Cool Links

Poor NASA. Even since a Democrat took over as president the world is convinced Americans are imperialists bent on flexing their muscles in areas like...disaster relief.

Disaster relief and humanitarian assistance are just two of the 'sinister' things critics in Thailand contend NASA may secretly be involved in under the guise of monitoring the atmosphere as part of the "Southeast Asia Composition, Cloud, Climate Coupling Regional Study". The project will use satellites, aircraft and ground missions to study how air circulation during the monsoon affected the climate and air quality in South and Southeast Asia.
What, a herd of cattle were poisoned by cyanide in Texas??  The culprit had to be a genetically-modified form of Bermuda grass!  Stupid scientists are out to kill us all with their right-wing, corporation-y greed.

Only if you get your science from CBS.  Or Sierra Club.  Or gullible commenters here on Science 2.0.
The Canadian military has it tough these days.  The legends of World Was II are only 50,000 strong and in a government that basically does not think very much of them.

Oddly, they are being tasked with saving the environment in Canada.

Canadian Forces Base Suffield, Alberta., is in a quiet tug-of-war with the oil and gas industry. Last year by the Alberta Energy Resources Conservation Board to approve 47 non-routine natural gas well applications by energy giant Cenovus.

So along with what is traditionally been considered the core mission of any military - preparation for combat - they are being forced to juggle government mandates, environmental issue and monitor industrial concerns.
Fundamentalist extremists don't like anything that looks like it didn't come from their religious texts. And they tend to blow stuff up that they don't like.

Five years ago, the Taliban blew the face off a towering, 1,500-year-old rock carving of Buddha, called Jahanabad Buddha, which was etched high on a huge rock face in the 6th or 7th century in northwest Pakistan.  Hard-line Muslims have a history of targeting Buddhist, Hindu and other religious sites they consider heretical to Islam. Six months before the Sept. 11, 2001 terrorist attacks, the Taliban outraged the world by dynamiting a pair of 1,500-year-old Buddhist statues in central Afghanistan.  
Did Roman influence extend to the farthest reaches of Asia? Maybe it was the other way around and Japan or its trading partners were common in Europe.

Either way, glass jewelry of Roman design has been found in  the Fifth Century "Utsukushi" burial mound in Nagaoka, near Kyoto, Japan, researchers said Friday. 
For science credibility about biology, who means more?
The Deepwater Horizon/BP oil spill is still working its way through the courts. The US government is pressing ahead with its $18 billion legal action despite the oil giant’s $7.8 billion settlement with 110,000 Gulf of Mexico businesses and individuals after the Deepwater Horizon disaster.

The US government is also investigating whether there are criminal charges to be brough.

Here are some graphical factoids from a group representing affected people and businesses. BP also faces challenges from the states of Louisana and Alabama, shareholder lawsuits in Houston and counter-claims between BP and its former Deepwater partners including Transocean.
Traditional Chinese medicine (TCM) is enjoying increasing popularity all over the world - to the tune of hundreds of millions of dollars each year, making it Big Business.

Yet there are concerns. Two molecular genetics studies show that the treatments can be harmful, as well, because not all of their ingredients are listed, or even legal, some can cause cancer and proponents often simply do not know what they are doing when making combinations. 
Alan Turing, the computer science legend best known for his part in breaking the German Enigma code at Bletchley Park in World War II, may have died of an accident rather than suicide, according to a new claim.

Accidental cyanide poisoning?  Do go on.

Professor Jack Copeland, director of the The Turing Archive for the History of Computing, claims in a new book that Turing may have died due to inhalation in amateur experiments rather than in a deliberate attempt to kill himself. 
The Utopian vision society has always dreamed about was a world where people could eat so much for so little money, that it wasn't just rich people who could afford to be fat; anyone could.

Well, we have that. America is more self-loathing about its obesity issues than most countries but Italian kids are fat, everyone in Britain is fat, and even the French are closing in on a weight crisis.
Two of the great feel-good fallacies promoted by vegetarians and vegans today is that eating less meat will stop climate change and that ancient man did it their way.

In reality, ancient man loved meat, it was just hard to kill.  So ancient scientists domesticated livestock - and then they found more uses for it, like milk, butter and cheese. It wasn't just Europeans, researchers have identified the chemical signature of dairy fats inside the surfaces of pottery from 7,200 years ago in North Africa.
A few days away from a Supreme Court ruling on the the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act(Obamacare to detractors) comes some sobering claims from Britain, which already has nationalized health care.

Professor Patrick Pullicino, a consulting neurologist for East Kent Hospitals and Professor of Clinical Neurosciences at the University of Kent, says National Health Service (NHS) doctors in the UK are prematurely ending the lives of thousands of elderly hospital patients because they are difficult to manage or to free up beds.
Things are not great in America but Spain may have the USA beat - even cherries are being stolen.

Last year, more than 20,000 thefts were reported at Spanish farms.  Is that more or less than in previous years?  No one is sure, it was never a problem before so they have few records.  Now, thieves steal food from farmers and resell them in ad hoc markets.  Welcome to the 14th century. All those people who think the past was better get to see it first hand.
Joan Gonzalvo of the Ionian Dolphin Project, who studies dolphins off western Greece for the Tethys Research Institute, captured an incredible sequence of images showing a leaping bottlenose dolphin with a large octopus clinging to its belly.

Well, more specifically the dolphin's genital slit. Yikes.

Advances in medical and surgical care are hard-won, requiring rigorous, carefully interpreted research and development. There is painstaking clinical work to translate basic discoveries into useful diagnostics, drugs, and devices. Despite the obastacles, the achievements made in the past half century are unmistakable: a 50 percent reduction in cardiovascular mortality despite an epidemic of obesity; a dramatically decreased cancer mortality rate; and the conversion of AIDS from a death sentence to survival with good life quality.
It's a nightmare for Whole Foods shoppers; what if genetically modified crops produced by evil scientists who only care about profits for their employers (i.e., the same as every employee of Whole Foods and its organic Mega-Farm suppliers) are actually good for the ecosystem?

We already know that genetically modified foods are as good for people as organic foods - or better if you'd prefer not to get E. coli from your food. We also know that, despite the silly claims, organic food is incapable of feeding poor people while genetically modified foods have brought prosperity and nutrition to a billion people worldwide in the last decade, and they have done it without using more land and with less harmful pesticides.
Chimpanzees, you are not alone.  The distinction of being our closest living relative in the animal kingdom is now a tie with the bonobo.

An international team of researchers has sequenced the genome of the bonobo for the first time, confirming that it shares the same percentage of its DNA (about 99.6%) with us as chimps do.
Bank of America was recently so crushed by its risky derivatives investments it needed $45 billion in bailout money from taxpayers - and then proceeded to engage in questionable practices to cover its losses, much like it engaged in questionable practices to acquire the losses.  

Things are so much better now they can afford to fix global warming and are devoting $50 billion to the cause. 
Archaeologists have discovered the remains of the Elizabethan theatre where some of William Shakespeare’s plays were first performed. The Curtain Theatre was the venue immortalized as “this wooden O” in the prologue to “Henry V.”

The remains of the polygonal structure, typical of 16th-century theatres were found behind a pub on a site marked for redevelopment.  They 
uncovered part of the gravel yard and gallery walls of the 435-year-old Curtain Theatre in Shoreditch, just east of London’s business district.

The Curtain opened in 1577 and was home to Shakespeare’s company, the Lord Chamberlain’s Men, from 1597 until the Globe Theatre was built across the river two years later.

If we want to start cutting budgets, Republicans are not wrong for noting that the Education Department and the Department of Energy could disappear without any consequence at all to America beyond the government union employees working there.

But one darling of the right, the military, could do some cutting as well.  America has 16 different intelligence agencies and one of them you likely never heard of, the National Reconnaissance Office, has donated not one but two Hubble-sized military telescopes to NASA because, darn it, they just don't need them after all.