Bush tries to oust climate scientist
The Bush administration, prompted by the oil company Exxon-Mobil, is trying to oust British scientist Robert Watson from his role as chairman of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change. He has been energetic in warning about the dangers of global warming.
(The Guardian)
Nature disowns GM paper
The science journal Nature has disowned a paper written by scientists from the University of California in Berkeley, that it published last year. The paper offered evidence supporting the green lobby's argument that genes from genetically modified crops could cross over to non-GM crops.
(The Guardian, The Times)
Australia to ban human cloning
Australia is set to ban human cloning, but it has backed off from forbidding the use of embryos in stem-cell research.
(The Financial Times)
Scientists decode rice genes
Two teams of scientists have decoded the full genetic sequence of rice. The code, revealed by teams from Syngenta, a Swiss-based biotechnology company, and the Beijing Genomics Institute, could help researchers breed strains of rice that are hardier and more nutritious.
(The Financial Times, The Mirror, The Times, The Independent)
DVT threat in car and rail journeys
Long car or rail journeys pose as big a threat of triggering deep vein thrombosis as long-haul flights, say researchers at King's College Hospital in London, but only for those already at risk of suffering a clot.
(The Daily Mail)
Earth gets asteroid alert
A 1km-wide asteroid is on a potential collision course with Earth. An article in the journal Science says the object is due to cross Earth's orbit on March 16 2880.
(The Daily Mail, The Guardian, The Mirror, The Independent)
Dust helps regulate climate
Scientists at the University of East Anglia have found that dust has an essential effect on regulating climate.
(The Daily Telegraph)
Labour ignores objections to online voting
The government has discounted objections from academics and will go ahead with trials of online voting in six towns and cities in next month's local elections. Researchers, led by academics at De Montfort University, argued that electronic voting would be too problematic on any significant scale.
(The Times)
Biotechnologists find key to long life for cut flowers
Leeds University's Institute of Plant Biotechnology and Agriculture has identified a hormone-producing gene that enables cut flowers to last in a vase for six months.
(The Guardian, The Daily Telegraph)
Prepare for 'planetary traffic jam'
A once-in-a-lifetime "planetary traffic jam" will occur in the last week of April, when Mercury, Venus, Mars and Saturn align in the western sky.
(The Daily Telegraph, The Daily Express, The Guardian)