Science Blog

"A comet is an icy small Solar System body that, when close enough to the Sun, displays a visible coma (a thin, fuzzy, temporary atmosphere) and sometimes also a tail. Occasionally, they will collide with planets such as the Earth. New research from Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory scientists shows that comets that crashed into Earth millions of years ago could have produced amino acids — the building blocks of life. Amino acids are critical to life and serve as the building blocks of proteins, which are linear chains of amino acids".

Read the article.....  From: Andy Soos, ENN
Published September 13, 2010 02:54 PM

"World leaders will next week consider a target for halting extinctions of animals and plants by 2020 that many experts rate impossibly ambitious given mounting threats such as climate change and loss of habitats.

"Biodiversity losses are accelerating," said Anne Larigauderie, executive director of the Paris-based Diversitas Secretariat, which groups international scientists and reckons that the goal laid out in a draft United Nations (UN) plan is out of reach for 2020." Read the full article from Polity.org.za

"This report from the United Nations Environment Programme and the World Meteorological Organisation highlights the two-way link between the ozone layer and climate change. International efforts to protect the ozone layer shielding life on Earth from harmful levels of ultraviolet rays have stopped additional ozone losses, potentially averting scores of millions of cases of skin cancer and eye cataracts, as well as helping to mitigate the global warming greenhouse effect". Download the report from Polity.org.za

"UCT is the only South African university ranked among the world’s top 200 by the Times ranking, which published its 2010 rankings yesterday." Sue Blaine. Business Day 

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"The report from the Food and Agriculture Organisation and the World Food Programme, states that although the number of hungry people in the world has fallen to 925-million thanks to renewed economic growth, it remains "unacceptably" high and hampers the achievement of the . Download the article from Creamer Media Reporter

International Rivers is an organization that opposes the construction of destructive dams on rivers, and they also support communities affected by dams. Their aim is to "protect rivers and promote just and sustainable water and energy development." Visitors will find most of their questions about dams and hydroelectricity can be answered under the "Learn More" tab's FAQ section. Along with each answer, there is most often an article, slideshow, video or other resource to explore further. Some of the pieces examine why there is opposition to large dams, the expense of hydroelectricity, the lack of local jobs produced when a dam is being built in a developing country, and the number of people displaced by dams. Under the "Get Involved" tab, there is a section called "Tools for Educators" that include lessons for introductory learners, intermediate learners, advanced learners, and a "River Educator's Toolkit", which contains lessons on the four major rivers in Asia, Africa, and South America

 David Colquhoun considers how a university can achieve the best research and teaching, and the most efficient administration – the aim of every university vice-chancellor (president, rector or provost) in the country. Read the article.....

Physiology News | No. 69 | Winter 2007 | www.physoc.org

http://profiles.nlm.nih.gov/PD/

"Daniel Nathans was a molecular biologist whose work with restriction enzymes provided one of the keystones of "the new genetics". His work in this area quickly became one of the essential tools of molecular biology, and in 1987 he received the Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine for this crucial work. This collection from the National Library of Medicine's "Profiles in Science" series brings together some of his research papers and related documents. The materials are divided chronologically into periods that include "Choosing Research, 1955-1962" and "New Directions: Growth Signals and Cellular Responses, 1980-1999". The site also contains a list of further readings and a glossary of terms". From the Scout Report