SCIENCE AND HEALTH HIGHLIGHTS

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April 23, 2014 (San Diego’s East County)-- Our Health and Science Highlights provide cutting edge news that could impact your health and our future

SCIENCE

HEALTH

For excerpts and links to full stories, click “read more” and scroll down.

SCIENCE

Asteroid impact risks ‘underplayed'  (BBC)

A visualisation showing where sizeable asteroids have hit the Earth in recent years has been released by the B612 Foundation. The US-based group, which includes a number of former Nasa astronauts, campaigns on the issue of space protection. It hopes the visualisation will press home the idea that impacts are more common than we think.

New Study Finds That Even the Good Kind of Ethanol is Terrible (Reason)

A new form of biofuel, cellosic ethanol, which relies on the detritus from the corn farming and production process, was supposed to fix some of these problems. It doesn’t. A new study funded by the federal government and published in the journal Nature Climate Change finds that cellosic biofuels actually release more greenhouse gases than regular gasoline during an initial five-year timeframe. 

U.N. Report: Avoiding Climate Change Possible With 'Substantial Emission Reductions' (KPBS)

The U.N.'s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change has just released its fifth report on the rapidly closing window of time to take action on reducing greenhouse gases.

Scientists might have figured out how to make solar power work at night  (CS Monitor)

The amount of energy generated by the sun in just an hour is more than enough to satisfy power needs of the Earth for an entire year. Harnessing that energy, however, can be a challenge, especially when it's dark out. But this might change with the discovery of certain kind of photoswitches that not only can store solar energy but also release the heat on demand, day or night.

Privacy concerns? What Google now says it can do with your data (+video)

This week's updates to Google's terms of service spotlight the degree to which it considers anything you upload to any of its various services – YouTube, Google plus, etc. – to be fair game.

Are fracking emissions worse than we thought?

Methane emissions from hydraulic fracturing (fracking) could be much higher than previously estimated, according to a new study. The results are troubling because natural gas has been trumpeted for its supposed emissions benefits when compared to coal. 

HEALTH

Sharp Rise In MERS Cases May Mean The Virus Is Evolving (NPR)

A rash of infections in Saudi Arabia could be a warning signal that the deadly virus has reached a tipping point and is ready to spread out of the Middle East, scientists worry.

'Miserable' Doctors Prescribe A Different Career  (NPR)

A lot of children grow up wanting to be doctors, but now some physicians are discouraging others from joining the profession. What has changed over the years? 

Casual pot use causes brain abnormalities in the young: study (Reuters)

Young, casual marijuana smokers experience potentially harmful changes to their brains, with the drug altering regions of the mind related to motivation and emotion, researchers found.

 


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