The benefits to animals of omega 3 fatty acids in fish oils have been well documented – helping the heart and circulatory system.   Can they also help in improving meat quality and reducing methane emissions?

Perhaps.   Methane given off by farm animals is a major contributor to greenhouse gas levels and researchers from University College Dublin have reported that by including 2% fish oil in the diet of cattle they achieved a reduction in the amount of methane released by the animals.

Important business has taken me out of sunny California and across the country to the slightly warmer March days of Florida; baseball spring training.

I maintain an affection for spring training even though I no longer live in a winter climate where a few days of sunshine after 5 months of cold can truly be appreciated.    But I spent my childhood in Florida, in a baseball haven aptly called Dodgertown, so cold climate or not baseball in spring is a necessary ritual.   It gives me a reminder I haven't seen my family in a year and spring baseball is somehow both better and worse than regular season baseball, when it becomes more of a business and obviously played by the best of the best.

A while back there was a news story that the Pantheon may have been constructed to create a special effect in the sunlight at the equinoxes. I'm slow in reacting because I've read the book where the claim appears, and I've been taking time to try and track down one or two other ideas regarding the Pantheon. The story is based on a chapter from a new book Time in Antiquity by Robert Hannah, and it's a great example of how thinking about ancient astronomy has gently expanded over the past decade.

Creationists have put us into a bizarre, alternate universe, at least when it comes to curriculum design. Their latest attempt to undermine science education involves inserting the code words 'strengths and weaknesses' into the public school science standards. The idea is that, whenever something religious fundamentalists find controversial crops up in science class, teachers have to teach the "strengths and weaknesses" of that particular topic. Fortunately, this creationist code has just been kept out of the Texas state science standards, but you can bet the code is going to crop up again at some point.

It's worth taking a moment to think about how whacked this whole debate over strengths and weaknesses has become.

Botox and face lifts only give the appearance that you've turned back the clock, and although expensive procedural looks are deceiving, your telomeres don't lie.  As your cells divide, telomeres become shorter, eventually leading to cell death over time. 

Unfortunately, scientists are far from curing this universal "disease" known as aging.  However, understanding the mechanisms of aging will have a more immediate impact on the development of stem cell therapies, and researchers at the University of Gothenburg in Sweden have discovered that the female egg is capable of reversing this telomere molecular clock.

Behind every major scientific effort is a story. Beadle and Tatum's story is one of persistence. They began with a hypothesis: each gene causes the production of a single enzyme, and that enzyme catalyzes a biochemical reaction within an organism.

The seeds of this hypothesis were spawned by Sir Archibald Garrod, who reported in 1909 that alkaptonuria - an inherited condition in which the urine is colored dark red by the chemical alkapton - results from a single recessive gene, which causes a deficiency in the enzyme that normally breaks down alkapton.

This Saturday night, a global effort is set to take place to promote energy conservation – the 3rd annual Earth Hour. To join in on the effort, simply turn off your lights from 8:30 – 9:30pm in your local time zone. This worldwide effort is designed to demonstrate that each person has a choice in their energy consumption - and at any time can simply choose to use less.

Turning off your lights is an easy way to reduce your energy usage, as well as reduce your energy bill. But as with many things, it’s always more fun to do it with friends. So 8:30-9:30pm on March 28th 2009 has been designated as the specific time when people and cities around the world will dim their lights to show their acknowledgement that sometimes little actions can have big impacts.

The Alliance For Human Research Protection, a non-profit advocacy group for responsible and ethical medical research practices, has called for the suspension of JAMA editor-in-chief Catherine DeAngelis and exec deputy editor Phil Fontanarosa, and for an an investigation into allegations that they threatened a researcher who criticized a study published in the journal, according to the Wall Street Journal.

I'm putting the finishing touches to a GUI when the red light starts flashing. The voice comes over the PA from ops, "Warning, Jupiter hoving to view". We quickly drop our work and run across the metal crosswalk that separates us from the STEREO operations bunker. Inside, against the din of the klaxon, we see the massive bulk of Jupiter crowding the leftmost of the main displays. STEREO B was in danger!

And here is the result from our STEREO website. Okay, I made up the bit about the red light and the klaxons. And after this brief science break, I'll even bring in some irony.

While physical exercise has been shown to trigger migraine headaches among sufferers, a new study describes an exercise program that is well tolerated by patients. The findings show that the program decreased the frequency of headaches and improved quality of life. The study is published in Headache: The Journal of Head and Face Pain.

The study used a sample of migraine sufferers who were examined before, during and after an aerobic exercise intervention. The program was based on indoor cycling (for continuous aerobic exercise) and was designed to improve maximal oxygen uptake without worsening the patients' migraines.