A new interactive website – www.darwin.rcuk.ac.uk - has been launched today that people the chance to learn about Darwin’s theories of evolution and what they mean today. It shows how his ideas are influencing our broader culture as well as science, engineering, and social science and invites people to join in discussions with researchers.

The website will:

•Survey what interests or puzzles people about evolution, which will help inform the development of our engagement activities
•Showcase the contemporary application of evolutionary theory
•Provide a forum for discussing questions about evolution

Next year will see nationwide celebrations to mark the 200th anniversary of Charles Darwin’s birth and the 150th anniversary of the publication of his groundbreaking book On the Origin of Species (and we'll be hosting our own series of articles, events and retrospectives at DarwinDay2009.com - editors).

Cannabis, the genus of flowering plants commonly known as marijuana, may create medicines that can help cure nicotine addiction, say University of Nottingham pharmacologists who have been studying the cannabis-like compounds which exist naturally in our bodies (endocannabinoids), and are exploring their potential for medical treatment. This includes treating conditions as diverse as obesity, diabetes, depression and addiction to substances like nicotine.

Scientists have known about endocannabinoids since the mid-1990s. This led to an explosion in the number of researchers looking into the future medical uses of cannabinoids and cannabis compounds.

Dr Steve Alexander, Associate Professor in the School of Biomedical Sciences, focused on a number of these projects in editing the first themed podcast for the British Journal of Pharmacology.

Only 45 percent of baseball players were able to return to the game at the same or higher level after shoulder or elbow surgery, according to new research released today during the 2008 American Orthopaedic Society for Sports Medicine Specialty Day at The Moscone Center.

Interested in the strange, turn-of-the-century science and math in Thomas Pynchon's novel Against The Day? In part 2 of my primer on Pynchon's science read about the obscure conflict among mathematicians over quaternions, before modern vector analysis largely won the day. (If you missed part 1, read it here).

Science and Against The Day Part 2: Vectors and Quaternions

I. The need for algebra in more than one dimension

In Against the Day, Pynchon frequently refers to a relatively obscure conflict in the mathematics and physics community that took place in the early 1890's between advocates of quaternions and proponents of the newer vector analysis. This conflict is tied in to major themes in the book, such as the tensions between the old and the emerging world that culminated in the conflict of World War I, and the ability to perceive and describe the world in more than the three dimensions of Euclidean space. Quaternions, like the luminiferous aether discussed in Part 1 of this essay, became superfluous and obsolete, mostly unnecessary in the efforts of physicists to describe the natural world after the advent of modern vector algebra and calculus.

There's no dispute that natural variations of atmospheric air flow patterns have played an important role in climate change in the last decades.

Basic knowledge of how and why it happens is necessary to improve climate models that still hold much uncertainty. Researchers investigating a fundamental climate process in the Arctic state that interactions between the stratospheric ozone chemistry and atmospheric air flow lead to significant changes of airflow patterns from the ground up to the stratosphere.

Atmospheric airflows follow preferred patterns. The most important pattern for the northern hemisphere is the Arctic Oscillation.

A group of researchers has developed a novel way to view the world through the eyes of a common fly and partially decode the insect’s reactions to changes in the world around it.

The research fundamentally alters earlier beliefs about how neural networks function and could provide the basis for intelligent computers that mimic biological processes.

The researchers used tiny electrodes to tap into motion-sensitive neurons in the visual system of a common blowfly. Neurons are nerve cells that emit tiny electric spikes when stimulated. The electrodes detected pulses from the motion-sensitive neurons in the fly.

This week, NASA's Wilkinson Microwave Anisotropy Probe (WMAP) showed off three key findings contained in five years of data:

(1)New evidence that a sea of cosmic neutrinos permeates the universe

(2) Clear evidence the first stars took more than a half-billion years to create a cosmic fog

(3)Tight new constraints on the burst of expansion in the universe's first trillionth of a second

"We are living in an extraordinary time," said Gary Hinshaw of NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Md. "Ours is the first generation in human history to make such detailed and far-reaching measurements of our universe."

Omega-3 fatty acids are unsaturated fats found in some fish such as salmon and herring and in smaller amounts in eggs and chicken.

New research from the Child & Family Research Institute shows the typical North American diet of eating lots of meat and not much fish is deficient in omega-3 fatty acids and this may pose a risk to infant neurological development.

This discovery is an important step towards developing dietary fat guidelines for pregnant and breastfeeding women. Current dietary recommendations evolved from the 1950’s emphasis on reducing saturated fat intake to lower the risk of cardiovascular disease.

U.S. Forest Service scientists believe an Oregon State University graduate student working on a cooperative project with the agency’s Pacific Southwest Research station on the Tahoe National Forest has photographed a wolverine, an animal whose presence has not been confirmed in California since the 1920s.

Katie Moriarty, a wildlife biology student, was conducting research on another carnivore called the American marten when a remote-controlled camera she set photographed the animal on February 28, 2008. Forest Service scientists who are experts at detecting rare carnivores believe the photographed animal is a wolverine.

The North American wolverine is the largest member of the weasel family. Adult males weigh 26 to 40 pounds, while females are 17 to 26 pounds.

In the latest issue of Nature Biotechnology, EuroStemCell scientist Elena Cattaneo from University of Milano along with Mauro Toselli from University of Pavia, Elisabetta Cerbai from the University of Florence and Ferdinando Rossi of University of Torino have challenged findings published in the same journal last year that amniotic fluid-derived stem cells can produce cells of the nervous system.

Amniotic fluid is the liquid that surrounds the fetus during pregnancy.