NPR Topics: Science

Lonely Wolverine Seeks West Coast Mate

It isn't a personal ad: A male wolverine, dubbed "Buddy" by researchers, has been found in Tahoe National Forest in California. A wolverine has not been spotted in the state for some 90 years. No one can figure out just how Buddy got there, but as mating season approaches, this little guy could feel lonelier than ever.

Researchers studying isolated communities in Canada showed that immunizing children against influenza lowered flu rates among unvaccinated adults by 60 percent.

Even a little pot of money can lead to a lot of giving, as the altruistic spirit ripples through a network, researchers say.

Following the massive earthquake that struck on Feb. 27, scientists have flocked to Chile with the goal of picking up enough clues to one day predict when the next big one will strike.

In the grand scheme of things, humans are mere infants on this planet. Some creatures alive today were swimming under the sea during the U.S. Civil War or photosynthesizing when the Egyptian pyramids were being built. Here are six of the oldest living things on the planet.

At the third science debate between the three main British political parties, it was unclear how secure the science budget will be after the upcoming general election

Organisms gradually grow apart until they become different species ? right? If new research is correct, it's more often down to tricks of fate

Disease and obesity go hand in hand, but an increase in body fat may actually be part of our body's attempts to protect itself from the effects of unhealthy eating

The mathematician and self-proclaimed incurable optimist talks about his cameo in an Oscar-nominated movie and why he has no time for string theory

Prostate cancer drugs trigger the release of a molecule that makes tumours grow ? the discovery could lead to a way to keep the cancer at bay

The Institute for Systems Biology (ISB) has analyzed the first whole genome sequences of a human family of four. The findings of a project funded through a partnership between ISB and the University of Luxembourg was published online today by Science on its Science Express website. It demonstrates the benefit of sequencing entire families, including lowering error rates, identifying rare genetic variants and identifying disease-linked genes.

An independent panel convened this week by the National Institutes of Health confronted a troubling fact that pregnant women currently have limited access to clinicians and facilities able and willing to offer a trial of labor after previous cesarean delivery because of so-called VBAC bans. The panel affirmed that a trial of labor is a reasonable option for many women with a prior cesarean delivery. But many women are not offered this option.

A thyroid-hormone-like substance that works specifically on the liver reduces blood cholesterol with no serious side effects. This according to a clinical trial conducted by researchers from the Swedish medical university Karolinska Institutet, amongst other centers, published today in the top-ranking scientific periodical the New England Journal of Medicine.

The Board of Directors of the American Association of Anatomists (AAA) has approved a set of guidelines to govern programs accepting the donation of bodies for education and biomedical research. The guidelines cover the minimum requirements that should be met by any Willed Body Program.

Patients who undergo gastric bypass surgery experience changes in their urine composition that increase their risk of developing kidney stones, research from UT Southwestern Medical Center investigators suggests.

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Deforestation conference to turn plans to action

Associated Press: French President Nicolas Sarkozy will open a daylong conference Thursday of some 40 nations to start turning plans into action to save the world's forests and help rein in the noxious gases blamed for climate change. Ministers from countries of the Amazon and Congo river basins and Indonesia -- whose massive forests, most at risk, are at the heart of efforts to end deforestation -- were among those attending the one-day conference. A follow-up meeting is scheduled for May in Oslo, ...

Agence France-Presse: The United States could source 10 percent of its electricity from solar power by 2030, a report said Tuesday, winning support from a US lawmaker who wants to boost the number of US solar panels. The report, produced by the independent environmental group Environment America, was presented to Congress with backing from Senator Bernie Sanders who in February introduced legislation to install 10 million solar panels across the United States within a decade. Sanders praised the ...

Associated Press: At a tumultuous time in U.N.-led climate negotiations, one of the world's most credible scientific groups agreed Wednesday to plug the recent cracks in the authoritative reports of the United Nations' Nobel Prize-winning global warming panel. "We enter this process with no preconceived conclusions," said Robbert Dijkgraaf, a Dutch mathematical physicist who co-chairs the group, the InterAcademy Council of 15 nations' national academies of science. U.N. Secretary-General Ban ...

Mongabay: Mature male orangutans produce what scientist's call 'long calls', which can be heard for one kilometer in all directions even in dense forests. New research in Ethology has uncovered that these calls are employed for a number of reasons and provide information about who is calling and why. "Orangutans have a rich repertoire of calls, however only sexually mature, flanged males emit long-distance calls with a series of long booming pulses and grumbles," explains co-author Dr Brigitte ...

Press Association: The future of the bluefin tuna could be decided within days, along with two other endangered fish, the spiny dogfish and porbeagle, according to a national conservation charity. The Marine Conservation Society (MCS) said the northern Atlantic bluefin tuna, Thunnus thynnus, considered to be one of the most majestic species living in European waters, has been fished for centuries, and the effects have taken their toll. Northern bluefin, which can reach more than 3m in length, is ...

Inter Press Service: The negative fallout from climate change is having a devastatingly lopsided impact on women compared to men, from higher death rates during natural disasters to heavier household and care burdens. In the 1991 cyclone disasters that killed 140,000 in Bangladesh, 90 percent of victims were reportedly women; in the 2004 Asian Tsunami, an estimated 70 to 80 percent of overall deaths were women. And following the 2005 Hurricane Katrina in the United States, African-American women, ...

Inter Press Service: Science fiction blockbuster Avatar was the big loser in the Oscar awards ceremony - not only a blow for director James Cameron but also seen as a symbolic reverse in the struggle to recover Amazon rainforest areas in Ecuador from the effects of oil pollution. Several environmental organisations, like the Rainforest Action Network (RAN) and the Amazon Defence Coalition, had asked Cameron to "let his legions of fans know that while Pandora is fictional, what is happening to (indigenous) ...

LA Times: It wasn't long ago that Marco Rubio and Tim Pawlenty -- two rising Republican stars -- supported legislation to limit greenhouse gas emissions. But in recent weeks, both have begun to express doubts about whether cars, factories and power plants have anything to do with global warming. The shift by Rubio and Pawlenty -- as well as other prominent Republicans -- reflects the rising power of climate change skeptics in the GOP, where global warming is becoming a litmus test for ...

Times (UK): The United Nations is to announce an independent review of errors made by its climate change advisory body in an attempt to restore its credibility. A team of the world's leading scientists will investigate the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) and ask why its supposedly rigorous procedures failed to detect at least three serious overstatements of the risk from global warming. The review will be overseen by the InterAcademy Council, whose members are drawn from ...

New York Times: China and India formally agreed Tuesday to join the international climate change agreemen reached last December in Copenhagen, the last two major economies to sign up. The two countries, among the largest and fastest-growing sources of greenhouse gas emissions in the world, submitted letters to the United Nations agreeing to be included on a list of countries covered by the so-called Copenhagen Accord, a three-page nonbinding statement reached at the end of the contentious and chaotic ...

Australian: RENEWABLE energy won't save the planet so it's time to go nuclear, according to one of world's most high-profile climate scientists. "We should undertake urgent focused research and development programs in next generation nuclear power," said atmospheric physicist James Hansen, head of NASA's Goddard Institute for Space Studies and adjunct professor at Columbia University's Earth Institute in New York. While renewable energies such as solar and wind were gaining in economic ...

BBC: The deaths of 75 starlings which appeared to fall from the sky and crash land on to a driveway in Somerset has mystified the RSPCA animal charity. The birds were spotted falling onto the entrance of a house in Coxley in Somerset on Sunday 7 March. Animal welfare officer Alison Sparkes, who was called by police, said: "It was a remarkable sight, I've never seen anything like it." There is no evidence the birds were ill or poisoned before they hit the ...

Reuters: European Union ambassadors agreed to propose protecting bluefin tuna as an endangered species on Wednesday, the EU presidency said, a move that would effectively ban international trade in the species. A meeting of the Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species (CITES) will take place from March 13 to consider a number of species, including bluefin tuna, populations of which have been decimated by overfishing. The European Commission proposed last month that ...

BBC: The EU has decided to support a ban on international trade in Atlantic bluefin tuna, reports indicate. The bloc is reported to have agreed to push for a ban at next week's meeting of the Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species (CITES). The US has already backed such a move, but Japan - where most bluefin is eaten - may opt out of CITES controls. The EU is likely to back exemptions for traditional fishers, and defer the ban pending scientific ...

BBC: UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon has asked the world's science academies to review work of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC). Work will be co-ordinated by the Inter-Academy Council, which brings together bodies such as the UK's Royal Society. The IPCC has been under pressure over small errors in its last major assessment of climate science in 2007. Mr Ban said the overall concept of man-made climate change was robust, and action to curb emissions badly ...