wired.com: By Jonah Lehrer

A revolution in the science of social networks began with a stash of old papers found in a storeroom in Framingham, Massachusetts. They were the personal records of 5,124 male and female subjects from the Framingham Heart Study. Started in 1948, the ongoing project has revealed many of the risk factors associated with cardiovascular disease, including smoking and hypertension. [ more ]

nytimes.com: By MATTHEW L. WALD

Poking out of the ground near the smokestacks of the Mountaineer power plant here are two wells that look much like those that draw natural gas to the surface. But these are about to do something new: inject a power plant’s carbon dioxide into the earth.

A behemoth built in 1980, long before global warming stirred broad concern, Mountaineer is poised to become the world’s first coal-fired power plant to capture and bury some of the carbon dioxide it churns out. The hope is that the gas will stay deep underground for millennia rather than entering the atmosphere as a heat-trapping pollutant.
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breitbart.com:

Paralysed rats whose spinal cords had been severed from their brains were made to run again using a technique that scientists say can work for people, according to a study released Sunday.

Consistent electrical stimulation and drugs enabled the rats to walk on their hind legs on a treadmill — bearing the full weight of the body — within a week of being paralysed.

With the addition of physical therapy, the rodents were able after several weeks to walk and run without stumbling for up to 30 minutes, reported the study, published in the journal Nature Neuroscience. [ more ]

Scientists are finally starting to find medical information of value.

technologyreview.com: By Emily Singer

Last year, when more than 100 of the world’s top geneticists, technologists, and clinicians converged on Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory in New York for the first annual Personal-Genomes conference, the main focus was James Watson’s genome. The codiscoverer of the structure of DNA was the first to have his genome sequenced and published (aside from Craig Venter, who used his own DNA for the private arm of the human genome project.) Watson sat in the front row of the lecture hall as scientists presented their analysis of his genome. They paid special attention to the number of single-letter variations or small insertions and deletions in his DNA–clues as to whether he had a genetic variation that slightly boosted his risk for heart disease or cancer. But there was very little usable information in the genome. [ more ]

ted.com: Virus hunter Nathan Wolfe is outwitting the next pandemic by staying two steps ahead: discovering deadly new viruses where they first emerge — passing from animals to humans among poor subsistence hunters in Africa — before they claim millions of lives.

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sciam.com: By Matthew L. Wald

The need to tackle global climate change and energy security makes developing alternatives to fossil fuels crucial.

Renewable energy, such as from photovoltaic electricity and ethanol, today supplies less than 7 percent of U.S. consumption. If we leave aside hydroelectric power, it is under 4.5 percent. Globally, renewables provide only about 3.5 percent of electricity and even less of transportation fuels.

But increasing that fraction for the U.S.—as seems necessary for managing greenhouse gases, trade deficits and dependence on foreign suppliers—has at least three tricky components. The obvious one is how to capture the energy of wind, sun and crops economically. After that, the energy has to be moved from where it is easily gathered, such as the sunny American Southwest or the windy High Plains, to the places it can be used. And the third is to convert it into convenient forms. Most prominently in the last category, electricity for transportation has to be loaded into cars and trucks, either through batteries or perhaps as hydrogen. [ read more ]

sciam.com: By David Biello
Molten salts can store the sun’s heat during the day and provide power at night

Near Granada, Spain, more than 28,000 metric tons of salt is now coursing through pipes at the Andasol 1 power plant. That salt will be used to solve a pressing if obvious problem for solar power: What do you do when the sun is not shining and at night?

The answer: store sunlight as heat energy for such a rainy day.

Part of a so-called parabolic trough solar-thermal power plant, the salts will soon help the facility light up the night—literally. Because most salts only melt at high temperatures (table salt, for example, melts at around 1472 degrees Fahrenheit, or 800 degrees Celsius) and do not turn to vapor until they get considerably hotter—they can be used to store a lot of the sun’s energy as heat. Simply use the sunlight to heat up the salts and put those molten salts in proximity to water via a heat exchanger. Hot steam can then be made to turn turbines without losing too much of the original absorbed solar energy. [ read more ]

sciam.com: By Mark Fischetti

Tracking packages and food sources would lead to faster recalls and lessen contamination risks

If a natural pathogen, or a perpetrator, contaminates food, lives will be saved if the tainted product can be quickly detected, then traced back to its point of origin so the rest of the batch can be tracked down or recalled. The following technologies, in development, could help:

Microfluidic Detectors—Botulinum bacteria produce the most poisonous toxin known. They and similar agents, such as tetanus, could be detected during food processing by microfluidic chips—self-contained diagnostic labs the size of a finger. The University of Wisconsin–Madison is crafting such a chip, lined with antibodies held in place by magnetic beads, that could detect botulism during milk production. The chip could sample milk before or after it was piped into tanker trucks that leave the dairy and before or after it was pasteurized at a production plant. Other chips could detect other toxins at various fluid-processing plants, such as those that produce apple juice, soup or baby formula. [ read more ]

sciam.com: By Eitan Haddok and David Biello:

The enhanced system at Soultz in France is the first such artificial geothermal power plant. Since the 1920s The Geysers geothermal power plant 72 miles (115 kilometers) north of San Francisco has been pumping out electricity harvested from hot rocks deep within Earth’s crust. But there are only so many natural volcanic formations to be tapped. In locations that are not blessed by easy access to this natural resource, drilling into the hot rock bed and pumping fluid through it has the potential to unleash 2,000 times the total annual consumption of energy in the U.S., according to a 2007 report from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. [ see more ]

newscientist.com:

AFTER 25 years battling the mother of all viruses, have we finally got the measure of HIV? Three developments featured in this issue collectively give grounds for optimism that would have been scarcely believable a year ago in the wake of another failed vaccine and continuing problems supplying drugs to all who need them.

Perhaps the most compelling hope lies in the apparent “cure” of a man with HIV who had also developed leukaemia. Doctors treated his leukaemia with a bone marrow transplant that also vanquished the virus (see “One shot to rid body of HIV”). Now US company Sangamo Biosciences is hoping to emulate the effect using gene therapy. If it works, and that is still a big if, it would open up the possibility of patients being cured with a single shot of gene therapy, instead of taking antiretroviral drugs for life. [ read more ]