UK–(ENEWSPF)–30 April 2013. Tiny 1,900 million-year-old fossils from rocks around Lake Superior, Canada, give the first ever snapshot of organisms eating each other and suggest what the ancient Earth would have smelled like. The fossils, preserved in Gunflint chert, capture ancient microbes in the act of feasting on a cyanobacterium-like[Read More…]

UK–(ENEWSPF)–30 April 2013. New research has overturned the theory that the Mount Toba super-eruption, which took place at the Indonesian island of Sumatra 75,000 years ago, could have plunged the Earth into a volcanic winter which led to the near extinction of early humans.  A fresh analysis of volcanic ash[Read More…]

Washington, DC–(ENEWSPF)–April 29, 2013 – 11:30 A.M. EDT THE PRESIDENT:  Thank you very much.  Thank you so much.  (Applause.)  Please, everybody have a seat.  Well, it’s good to be back.  Good morning, everybody, and thank you, Dr. Cicerone, for the kind introduction and the great work that you do.  The[Read More…]

Washington, DC–(ENEWSPF)–April 22, 2013 – 2:21 P.M. EDT THE PRESIDENT:  Thank you, everybody.  (Applause.)  Please have a seat.  Have a seat.  Well, good afternoon, everybody.  And welcome to the White House Science Fair, one of my favorite events during the course of the year. And I just had a chance[Read More…]

ANN ARBOR–(ENEWSPF)–April 11, 2013. The explosive popularity of wireless devices—from WiFi laptops to Bluetooth headsets to ZigBee sensor nodes—is increasingly clogging the airwaves, resulting in dropped calls, wasted bandwidth and botched connections. New software being developed at the University of Michigan works like a stoplight to control the traffic and[Read More…]

Spatial measurements of population density could reveal when threatened natural populations are in danger of crashing CAMBRIDGE, Mass. –(ENEWSPF)–April 11, 2013.  Many factors — including climate change, overfishing or loss of food supply — can push a wild animal population to the brink of collapse. Ecologists have long sought ways[Read More…]

UK–(ENEWSPF)–April 11, 2013. A one-day colloquium, hosted by the University of Oxford, is to examine new finds from the site of the final naval battle between Rome and Carthage in the First Punic War (in 241 BC). The 23-year long naval war was between the two great powers of the[Read More…]

UK–(ENEWSPF)–8 April 2013.  A custom-built programmable 3D printer can create materials with several of the properties of living tissues, Oxford University scientists have demonstrated. The new type of material consists of thousands of connected water droplets, encapsulated within lipid films, which can perform some of the functions of the cells[Read More…]

“If we want to make the best products, we also have to invest in the best ideas… Every dollar we invested to map the human genome returned $140 to our economy… Today, our scientists are mapping the human brain to unlock the answers to Alzheimer’s… Now is not the time[Read More…]

A new formula that characterizes the privacy afforded by large, aggregate data sets may be discouraging, but could help sharpen policy discussion. CAMBRIDGE, Mass.–(ENEWSPF)–March 28, 2013.  The proliferation of sensor-studded cellphones could lead to a wealth of data with socially useful applications — in urban planning, epidemiology, operations research and[Read More…]