all General AAAS News stories

To lose weight - eat less; exercise more

404132862 — Sun, 17 Feb 2008 17:43:22 -0500

How to lose weight and keep it off? Consume fewer calories and burn more calories than you consume, says Rena Wing, director of the Weight Control & Diabetes Research Center at The Miriam Hospital in Rhode Island.

The Professor of Psychiatry and Human Behavior at Brown University presented new research findings on weight loss and control at a symposium on obesity at the AAAS Meeting today. And her conclusions are painfully obvious, but ones that millions of people don't want to deal with:

Brain stem role in speech perception reassessed

404132862 — Sat, 16 Feb 2008 20:36:05 -0500

The brain stem plays a greater role in speech perception than previously thought, according to Jackson T. Gandour, a professor of speech, language, and hearing sciences at Purdue University.

“We have found that early activity in the brain stem is shaped by a person’s language experience, even while the person is asleep,” Gandour said. The brain stem is the lower part of the brain, located near the cochlea and the auditory nerve, which is where pitch-processing begins.

Gandour also noted that brain stems are tuned differently depending on the sounds of a person’s mother tongue.

Sharks being hammered by over-fishing

404132862 — Sun, 17 Feb 2008 17:01:24 -0500

Shark-eating humans are putting pushing this finned species to the brink of extinction, Julia Baum today warned during a presentation at the AAAS annual meeting in Boston.

A member of the World Conservation Union (IUCN) Shark Specialist Group, Baum blamed the sharks' decimation on overfishing.

Increased demand for shark fins and meat, along with recreational shark fishing have decreased the number of large shark species. Additionally, Baum said, millions of sharks are swept up as by-catch in tuna and swordfish fisheries. Shark fishing is unrestricted in international waters, she noted.

Violators of environmental treaties should have to pay

404132862 — Sat, 16 Feb 2008 20:44:08 -0500

Countries that do not comply with environmental treaties should be hit hard in their pocketbooks, MIT professor Lawrence Susskind said at a special lecture delivered today at the AAAS Meeting in Boston.

Susskind pointed out contrary to their intentions, international environmental treaties are not playing a real role in slowing the pace of ecological damage. Pacts such as the Kyoto Protocol are not sufficient because
they are not ratified by key countries and are inadequately financed, he said.

The Kyoto Protocol is one of the many global environmental treaties aimed at reducing greenhouse gases and addressing problems such as ocean dumping and fishery management. The United States has not signed the
treaty.

U.S. lagging in ability to trace nuclear materials

404132862 — Sat, 16 Feb 2008 18:54:20 -0500

The United States must renew its resources in tracing unidentified
nuclear materials, specialists say.

Michael May, a professor emeritus at Stanford University and the head of
a panel of nuclear forensic experts studying the issue, said at today’s session of the AAAS annual meeting in Boston that the United States is on the verge of losing its expertise in tracing nuclear materials — especially those smuggled on the black market.

Fish on "the pill"

404132862 — Sat, 16 Feb 2008 18:44:11 -0500

Human birth control pills are creating problems in the sex lives of fish.

Reporting results of a seven-year research study at the annual meeting of the American Association for the Advancement of Science in Boston, Karen Kidd, a biology professor at the University of New Brunswick, said
that the synthetic estrogen contained in birth control pills are ruining the fishes’ reproductive system.

Kidd said that even the miniscule amounts of estrogen in municipal wastewater discharges can destroy wild fish populations living downstream. Male fish are producing egg protein normally synthesized by females, and female fish are experiencing delays in sexual maturation.

Public funding of science no business for public

404132862 — Fri, 15 Feb 2008 19:27:31 -0500

The public should not be asked to decide which science programs should receive public funding, says Daniel Sarewitz, director of the Consortium for Science, Policy & Outcomes at Arizona State University.

Sarewitz gave a presentation today at the AAAS annual meetingon the negative aspects of excessive voter involvement in science funding . "While increased democratization in the sciences is certainly desirable, putting it to the public to decide which programs areworthy of funding and which are not is an absurd way to fund science," he said.

Warming of Antarctic oceans endangers marine life

404132862 — Fri, 15 Feb 2008 15:16:16 -0500

Global warming is endangering marine life in Antarctic waters for the
first time in millions of years, said specialists participating on a panel at the American Association for the Advancement of Science’s 2008 annual meeting here in Boston today.

Sven Thatje, a professor at the University of Southampton in the
United Kingdom, said that rising temperatures are allowing
skeleton-crushing predators such as sharks and crabs to move
closer and closer to Antarctica. The marine food web is different
in polar regions, he said, because the water is normally too cold for these skeleton-crushing predators. Unusual invertebrates, such as sea lilies, sea
spiders and giant worms would be extremely vulnerable to these predators.

Religious beliefs shape views of science

404132862 — Fri, 15 Feb 2008 15:01:37 -0500

Religion greatly influences the American public’s views of technology, says Dietram Scheufele, a professor in the Department of Life Sciences Communications at the University of Wisconsin-Madison.