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A new “addendum” to be released as soon as this week purports to update with the latest science a 2009 federal assessment on the impacts to the United States of climate change. The addendum matches the layout and design of the original, published by the U.S. Global Change Research Program: Cover art, “key message” sections, table of contents are all virtually identical, down to the chapter heads, fonts and footnotes. But the new report comes from the conservative Washington, D....

By Zeeya Merali of Nature magazineIt could turn out to be a milestone for quantum computing. Last week, D-Wave Systems of Burnaby in British Columbia, Canada, announced the first sale of a commercial quantum computer, to global security firm Lockheed Martin, based in Bethesda, Maryland.Yet perhaps fittingly for a quantum device, uncertainty persists around how the impressive black monolith known as D-Wave One actually works. Computer scientists have long questioned whether D-Wave’s systems truly exploit quantum physics, and although the company last month published a paper in Nature (M....

Genetic engineering is coming to the forests. While the practice of splicing foreign DNA into food crops has become common in corn and soy, few companies or researchers have dared to apply genetic engineering to plants that provide an essential strut of the U.S. economy, trees. But that will soon change. Two industry giants, International Paper Co. and MeadWestvaco Corp., are planning to transform plantation forests of the southeastern United States by replacing native pine with genetically engineered eucalyptus, a rapidly growing Australian tree that in its conventional strains now dominates the tropical timber industry....

The dogs bound into the office, two of them. Not quite Hounds of the Baskervilles, but large enough. It is a dramatic lead. A minute or so later Thomas E. Starzl follows them in, and, while his pets nap and his assistant provides this or that document or letter, he settles in to recount a story, a compelling narrative of a field that has come full circle. All the classical elements are there: a missed turn, bad timing, a paradigm shift, some overturned dogma and a satisfying, hopeful conclusion: organ transplantation without a lifetime of antirejection drugs....

In 2000, when doctors at the University of Alberta in Edmonton announced that they had successfully transplanted pancreatic islets into diabetic patients, people around the world began clamoring for the therapy. Because islets secrete the right amount of insulin at the right time, they can control the concentration of glucose in the blood far more precisely than a patient can do, even with five or six injections a day. But islets must be harvested from suitable organ donors, and there just are not enough to go around....

In a little corner of the Great Plains, corn growers are using proven methods to cut their carbon footprint. The tri-state corner of Minnesota, South Dakota and Iowa is marked by rolling hills dotted with trees, a transition between the dry prairies and woodlands. Recently, it has become a laboratory for more sustainable corn, and one research team has found that the processes used can cut carbon emissions by more than half from the national average....

Humans alone were responsible for the Tasmanian tiger’s extinction in the 20th century, according to a new study that shoots down claims that disease also doomed the meat-eating marsupial. More officially known as thylacines, Tasmanian tigers (Thylacinus cynocephalus) looked somewhat like striped coyotes and were found throughout most of the Australian island of Tasmania before Europeans settled there in 1803. Starting at the end of the 19th century, the Tasmanian government paid bounties for thylacine carcasses, as the animals were believed to prey on farmers’ sheep and poultry....

Nestled in a steep fjord beneath three kilometers of Antarctic ice, the lost world of Lake Ellsworth has haunted Martin Siegert’s dreams ever since he got involved in subglacial research a dozen years ago. Finally, the time has come for him to explore its mysterious waters. Next week, Siegert, a glaciologist at the University of Bristol, UK, packs his bags for the long journey to the opposite end of the world....

GENDER TALK As a gender studies scholar, I was quite interested in your special issue. I read all the articles with great enthusiasm. I was, however, surprised that you featured only Deborah Tannen’s ideas concerning gendered speech styles (“He Said, She Said”). Because there is so much fascinating research in the area, I was disappointed that she lists her own work exclusively as possible Further Reading. For other work in the field, visit the International Gender and Language Association (IGALA) Web site: www....

Insects are everywhere—in the air, on the ground, in the ground, and sometimes in your house and food. Yet there are none whatsoever in the known fossil record between 385 million and 325 million years ago. The earliest known insect fossil is a 385-million-year-old wingless creature that looks like a silverfish. But for the next 60 million years there is not so much as a single dragonfly, grasshopper or roach. This so-called hexapod gap has long vexed paleontologists, given that insects today are found in almost every imaginable land habitat....

To the long list of jobs that dogs do for humans, add another: the detection of water pollution. Meet Sable, a German shepherd mix with a nose for sewage. Sable’s trainer, Scott Reynolds, who works for an environmental consulting firm, Tetra Tech in Lansing, Mich., said the three-and-a-half-year-old mutt is the only canine known to reliably detect raw sewage or detergents flowing into sewers from illegal or bungled pipe connections. The dog has sniffed out illegal connections in three Michigan counties....

By Andrew M. Seaman (Reuters Health) - Rushing to put on a condom may lead to problems that raise the risk of sexually transmitted infections, according to a new study. Survey responders, almost 60 percent of them women, were more likely to report condom breaks, leaks and slips when it was put on in a hurry, researchers found. Couples who rushed were also more likely to report not using a condom for the entire sex act....

In her book Mediocre: The Dangerous Legacy of White Male America, Ijeoma Oluo describes a phrase that she and her fellow social justice advocates use whenever injustice occurs in society: “works according to design,” meaning that our unequal society didn’t come about by accident – it was designed to keep historically marginalized people on the margins. Oluo uses the example of the many unarmed Black people killed by the police, while the perpetrators consistently avoid criminal trials....

The incandescent lightbulb is a miracle of modern engineering. It requires a vacuum inside, blown glass and special filaments to work. Yet despite more than a century of refinements, an average bulb emits just 15 lumens of light for every watt of electricity it consumes. As a result, simple lighting accounts for 22 percent of the electricity used by buildings in the U.S. Now a team of engineers and chemists has created a carbon-based series of light-emitting diodes (LEDs) that operate at the pinnacle of efficiency while emitting a strong white light....

Treatment: Bevasiranib Maker: Acuity Pharmaceuticals Stage: Phase II completed, phase IIb or III expected to begin mid-2007 Why It Matters The leading cause of irreversible vision loss in the developed world is wet age-related macular degeneration (AMD), which is expected to become increasingly common as the population grows older. An estimated 1.65 million people in the United States have wet AMD, and an estimated eight million worldwide will have it by 2013....

In June, international diabetes organizations endorsed provocative new guidelines suggesting physicians should consider gastric bypass surgery for a greatly expanded number of diabetics—those with a body mass index of 30 and above as opposed to just those with a BMI of 40 or more. Research has shown that the surgery helps people lose more weight, maintain the loss longer and achieve better blood glucose levels than those who slim down by changing diet and exercise habits....

Last month the American Society for Nutrition (ASN) reaffirmed in a report that fiber-rich whole grains lower the risks of diabetes and heart disease. Media outlets such as Reuters duly reported the news, but many failed to point out a crucial detail: some whole grains may do nothing to reduce disease risks. In fact, many foods legally marketed as whole grains could actually harm health. The term “whole grain” might evoke an image of a whole, intact grain—that is, a fiber-rich coating of bran surrounding a starchy endosperm and a small reproductive kernel known as the germ....

Dear EarthTalk: A number of federal energy-efficiency related tax incentives expired at the end of 2010. Will any such programs remain in force and if not, are there other ways to save money on green upgrades?—Jen Franklin, Chicago, Ill. It is true that some federal tax credits for energy efficiency upgrades expired at the end of 2010, but there is legislative effort afoot to extend some of those credits—and there are plenty of other ways to defray the costs of turning over a new green leaf or two this year and beyond....

Dear EarthTalk: What is the status of Hawaiian monk seals and how will the new national monument designation in the waters around the Hawaiian Islands affect them? – Polly LaBarre, New York, NY Easily exploited by hunters, whalers and fishermen in the 19th century, Hawaiian monk seals essentially never recovered. As early as 1976, the Hawaiian monk seal was listed as endangered under the U.S. Endangered Species Act. The species is also on the International Union for the Conservation of Nature’s (IUCN’s) Red List of Threatened Species, and trade in the species or its parts is banned under the Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species (CITES)....

New evidence suggests that the earliest traces of a language can stay with us into adulthood, even if we no longer speak or understand the language itself. And early exposure also seems to speed the process of relearning it later in life. In the new study, recently published in Royal Society Open Science, Dutch adults were trained to listen for sound contrasts in Korean. Some participants reported no prior exposure to the language; others were born in Korea and adopted by Dutch families before the age of six....