Black Holes

Scientific American 

As increasingly early puberty ups breast cancer risk, researchers search environment for clues

NEW YORK--Women who reach puberty early have a higher risk of developing breast cancer than those who reach it late. So as the age of puberty's onset among U.S. girls continues to drop, researchers are trying to figure out why--and how this growing risk factor might be avoided.  [More]

Cattle plague: An extinction worth celebrating

The world's deadliest cattle disease could be wiped off the face of the planet in the next 18 months , according to a report from the United Nations Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO). [More]

New compound provides a better cage for carbon dioxide

Capturing carbon dioxide is simple chemistry. In fact, you may have seen it in your high school chem lab. Remember that tightly sealed bottle of sodium hydroxide, aka lye ? Simply popping the top off that strong base and exposing it to air resulted in a chemical reaction in which the ambient CO2 was absorbed and the lye became sodium carbonate. [More]

U.S. Forest Service to Adapt Woodland Management to Climate Change

Forest Service Chief Tom Tidwell has directed the agency's regions and research stations to jointly produce draft "landscape conservation action plans" by March 1 to guide its day-to-day response to climate change. In a memo earlier this month requesting the plans, Tidwell said climate change is "dramatically reshaping" how the agency will deliver on its mission of sustaining the health and diversity of the nation's forests . He focused particularly on water management . [More]

Large Hadron Collider reaches an initial energy milestone

The embattled Large Hadron Collider (LHC) reached its first major milestone Monday as it accelerated its twin beams of protons to 1.18 TeV (more than one trillion electron volts) of energy, eclipsing the previous record of 0.98 TeV (tera-electron volts) of energy held by Fermi National Accelerator Lab's Tevatron in Batavia, Ill., since 2001, according to the European Organization for Nuclear Research , aka CERN. [More]

Deer antlers are stronger than bone when mates are at stake

When an attractive doe saunters by, male deer need to be ready to fight their peers for a chance to mate with her. And to battle other bucks, these ruminants have developed some highly specialized appendages: antlers, which must be both tough--to absorb the impact--and stiff--to win a pushing war.  [More]

Language Immersion Impedes Access To Native Tongue

Adults can have a tough time learning a new language. Some opt for language immersion, in which the person spends all their time reading, listening to and speaking the new language. Now research reveals that immersion students do indeed learn the new language faster than students studying the language in a classroom situation--but immersion comes with a price. The work appears in the journal Psychological Science . [More]

Copenhagen and Climate Change

The people of the world continue to grapple with the question of how best to combat climate change [More]

Seven Answers to Climate Contrarian Nonsense

On November 18, with the United Nations Global Warming Conference in Copenhagen fast approaching, U.S. Senator James R. Inhofe (R-Okla.) took the floor of the Senate and proclaimed 2009 to be "The Year of the Skeptic ." Had the senator's speech marked a new commitment to dispassionate, rational inquiry , a respect for scientific thought and a well-grounded doubt in ghosts, astrology, creationism and homeopathy, it might have been cause for cheer. But Inhofe had a more narrow definition of skeptic in mind: he meant "standing up and exposing the science, the costs and the hysteria behind global warming alarmism." Within the community of scientists and others concerned about anthropogenic climate change, those whom Inhofe calls skeptics are more commonly termed contrarians, naysayers and denialists. Not everyone who questions climate change science fits that description, of course--some people are genuinely unaware of the facts or honestly disagree about their interpretation. What distinguishes the true naysayers is an unwavering dedication to denying the need for action on the problem, often with weak and long-disproved arguments about supposed weaknesses in the science behind global warming. [More]

Risk-Taking Teens Have More Mature Brains

Editor's note: The orignal online version of this story was previously posted. We often hear that teens are irresponsible because their brains are immature. But, contradicting that idea, teen turmoil is completely absent in more than 100 cultures around the world [see " The Myth of the Teen Brain ," by Robert Epstein; Scientific American Mind , April/May 2007]. Nevertheless, neuroscience studies do indeed suggest that the gray matter in the frontal cortex of teens, as compared with adults, is not fully developed. [More]