Science

Being tethered to a computer all day is bad for employees' health and for employers' profits, considering healthcare insurance premiums climb and productivity declines with every worker malady. The latest scientific evidence finds that productivity is reduced even when it appears to be unimpeded. Wo...

Physicists Andre Geim and Konstantin Novoselov of the University of Manchester in England have been awarded the Nobel Prize in Physics 2010 for what the committee described as "groundbreaking experiments" on graphene. A sheet of graphene is just one atom thick, works as a superb conductor of electri...

The very nature of humanity has been changed by the nature of modern work. Where once workers were lean, muscled and tan, now they are pudgy, stooped and wrist-warped. The problem comes from restricted movement over long stretches in the day. Computers have chained employees to one spot, effectively...

SPACE

Distant Planet May Have the Right Stuff

Planet Gliese 581g, the so-called Goldilocks planet whose discovery was announced earlier this week, may help prove Earth is not the only habitable planet in the universe. One reason for that is because it was so readily discovered -- scientists found it after looking at only nine nearby stars. "Pla...

21st Century Western civilization bears the brunt of the greatest health threat since the black plague. Although not quite as dramatic -- there are no bodies in the street or mass graves of the afflicted, for example -- the death count is high and climbing, and the toll on company costs (from health...

IBM researchers can now look into what's happening in individual atoms in close to real time, according to a paper published Friday in Science. "We're interested in what happens at the very end of semiconductor and the IT industries," Andreas Heinrich, one of the IBM researchers involved in the proj...

Robots can be made made strong, robots can be made tireless, but a big problem with robots so far is that they can't be made to have a sense of touch as humans do. The same issue challenges designers of prosthetic limbs. Imitating the motor movements of joints and muscles is one thing, but imitating...

A cosmic ray detector designed to search for antimatter made its way to the Kennedy Space Center Friday in preparation for a February launch that will take it to the International Space Station on the final space shuttle flight. The detector, called the "Alpha Magnetic Spectrometer," was flown in fr...

OPINION

Regulators Take Aim at Genomics

The genomics industry, which provides reports about disease risk, ancestry, and drug reactions based on one's DNA, came under fire last week as a Congressional Committee held hearings and the Government Accountability Office released an unscientific "study" of the sector. According to undercover d...

Just a few weeks ago, Lincoln Medical and Mental Health Center learned a hard lesson. If you didn't see the news reports, the N.Y.-based healthcare provider notified over 130,000 individuals that their records -- including diagnostic information, Social Security numbers, dates of birth, and other i...

The U.S. Department of Health and Human Services has released its final version of rules that define the parameters under which physicians and hospitals can qualify for funding to upgrade their electronic medical records systems. Included are new definitions for what will constitute "meaningful use"...

As healthcare professionals rely more on electronic medical records, tests, images, videos and other multimedia files, high-speed broadband networks have increasingly become a necessary way to transfer and move this data. Unfortunately, however, rural hospitals and clinics have had a difficult time...

A manned solar-powered airplane took off in the early hours of Wednesday morning for a 24-hour trip that will include its first nighttime flight. After being postponed last week, the flight began at 6:51 a.m. local time, when the Solar Impulse HB-SIA aircraft took off from the Payerne airbase in Swi...

Personal computing altered the world forever, and now the digitization of biology is poised to bring about sweeping change. Craig Venter's recent announcement of the first synthetic genome was a huge milestone, but many outside of Silicon Valley remain unaware of the "do-it-yourself biology" movemen...

2010: A Space Policy

The Obama administration on Monday released a new space policy for the U.S. that emphasizes international cooperation and the advancement of the commercial space industry. "No longer are we racing against an adversary; in fact, one of our central goals is to promote peaceful cooperation and collabor...

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