A study of college freshmen in the United States and in China found that Chinese students know more science facts than their American counterparts but both groups are nearly identical when it comes to their ability to do scientific reasoning - unfortunately neither group  was very good at it.

The lesson is that educators must go beyond teaching science facts if we hope to produce voters, policy makers and scientists who can make reasoned choices.

The Scientific business of Thomson Reuters today announced the results of a study showing that the United States' share of scientific research has shrunk while Asia-Pacific's share of output has risen but the U.S. remains the leader globally in the relative impact of its research.

In its January/February issue of Science Watch, Thomson Reuters analyzes 12 year's worth of data from its National Science Indicators database to determine the U.S.'s global scientific influence based on the nation's research output and impact.

Investigators from Ludwig-Maximilians-Universität München and a Bolzano colleague have written another chapter in a murder case over 5,000 years old. New investigations  reconstructed the chronology of the injuries that Oetzi, the glacier man preserved as a frozen mummy, received in his last days.

In 2007 chocolate was all the rage, with Mars, Inc.-funded scientists even having their own panel at the AAAS meeting.  In 2008, blueberries were the rage.    

In 2009, says Dr. Luis Cisneros, Texas A&M AgriLife Research food scientist, "Stone fruits are super fruits, with plums as emerging stars."

Astronomers have observed the intense heating of a distant planet as it swung close to its parent star, providing important clues to the atmospheric properties of the planet.  With that data,  astronomers at the University of California, Santa Cruz were able to generate 'realistic' images of the planet by feeding the data into computer simulations of the planet's atmosphere.    The researchers used NASA's Spitzer Space Telescope to obtain infrared measurements of the heat emanating from the planet as it whipped behind and close to its star. In just six hours, the planet's temperature rose from 800 to 1,500 Kelvin (980 to 2,240 degrees Fahrenheit). 

An international team of researchers  has uncovered the first gene linked to the most common type of epilepsy, called Rolandic epilepsy. One out of every five children with epilepsy is diagnosed with this form, which is associated with seizures starting in one part of the brain.

The finding is the first step in unlocking the causes of common childhood epilepsies and developing more effective treatments. Children with Rolandic and other types of epilepsies are usually treated with drugs that prevent seizures by suppressing electrical activity in the entire brain.