For those who have not entered the world of Twitter, it is hard to fathom why people feel compelled to stream their lives to strangers 140 characters at a time. And such non-Twitter folk are also unlikely to fathom the purpose of blogging, especially in a world with more than 170 million blogs. Imagine the non-tweeting non-blogger’s disbelief, then, when they read story after story about how Twitter, Facebook, Wordpress, Posterous and the other “Social Web 2.0” heavyweights are changing the world as we know it.

Writing in the Proceedings of The National Academy of Sciences, Harvard University researchers say they have demonstrated that simple changes in beak length and depth can explain the important morphological diversity of all beak shapes within the famous genus Geospiza. Broadly, the work suggests that a few, simple mathematical rules may be responsible for complicated biological adaptations.

Using digitization techniques, researchers found that 14 distinct beak shapes, that at first glance look unrelated, could be categorized into three broader, group shapes. Despite the striking variety of sizes and shapes, mathematically, the beaks within a particular group only differ by their scales.

Scientists from the University of Washington sent to collect seismic data and evaluate damage from the devastating magnitude-7 earthquake that struck Haiti have recently released a report documenting their results. The team  of civil and environmental engineers says that mass poverty, density of population and lack of building codes were responsible for the widespread devastation.

A survey of 107 buildings in a heavily damaged part of downtown Port-au-Prince found that 28 percent had collapsed and a third will require repairs. A survey of 52 buildings in nearby Léogâne found that more than 90 percent had either collapsed or will require repairs. The report indicates that many of the damaged structures will have to be destroyed and rebuilt.

A new study by researchers at Indiana University suggests that there may be a link between the number of 'alcohol sales sites' in a neighborhood and the amount of violence that neighborhood experiences. The higher the former, the higher the latter, researchers say. The study also claims that the highest assault rates are associated with carry-out sites selling alcohol for off-premise consumption. The findings were released yesterday and presented as part of the Feb. 18-22 annual meeting of the American Association for the Advancement of Science in San Diego, Calif.

In recent years, DNA evidence has added important new tools for scientists studying the human past, and a collection of reviews published in a recent issue of Current Biology offers a timely update on how new genetic evidence, together with archaeological and linguistic evidence, has enriched our understanding of human history.

The journey started around 60 to 70 thousand years ago in Africa, where modern humans evolved more than 150 thousand years ago, and where human diversity is still the highest among all continents in terms of genetic variation and languages. From there, humans settled Europe and South Asia and reached Oceania. The Americas (apart from the remote Oceanian islands) were settled last.

The United States Geological Survey (USGS) reports that ice shelves are retreating in the southern section of the Antarctic Peninsula due to climate change. The disappearing ice could lead to sea-level rise if warming continues, threatening coastal communities and low-lying islands worldwide.

Every ice front in the southern part of the Antarctic Peninsula has been retreating overall from 1947 to 2009, according to the USGS, with the most dramatic changes occurring since 1990. Previously documented evidence indicates that the majority of ice fronts on the entire Peninsula have also retreated during the late 20th century and into the early 21st century.

Day two and day one if you need to catch up.

One great thing about being at a conference on a press pass is people want to buy you food. You can literally go the entire day without buying anything for yourself if that's how you roll. Breakfasts - check. Coffee - check. Lunch - well, I am not much of a lunch guy but I suppose I could get the proverbial free lunch in the way of a literal one. Dinner could at least be bar food.

There are twenty-four elementary fermions in the standard model. Sure, they are arranged in a very tidy, symmetrical structure of three families of eight fermions (two leptons and six quarks), which is not too unpleasant to behold. And of course, if one is willing to forget the fact that the quantum-chromodynamical charge of quarks does make them different, then the picture is even tidier: 12 fermions, six of them quarks and six of them leptons, arranged in three families of four.