In one of the most dramatic signs ever documented of how shrinking Arctic sea ice impacts polar bears, researchers at the U.S. Geological Survey in Alaska have tracked a female bear that swam nine days across the deep, frigid Beaufort Sea before reaching an ice floe 426 miles offshore.
The marathon swim came at a cost: With little food likely available once she arrived, the bear lost 22% of her body weight and her year-old female cub, who set off on the journey but did not survive, the researchers said.
Polar bear's long swim illustrates ice melt
WHO reviews GSK H1N1 flu shot after narcolepsy link
The World Health Organisation is reviewing the safety of GlaxoSmithKline's Pandemrix H1N1 flu vaccine after a Finnish study suggested children who got the shot were nine times more likely to suffer from narcolepsy, a rare sleeping disorder.
Narcolepsy causes a person to fall asleep suddenly and unexpectedly. Its precise cause is unknown but it is generally considered to be triggered by a combination of genetic and environmental factors.
Attorneys Attack Rights of Citizen Journalists
The Florida Bar has proposed a new rule to eliminate coverage of court proceedings by citizen journalists. The Bar’s proposed rule prohibits anyone other than an employee of a traditional media outlet or an official court reporter from using any device which can make video or audio recording from being brought into a court including laptop computers.Of course, the proposed rule allows the courts to continue to record you, but unfortunately, the courts usually don’t want to give up their own recordings without a fight even though they are required to do so.
International Medical Council on Vaccination refutes vaccine propaganda with myth-busting report
To hear it from proponents of the vaccine industry, vaccines are based on rock-solid science that proves them to be completely safe and widely effective. These beliefs, however, are not factually based on real science but rather a persistent vaccine mythology that has been propagandized by the vaccine industry, medical practitioners and even governments which underwrite vaccine risks.
Afghan elite 'plundered $900m' from leading bank
A coterie of well-connected Afghan businessmen and politicians may have plundered as much as $900m from the country's biggest commercial bank, three times the amount of earlier estimates, and the equivalent of about 7 per cent of Afghanistan's total gross domestic product.
Kabul Bank's funds were treated like personal accounts, it is claimed by several well-known members of Afghan society. Mahmoud Karzai, a brother of the Afghan President and prominent shareholder in Kabul Bank, told The New York Times that the bank's former chairman lent himself about $98m (£62m) to buy one of Afghanistan's airlines, and then used deposits to subsidise the carrier in an attempt to drive rivals out of business.
Nearly 1,000 People Protest Secret Koch Brothers Meeting in Rancho Mirage
As wealthy, conservative business people met Sunday inside a Coachella Valley resort, members of a liberal political action and open access group rallied to complain that corporations were being given unfettered control of the nation.
Common Cause rented a hotel ballroom for about 350 activists to discuss the conservative political agenda being furthered by Charles Koch and David Koch, the billionaire brothers who own an oil conglomerate that is the largest privately-held corporation in the U.S. The brothers and their company, Koch Industries, are hosting an invitation-only strategy session in the Valley this weekend.
Gene Therapy Transforms Immune System Into Cancer Killer in U.S. Study
U.S. government researchers are expanding use of gene therapy to fight cancer, turning the human immune system against a deadly tumor found in young adults.
The approach may shrink tumors in many patients with common cancers, said Steven Rosenberg, chief of surgery at the National Cancer Institute’s Center for Cancer Research in Bethesda, Maryland. In a study, 9 of 17 patients with advanced cancer that had withstood other treatments saw tumors shrink after gene therapy, according to results published today in the Journal of Clinical Oncology.
Republican Congressman Proposes Tracking Freedom of Information Act Requests
Mr. Issa, a California Republican and the new chairman of the House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform, says he wants to make sure agencies respond in a timely fashion to Freedom of Information Act requests and do not delay them out of political considerations.
But his extraordinary request worries some civil libertarians. It “just seems sort of creepy that one person in the government could track who is looking into what and what kinds of questions they are asking,” said David Cuillier, a University of Arizona journalism professor and chairman of the Freedom of Information Committee at the Society of Professional Journalists. “It is an easy way to target people who he might think are up to no good.”
Gazing Afar for Other Earths, and Other Beings
In a building at NASA’s Ames Research Center here, computers are sifting and resifting the light from 156,000 stars, seeking to find in the flickering of distant suns the first hints that humanity is not alone in the universe. The stars are being monitored by a $600 million satellite observatory named Kepler, whose job is to conduct a kind of Gallup poll of worlds in the cosmos.
On Wednesday, Kepler’s astronomers are scheduled to unveil a closely kept list of 400 stars that are their brightest and best bets so far for harboring planets, some of which could turn out to be the smallest and most Earth-like worlds discovered out there to date. They represent the first glimpse of riches to come in a quest that is as old as the imagination and as new as the iPad.
Page 657 of 1150
