If you have confidence in the future of science, you might be inclined to believe that a technology solution decades from now could make CO2 clean-up cheaper and more effective than what is available right now.

A group of economists argue just the opposite, they say that costs will be higher and that would make it less likely for decision-makers to ever push for a low-carbon economy. Global economic growth would be cut back by up to 7 percent within the first decade after climate policy implementation if the current international stalemate is continued until 2030, compared to 2 percent if a climate agreement is reached by 2015.

Astronomers have provided the best three-dimensional map yet of the central parts of the Milky Way. It shows that the inner regions take on a peanut-like appearance from some angles. This odd shape was mapped by using public data from ESO’s VISTA survey telescope along with measurements of the motions of hundreds of very faint stars in the central bulge.

One of the most important and massive parts of the galaxy is the galactic bulge. This huge central cloud of about 10 000 million stars spans thousands of light-years, but its structure and origin were not well understood.

Cilantro, a favorite ingredient in spicy cuisine, may also be an inexpensive new way of purifying drinking water, according to research done by undergraduate students at Ivy Tech Community College.

Douglas Schauer, Ph.D., reporting on the work at the American Chemical Society meeting, said that cilantro, also known as coriander and Thai parsley, shows promise as a "biosorbent" for removing lead and other potentially toxic heavy metals from contaminated water. 

Moore's Law, originating in 1965 [1], is an observation of transistor density on a single CPU core increasing exponentially with time. Futurists such as Ray Kurzweil [2] extend this to the claim that CPU-core computation rate (operations per second) will also increase exponentially with time, allowing for a technological explosion of super-intelligent machines in soon-to-come decades.

Anorexia nervosa is a multifactorial neuropsychiatric condition that affects as many as one percent of women in the Western world, and has an estimated mortality as high as 10 percent, making it perhaps the deadliest of mental illnesses. Anorexics severely restrict eating and become emaciated, yet consider themselves overweight. Individuals with anorexia tend to be perfectionistic, anxious or depressed, and obsessive.

A team of researchers have published new data that could prove vital for advances in care for women who suffer from recurrent miscarriage.

The recurrent loss of pregnancy through miscarriage causes significant distress to couples, often exacerbated by there being so few treatments available to clinicians.

The search for an effective treatment has been the cause of significant controversy in the field of medical research, centering on the role of natural killer cells (or NK cells) and the ability of steroids to prevent miscarriage.

Scientists have been uncertain about how these NK cells could contribute to a miscarriage and this has raised doubt over their importance in causing pregnancy loss.

20 years ago, El Niño had an uncorrected impact on the data that went into global warming models, causing puzzling results. Now, those results have been corrected and instead of El Niño impacting global warming, global warming could be impacting El Niño.

Using coral samples from Kiribati, researchers have outlined how El Niño Southern Oscillation (ENSO) cycle has changed over the past 4,300 years - altering the cycles of El Niño and La Niña events that bring extreme drought and flooding to Australia and many other Pacific-rim countries. The new paper suggests that external changes have an impact on the strength and timing of El Niño events.

Astronomers has begun to map the location of the most massive and mysterious objects in our galaxy – the Southern Milky Way and its giant gas clouds, where new stars are born.

Very good news for the Quantum Randi Challenge, the most engaging bit of science outreach that already helped tripping up a notorious crackpot, and which now starts to gain momentum toward its main aim, which is helping a wide audience to understand the essence of quantum mechanics while being immunized against quantum–mysticism, which is sadly promoted by established scientists as badly as by snake-oil sellers.

Finding the collaboration by educators and artists that the Quantum Randi Challenge needs is now easier, as most of the didactic core has passed the scientific community’s peer review system, and not just with one paper, but two!