No more runs? Thinking
of going on a cruise this winter but afraid you’ll come home with the cruise-ship virus? A
vaccine may be on the way. Scientists reported in the New England Journal of Medicine this week that an experimental
vaccine is highly effective against a strain of norovirus, the bugs that according
to the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention cause an estimated 21
million cases of vomiting and diarrhea in the United States every year. The vaccine dramatically
reduced both the rate of infections and the severity of symptoms.
Or perhaps you’re planning to do your runs on a ski trail. You’ll
definitely want to put these on your Christmas—er, holiday—gift
list: the
world’s first GPS ski goggles. Features include real-time stats, speed, altitude, vertical
odometer, stopwatch/chrono mode, a USB port for downloading and analyzing stats
on your computer, and goggle map overlay.
By Linda Felaco
Bad news for sushi lovers. A
new analysis of worldwide tuna numbers finds that many
tuna species may be headed for trouble if catches continue to increase. Fisheries managers
need to lower quotas to make sure other species don’t become as overfished
as the bluefin tuna that are prized for sushi, the researchers reported this
week in the Proceedings of the National
Academy of Sciences. In particular, the study found that numbers of bluefin tuna in the Atlantic have been reduced
by more than 90%.
 |
| Artist's impression of Kepler 22b, the first planet outside our solar system found to orbit in the habitable zone of its sun. (NASA/Ames/JPL-Caltech) |
E.T., the reunion
tour? Astronomers at NASA’s Kepler space telescope are now two steps closer
to possibly finding E.T.’s home planet.
This week, they reported the discovery of the
first planet to be found in the so-called habitable zone of a sunlike star,
where temperatures allow for the existence of liquid water, and the
first Earth-sized planet outside our solar system. Scientists at the Search
for Extra-Terrestrial Intelligence will be pointing their scopes toward these
newly discovered planets in hopes of learning whether they harbor any life.
Wind bad, solar good.
The Planning Commission has made wind energy impractical for Charlestown
homeowners but appears to have given its blessing to solar power. But prices of panels need to drop considerably for solar
power to be competitive with today's fossil fuel-generated electricity.
Researchers are making rapid progress on two technologies that hope to do just
that. The first produces solar cells from plastics and other organic compounds.
The second uses tiny inorganic nanoscale wires to capture the sun's energy. How
do these new technologies capture sunlight? How do scientists use
nanotechnology to create these cells? And how can they help solar panels churn
out more power for less money? Join a live
chat with experts on solar cell technology at 3 p.m. EST on Thursday, 8
December, to find out.