Science

This year's World Food Prize is going to a Belgian scientist and two researchers in the United States for their innovations that brought the world genetically modified crops.

A new study challenges the orthodoxy of microbiology that in response to environmental changes, bacterial genes will boost production of needed proteins and decrease production of those that aren't. Researchers with the U.S. Department of Energy (DOE)'s Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory (Berkeley Lab) found that for bacteria in the laboratory there was little evidence of adaptive genetic response. In fact, most bacterial genes appear to be regulated by signals unrelated to their function.

President Barack Obama on Wednesday pledged that the United States "will do more" to tackle the threat of climate change and said the world must do likewise before it is too late.

To celebrate the new 1.3 billion-pixel image of Mars, we scrolled, panned and zoomed to find these amazing faces.

The body weight simulator, originally a web based java application, is now also an iPhone app (see here in iTunes).  The simulator is based on the human metabolism model developed by Kevin Hall, myself, and collaborators.  The exact model is given in detail in our Lancet paper, which is listed here along with other related references.  The app predicts the time course of your body weight given your baseline parameters and your new diet and/or new physical activity.  It will also give a suggested daily caloric intake to attain a new weight over a specified period of time along with the diet required to maintain that weight.  The model uses parameters calibrated to the average American so your own mileage will vary.  Also, I basically wrote the app in my spare time over the past year so it is pretty primitive as far as apps go but it does the job.  Please try it out and give me feedback.

As supercomputers get faster, the demand for their services is also picking up.

Interactive map: Where are the 50 most populous refugee camps?

MarkWhittington writes "Politico reports in a June 18, 2013 story that House Republicans have added a Mars base to its demands for a lunar base in the draft 2013 NASA Authorization bill. Both the Bush-era Constellation program and President Obama space plan envisioned eventual human expeditions to Mars. But if Politico is correct, the new bill will be the first time an official piece of legislation will call for permanent habitation of the Red Planet. The actual legislative language states, 'The [NASA] Administrator shall establish a program to develop a sustained human presence on the Moon and the surface of Mars.'" Read more of this story at Slashdot.

The setting sun bathes Yosemite's Half Dome in light #photography

Extreme risk takers rely on mental training so that fear doesn't hold them back.