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3,586 results
3,586 results for: assessments
- Tech
Preventing disastrous offshore spills may require space-program diligence
As crude oil continues to spew from the Gulf of Mexico seafloor — two weeks now after the Deepwater Horizon accident and sinking — questions continue to surface about what went wrong. To my mind, what went wrong was almost blind optimism on the part of industry, regulators, the states and the public. And any niggling doubt about the wisdom of that optimism was likely assuaged by at least a little greed.
- Earth
Atrazine paper’s challenge: Who’s responsible for accuracy?
As a new critique of a review paper on atrazine suggests, some papers may simply overtax a journal’s fact-vetting enterprise. Which would be bad for science. And bad for society.
- Earth
Feds up estimates of BP-spill rate
At a news briefing on June 10, Marcia McNutt, who chairs the National Incident Command’s brain trust of experts calculating the likely release rate of the ongoing Gulf of Mexico oil spill, pegged the best available estimates at between 20,000 and more than 40,000 barrels per day.
- Health & Medicine
Coffee perks up memory and balance in geriatric animals
Millions of Americans start their day with a cup of coffee and then reach for refills when their energy or attention flags. But new research in rats suggests that for the aging brain, coffee may serve as more than a mere stimulant. It can boost memory and the signaling essential to motor coordination.
- Climate
EPA rejects climate-change deniers’ petitions
A number of people challenge that climate change is real, that it's due to greenhouse gases released by human activities and that it's a threat to human health and the environment. On July 29, the Environmental Protection Agency formally rejected those claims as it turned down 10 petitions asking the Obama administration to reconsider EPA’s “endangerment finding.”
- Tech
Cashiers may face special risks from BPA
“People working at places that use thermal paper can have continual contact with bisphenol A. And if they knew, I think they would be horrified,” notes Koni Grob, an analytical chemist with an official government food laboratory in Zurich, Switzerland. He’s describing the thermal paper commonly used throughout Europe and North America to print store receipts.
- Health & Medicine
Traffic may drive some people to diabetes
Urban air pollution — especially the particles and gases emitted by heavy traffic — can increase a senior citizen’s risk of developing type-2 diabetes, according to a new German study. If confirmed, its authors say, pollution would represent a “novel and potentially modifiable risk factor” for the metabolic disorder.
- Health & Medicine
Dairy foods may cut heart attack risk
The reputations of milk, cheese and many other dairy products have taken a bit of a hit in recent years for their constituting a major dietary source of saturated fats — a risk factor for cardiovascular disease. How ironic, then, that a Swedish study now correlates intake of dairy fats with a reduced risk of heart attacks.
- Climate
Academies recommend that IPCC make changes
The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, an authoritative scientific organization set up in 1989 to assess climate science, took some heat today from a group that it commissioned to investigate its credibility. The oversight group reported findings procedural weaknesses that preclude IPCC from responding nimbly to events — or from reliably identifying errors in its assessments.
- Space
An uncomfortable silence
At NASA meeting, answers to questions about cost overruns on the Hubble’s successor prove difficult to come by.
- Health & Medicine
Chocolate as Sunscreen
A small study in women suggests that a cocoa drink rich in flavonoids made their skin look better and protected it from ultraviolet-light damage.
- Health & Medicine
A New Bible for Eating Well
The Institute of Medicine has just summarized in a new book 5,000 pages of comprehensive nutrition guidelines issued over the past decade.
