On:

Tiny flashes of infrared light from LEDs can heal wounds, build muscle, help heal the effects of diabetes and repair blindness?but nobody knows why. LEDs are the tiny, ultra-efficient light-emitting diodes, or bulbs, like the ones found in digital clocks and TV remote controls. Despite being tested by NASA, the Pentagon and hospitals, pathologist Marti Jett says, “There’s not a clear idea of how this works.”

Noah Shachtman writes in Wired.com about research done by Dr. Harry Whelan, who used LEDs to restore the vision of rats blinded by toxic doses of methanol. After exposure to the LED flashes, 95% of their injuries were repaired.
read more

On:

In the current era of global warming, scientists at the Geological Society of America are taking a look at ancient periods of climate variability, some of which lasted for millions of years. During these periods, great strides were made in human intelligence, language, and creativity. Will this happen again?

Some of the questions scientists are asking are: why did only one species (us) learn to walk on two legs (leaving the other two limbs free to use tools)? How did climate change influence our exodus from Africa (while other primates stayed behind)? Geologist Gail Ashley says, “The answers to these questions will not all come from the bones, but from what was taking place in the environment in which they were found.”
read more

On:

In Whitley’s new journal,he writes: “The sun is in the most unusual state that has ever been observed. At a time when it should be recording greatly diminished sunspot activity, the most active sunspot ever observed has just finished crossing its face. The largest solar flare ever recorded?by far?exploded out of this sunspot on November 4. [But] this extraordinary event wasn’t headline news. In fact, it didn’t even make the back pages of most papers and news websites, let alone the broadcast news. Unknowncountry, Earthfiles and the NASA and NOAA sites were the only places where it was really featured as a major news item. The big media was probably making a big mistake. Here’s why.”
read more

On:

Global warming will change the weather, meaning farmers will have to move to new areas and learn to grow different crops. After a long period of denial, researchers are now looking closely at agricultural areas in the U.S. in order to predict the changes that will occur if carbon dioxide levels double by 2060, as expected. But for U.K. farmers, the future has already arrived.

In order to predict the future as global warming progresses, researchers have created a new, more complex, computer model. In Discovery News, Larry O’Hanlon quotes Linda Mearns, of the National Center for Atmospheric Research, as saying, “We’re finding that (the new model) certainly made a bigger difference than expected. Agriculture didn’t do as well.”
read more