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Paul is a geek contender based on his appeal to libertarian-leaning Silicon Valley, combined with his support of online freedoms, although he fails science when it comes to accepting evidence for anthropogenic climate change and evolution. Romney accepts evolution, accepts at least the phenomenon of climate change, if not the science showing that it is human-caused, and has deeper ties to Silicon Valley. He also has thought extensively about energy, technology and engineering issues to the point that he explicitly favors a federal program for advanced energy research....

Ann L. Davis of the Virginia Division of Forensic Science and the Virginia Institute of Forensic Science and Medicine, explains. Most modern handguns and rifles are manufactured based on blueprints that specify their configurations. One of these specifications is a characteristic known as rifling, which refers to the spiral lands and grooves placed into the firearm’s barrel to impart a spin on the bullet for accuracy. The number of lands and grooves and the direction in which they twist, either right or left, can be determined by observing the rifling engravings in the barrel....

Since launching in February 2004, Facebook has proved highly effective at creating opportunities for the average Web user to create campaigns that reach a mass audience. Most recently such opportunities have extended to organ donation, an area that could benefit from the social network’s attention—controversy over its recent initial public offering aside, Facebook’s membership is more than 900 million and growing. Indeed, with demand for healthy organs for transplantation growing worldwide, Facebook has already become a popular channel for people soliciting kidneys, livers and other potentially lifesaving organs....

In search of nectar, a honeybee flies into a well-manicured suburban garden and lands on one of several camellia bushes planted in a row. After rummaging through the ruffled pink petals of several flowers, the bee leaves the first bush for another. Finding hardly any nectar in the flowers of the second bush, the bee flies to a third. And so on. Our brains may have evolved to forage for some kinds of memories in the same way, shifting our attention from one cluster of stored information to another depending on what each patch has to offer....

A certain state, known for its beautiful land and its tough regulations, faces a dilemma. In the spirit of strict liability, the people have decided that the government must pay owners for any zoning laws that reduce property values or forgo enforcement. Suppose, for example, that you own a house in the woods, but have a strong desire to put up a fast food joint with an enormous parking lot. Your property value may go up....

By Geert De Clercq PARIS (Reuters) - A group of Paris restaurants is turning food scraps into biogas and compost ahead of a new law that will force thousands of French food outlets to recycle their organic waste. Some 80 restaurants, caterers and hotels, including gourmet food company Fauchon and Michelin-starred Taillevent, signed up for a pilot project to collect their food waste, which is used to generate biogas and produce electricity and heat, as well as compost for farms around Paris....

By Eric Hand of Nature magazineThe potential cost of NASA’s flagship mission to Jupiter’s icy moon Europa was recently put at $4.7 billion. In an era of austerity, that’s likely to be a show-stopper. But John Sommerer thinks that his laboratory can send a probe to Saturn’s moon Titan for less than one-tenth of that.Sommerer, head of the space department at the Applied Physics Laboratory (APL) in Laurel, Md., made his case to planetary scientists this week during a conference at the APL on low-cost space missions....

By Magdalena Mis LONDON (Thomson Reuters Foundation) - The three West African countries worst hit by Ebola risk a “double disaster” unless a multi-million dollar plan is put in place to help their economies recover, Oxfam said on Tuesday. In Liberia, Guinea and Sierra Leone people were struggling to make ends meet having seen their incomes plummet, the aid agency said. “The world was late in waking up to the Ebola crisis, there can be no excuses for not helping to put these economies and lives back together,” Mark Goldring, Oxfam’s chief executive, said during a visit to Liberia....

In the next few years nasa will amass reams of new data about near-Earth objects (NEOs), including asteroids and comets. Unfortunately, nothing is likely to protect us from a meteor the size of the one that barreled into the sky over the Russian city of Chelyabinsk (below) in February, injuring more than 1,000 people. That 17-meter object was too small to be systematically tracked—asteroid spotters naturally focus on the largest objects that could cause the most mayhem....

The release of U.S. carbon dioxide emissions in the first half of this year sank to their lowest level since 1991, the Energy Information Administration said yesterday. The agency attributed the decline to a warm winter, slumping use of coal-fired electricity, and strong growth in renewable and hydroelectric power. It was the first time in 25 years that emissions during the first six months of any year were that low. Overall energy use fell 2 percent in the first half of 2016 compared with the same period last year, according to EIA....

The monster tornado that destroyed the town of Mayfield, Ky., during last weekend’s deadly outbreak in the Midwest and Southeast may have traversed four states without ever lifting off the ground. The National Weather Service (NWS) office in Paducah, Ky., confirmed to the Weather Channel this week that the “Quad-State Tornado” carved a continuous path of 128 miles through the office’s region of responsibility (which covers southeastern Missouri, western Kentucky, southern Illinois and the southernmost tip of Indiana) last Friday....

Key concepts Food science Chemistry Gelatin Fruits Enzymes Heat Introduction Have you ever noticed that if you’re making a gelatin dessert, such as JELL-O, it’s not recommended to use certain fruits, like pineapple? Why is this? These fruits may prevent the gelatin from solidifying. In this activity you’ll get to determine if certain enzymes in some fruits can keep the gelatin from gelling—and whether there’s a way to still include these fruits without ruining your gelatin dessert!...

Proxima Centauri, the star closest to our sun, may harbor a second planet—still. “Still,” because astronomers first announced this candidate world in April 2019, based on observations and analyses that had yet to be published or peer-reviewed. Now more thoroughly vetted and bolstered by additional data, the study reporting the potential discovery appears today in the journal Science Advances. Yet certainty is elusive—the planet could still prove to be a mirage....

As a volunteer in a trial of mobile health technology, I can attest that it’s incredibly cool to pick up your iPhone, fire up an application to monitor your heart rate and rhythm, and then beam your ECG reading to a cardiologist halfway around the globe. As a physician-scientist, I also know that cool technology is not necessarily synonymous with good science or sound health practices and that therein lies a challenge....

When Hurricane Sandy hit New York City in 2012, the storm destroyed more than US$20 million worth of scientific equipment at New York University’s (NYU) Langone Medical Center. Tropical storm Allison hit the University of Texas Health Science Center (UT Health) in Houston in 2001 and caused so much damage some researchers had to restart their careers elsewhere. Despite such catastrophes, a new report finds that many research institutions in the United States are still unprepared for disasters....

GJ 436b keeps getting weirder. Astronomers already knew that the Neptune-mass exoplanet is evaporating; a few years back, a research team spotted the huge, comet-like tail of gas that streams behind GJ 436b as it orbits its small, dim host star. Now, a new study reveals there’s something very off about that orbit: It’s highly elliptical and takes the alien world over the star’s poles. (The “normal” case, exhibited by all eight officially recognized planets in Earth’s solar system, is a relatively circular path in line with the star’s equatorial plane....

Pieces of an AirAsia jet and the bodies of some of its 162 passengers were recovered today (Dec. 30) off the coast of Borneo, snuffing out hopes that the missing plane had somehow made a miracle landing and that survivors might be found. Life vests, aircraft debris and a small blue suitcase were among the items that the search and rescue team found floating in the Java Sea. But Indonesian authorities are still working to recover a key piece of the plane that should reveal what caused the mysterious crash: the black box....

In the Republican response to last night’s presidential address to a joint session of Congress, Louisiana Gov. Bobby Jindal chided the lawmakers for earmarking “$140 million for something called volcano monitoring.” The funds he was referring to are part of the $787 billion stimulus package signed into law by Pres. Obama earlier this month; some 12 percent ($98.3 billion) of the monies are set aside for transportation and infrastructure projects, including volcano monitoring and other natural disaster prevention programs....

By Jon Cartwright of Nature magazinePhysicists have already unveiled invisibility cloaks that can hide objects from light, sound, seismic and even water waves. Now researchers report a cloak that can hide objects from static magnetic fields. This ‘antimagnet’ could have medical applications, but might also subvert airport security.Writing in Science, a team of theorists led by Alvaro Sanchez at the Autonomous University of Barcelona in Spain, together with experimentalists at the Slovak Academy of Sciences in Bratislava, describe a magnetic cloak made with inexpensive, readily available materials....

The next time you look up at the night sky and find yourself marveling at the number of stars overhead, know that you are only seeing part of the magnificent bounty that our galaxy holds. Most of those Milky Way stars are not isolated orbs. Rather an average star has at least one planetary companion, invisible to the naked eye and in most cases as yet unseen by telescopes, according to a new analysis....