Science News

NEW ORLEANS, Louisiana (AFP) - Desperate to avoid a repeat of the Katrina catastrophe in 2005, New Orleans prepared to begin mandatory evacuations Saturday as another deadly hurricane, Gustav, bore down on the city.

HAVANA - Gustav swelled to an increasingly fearsome Category 3 hurricane with winds of 125 mph as it shrieked toward the heartland of Cuba's cigar industry Saturday on a track to hit the U.S. Gulf Coast, three years after Hurricane Katrina.

BOARDMAN, Ohio - Barack Obama expressed hope Saturday that the lessons learned from Hurricane Katrina three years ago would help to protect the Gulf Coast from Hurricane Gustav this time. His running mate, Joe Biden, urged people to pray that the levees in New Orleans hold.

PATNA, India (Reuters) - Indian authorities, hampered by heavy rain and damaged roads, were struggling on Saturday to get aid to millions of displaced villagers in the eastern state of Bihar, hit by the worst flooding in 50 years.

MIAMI (AFP) - Hurricane Gustav strengthened into a "dangerous" category three hurricane Saturday as it approached the west of Cuba, the US National Hurricane Center said.

CAPE CANAVERAL, Fla. - NASA's staff will study whether the space shuttle program could continue operating past its scheduled retirement in 2010, according to an internal e-mail sent this week.

After nearly a year rolling around inside an expansive crater on Mars, NASA's trusty rover Opportunity is headed back out to explore the Martian plains.

NASA is taking a look at what might be required to postpone the retirement of its three space shuttles until their Orion capsule replacement begins operational flight in 2015, but only as a preparatory measure for Congress and the incoming president, agency officials said Friday.

PARIS - The five-satellite RapidEye commercial Earth observation constellation launched successfully on Friday aboard a silo-based Dnepr rocket from Russia's Baikonur Cosmodrome in Kazakhstan. All five satellites have sent signals and are healthy in low Earth orbit, the satellite's owners and the prime contractor said.

Currently, the planet Venus is visible, albeit very low in the western evening sky right after sundown. Those with obstructions such as trees or buildings toward the west may not be able to see Venus yet, thanks to its low altitude. But this current evening apparition of Venus is going to evolve into a very good one in the coming days and weeks, so let's get into a fuller explanation of what is to come.

SALT LAKE CITY - Animal rights activists broke into a mink farm and released hundreds of the animals from their pens, police said.

TOKYO (AFP) - A giant panda cub whose rare birth by artificial insemination led to rejoicing in Japan died on Friday after just three days, zoo officials said.

Changes that the Bush administration is proposing to make to Endangered Species Act regulations just aren't sound science, various scientists and conservation groups say. They're concerned that the loss of scientific oversight resulting from the changes will leave some species vulnerable to federal projects that could damage habitats. The Endangered Species Act (ESA), signed into law by President Nixon on Dec. 28, 1973, does more than just provide for the creation of the Endangered Species List. ...

Some zoos in the U.S. offer an exotic way to fertilize their gardens through a unique method of recycling waste from zoo animals.

BEIJING (AFP) - Three giant pandas have been born in southwest China, bringing the total number of new arrivals of the endangered species this year to at least 19, state media reported.

A turtle that toddled alongside the dinosaurs died just days before laying a clutch of eggs. Now, about 75 million years later, paleontologists are announcing their find of the fossilized mother-to-be and the eggs tucked inside her body.

CARACAS, Venezuela - An ancient tar pit exposed when Venezuelan oil workers laid a pipeline has yielded a rich trove of fossils, including a type of saber-toothed cat that paleontologists had never found before in South America. Scientists say the find holds the promise of many discoveries to come.

WASHINGTON (AFP) - A US-led team of archaeologists said Thursday they had discovered by chance what is believed to be the largest find of Stone Age-era remains ever uncovered in the Sahara Desert.

SYDNEY (AFP) - The chance discovery of the remains of a prehistoric giant kangaroo has cast doubts on the long-held view that climate change drove it and other mega-fauna to extinction, a new study reveals.

CARACAS (AFP) - Venezuela has found the first fossils of an extinct scimitar cat -- of the saber-toothed cat genus -- in South America, during oil prospecting activities southeast of Caracas, paleontologists announced.

PARIS (AFP) - Scientists have used gene therapy on mouse embryos to grow hair cells with the potential to reduce hearing loss in adult animals, according to a study released Wednesday.

Aug. 26 (Bloomberg) -- The Republican Party released a draft of its 2008 platform that differs from candidate John McCain on issues including immigration, stem-cell research and climate change, while endorsing his ideas for economic growth and free trade.

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Prescribing instructions for Biogen Idec and Elan Corp's drug Tysabri should be revised to note cases of a serious brain disorder in patients who were using it as their sole treatment for multiple sclerosis, U.S. health regulators said on Monday.

LONDON (Reuters) - Stem cell scientists have developed a new and more accurate way of spotting aggressive forms of bowel cancer, allowing for tailored treatment that should improve patients' chances of survival.

PARIS (AFP) - Personalised, genome-based health care could help prevent hundreds of thousands of deaths caused each year by adverse drug reactions, genetics pioneer Craig Venter said Tuesday.

WASHINGTON - If Democrats hoped to portray John McCain as captive to the oil industry, their task became more complicated with his selection of Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin as a running mate.

RIO DE JANEIRO, Brazil - Brazil will spend US$160 million by the end of next year on the development of a nuclear-propelled submarine to protect the oil reserves found recently off its coast, the defense minister said Friday.

ANCHORAGE, Alaska - Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin's reputation as a crusading reformer after pushing through higher taxes on oil companies has been tarnished by revelations that members of her staff tried to have her former brother-in-law fired from his job as an Alaska state trooper.

WASHINGTON (AFP) - US officials are prepared to tap the government's strategic oil reserve if a storm damages oil installations in the Gulf of Mexico, a Department of Energy spokeswoman said Friday.

LONDON (AFP) - The dollar dropped against the euro and the yen on Friday, as dealers tracked rising oil prices and fresh evidence of inflationary pressures in the eurozone and Japan.

The gooey, golden stuff that builds up inside your ears should stay there, according to national guidelines on earwax removal released today.

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - A vast region of the Amazon forest in Brazil was home to a complex of ancient towns in which about 50,000 people lived, according to scientists assisted by satellite images of the region.

A baby's first words are often "mama" and "dada," much to the delight of parents. Now scientists think they know why.

WASHINGTON - The difference between a monster and a wimp for Gulf of Mexico hurricanes often comes down to a small patch of warm deep water that's easy to miss. It's called the Loop Current, and hurricane trackers say Gustav is headed right for it, reminiscent of Katrina.

CHICAGO (Reuters) - The brains of flies are wired to avoid the swatter, U.S. researchers said on Thursday.