A Virginia Commonwealth University Life Sciences Survey is the first poll to reflect the discovery reported internationally in November that human skin cells can be used to create stem cells or their near equivalents.

When asked about the implications of this development, more than six in 10, or 63 percent, say that both embryonic and non-embryonic stem cell research is still needed, 22 percent say this development means embryonic stem cell research is no longer necessary. Thirty-eight percent of Americans report hearing about this research.

Three-quarters of the U.S. public supports stem cell research that does not involve human embryos.

Viticulture, the growing of grapes Vitis vinifera, chiefly to make wine, is an ancient form of agriculture, dating as far back as the Neolithic and Early Bronze Ages.

We have a detailed understanding of how nurture affects the qualities of a grape harvest leading to the concept of terroir (the range of local influences that carry over into a wine). The nature of the grapes themselves has been less well understood but the publication of a high quality draft genome sequence of a Pinot Noir grape by an Italian-based multinational consortium may change that.

In the world of commercial materials, lighter and cheaper is better - especially when coupled with superior strength and special properties such as a material's ability to remember its original shape after it's been deformed by a physical or magnetic force.

A new class of materials known as "magnetic shape-memory foams" has been developed by two research teams headed by Peter Müllner at Boise State University and David Dunand at Northwestern University.

The foam consists of a nickel-manganese-gallium alloy whose structure resembles a piece of Swiss cheese with small voids of space between thin, curvy "struts" of material. The struts have a bamboo-like grain structure that can lengthen, or strain, up to 10 percent when a magnetic field is applied.

Do polls reflect who people will vote for or who they would like to be perceived as voting for? A new national study of voters who say they might vote in Democratic primaries (participants were not a representative sample of Democrats but were self-selected volunteers who took an experimental test over the Web) and caucuses shows a striking disconnect between their explicit and implicit preferences, according to Bethany Albertson, a University of Washington assistant political science professor and Anthony Greenwald, a UW psychology professor and inventor of the Implicit Association Test.

When asked who they would vote for, Sen. Barack Obama held a 42 percent to 34 percent margin over Sen. Hilary Clinton. Former senator John Edwards was in third place with 12 percent.

A cosmic explosion that seems to have occurred thousands of light-years from the nearest galaxy-sized collection of stars, gas, and dust has puzzled astronomers. This "shot in the dark" is surprising because the type of explosion, a long-duration gamma-ray burst (GRB), is thought to be powered by the death of a massive star.

"Here we have this very bright burst, yet it's surrounded by darkness on all sides," says Brad Cenko of the California Institute of Technology, Pasadena, Calif., lead author of the team’s paper, which has been accepted for publication in The Astrophysical Journal.

No human can survive longer than a few minutes underwater, and even a well-trained Olympic swimmer needs frequent gulps of air. Our brains need a constant supply of oxygen, particularly during exercise.

Contrast that with Weddell seals, animals that dive and hunt under the Antarctic sea ice. They hold their breath for as long as 90 minutes, and remain active and mentally alert the whole time. The seals aren't fazed at all by low levels of oxygen that would cause humans to black out.