SAN FRANCISCO - A research team in Sweden said Charles Darwin was wrong about the genetic basis for the yellow skin of some chickens.Greger Larson, a research fellow at Uppsala University in Sweden and at Durham University in Britain, said yellow-skinned chickens have a different version of a gene than their white-skinned cousins.Darwin believed that all chickens came from a wild species known as the red junglefowl but when the research team looked for a ... [full story]

A vault designed to pro­tect va­nish­ing seed va­rie­ties for fu­ture gener­a­t­ions opened Feb. 26 on a re­mote Arc­tic is­land.The Sval­bard Glob­al Seed Vault, a pro­ject of the Nor­we­gian go­vern­ment, re­ceived in­au­gu­ral ship­ments of 100 mil­lion seeds that orig­i­nat­ed in over 100 coun­tries.  The seed vault's entrance juts out from a mountainside. (Credit: Mari Tefre/Global Crop Diversity Trust) With de­posits rang­ing from un­ique va­ri­eties of Af­ri­can and Asian food sta­ples such as maize, rice, wheat, cow­pea, and ... [full story]

CAPE CANAVERAL, Fla. - NASA senior managers completed a review Friday of space shuttle Endeavour's readiness for flight and selected March 11 as the official launch date for the STS-123 mission. Commander Dominic Gorie and his six crewmates are scheduled to lift off to the International Space Station at 2:28 a.m. EDT. During the 16-day mission, the crew will deliver and install the first section of the Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency's Kibo laboratory and the ... [full story]

PARIS - The European Space Agency's first automated transfer vehicle, the Jules Verne, has been placed on top of an Ariane 5 rocket for launch from French Guiana.The Jules Verne -- encapsulated in a huge container on top of the launcher with a total mass of about 21,000 tons -- will become the largest payload ever launched by Ariane 5. The historic mission with the first European space supplier for the International Space Station is ... [full story]

CHICAGO - U.S. anthropologists say they have solved the mystery of how the durable, vivid blue pigment found on ancient pottery in Mexico's Yucatan Peninsula was made.Researchers at Wheaton College and the Field Museum said the pigment, known as Maya Blue, was integral to the performance of rituals at Chichen Itza, including painting human sacrifices from head to toe with it. The pigment, which is resistant to age, acid, weathering, biodegradation and even modern chemical solvents, ... [full story]

HOME DECONSTRUCTION   WHAT IS IT? - This is a red-lipped batfish that is found in tropical seas. CNS Photo.   CARTOON LAWS OF PHYSICS - Any biological organism passing through solid matter will leave a perforation conforming to its perimeter, this is also known as the law of 'the silhouette of passage.' CNS Photo.   HOME DECONSTRUCTION - Being fairly nomadic and almost constantly on the move for new forage, African elephants (Loxodontia africana) don't really keep house. ... [full story]

Work in zebrafish by researchers in Postlethwait and Kimmel labs points to tiny gene products that regulate specific cell traffic of a key protein. EUGENE, Ore. - By creating a genetic mutation in zebrafish, University of Oregon scientists say they've discovered a previously unknown mechanism for cleft palate, a common birth defect in humans that has challenged medical professionals for centuries.Many molecular pathways in zebrafish are present in humans and other vertebrates. By studying the ... [full story]

BALTIMORE - A U.S.-led international team of scientists operating the Hubble Space Telescope has detected one of the youngest and brightest galaxies ever discovered.The researchers led by Larry Bradley of Johns Hopkins University said the galaxy -- A1689-zD1 -- is 13 billion light-years from Earth and was formed about 700 million years after the Big Bang created the universe 13 billion years ago. The galaxy -- too distant to be visible by Hubble's advanced camera for ... [full story]

CORVALLIS, Ore. – A review of all available ocean data records concludes that the low-oxygen events that have plagued the Pacific Northwest coast since 2002 are unprecedented in the five decades prior to that, and may well be linked to the stronger, persistent winds that are expected to occur with global warming. In a new study to be published Friday in the journal Science, researchers from Oregon State University outline a “potential for rapid reorganization” ... [full story]

BOSTON, Mass. – Climate change is rapidly transforming the world’s oceans by increasing the temperature and acidity of seawater, and altering atmospheric and oceanic circulation, reported a panel of scientists this week at the American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS) annual meeting in Boston. “The vastness of our oceans may have engendered a sense of complacency about potential impacts from global climate change,” said Jane Lubchenco, the Wayne and Gladys Valley Chair of ... [full story]

WASHINGTON - NASA is targeting May 25 at 7:26 p.m. EDT for the launch of the space shuttle Discovery's STS-124 mission from the Kennedy Space Center, Fla.The flight originally was targeted for April 24. Fuel sensor system repair work on STS-122 and STS-123 delayed final preparations of Discovery's external fuel tank. The tank is expected to arrive at Kennedy in early March. Also, the shuttle cannot launch to the International Space Station between May 7 ... [full story]

BOSTON - U.S. scientists have discovered a molecular pathway in mice that spurs the growth of new blood vessels when body parts are jeopardized by poor circulation.Researchers at the Dana-Farber Cancer Institute said their finding adds to the understanding of blood vessel formation and, in the future, might lead to a new treatment for heart and blood vessel diseases, as well as cancer. Harvard Medical School Professor Bruce Spiegelman, Dr. Zoltan Arany and colleagues discovered PGC-1alpha ... [full story]

Ad­ver­tis­ers try­ing to boost their prod­ucts’ ap­peal may need to look no far­ther than the near­est art mu­se­um. New stud­ies sug­gest throw­ing the im­age of a paint­ing—al­most any paint­ing—onto a prod­uct, or into a prod­uct pitch, con­sist­ently makes view­ers rate the items as more lux­u­ri­ous. “Art has con­nota­t­ions of ex­cel­lence, lux­u­ry and so­phis­tica­t­ion that spill over” on­to goods with which it’s as­so­ci­at­ed, said the Va­nes­sa M. Pat­rick, an as­sis­tant pro­fes­sor at the Un­ivers­ity of Geor­gia’s ... [full story]