Seven species of vulnerable sharks and manta rays have now been submitted by 35 countries for consideration for protection next year under an international treaty concerned with regulating wildlife trade.

Governments met the deadline today and formally submitted their proposals for the meeting of the Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species of Wild Fauna and Flora (CITES) in March 2013. The recommendations include porbeagle and oceanic whitetip sharks, three species of hammerhead sharks, and two types of manta rays. For nearly 40 years, CITES has shielded thousands of plants and animals from overexploitation through international trade, and the treaty is widely considered one of the best-enforced international conservation agreements.

I must admit, before reading Massimo Pigliucci’s interesting article on Science 2.0, I was unaware of John Dupre’s so-called scholarship. My curiosity first led to Wikipedia which refers to him as a critic of evolutionary biology. With amazing tools such as Google and YouTube, I was able to watch Dupre debate Alex Rosenberg of Duke University, someone whom I had many exchanges with in his first philosophy of genomics class in 2004. After watching the video, in a matter of minutes it was apparent that Dupre is a philosopher, not an expert in evolution.  

Online fundraisers taking part in organized events use social media to reach close to 600 people and inspire others to take on challenges for charity, according to new data from JustGiving.com

 Speaking at Making every step count: How to maximize participation and fundraising at your event, Howard Bell, Director of Partnerships at JustGiving revealed new data showing that each individual fundraising campaign is seen by an average of 562 people on Facebook.

 What's more, the event fundraising 'network effect' means fundraisers encourage others to follow their lead. One in four fundraisers will choose either to take part in the same event for charity the next year or will inspire a friend or family member to take part instead. 

The U.S. Food and Drug Administration has granted Boston Scientific Corporation regulatory approval for its S-ICD(R) System, the world's first and only commercially available subcutaneous implantable defibrillator (S-ICD) for the treatment of patients at risk for sudden cardiac arrest (SCA).

Sudden cardiac arrest is an abrupt loss of heart function. Most episodes are caused by the rapid and/or chaotic activity of the heart known as ventricular tachycardia or ventricular fibrillation. Recent estimates show that approximately 850,000 people in the United States are at risk of SCA and indicated for an ICD device, but remain unprotected

 Apollo Hospitals performed a complex spinal surgery on a 10-year-old child, the 12th successful surgery done within 10 days of the launch of Renaissance Robotic Technology, the only technology specifically designed for spine surgery. Apollo Hospitals Group is the first in the Asia-Pacific to offer this surgical guidance system, which is a minimally-invasive robotic-guided spine surgery. 

A 10-year-old girl from Gujarat, Heema was born with congenital anomalies that left her with a severely deformed spine. Before being admitted to Apollo Hospitals, the child had already undergone multiple procedures that had failed and left her with rods placed in her back, broken at multiple places, and a spine that was grotesquely deformed.

For over a year, Google has been the target of U.S. and European antitrust investigations, but now the search company has fired back. In a report commissioned by Google and released today, two acclaimed antitrust experts dismiss Google's critics' claims as lacking any compelling legal or economic argument for a government antitrust case.

What Does the Chicago School Teach About Internet Search and the Antitrust Treatment of Google? the work of Judge Robert Bork and Professor Gregory Sidak. The report examines the legal theories of Google's critics and compares those conjectures to the real-world search experience.

Hydraulic fracturing technology, called fracking, has been around since the 1940s but has recently gained attention as the energy industry expanded cleaner natural gas production.

The inaugural Energy Census from business intelligence company Polecat says it is a big topic, with energy writers noting that CO2 emissions from energy have plummeted and coal emissions have gone even farther back in time, to the days of the first Reagan administration. Meanwhile, detractors claim it causes headaches and cancer (cancer has been the go-to disease for everything since Rachel Carson made up a scare about DDT 50 years ago) and even that it could cause the earth to deflate.

One of the interesting things in the online autism world is how the use of labels and definitions created by mental health professionals are being taken over by the community. Autism is redefined away from a mental disorder to a neurological difference, and labels are adopted by individuals and reworked into personality traits and features that are innate to the person and not a signifier of defects  or deficits.

An outbreak of meningitis has been reported among patients who received injection of preservative-free methylprednisone acetate, a steroid medication which is administered by injection into the spinal cavity. As of today, 47 cases of meningitis and 5 deaths as a result of the distribution of contaminated compounds have been reported. 

Scientists are commonly portrayed as paragons of rationality, subsisting solely on fact-based evidence and hard data; what goes on behind laboratory doors is in large part a mystery to the general public. In the past several years, however, there have been several notable cases of scientific fraud exposed: in 2006, it was revealed that Hwang Woo Suk fabricated data in papers claiming that he had managed to extract stem cells from cloned embryos. At around the same time it was discovered that Norwegian researcher Jon Sudbo made up a study where he claimed that anti-inflammatory drugs reduced the risk of oral cancer.