By: Michael C. Bradbury

LHC Machine in tunnel at CERN, photo by Maximilien Brice

Deep beneath the Franco-Swiss border, the Large Hadron Collider is smashing atoms in hopes of recreating the moments just following the big bang. And, in the process scientists are learning more about particle physics than ever before. They are even close to capturing the elusive Higgs boson, also known as the God particle.

Now the European Organization for Nuclear Research or CERN is facing something far less elusive—budget cuts. And those proposed cuts could slow down science, jeopardize the project and prevent important discoveries from being made.

Europe is going on a spending diet. In late August a meeting at CERN weighed the best way to proceed in the growing climate of fiscal austerity.

There the Director-general proposed cutting just over $430 million from the program between 2011 and 2015.

A spokesman for the research facility says, “Management felt it could slow things down without compromising the future.”

But Gianni Deroma, the head of CERN’s 2,200-member staff association says that deep cuts could lead to a repeat of the 14-month shutdown shortly after the large hadron collider went online in 2008.

“Budgetary cuts are going to slow down our accelerators.” — Gianni Deroma, President of the CERN staff association

In the last few months, scientists say the LHC is setting new milestones with the amount of data being collected from crashing particle beams at nearly the speed of light.

Any interruption to the progress, especially as the program ramps up its accelerators to full power, could pose a problem.

Deroma says, “Budgetary cuts are going to slow down our accelerators.”

On Labor Day, CERN officials released a statement saying that all nine particle accelerators would be put on ice for a year, beginning in 2012.

Director-general Rolf Heuer admits it will now take a little longer to answer some of these big scientific questions.

A planned shutdown of the LHC in 2012 was already in the works before this week’s announcement. The purpose of that was to upgrade the accelerator so it can reach its full power potential and dive deeper into the unknown corners of science. But that upgrade was intending to take just one of the nine accelerators offline for that year. Now all accelerators will sit idle, allowing scientists to catch up on their data analysis. And a new experiment set to begin in 2015 might also get pushed back a year or two, according to officials.

After the Greek debt crisis this summer, Europe is feeling the economic pinch and science is among the latest casualties.

Science has been somewhat of a sacred cow in Europe, which allows for expensive, internationally-funded mega projects, including the large hadron collider at CERN.

Other projects are also facing deep cuts.

According to the Washington Post, the new coalition government in Britain is leading the European austerity charge while other member nations like Italy and Spain just have no more money for science.

This threatens several planned projects.

Aerial View of Britain's Diamond Light Source, courtesy of Diamond Light Source

ISIS Muon Spectrometer, courtesy of ISIS Neutron Source

The Post reports that Britain may not be able to commit to another, more powerful telescope in Chile that can discern the atmosphere of distant planets. British officials also warn that planned science cuts could force the closure of either the Diamond Light source particle accelerator or the ISIS neutron source.

Germany has been covering shortfalls from other countries to maintain the European Space Agency. But the organization that runs the International Space Station is set to cut administrative costs by 25 percent. And it is unclear whether other European governments will agree to extend funding of the space station through 2020.

Scientists at CERN are particularly frustrated by the new budget climate, especially since they can practically taste one of the biggest achievements in atomic physics—the ability to trap a particle of antimatter long enough to study it.

Leading antimatter physicist Michael Doser says if that project goal isn’t met before the year-long shut down that 12 months may seem like an eternity.

It’s a rare occasion when a scientist can test a theory outside the confines of a laboratory. So when Paul Zak got a call from New Scientist reporter Linda Geddes to take her blood at her wedding, he just couldn’t say no.

Dr. Zak is an ocytoxin researcher who studies social indicators of the love hormone.

Geddes and her groom-to-be offered their wedding (and a few guests) as guinea pigs in this science experiment. The goal? See if oxytocin is released by friends and family witnessing this momentous event or if the hormone release is limited to bride and groom being bonded.

Geddes writes about the experiment in a New Scientist editorial.

Photo by John Hurst, courtesy of New Scientist.

The federal agencies submitted their budget requests to Congress this week, marking a big moment for all things science. According to preliminary reports about $148 billion of the Presidents full $3.8 trillion budget is heading for scientific research programs.

Photo courtesy of Brookhaven National Laboratory

The man who is planning to send tourists to space is diving into the world of ocean exploration. The first underwater plane is designed for use by Sir Richard Branson’s guests who visit his private Caribbean island.

This fun toy could be the beginning of a new Virgin brand — this called one Virgin Oceanic.

After taking possession of the new Necker Nymph later this month Branson will continue on adapting jet-fighter technology for a new class of submarine, capable of plumbing the depths of the 35,000-foot Mariana Trench.

Astronauts can order books on Amazon or watch movies on Netflix, even while orbiting the Earth on the International Space Station. NASA just hooked up the Internet last week and already the astronauts have been tweeting up a storm.

NASA also unveiled live streaming aboard the space station, starting today.

President Obama’s first State of the Union address was long as these speeches go but short on science. With only a few mentions of science, science education and innovation, the Monday morning science quarterbacks criticized the President for not including more science.

But two teenage future scientists — Gabriela Farfan and Li Boynton — proudly sat near the First Lady during the State of the Union, representing the President’s commitment to science and science education.

Next week, the true science state of the union will become clear as the National Science Foundation and NASA release their budget requests for 2011.

Photo: 19-year-old Stanford University Freshman Gabriela Farfan and 18-year-old Houston High School Senior Li Boynton, the day after the State of the Union. Courtesy of Intel.

President Barack Obama’s first State of the Union Address, January 27, 2010.

A group of geoscientists from leading research universities just received a grant to travel to Haiti to study the aftermath of the 7.0 Haiti earthquake that devastated the capital of Port-au-Prince on January 12.

Led by Eric Calais from Purdue University, the team will take measurements of the changes along the fault line that ruptured during the quake and they will learn whether a bigger quake may be on the way.

Eric Calais talks about Haiti’s recent earthquake

You can follow along as they detail their experience in the Geophysicists in Haiti blog.

The sun is one-stop shopping when it comes to finding an unlimited supply of power. But harnessing light and turning it into electricity has proven to be a tricky and expensive proposition.

But if we could squeeze our huge thirst for power from the sun, one way to go may be something called “solar chemical“.

It uses a chemical process to break the bonds of molecules like water or carbon dioxide in order to create a solar fuel. Using solar energy to turn a greenhouse gas like carbon dioxide into electricity and fuel would be a simple way capture that nuisance greenhouse gas and create a clean fuel at the same time.

Some people, including Bill Gates, are suggesting more funding for basic solar chemical research as one way to solve the ever present solar storage problem.

Here’s your chance to make scientific history. NASA is inviting the public to help choose sites on Mars to point a high-powered camera as part of a visual survey of the Red Planet.

The HiRISE camera aboard the Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter has shot over 13,000 images already. Now NASA is opening up the opportunity to the public.

Use the new HiWish online tool to study the Mars map, decide what would be a worth target and why. Then submit your suggestion to the mission and wait to see if it gets selected.

The yellow dot pinpoints the landing site of Viking Lander 2 on Utopia Planitia. Viking 2 landed within the ejecta of 65-mile wide Mie Crater.

REALscience submitted a target suggestion — the southern crater wall of the Mie Crater, seen above. This giant crater, likely made by a big asteroid or comet impact, could reveal clues to early Mars and probably hides some of its icy secrets in the shadowy part of the crater.

The top predators in every animal niche are disappearing. Development and other forces are pushing these animals toward the brink of extinction.

New research shows that conservation efforts and a plan to return apex predators to the wild may be more cost-effective than trying to control the predators in waiting — called mesopredators.

Much of the country and for that matter the Northern Hemisphere has been locked in an icy weather pattern that sent records tumbling and even forced Florida produce growers to seal oranges and strawberries in ice to protect them from frigid temperatures.

Some scientists are saying this is yet another sign of the extreme temperature fluctuations that climate change is bringing. Others are quick to dismiss this cold stretch as evidence of anything but a cold winter.

But there is a climate force at work. Called the Arctic Oscillation, scientists noticed that the air pressure that usually remains high at the top of the world weakened and became very low in December. That allowed the coldest Arctic air to flow south and cover large swaths of the Northern Hemisphere.

The head of the Russian space agency surprised scientists recently when he announced that his country needs to start figuring out how to deflect a big asteroid that will pass very close to Earth in about 20 years.

When Apophis was discovered in 2004 NASA thought there was a slight chance that the big rock could hit Earth when it passes by in 2029 and again in 2036. But studies since then have allowed scientists to rule out a direct hit in 2029 and they say it is highly unlikely that the country-busting asteroid will pose a threat in 2036 either.

With so many asteroids floating out in deep space, some do pose a threat to Earth. And, now scientists are going to take a closer look at ways to nudge dangerous rocks away from our planet.

Update: The asteroid known as 2010 AL30 zipped past Earth on January 13, staying about 80,000 miles away. But a Utah astronomer did capture the whole transit on video.

One thing is for sure. Science doesn’t do certainty. No matter how close a researcher gets to complete certainty there is always room to know more. Therefore uncertainty is a scientific fact. And we need to get comfortable with it.

From taxonomic tussles over classifying the giant panda to more controversial science like climate change and genetics, uncertainty is a driving force pushing science forward and opening up the opportunity for insight and breakthrough discoveries.

There are growing signs that outer space is going to become the domain of private enterprise. Since the U.S. space program began, it has been largely controlled by the federal government. But that’s all changing.

The first spaceport just broke ground in New Mexico. The first commercial spaceline is being built and citizen-astronauts are ponying up a lot of money for a ride to sub-orbital space. There is even one hotelier just waiting to start building space resorts.

The personal spaceflight industry kicked off five years ago when Burt Rutan won the Ansari X PRIZE, the first in a series of commercial competitions to solve big human problems. X PRIZE founder Peter Diamandis has been pushing for private enterprise to join the space race and now it appears NASA may be more open to outsourcing some parts of the space program to commercial interests.

Photo of Dr. Stephen Hawking with Peter Diamandis in zero gravity, courtesy of Diamandis

Many scientists are disappointed after two weeks of climate change negotiations resulted in a toothless agreement that didn’t limit carbon dioxide, the main culprit of global warming. The new Copenhagen Accord(PDF) did not cut emissions as previously thought, dimming some hope that a global treaty would help improve the climate.

Some are calling for Plan B just in case reducing emissions ends up being too little, too late. Intervening in the climate is considered a last-ditch effort if we find ourselves in dire climate straits. But now geoengineering is starting to get some attention as several top scientists are calling for new research initiatives and its inclusion as part of broader climate solutions.

Even former Microsoft technology guru and physicist Nathan Myhrvold thinks we need to start preparing for every eventuality.

Owning the Weather, panel discussion on geoengineering, from COP 15 in Copenhagen.

Artist rendering of blimps spewing sulfur dioxide into the stratosphere, courtesy of The Atlantic.

The endangered turtle is now settling into her new home at the Hidden Harbor Marine Environmental Project’s “Turtle Hospital”.

At first vets thought she was injured after being hit by a boat and suffering some nerve damage. A new evaluation questions that theory but a full evaluation won’t be complete for a few weeks.

At the hospital Anita swims in a 650 gallon saltwater tank for an hour each day to build up strength and to learn to swim correctly. a hyper-inflated lung prevents her from diving so specialists hand feed her.

She is one of about 5,000 female hawksbill turtles left in the wild. If she can be rehabilitated turtle specialist Tara Vickery says, “She can be 5,001.”

See the turtles swimming live on the “Turtle Hospital” Web cam.

Photos courtesy of Alina Szmant.

Anita the Hawksbill Turtle

Matschie's Tree Kangaroo courtesy of Woodland Park Zoo

Climate negotiations over how to limit carbon dioxide emissions are heating up in Copenhagen. But one other important area negotiators are addressing — how to sequester existing CO2.

Climate sinks — like oceans, forests and permafrost — are natural solutions. But tropical rain forests are falling faster than they can be preserved.

One cute and cuddly (looking) tree kangaroo may become the unwitting ambassador for forest conservation.

Biologist Lisa Dabeck, from the Woodland Park Zoo in Seattle, is the director of the Tree Kangaroo Conservation Project, which has been able to set aside almost 200,000 acres of pristine forest, where the matschie’s tree kangaroo lives.

Here is the National Geographic tree kangaroo critter cam.

Here is the Lincoln Zoo tree kangaroo critter cam. (Sad news. One of the twin joeys died in September after falling from a branch in the exhibit.)

Nightline followed Dr. Dabeck to New Guinea in search of tree kangaroos. Here’s a link to Dan Harris’ report, which includes a roo named Dan.

The hit ABC television drama Grey’s Anatomy revolves around the fictional Seattle Grace Hospital and follows the lives of surgical residents. Portland, Oregon medical correspondent and author Andrew Holtz wondered where the line between fact and fiction is being drawn when it comes to training future surgeons.

His new book, The Real Grey’s Anatomy follows a group of Oregon Health and Science University surgical residents through their rotations and helps to separate fact from fiction.

Holtz visited Seattle last week and at an appearance sponsored by the Northwest Science Writers Association and the Pacific Science Center, he shared some of those secrets, complete with clips from the TV show.

Here’s what he had to say.

VSS Enterprise

December 7 is a day that will now live in a new kind of infamy. It was the day that Sir Richard Branson’s Virgin Galactic space company unveiled its new Space Ship 2 and almost blew 800 guests away — in hurricane-force winds — in the process.

Video of the destruction in the Mojave Desert where 105 mph winds ripped through site where VIPs celebrating the new spaceship had to be quickly evacuated.

Photo by: Alan Radecki, MojaveWest Media Works.

The world has gone nuts for five robotic hamsters, called Zhu Zhu Pets. While the cute and cuddly creatures race around on a surfboard, skateboard or in a car, the “it” toy of 2009 has some heavy metals that are within safety limits but beg the question: Do toys need to have these toxic ingredients at all?

Consumer products safety organizations measure the presence of dangerous elements two ways. One uses an XRF scanner to determine if a metal is present at all. The other dissolves the product in a solution to measure the presence and quantity of heavy metals.

New rules go into effect in 2010 that will require Zhu Zhu Pet maker Cepia and other toy manufacturers to follow stricter standards to ensure lead and other heavy metals don’t creep into toys and other goods.

Essco Safety Check, a Redmond, WA company is offering consumers free testing of any household item they bring to the Seattle-area retail location until mid January.

Composite image of Pluto, courtesy Eliot Young (SwRI) et al., NASA

For three years, Pluto–the ninth planet–has been given the cold shoulder by the astronomy community, which demoted it to dwarf planet in 2006.

What is it about Pluto that tugs at our heartstrings?

MSNBC.com Science Editor Alan Boyle explores our fascination with Pluto in his new book, The Case for Pluto.

Over the course of the next few weeks we are going to be hearing a lot about carbon emissions–the gas released into the atmosphere from burning fossil fuels and a whole host of other human activities. While the catch-all is called “carbon emissions” they aren’t confined to carbon dioxide gas.

During the Copenhagen Climate Conference we are going to be hearing a lot about what will follow the Kyoto Protocol, the global treaty aimed at reducing carbon emissions to help reduce the effects of man-made global warming.

Did you fall into a turkey coma? Well, if you did don’t blame it on the much-maligned tryptophan. It was more likely something else, like all the starch in stuffing or sugars in candied yams that made you need a nap.

New research is finding that carbohydrate-rich meals help tryptophan cross the blood-brain barrier more easily but turkey isn’t the only food containing that amino acid.

just as world leaders are getting ready to head to Denmark for a big climate negotiations conference that will determine the treaty to follow the Kyoto Protocol, a new scientific assessment is painting a dark picture of the future, based on recent climate science.

Though not an official report of the United Nations Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, 14 of the 26 authors are scientists who helped construct the scientific assessment in 2007. Since then, they felt that so much new data shows that the previous estimates were too conservative and the rate of global warming was significantly underestimated.

Here are some key points of the 64-page Copenhagen Diagnosis: Updating the World on the Latest Climate Science (PDF).

Greenhouse gas emissions–namely carbon dioxide–in 2008 were 40% higher than in 1990.

The human induced global warming trend is still active, despite less solar activity and seasonally cool temperatures.

Glaciers, ice caps and ice sheets have been melting at an accelerated pace since 1990, especially on Greenland and Antarctica.

Arctic sea ice has been melting at a rapid rate, making parts of the Arctic ice-free in summer for the last three years.

Sea levels are rising much faster than previously thought–two inches in the last 15 years.

The report finds suggests that vulnerable elements of the climate system could push us past tipping points if emissions reductions are delayed. And in order to meet the globally-determined safe threshold of less than two degrees Celsius, carbon emissions must peak by 2015 and then rapidly decline to almost zero by 2050.

To underscore the importance of the Copenhagen Climate Conference, President Obama will appear during the proceedings on Dec. 9 to urge world leaders to reduce emissions right away.

Christian pastor Ray Comfort decided to celebrate the 150th Anniversary of Charles Darwin’s On the Origin of Species by writing his own introduction and handing out free copies of the book to college students across the country.

Comfort is responsible for handing out over 100,000 copies of the abridged Darwin book. His version includes 54 pages that attempt to debunk the theory of evolution that Darwin lays out in the book.

Did this anti-science stunt work or backfire?

The Comfort campaign targeted the top 100 college campuses, where students were were just happy to get a free copy of the book.

National Center for Science Education video:

NCSE public service announcement.

A long-standing debate over younger women getting annual breast cancer screening is reigniting this week, after an independent medical panel changed its recommendations.

Confusion, fear and politics are swirling around the new U.S. Preventive Services Task Force recommendations. The task force now recommends shifting from annual to biennial mammograms for all women aged 50-74.

They no longer recommend annual mammograms and they don’t think women under 50 need them at all. By analyzing the available cancer data, they also found that breast self-examination didn’t reduce deaths from breast cancer.

Many groups are upset by the new recommendations and are urging women to continue annual screening like they have for years. Some are even tying this to health care reform and other politics.

Congress will hold hearings next month and even the White House felt compelled to weigh in on this issue.

Moon Water, courtesy of Babaloo.

After a lackluster lunar blast that was barely visible, scientists worried there might not be water on the moon. But after analyzing the mountain of preliminary data, NASA confirmed there is water–in the form of ice–just below the surface of the lunar poles.

This means that the mission was a roaring success and astronauts venturing to the moon may not have to bring their own water.

But how did the water get on the moon? Several scientists have several different theories.

Scientists within the most venerated science organizations in the United States are mounting rebellions against those organizations and their somewhat unified policy on the science of climate change–that it is real and being driven by human activities.

A group of several hundred of 47,000 physicists have unsuccessfully proposed new language for the American Physical Society.
It reads

Greenhouse gas emissions, such as carbon dioxide, methane, and nitrous oxide, accompany human industrial and agricultural activity. While substantial concern has been expressed that emissions may cause significant climate change, measured or reconstructed temperature records indicate that 20th 21st century changes are neither exceptional nor persistent, and the historical and geological records show many periods warmer than today. In addition, there is an extensive scientific literature that examines beneficial effects of increased levels of carbon dioxide for both plants and animals.

Studies of a variety of natural processes, including ocean cycles and solar variability, indicate that they can account for variations in the Earth’s climate on the time scale of decades and centuries. Current climate models appear insufficiently reliable to properly account for natural and anthropogenic contributions to past climate change, much less project future climate.

The APS supports an objective scientific effort to understand the effects of all processes – natural and human –on the Earth’s climate and the biosphere’s response to climate change, and promotes technological options for meeting challenges of future climate changes, regardless of cause.

On Tuesday, the APS decided to let its current national climate policy statement, which was adopted in November 2007 and reaffirmed last year, stand.
It reads:

Emissions of greenhouse gases from human activities are changing the atmosphere in ways that affect the Earth’s climate. Greenhouse gases include carbon dioxide as well as methane, nitrous oxide and other gases. They are emitted from fossil fuel combustion and a range of industrial and agricultural processes.

The evidence is incontrovertible: Global warming is occurring. If no mitigating actions are taken, significant disruptions in the Earth’s physical and ecological systems, social systems, security and human health are likely to occur. We must reduce emissions of greenhouse gases beginning now.

Because the complexity of the climate makes accurate prediction difficult, the APS urges an enhanced effort to understand the effects of human activity on the Earth’s climate, and to provide the technological options for meeting the climate challenge in the near and longer terms. The APS also urges governments, universities, national laboratories and its membership to support policies and actions that will reduce the emission of greenhouse gases.

In October the 18 leading science organizations sent a letter (PDF) to the U.S. Senate, pledging assistance as the Congress enters deliberations to pass a law that would reduce greenhouse gas emissions.

It reads:

Dear Senator:

As you consider climate change legislation, we, as leaders of scientific
organizations, write to state the consensus scientific view.

Observations throughout the world make it clear that climate change is
occurring, and rigorous scientific research demonstrates that the
greenhouse gases emitted by human activities are the primary driver.
These conclusions are based on multiple independent lines of evidence,
and contrary assertions are inconsistent with an objective assessment of
the vast body of peer-reviewed science. Moreover, there is strong
evidence that ongoing climate change will have broad impacts on
society, including the global economy and on the environment. For the
United States, climate change impacts include sea level rise for coastal
states, greater threats of extreme weather events, and increased risk of
regional water scarcity, urban heat waves, western wildfires, and the
disturbance of biological systems throughout the country. The severity
of climate change impacts is expected to increase substantially in the
coming decades.

If we are to avoid the most severe impacts of climate change, emissions
of greenhouse gases must be dramatically reduced. In addition,
adaptation will be necessary to address those impacts that are already
unavoidable. Adaptation efforts include improved infrastructure design,
more sustainable management of water and other natural resources,
modified agricultural practices, and improved emergency responses to
storms, floods, fires and heat waves.

We in the scientific community offer our assistance to inform your
deliberations as you seek to address the impacts of climate change.

Here’s the gist of the kitchen sink hoax. It starts with the end of the Mayan calendar, adds a mystery planet on a crash-course with Earth. Then there is some nonsense about the planets aligning on Dec. 21, 2012, heralding the end of the world. There are about six different pieces to this hoax, which seems to be gaining public momentum.

But the science just doesn’t hold up. Only a few pieces–yes, we will be experiencing a solar maximum and we will be in the galactic plane during this time–are actually true.

Here’s the hoax sorted out. Listen for yourself.

Beer has been flavoring human culture for at least 9,000 years. During that time, the rich brew has transformed and evolved to satisfy the complex palates of the time.

Now, science is a driving force in making beer. And, understanding some of the chemistry can refine color, aroma and flavor.

More Info:
IBU Chart Graph

Dogfish Head Brewery owner Sam Calagione talks ancient beer.

Most people don’t realize that since the advent of high-powered telescopes and a new method in planetary detection called radial velocity, over 400 new planets have been spotted orbiting distant stars. And it all began in 1995.

Now with new planet discoveries growing interest in finding Earth-like planets, some people are calling for each new world to be given its own proper name.

Dr. Wladimir Lyra just penned a 28-page paper (PDF) explaining why the extra-solar planets or exoplanets need individual names. He also includes suggestions for each new planet that has been confirmed.

Want to name your own planet? Join the Exoplanet Naming Society or contact the International Astronomical Union to make your suggestion. Or just comment below and we’ll send your suggestions on to the right people.

Members of the Surui tribe in Brazil test Open Data Kit, photo courtesy of Carl Hartung, UW

Cell phones are coming to the aid of international health workers, environmental monitors and even citizen scientists. Now loaded with a data collection tool, Open Data Kit is the brainchild of some doctoral students at University of Washington.

But early deployment into the Amazon Rainforest and Tanzania will give the United Nations Climate Change Conference in Copenhagen in December better information when it comes to global deforestation.

Measuring of the size of rainforests is helping to deter illegal logging practices that so often escape the watchful eye of satellites. Now on the ground monitoring is turning members of the Surui tribe into citizen scientists and helping them break into the emerging carbon market in Brazil.

The man behind the recent hoax captured our attention but smeared amateur science in the process. Fame-hungry Richard Heene used his son and some faked backyard science to launch his reality TV career.

Most people thought it was highly unlikely that a 40-pound boy stowed away in the balloon and floated 50 miles away at over 7,000 feet in the air. But everyone gave this family the benefit of the doubt.

Until the facts stopped adding up.

Just how mad is this amateur scientist? Well, a science reality TV show proposal helps paint the picture. But a YouTube series, called The Psyicence Detectives showcases Heene’s knowledge base when it comes to science. It appears he favors the paranormal, alien and conspiracy theories over real science.

A little green frog is causing big problems across Hawaii, where the coqui has become the latest invasive species to get a strong foothold.

But Hawaii may be the only place experiencing a surging frog population. Around the world, frogs are dying in droves from a fungus called a chytrid.

What can we learn from the little coqui?

Brilliant minds have been challenging people to embrace math for centuries. But one man made recreational math fun and has been inspiring legions of followers for decades.

His name? Martin Gardner. This mathemagician has been transforming frightening formulas into fun.

But recreational math doesn’t just fill free time. It challenges the mind and even informs real science.

The Zebra Puzzle--a famous math puzzle

The following puzzle is a fine example of a detective math puzzle. Based on clues supplied in a narrative, answer a question by applying simple, man-on-the-street logic to the information (not all of it relevant) supplied.

On an odd little street in the town of Somewhere, there are five house in a row. Each house is a different color, each is inhabited by a woman of different nationality, and the owners of the houses also have their differences: each owner has a different pet, prefers a different drink and works in a different profession. A detective, charged with the task of discovering who drinks water and who owns the Zebra, gathered the following information, itemized for your convenience:

1. The Englishwoman lives in the red house.
2. The Spaniard owns a dog.
3. Coffee is drunk in the green house
4. The Ukrainian drinks tea.
5. The green house is immediately to the right of the Ivory house.
6. The engineer owns the snail.
7. The diplomat lives in the yellow house.
8. Milk is drunk in the middle house.
9. The Norwegian lives in the first house on the left.
10. The doctor lives next to the owner of the fox.
11. The diplomat lives next to the owner of the horse.
12. The teacher drinks orange juice.
13. The carpenter is Japanese.
14. The Norwegian lives next to the blue house.

Now it’s your job to find out Who owns the zebra and who drinks water.

Cabeus Crater, impact zone for LCROSS mission

When NASA smashed an expensive satellite and rocket into the moon, many people wondered why the space agency would do such a thing.

Then on October 9, with hundreds of thousands of people watching, the big plume of dirt and ice that would indicate a successful mission was barely a blip on the radar.

So what happened? Well, it’s still early too tell what the Lunar Crater Observation and Sensing Satellite picked up when a centaur rocket smashed into a crater on the lunar south pole.

But NASA is saying the mission was a success. Now scientists just have to sift through the mountain of data to determine what they have.

Evidence of global warming is hitting the Arctic harder than anywhere else. The rate of climate change is twice that of the rest of the world.

And, now scientists are discovering the Arctic region plays an important role in capturing atmospheric carbon, both in the ocean and on land.

But that delicate system might be in jeopardy as the polar ice caps melt, triggering a feedback loop of increased warming and melting.

As permafrost melts for the first time ever, there might be a big threat looming–methane–which could help convert the Arctic carbon sink into a big greenhouse gas emitter.

Visualization of a river bed created using VisTrails, a system developed by University of Utah computer scientists Photo by: Juliana Freire and Claudio Silva, University of Utah

A two-year experiment to build a framework to analyze the massive amount of data scientists are collecting will push research to better understand our planet, our bodies and the limits of the Internet.

The National Science Foundation initiative called Cluster Exploratory or the CLuE program is a partnership between I.B.M. and Google to put scientists to work solving the problem of how to deal with so much information.

The answer? Cloud computing. Using virtual locations online to cope with the large data stream will allow science to answer some big and complex questions.

Top 8 in the Science Cloud:

Sloan Digital Sky Survey–obtained deep, multi-color images covering more than a quarter of the sky and created 3-dimensional maps containing more than 930,000 galaxies and more than 120,000 quasars.

Visible Human–is an anatomical data set licensed from the National Library of Medicine, Visible Human Project.

IRIS Seismology Database–allows you to monitor global earthquakes in near real-time, visit seismic stations around the world, and search the web for earthquake or region-related information.

Protein Data Bank–contains information about experimentally-determined structures of proteins, nucleic acids, and complex assemblies.

Linguistic Data Consortium–supports language-related education, research and technology development by creating and sharing linguistic resources.

TerraFly–View images and data anywhere in the United States and in much of the World.

Large Synoptic Survey Telescope–A large aperture, wide field survey telescope and 3200 Megapixel camera to image faint astronomical objects across the sky.

Open Topography–provides integrated access to high-resolution topographic data and web-based processing tools as well as enables its user community to share knowledge, resources and build science collaborations.

While most serious scientists are wringing their hands, wondering who will win the Nobel prizes, a different group of scientists is celebrating the lighter–but just as bona fide–side of science.

The 19th First Annual Ig Nobel Prize ceremony shined a silly look at science at Harvard last week. Here’s a breakdown of the winners in each category. The Ig Nobel goes to…

Economics:
Icelandic bank management and auditors–for demonstrating how to bankrupt a national economy.

Math:
Gideon Gono, governor of Zimbabwe’s Reserve Bank–for printing currency ranging from one cent to 100 trillion dollars.

Public Health:
Elena Bodnar–for inventing a bra that’s good during an emergency.

Physics:
Katherine Whitcome, Daniel Lieberman and Liza Shapiro–for answering the question: Why don’t pregnant women tip over?

Medicine:
Donald Unger–for proving his mother wrong and discovering that knuckle cracking doesn’t cause arthritis.

Veterinary Medicine:
Catherine Douglas and Peter Rowlinson–for discovering that cows with names give more milk at dairy farms.

Peace:
Stephan Bollinger–for determining that empty beer bottles will do more damage then full ones when smashed over someone’s head.

Chemistry:
Javier Morales, Miguel Apatiga and Victor Castano–for making diamonds out of tequila.

Biology:
Fumiaki Taguchi, Song Guofu and Zhang Guanglei–for finding a bacteria in panda poop that eats kitchen garbage.

Literature:
Ireland’s Police Service–for writing more than 50 traffic tickets to Prawo Jazdy, the most frequent driving offender in Ireland. The name in Polish means…”Driving License.”

Every year (since 1901) the Nobel Foundation has been honoring the final wish of Alfred Nobel, the inventor of dynamite.

This year the three science prizes went to nine scientists who overcame a big biology problem, harnessed light and unraveled the mechanism at the heart of a cell.

Nobel Prize for Medicine and Physiology:
Elizabeth Blackburn, Carol Greider and Jack Szostak

Nobel Prize for Physics:
Charles Kao, Willard Boyle and George Smith

Nobel Prize for Chemistry:
Thomas Seitz, Ada Yonath and Venkatraman Ramakrishnan

The CDC hopes that at least 150 million Americans will get the shot or nasal spray to fight the H1N1 flu virus that began its worldwide rampage in April.

Some are worried about side effects. But the CDC and other research groups are teaming up to monitor people who get the vaccine. Others are worried about a preservative in the vaccine. If you want a thimerasol-free vaccine, just ask.

This is slated to be the biggest voluntary vaccination program in U.S. history. And if the demand calls for it the federal government is prepared to vaccinate the entire population in the next few months.

But public opinion surveys show only about 40% will definitely get their vaccination when it is made available.

Some want to get both seasonal vaccine and the new H1N1 flu vaccine. Is that advisable? The CDC says, Yes. But a new Canadian report finds an unexpected link among those who got the seasonal flu vaccine last year and those who fell ill with swine flu.

To prevent the flu, the CDC recommends:

Washing your hands–with soap and water or an alcohol-based hand sanitizer.
Cover you mouth–when you cough and sneeze.
Avoid touching your eyes, nose and mouth–that’s how germs spread easily.
Stay home if you feel sick–don’t go to school or work and limit contact with others to keep from infecting them.

For more information, go to www.flu.gov.

When the ants go marching two by two, pay attention to what they are doing. Scientists are. And they are discovering clever ways to improve cyber security just by mimicking the behavior of ants.

The foraging insects use something called swarm intelligence to efficiently locate and gather food. Computer scientists are applying this behavior to computer networks to find viruses, worms and other electronic threats.

Story written and produced by Michelle Ma

The biggest business lobby in the U.S. is pushing for the EPA to hold a public hearing to debate the science of global warming.

The move, calling for the Scopes monkey trial of the 21st Century, is proving too much for some chamber members, from big utilities to Nike and Johnson & Johnson.

Yesterday, the EPA announced it was moving forward with its plan to regulate stationary sources of greenhouse gas, including some 14,000 coal-fired power plants and refineries.

Now the ball is back in the chamber’s court and it’s time for it to decide whether it wants to sue the EPA and try to put the science on trial.

REALscience dissects the petition submitted by the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, which reads like an anti-global warming play book.

Cast of ABC Television's Flash Forward, courtesy of ABC

When the ABC Television series FlashForward pushed the collective consciousness of the world (in the context of the show) forward six months, the book on which the action-adventure series is based flashed up the Amazon book ranking last week.

The content of the show is being closely guarded but to get a sense of what’s coming, look no further than FlashForward, the novel by Robert J. Sawyer.

Or to the real-world particle physics about to start at CERN below Switzerland.

New research coming from Johnson & Johnson shows that Listerine antiseptic not only kills germs that cause bad breath and gum disease but also could prevent those germs from entering the bloodstream where they can lead to diabetes, heart disease and pneumonia.

This follows on the heels of an Australian study showing “sufficient evidence” that alcohol-containing mouthwashes–including Listerine–may be associated with a greater risk of mouth cancer.

So the question remains, is this 120-year-old health product both helping and harming us?

President Obama Addresses UN Climate Summit

In what could be considered his most strongly-worded warning about the threat of climate change, U.S. President Barack Obama told the United Nations that there is little time to act before permanent environmental damage is irreversible.

In a stirring speech, he called upon Congress, scientists, engineers and citizens to take climate change seriously and work toward solutions to prevent the worst and adapt to the inevitable.

He also announced that the U.S. would begin tracking greenhouse gas emissions across the country and work toward eliminating long-standing fossil fuel subsidies.

Video of President Obama’s UN climate speech:

A Yeast Cell with Synthetic Genes, courtesy of Dr. Pamela Silver, Harvard Medical School

Life is often stranger than fiction. But the direction that biology is heading, synthetic life could be stranger than science fiction.

The emerging field of synthetic biology is moving closer and closer to creating new forms of life in the lab.

Amy Wright Collects Samples While Diving, courtesy of Harbor Branch Oceanographic Institute at Florida Atlantic University

Cures to the most mundane and deadly illnesses have been found deep in the jungles, high in the mountains and hidden in the rainforests. But until recently not many scientists were looking to the ocean as another source of medicine.

But sponges, coral, snails and other marine creatures have a lot to offer the medical community. The small molecules that make them so adaptive to their harsh environments could give medical science an edge in fighting cancer, chronic pain and auto-immune diseases.

Story written and produced by Michelle Ma

Entangled Photons and The Lost Symbol

Avid fiction aficionados have anxiously awaited author Dan Brown’s latest rip-snorting adventure through the mysterious. The Lost Symbol is Brown’s new book, which features the largely unknown field of noetic sciences as a means to move his plot along.

Loosely based on the quantum mechanical principle of entanglement, noetics aims to scientifically understand the mind-connection as a way to discover the unconscious.

The Institute of Noetics has been using physics to drive research that has appeared in bona fide peer-reviewed journals. And, now it’s front-and-center position in Brown’s book will surely push it into public consciousness.

AltaRock Energy Site in California

After hitting a fault in Basel, Switerland and triggering a 3.4 earthquake that shook the city, Markus Haring shut down his project. In August German geothermal company Geox caused a few quakes and is investigating. And, in California, AltaRock Energy just suspended it’s exploration of an area north of San Francisco.

Is Geothermal energy too dangerous? Or do the small micro-seismic events resulting from drilling deep and fracturing hard rock relieve built-up pressure and prevent bigger quakes?

Science is still trying to decide. But the search for renewable power sources has led many to the core of the planet, where a seemingly unending source of heat can be found and captured.