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Full Story At Reuters

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Ever wondered how Santa Claus can travel around the world in just one night on his reindeer-pulled sleigh and deliver toys to all the children?

“He exploits the space-time continuum,” says Larry Silverberg, a professor of mechanical and aerospace engineering at North Carolina State University.

Santa’s magic may go far beyond merely traveling across 200 million square miles (322 million sq km) to visit hundreds of millions of homes of believing children in just one night, Silverberg said.

“He understands that space stretches, he understands that you can stretch time, compress space and therefore he can, in a sense, actually have six Santa months to deliver the presents,” Silverberg told Reuters.

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Full Story At VIDEO: Iceland Puffin Threatened

December 5, 2008—In Iceland’s remote Westman Islands, warming weather is threatening a beloved mascot: the Atlantic puffin.

Video by Public Television’s Wild Chronicles, from National Geographic Mission Programs

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Full Story At CNET News

The Department of Homeland Security has failed to ensure the nation’s cybersecurity, a new report to be released Monday concludes, because the threat of cyberattacks is too vast for any one agency to tackle and must be addressed by a new White House office, as well as revised laws and government practices.

As President-elect Barack Obama fills the remaining cabinet positions in his administration, a Center for Strategic and International Studies commission is recommending Obama create a new office in the White House: the National Office for Cyberspace, headed by an Assistant to the President for Cyberspace. The Commission on Cyber Security for the 44th Presidency, an independent, nonpartisan group, releases its final report Monday after more than a year of exploring how to address the country’s cybersecurity threats.

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Full Story At  CBS News

(CBS/AP) One of the scientists sharing the Nobel Prize in medicine for discovering HIV said Saturday he believes there will be a therapeutic vaccine to treat the virus within five years.

Luc Montagnier, of France, told reporters in Sweden that he believed it was “a matter of 4 to 5 years” before a therapeutic vaccine to treat HIV infection is developed. He did not elaborate as to why he believed scientists were close.

Scientists have developed lifesaving drugs that can inhibit the disease, but there is no vaccine to prevent or treat HIV infection. Finding a vaccine has proved elusive in the past, with the most recent trials ending in failure.

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Full Story At  Reuters

OZNAN, Poland (Reuters) - An ancient technique of plowing charred plants into the ground to revive soil may also trap greenhouse gases for thousands of years and forestall global warming, scientists said on Friday.

Heating plants such as farm waste or wood in airtight conditions produces a high-carbon substance called biochar, which can store the greenhouse gas carbon dioxide and enhance nutrients in the soil.

Plants absorb carbon dioxide from the atmosphere as they grow. Subsequently storing that carbon in the soil removes the gas from the atmosphere.

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Full Story At  detnews.com

MYSTIC, Conn. — Energy independence is still only a hypothetical goal for the U.S., but the owner of a tiny island off the coast of Connecticut says he has already achieved that feat and is offering his work as a model.

Dean Kamen, inventor of the Segway and numerous medical devices, jokingly refers to his North Dumpling Island as an independent nation and himself as Lord Dumpling. Kamen claims to have his own currency and offers visas to visitors to the tiny island a few miles from Mystic, where he is the only resident.

But Kamen, who bought the three-acre island in the 1980s as a retreat, is serious about energy independence and the lessons it offers at a time of volatile gas prices and fears about global warming.

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“The rest of the world will eventually catch up if the Dumplonians can get their message out,” Kamen said.

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Full Story At Wired.com

Pentagon mad-science division Darpa is helping build thought-controlled robotic limbs, artificial pack mules, real-life laser guns and “kill-proof” soldiers. So it comes as no surprise, really, that the agency is now getting into the flying-car business, too.

Darpa hopes its “Personal Air Vehicle Technology” project, announced yesterday, will ultimately lead to a working prototype of a military-suitable flying car — a two- or four-passenger vehicle that can “drive on roads” one minute and take off like a helicopter the next. The hybrid machine would be perfect for “urban scouting,” casualty evacuation and commando-delivery missions, the agency believes.

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Full Story At Yahoo! News

NEW YORK - Talk about an extreme makeover: Scientists have transformed one type of cell into another in living mice, a big step toward the goal of growing replacement tissues to treat a variety of diseases.
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The cell identity switch turned ordinary pancreas cells into the rarer type that churns out insulin, essential for preventing diabetes. But its implications go beyond diabetes to a host of possibilities, scientists said.

It’s the second advance in about a year that suggests that someday doctors might be able to use a patient’s own cells to treat disease or injury without turning to stem cells taken from embryos.

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