Where do greenhouse gas emissions come from? Which countries are most responsible for causing human-induced climate change? And have governments pledged tough enough cuts so far to keep the global average temperature rise within “safe …

Carbon labelling could unfairly disadvantage economies in the developing world, and mislead consumers, according to an interdisciplinary project carried out by the UK Research Councils’ Rural Economy and Land Use Programme. … Read more

A new theory that multiple sclerosis is a vascular disease that could be treated with simple surgery is so “exciting” and “potentially paradigm shifting” that the MS Society of Canada is calling on scientists to …

They already detect and defuse bombs, control traffic patterns and do some basic household chores. And scientists predict that pretty soon, robots will be using artificial intelligence to play a larger role on the battlefield, …

Climate change poses a huge barrier to a fulfilling future, argues Lord Puttnam, an ambassador for Unicef UK. In this week’s Green Room, he asks what price children will have to pay for three or …

Researchers at Sandia National Laboratories have built a machine that uses the sun’s energy to convert carbon dioxide waste from power plants into transportation fuels such as gasoline, diesel, and jet fuel. The system could …

While U.S. newspapers are losing subscribers at a staggering rate, a few dailies stand out because their circulation is rising. But they aren’t necessarily selling more copies. … Read more

To design a lightweight anchor that can dig itself in to hold small underwater submersibles, Anette (Peko) Hosoi of MIT borrowed techniques from one of nature’s best diggers — the razor clam. … Read more

A group of researchers at the City College of New York is developing a new way to generate power for planes and automobiles based on materials known as piezoelectrics, which convert the kinetic energy of …

New way of thinking about debilitating disease has yielded stunning new treatments – but MS societies urge sufferers to be cautious before experimenting. … Read more

Few things in the Web 2.0 world are more frustrating than attempting to justify Twitter to a nonbeliever. … Read more

US newspaper advertising revenue fell by nearly 28 percent in the third quarter, continuing a slide which has led to layoffs, bankruptcies and the closure of several dailies. … Read more

On the beach at Monster, bulldozers painstakingly turn sand dredged from the bottom of the North Sea bed into dunes in an ambitious effort to safeguard the Netherlands from flooding. … Read more

Researchers at Mount Sinai School of Medicine set out to address a question that has been challenging scientists for years: How do dietary restriction—and the reverse, overconsumption — produce protective effects against aging and disease? …

Researchers at GE Global Research have been awarded $2m (£1.2m) from the National Institute of Environmental Health Sciences (NIEHS) — part of the US National Institutes of Health — to develop wearable radio-frequency-identification (RFID) sensors …

The biggest chemical battery in the United States is located near Interstate 90 in the small town of Luverne, Minn. The 80 ton device — the size of two tractor-trailers stacked on top of each …

Energy adviser and former Honeywell executive Maxine Savitz says there are enormous energy savings available through increased efficiency, as much as 30 percent by 2030. … Read more

Around the world, federal, state, provincial and municipal organisations are in a race to the future. In one way or another, they all face the same set of challenges: navigating in an environment of profound …

A new coalition of synthetic-biology companies, named the International Gene Synthesis Consortium (IGSC), has created its own set of guidelines that are intended to lessen the risk that gene-synthesis technology could be misused. … Read …

It is humanity’s oldest enemy. Despite all our science, a sixth of people in the developing world are chronically hungry. At a summit in Rome this week, world leaders reaffirmed a pledge to end hunger …

The government of Spain is making broadband internet access a universal right, forcing telecommunications companies to provide speeds of at least one megabit per second to all citizens by 2011. … Read more

Researchers at the Swedish medical university Karolinska Institutet have discovered that patients with recent-onset schizophrenia have higher levels of inflammatory substances in their brains. Their findings offer hope of being able to treat schizophrenia with …

Researchers from IBM and the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory say they have performed a computer simulation that matches the scale and complexity of a cat’s brain, and project members from IBM and Stanford have developed …

Every year, more than 250 billion pounds of plastic are produced worldwide. Much of it ends up in the world’s oceans, a fact that troubles MIT biology professor Anthony Sinskey. … Read more

Google Labs has brought more focus to finding pictures online, adding a “Swirl” tool that automatically groups similar images into categories presented on results pages. … Read more