Let's be honest, the one thing you worry about most when driving your Hummer and sipping corporate-farmed coffee is how much damage that Union Oyster House ("oldest restaurant in America!") refrigerator magnet in your house is doing to the environment.   

You're out of luck.   The refrigerator magnets scientists are a step closer to making are for  environmentally-friendly 'magnetic' refrigerators and air conditioning systems.

The research group of Dr. Frédéric Charron, a researcher at the Institut de recherches cliniques de Montréal (IRCM), has made a discovery which could help treat spinal cord injuries and neurodegenerative diseases. This new finding has been published in the current issue of Neuron.

The American Civil Liberties Union action in filing a lawsuit yesterday against Myriad Genetics is going to lead to one of the most important legal battles in the history of biotechnology, asserts Genetic Engineering&Biotechnology News(GEN).   The ACLU charged that the patenting of two human genes linked to breast and ovarian cancer will inhibit medical research.   The organization also claims that the patents are invalid and unconstitutional, though the ACLU didn't disclose which clause of the Constitution it violates.

Should You Share  A Higher Genetic Risk?

If you learned that you were at high risk of cancer because you carry the hereditary BRCA1/2 gene mutation, would you tell your children? A recent study at Fox Chase Cancer Center not only considered that question, but also took it to the next level and studied the parent perceptions of the impact of such a decision on children.   BRCA1/2 are hereditary gene mutations that indicate an increased risk of developing breast cancer.

The potential contribution to sea level rise from a collapse of the West Antarctic Ice Sheet (WAIS) have been greatly overestimated, according to a new study in Science.   These scientists estimate global sea level would rise 3.3 metres, not five or six, which were some previous estimates.

After the victory of IBM's Deep Blue against Garry Kasparov, the game of Go has replaced chess as a test bed for research in artificial intelligence (AI).

Go is one of the last board games where humans are still able to easily win against AI. Although there has been quite some research in the Go domain for 40 years, the progress in Computer Go has been slow.

However, researchers have discovered new performing algorithms and computers are catching up really fast. Since 2006, when a new algorithm called Monte-Carlo Tree Search was proposed, the level of Go programs has improved drastically. The application 'MoGo TITAN', developed by INRIA France and Maastricht University, runs on the Dutch national supercomputer Huygens, which is one of the PRACE prototypes.