Climate leader McKibben speaks to the hometown crowd
By Michael Prager Author and activist Bill McKibben wasn’t only preaching to the choir when he addressed the annual meeting Sunday of the Mass. Climate...
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SCIENCE NEWS
Touch influences what we hear, study finds
Listening is more than a matter of being “all ears.’’ People can also hear with their skin, according to new research that deepens our understanding of the senses, showing they can work together but also override one another.
Optogenetics may help explain workings of the brain
More than two centuries ago, the Italian scientist Luigi Galvani found that electricity could make a dead frog’s leg kick, as if it were alive. Today, using the same basic principle but new tools, scientists are employing light to trigger brain cells - looking not for a kick, but for the origins of emotions, behaviors, and diseases in the brain. (By By Carolyn Y. Johnson, Globe Staff)
LATEST SCIENCE NEWS
- Thanksgiving last full day in space for shuttle (AP, 3:21 a.m.)
- Shuttle Atlantis, with crew of seven, leaves space station and heads home (Boston Globe, 11/25/09)
- Rare butterfly species rediscovered in Maine (Boston Globe, 12:15 a.m.)
- Scientists get US funds to crack the turkey’s genetic code (Boston Globe, 11/25/09)
- Curbing global warming saves lives, studies say (AP, 11/25/09)
- Shuttle Atlantis leaves space station, headed home (AP, 11/25/09)
- Icebergs head from Antarctica for New Zealand (AP, 11/25/09)
- Shuttle, space station crews part ways (Boston Globe, 11/24/09)
- Around the Region Energy-efficiency projects get $39m (Boston Globe, 11/24/09)
- Hope (and skepticism) as man’s 23-year coma ends (Boston Globe, 11/25/09)
- Nepal temple slaughtering 200,000 animals (Boston Globe, 11/24/09)
- Hundreds of icebergs drift from Antarctica into shipping lanes near Australia (Boston Globe, 11/24/09)
- GOP opens probe into climate science e-mails (AP, 11/24/09)
- Research: Giving thanks brings health, happiness (AP, 11/24/09)
- Maine utility regulators dismiss solar firm's plan (AP, 11/24/09)
- Icebergs head from Antarctica for New Zealand (AP, 11/24/09)
- China moves to protect pandas from swine flu (AP, 11/24/09)
- EU: US should spell out long-term climate goal (AP, 11/24/09)
- UN: HIV outbreak peaked in 1996 (AP, 11/24/09)
- Big Bang atom smasher starts speeding proton beams (AP, 11/24/09)
- Shuttle, station crews seal hatches for departure (AP, 11/24/09)
- Obama to offer target for cutting greenhouse gas emissions (Boston Globe, 11/24/09)
- Man’s vegetative state wasn’t, after all (Boston Globe, 11/24/09)
- Spacewalking astronauts clear agenda (Boston Globe, 11/24/09)
- Maine dismisses solar firm's plan (AP, 11/23/09)
- Obama to honor young inventors at science fair (AP, 11/23/09)
- UN says greenhouse gases reach record high in 2008 (AP, 11/23/09)
- NRG buys Blythe solar project from First Solar (AP, 11/23/09)
- Seattle Genetics gets $12 million in Astellas deal (AP, 11/23/09)
- LDK Solar 3Q profit falls, demand outlook strong (AP, 11/23/09)
Past features
In battle to save hemlocks, hope rests on a beetle
Armed with a Wiffle Ball bat and a canvas sheet, entomologist David Mausel is scouring forests across New England for an ally. That ally - a small jet-black beetle - feasts on the even tinier but voracious hemlock woolly adelgid, which is ravaging the region’s hemlocks. The adelgids latch onto twigs, feeding on the trees until their needles yellow and fall and the trees die.
Malaria's deadly leap from chimps to humans
One mosquito; one hot-blooded human target; one quick puncture of skin. Most likely, our distant ancestor reacted with no more than a scratch and a shrug.
Thus did malaria leap across the “species divide’’ between chimpanzees and humans, according to new research led by a University of Massachusetts at Amherst scientist.