Science & Medicine

The Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter is casting doubts on the belief that the Moon is a lifeless piece of rock.

Thinking about getting a body piercing? Who hasn't, right?

Well, one thing to consider is that about 20 percent of the time there are complications from the procedure, such as infection or scarring, a fresh review of the medical literature finds.

Piercings of the bellybutton and upper ear are especially prone to problems.

Researchers have nailed down something scientists, government officials and agribusiness proponents have argued about for years: whether antibiotics in livestock feed give rise to antibiotic-resistant germs that can threaten humans.

A study in the journal mBio, published by the American Society for Microbiology, shows how an antibiotic-susceptible Staph germ passed from humans into pigs, where it became resistant to the antibiotics tetracycline and methicillin. And then the antibiotic-resistant Staph learned to jump back into humans.

There were so many amazing moments during Bjork's performance of Biophilia at the New York Hall of Science this week: the four pendulum harps that made music, the dome-shaped wok-looking instrument that played beautiful bell-like sounds when struck.

Purdue researchers who are working on challenging issues are receiving a financial boost.

The university’s Global Policy Research Institute has given $180,000 to six teams.

Managing Director Angela Phillips Diaz says four projects will receive $40,000 each, while two were awarded $10,000 apiece.

"We're very excited about the scope and the quality of the proposals, and have high hopes these projects will go onto have a real impact.”

She says the six recipients were narrowed down from a field of 33 who applied in September. Some of the work receiving funds focus on drought in East African, solar photovoltaics, and sustainable biofuels production.

Diaz hopes the awards will help the researchers secure future funding.

Purdue will use a grant from the National Institutes of Health to further its research on spinal cord injuries.

The Center for Paralysis Research received one-point-five-million dollars for its work dealing with the chemical acrolein.

Basic Medical Sciences Professor Riyi Shi is the lead researcher.

He says the treatment developed through this study could also be used with other disorders, such as multiple sclerosis.

Shi says the initial spinal injury can get worse within days because of the chemicals released when nerve cells are damaged.

The study also shows two FDA approved drugs for hypertension and depression could be used in potential treatments.

Countries pursue space programs for a variety of reasons — to communicate faster; to track the weather; to spy on one another; to prove they, too, can put something in space. Leave it to Switzerland to launch a project that has the simple goal of keeping things tidy.

A closed-door summit on controversial bird flu research starts today, and the newly released guest list reveals that the event will be dominated by virologists.

Erasmus Medical Center's Ron Fouchier, one of the virologists whose experiments with bird flu drew attention in the first place, will be there. So will his boss, Albert Osterhaus, head of the virology department at Erasmus in the Netherlands.

Every 10 years, about two dozen of this country's top astronomers and astrophysicists get together under the auspices of the National Research Council and make a wish list. The list has on it the new telescopes these astronomers would most like to see built. At the last gathering, they said, in essence, "We most want the Large Synoptic Survey Telescope."

Here's why. A synoptic survey is a comprehensive map of every square inch of the night sky. The Large Synoptic Survey — LSST — will do that multiple times.

"We want to scan the entire sky over and over again for 10 years," says Sidney Wolff, president of the LSST Corp., who is in charge of building the new telescope. "And we will get over 800 images of every patch of the sky."