Archive by date | January 2010

Nature Podcast

Nature Podcast

This week, we learn how engineered bacteria are helping to produce better biofuels, how functional brain cells have been created directly from skin cells, and discover what fossils found in Northern China tell us about the colour of feathered dinosaurs. Plus, a round-up of what’s hot elsewhere in Nature.  Read more

Nature Video: The Barefoot Professor

Harvard professor Daniel Lieberman has ditched his trainers and started running barefoot. His research shows that barefoot runners, who tend to land on their fore-foot, generate less impact shock than runners in sports shoes who land heel first. This makes barefoot running comfortable and could minimize running-related injuries. Read more here and find the original research here.  Read more

Dutch MPs approve controversial carbon capture store

A poster-child project for protest against carbon capture and storage (CCS) – Shell’s plans to bury carbon dioxide under the town of Barendrecht in the Netherlands – looks more likely to take place despite local opposition, after Dutch MPs voted to approve its construction on Tuesday.  Read more

Agricultural science key to food security

Agricultural science key to food security

The UK government’s failure to fund the nation’s public agricultural science base over the past decade has led to a “catastrophic” drop in British scientists’ ability to assist in international development, parliamentarians have said.

In a report on global food security published today, the All Party Parliamentary Group on Agriculture and Food for Development, says, it is an “embarrassing failure” that in 2009, world hunger increased for the first time in a decade given the level of resources, skills and scientific know-how at the disposal of the international community.

Mars rover becomes a couch potato

Mars rover becomes a couch potato

Spirit, the NASA rover that has trundled across the Mars landscape since 2004, will no longer rove. If it survives a hibernation through the fierce cold of the oncoming winter, it will continue operations as a science station, NASA announced in a telecon on Tuesday. Spirit has been trapped in a bed of sand since last May, and engineers have been unable to free it.  Read more