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.

TOKYO, May 15 /PRNewswire/ --

BB Softservice Corp., a Tokyo-based planner and developer of application service in the SoftBank Group, announces that it will release an English version of 'Jigsaw Art' application software for iPhone(TM) 3G/iPod touch offered by 'SoftBank SELECTION,' in 18 countries in the world on May 15, 2009 at the AppStore.

'Jigsaw Art Premium' is a jigsaw puzzle with 100 masterpieces of pictures by master artists of the world that can be enjoyed by simple touch-screen operation utilizing iPhone 3G functions. It also enables creation of original jigsaw puzzles using photos and images stored in iPhone 3G. When a jigsaw puzzle is completed, the masterpiece can be viewed in the Gallery of the application.

Astronauts John Grunsfeld and Drew Feustel successfully installed the Wide Field Camera 3 (WFC3) Thursday during the first of five scheduled EVAs, or spacewalks, to rejuvenate the Hubble Space Telescope.

Hubble was "full of surprises" for the astronauts, and EVA 1 took an hour longer than planned, but the veteran space and ground crews overcame all obstacles and Servicing Mission 4 (SM4) remains right on schedule.  (See the full scheduled timeline in my previous post.)

LONDON, May 15 /PRNewswire/ --

Perenco Ecuador Limited (Perenco) announced today that on May 8, 2009, a three member international arbitration tribunal constituted under the auspices of the International Centre for the Settlement of Investment disputes (ICSID) unanimously ordered that the Republic of Ecuador and Empresa Estatal Petroleos del Ecuador (Petroecuador) were restrained from instituting or further pursuing any action to collect from Perenco any payments they claim are owed pursuant to Law 42.

Have you ever thought about what's going on in your brain when you look at a painting that you like a lot?  While Neuroscientist Dr. Edward Vessel has and he's done brain imaging experiments to figure it out.

What happens in your brain when you have a pleasurable experience -- for example, when you see at a painting that you like very much.  Scientists describe this as an aesthetically pleasing experience.  They want to know if simply seeing a painting that you enjoy engages an emotional response and triggers the emotion circuits in your brain.

Did Language Invent Humans ?

Writing is a human invention.  We have plenty of evidence of its invention and of its improvement down the ages.  It would make no sense to assume that writing somehow 'just appeared'.  A magical origin of writing would presuppose that our brains are hard wired to read, but we all know that reading and writing are skills that must be taught in a formal manner.  Again, if we were 'hard wired' for written language then we would all use a single writing method, regardless of language.  Writing is most definitely invented.

MEXICO CITY, May 15 /PRNewswire/ --

- Discarded degradable metallic packaging disintegrates in 3 to 5 years

- The company intends to use degradable metallic packaging for all its products by the first quarter of 2011

Mexican leading baked goods company Grupo Bimbo, the world leader in production and sales volume, with presence in 18 countries throughout the Americas, Europe, and Asia, announced that Organizacion Barcel, one of its subsidiaries, has begun using degradable metallic polypropylene packaging for its products, which disintegrates within a period of 3 to 5 years after the product's shelf life.

Following on from the previous post, I wanted to pull out another couple of 'pointers to God' that Francis Collins and BioLogos like to present as part of their argument for belief. I like them because, far from being pointers to god, they are in fact powerful examples of the power of science and the weakness of religion as a tool to help us understand morality. They're great examples of how science is encroaching into what was once regarding as purely religious territory.

First example is this one - "Why is it wrong to torture an individual for the greater good?"

Although the theoretical applications for stem cell research are seemingly endless, the far-off possibilities are not as awe-inspiring as some scientists would like. Setbacks, ethical concerns and funding are all part of the hurdles that face all new scientific research, stem cell research especially. However, drastic results and benefits may be closer than previously thought.