lander's lead investigator, Peter Smith. "These little clumps completely disappearing over the course of a few days, that is perfect evidence that it's ice."
A South Korean biotech firm announced it has successfully cloned four dogs capable of sniffing out human cancers by using tissue from a Labrador retriever in Japan, media reported Wednesday.
RNL Bio, a leader in commercializing cloning in South Korea, said Monday the dogs were born last month and would be sent to Japan for training in the same skills as their mother. Two of them will later be sold to clients at 500 million won (480,000 U.S. dollars) each or more, it said.
