WASHINGTON - More than 30 scientists will embark next week on a research mission to the Southern Ocean. Researchers will battle the elements to study how gases important to climate change move between the atmosphere and the ocean under high winds and seas. NASA, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA), and the National Science Foundation are sponsoring the Southern Ocean Gas Exchange Experiment, a six-week research expedition aboard the NOAA ship Ronald H. Brown, ... [full story]

Sci­en­tists have dreamed of find­ing ev­i­dence for past life on Mars, where they be­lieve there was once plen­ty of liq­uid wa­ter. But now they’re say­ing it might have been too salty. “Not all wa­ter is fit to drink,” said An­drew Knoll, a Har­vard Uni­ver­s­ity bi­olo­g­ist who is on the sci­ence team for the NASA Mars rov­er Op­por­tun­ity. High con­centra­t­ions of dis­solved min­er­als as well as ac­ids may have thwar­t­ed mi­crobes from de­vel­op­ing on the red plan­et, ... [full story]

In a study billed as an ex­plora­t­ion in­to the realm of “con­scious­ness,” re­search­ers claim to have found brain cells that be­come very busy only when some­thing is con­sciously no­ticed.Try­ing to un­der­stand what cre­ates con­sciousness—the sense of be­ing alive and aware—is one of the all-time most ex­as­per­at­ing prob­lems in sci­ence. The key stum­bling block: even if one knew every brain mech­an­ism un­der­ly­ing con­scious­ness, there would still be no ap­par­ent way to see or meas­ure the ac­tu­al ... [full story]

THIS BEETLE CAN'T SING   VERBATIM - The guy who invented the first wheel was an idiot, but the guy who invented the other three, now he was a genius -- comedian Sid Caesar. CNS Photo.    THIS BEETLE CAN'T SING - Entomologists have named and described a new kind of Indian whirligig beetle as Orectochilus orbisonorum, in honor of the late rock 'n' roll legend Roy Orbison. CNS Photo.    WHAT IS IT? - The long, streaky clouds on ... [full story]

EUGENE, Ore. -- U.S. scientists studying zebrafish have discovered a genetic mechanism that leads to development of cleft palate.By creating a genetic mutation in zebrafish, University of Oregon scientists found a previously unknown mechanism for cleft palate development -- a common birth defect in humans.Many molecular pathways in zebrafish are present in humans and other vertebrates. By studying the induced mutation in zebrafish, the 10-member research team said it isolated a disruption in early developmental ... [full story]

TEEN DINOS RUNNING LOOSE Imagine for a moment that you're an allosaurus mom or a tenontosaurus dad and you find out your 8-year-old daughter has gotten herself pregnant. Would you be upset? Would you wring your hands in dismay?   TRUE FACTS - There are an estimated 7,000 to 15,000 tigers in U.S. zoos, circuses, sanctuaries, farms and private homes -- more than exist in the wild, where there are between 4,800 and 7,300. CNS Photo.    PRIME ... [full story]

GRONINGEN, Netherlands - A Dutch marine biologist said algae is an ideal biofuel, yielding 10 times as much fuel as corn or rapeseed.Hein de Baar of the University of Groningen in the Netherlands said algae are easy to grow, are not a human food source and can absorb carbon dioxide, making it "carbon neutral." He said he hopes to see cars running on algae oil in two to four years, the university said in a ... [full story]

When the world’s most pow­er­ful par­t­i­cle smash­er starts up this sum­mer, ex­ot­ic new par­t­i­cles may of­fer a glimpse of the ex­ist­ence and shapes of ex­tra di­men­sions, says a group of phys­i­cists.Ex­tra di­men­sions are a pre­dic­tion of string the­o­ry, a mod­el of the un­iverse pop­u­lar among some sci­en­tists that de­scribes na­ture’s fun­da­men­tal par­t­i­cles as ti­ny vi­brat­ing threads of en­er­gy. Engineers check the electronics at the Large Hadron Collider (Image courtesy CERN) String the­o­ry of­fers rel­a­tively ... [full story]

WASHINGTON - NASA senior managers completed a review Wednesday of space shuttle Atlantis' readiness for flight. Pending closure of an issue with a shuttle radiator hose, the STS-122 mission will launch Feb. 7 at 2:45 p.m. EST.During an inspection of Atlantis Tuesday, one of four hoses that carry Freon to the shuttle radiators in the payload bay was found bent and not properly retracted in its storage box. The others were fully retracted into their ... [full story]

WASHINGTON - The recent flyby of Mercury by NASA's MESSENGER spacecraft has given scientists an entirely new look at a planet once thought to have characteristics similar to those of Earth's moon. Researchers are amazed by the wealth of images and data that show a unique world with a diversity of geological processes and a very different magnetosphere from the one discovered and sampled more than 30 years ago.After a journey of more than 2 ... [full story]

A con­tro­ver­sial the­o­ry, that strange red rains in In­dia six years ago might have con­tained mi­crobes from out­er space, has­n’t died. In fact, things might be get­ting even weirder.A new study sug­gests the claimed con­nec­tion be­tween scar­let rain and ti­ny ce­les­tial vis­i­tors may be con­sist­ent with his­tor­i­cal ac­counts link­ing col­ored rain to me­te­or passings. These would seem to ech­o the In­dia case, in which or­gan­isms are pro­posed to have fall­en out of a break­ing me­te­or. ... [full story]

COPENHAGEN, Denmark - Researchers in Denmark tracked a genetic mutation showing that people with blue eyes have a single, common ancestor. Hans Eiberg of the University of Copenhagen and his team examined mitochondrial DNA and compared the eye color of blue-eyed individuals in countries as diverse as Jordan, Denmark and Turkey."Originally, we all had brown eyes," Eiberg said in a statement. "But a genetic mutation affecting the OCA2 gene in our chromosomes resulted in the ... [full story]

WASHINGTON - Computer modeling suggests the decline in the snowpack in the Western United States is caused by global warming, scientists said Thursday.The scientists compared 50 years of data to what would be predicted by various models, the Washington Post reported. They found that a model based on human-induced warming matched the data the best."We've known for decades that the hydrology of the West is changing, but for much of that time people said it ... [full story]