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	<title>Science &amp; Space | TIME.com</title>
	
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		<title>Science &amp; Space | TIME.com</title>
		<link>http://science.time.com</link>
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		<title>Cockroaches, Sponges and Snakes: The Top 10 New Species</title>
		<link>http://science.time.com/2013/05/23/cockroaches-sponges-and-snakes-the-top-10-new-species/</link>
		<comments>http://science.time.com/2013/05/23/cockroaches-sponges-and-snakes-the-top-10-new-species/#comments</comments>
		<pubDate>Thu, 23 May 2013 19:05:20 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator>Andrew Hinderaker</dc:creator>
				<category><![CDATA[Animals]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Ecocentric]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[animals]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[endangered]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[extinction]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[species]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[wildlife]]></category>

		<guid isPermaLink="false">http://science.time.com/?p=15442</guid>
		<description><![CDATA[So the news we report at Ecocentric is often of the doomy sort: overfishing, extinct species, killer heat waves, deadly disasters, that sort of thing. You can&#8217;t put all the blame on us–the world really is that unstable, and at the same time, the darkest posts do seem to get the most clicks. But not everything is bad! We live in what is still an incredible and beautiful world, one we&#8217;re only beginning to comprehend. By some counts there are perhaps 10 to 12 million separate species of plants and animals on Earth, which is about 10 to 12 million more than we know of on any other planet in this universe. And even that figure is just an estimate—we&#8217;ve only formally described perhaps 2 million species altogether. There&#8217;s a whole world of biodiversity out there waiting to be discovered by scientists willing to do the field work. So it makes sense that&#8217;d we celebrate the 2013 list of the top 10 new species, which is put out each year by the International Institute for Species Exploration at Arizona State University. A global committee of taxonomists—the hard-noses scientists who name and classify species—assemble the list and release it on May 23, the birthday of the great 18th century Swedish botanist Carolus Linnaeus, the man responsible for the modern system of species classification. The committee picked the top 10—which includes a glow-in-the-dark cockroach and the smallest vertebrate on Earth—from more than 140 nominated species. But this is just the beginning—the institute is calling for a &#8220;NASA-like mission&#8221; to discover 10 million new species over the next half century. We&#8217;re up against the clock, as Quentin Wheeler, the founding director of the institute, put it in a statement: For decades, we have averaged 18,000 species discoveries per year which seemed reasonable before the biodiversity crisis. Now, knowing that millions of species may not survive the 21st century, it is time to pick up the pace. These new species represent a good start, but there&#8217;s so much more to learn.<img alt="" border="0" src="http://stats.wordpress.com/b.gif?host=science.time.com&#038;blog=13785469&#038;post=15442&#038;subd=timeecocentric&#038;ref=&#038;feed=1" width="1" height="1" />]]></description>
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		<slash:comments>0</slash:comments>
	<primary_category>Animals</primary_category><primary_category_link>http://science.time.com/category/animals-2/</primary_category_link><featured_image>http://timeecocentric.files.wordpress.com/2013/05/03a_cercopithecus_lomamiensis.jpeg?w=240</featured_image>
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			<media:title type="html">Top 10 New Species</media:title>
		</media:content>

		<media:content url="http://2.gravatar.com/avatar/eb79a5301e4b9862edabe7af129243cb?s=96&amp;d=http%3A%2F%2F2.gravatar.com%2Favatar%2Fad516503a11cd5ca435acc9bb6523536%3Fs%3D96&amp;r=G" medium="image">
			<media:title type="html">ahinderaker</media:title>
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		<title>Solved! The Mystery of the Maddening Itch</title>
		<link>http://science.time.com/2013/05/23/solved-the-mystery-of-the-maddening-itch/</link>
		<comments>http://science.time.com/2013/05/23/solved-the-mystery-of-the-maddening-itch/#comments</comments>
		<pubDate>Thu, 23 May 2013 18:00:56 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator>Michael D. Lemonick</dc:creator>
				<category><![CDATA[Biology]]></category>

		<guid isPermaLink="false">http://science.time.com/?p=15437</guid>
		<description><![CDATA[OK, so it doesn’t quite rank up there with unraveling the cause of Alzheimer’s or Parkinson’s disease. But with mosquito and poison-ivy season on the way, plenty of folks would be grateful for an answer to a more mundane question: what is the neurological basis of the pruritic response? Or in plain English, why do we itch? At least part of that mystery has now been solved by scientists at one of the less celebrated units of the National Institutes of Health. Writing in Science, molecular biologists working at the National Institute of Dental and Craniofacial Research report that a molecule known as neuropeptide natriuretic polypeptide b (Nppb) that is released by nerve cells far from the actual itch site triggers an electrochemical cascade that ultimately tells the brain it’s time to get scratching. “This is an important breakthrough,” says Sarah Elizbeth Ross, a neurobiologist at the University of Pittsburgh. It was also, says the report’s senior author, Mark Hoon, “really fun work. It was like a roller coaster of discovery.” That may sound a little over the top when the subject is itching, but chronic itch caused by dry skin, psoriasis, diabetes or even liver disease can be  maddening, and the cause has long been a true medical mystery. “The classical view,” says Hoon, “was that a single class of nerve cells detected both itch and pain.” According to this theory, the type and intensity of the stimulus told the cells which sensory message to send up to the brain.  The nervous system would then respond accordingly. (MORE: Revealed: The Mystery of Bubbles—and Clouds Too) At one level, the theory is correct: pain and itch, as well as heat, are all transmitted by a class of nerve cells known as TRPV1-expressing neurons. When scientists use genetic engineering to create mice that don’t have these cells, the animals don&#8217;t feel any of those three sensations. But over the past five or ten years, says Hoon, research in his own group and also what he calls “some beautiful work by others,”<img alt="" border="0" src="http://stats.wordpress.com/b.gif?host=science.time.com&#038;blog=13785469&#038;post=15437&#038;subd=timeecocentric&#038;ref=&#038;feed=1" width="1" height="1" />]]></description>
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		<slash:comments>0</slash:comments>
	<primary_category>Biology</primary_category><primary_category_link>http://science.time.com/category/biology-2/</primary_category_link><featured_image>http://timeecocentric.files.wordpress.com/2013/05/wp74598840.jpg?w=240</featured_image>
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			<media:title type="html">The Mystery of the Itch</media:title>
		</media:content>

		<media:content url="http://0.gravatar.com/avatar/f2cdfe953fad799c6100332224e6ecb9?s=96&amp;d=http%3A%2F%2F0.gravatar.com%2Favatar%2Fad516503a11cd5ca435acc9bb6523536%3Fs%3D96&amp;r=G" medium="image">
			<media:title type="html">jkluger</media:title>
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		<title>The Most Endangered Freshwater Turtles and Tortoises</title>
		<link>http://science.time.com/2013/05/23/the-most-endangered-freshwater-turtles-and-tortoises/</link>
		<comments>http://science.time.com/2013/05/23/the-most-endangered-freshwater-turtles-and-tortoises/#comments</comments>
		<pubDate>Thu, 23 May 2013 12:54:11 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator>Bryan Walsh</dc:creator>
				<category><![CDATA[Animals]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Ecocentric]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[animals]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[endangered species]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[turtles]]></category>

		<guid isPermaLink="false">http://science.time.com/?p=15417</guid>
		<description><![CDATA[Is there anything more harmless than a turtle? (Unless, I suppose, you&#8217;re a nice, leafy vegetable.) Turtles and tortoises—the main difference is that turtles dwell at least partially in water, while tortoises live exclusively on land—are slow-moving, peaceful animals whose main form of protection from the outside world is a hard shell. Not for nothing do we have the fable of the slow and steady tortoise winning the race. Turtles have existed in some form for more than 220 million years, outlasting their early contemporaries the dinosaurs. Long-lived turtles and tortoises are symbols of perseverance in the natural world. Unfortunately, the rules of the race are changing. Turtles and tortoises are among the world&#8217;s most endangered vertebrates, with about half their more than 300 species threatened with extinction. Only primates—human beings expected—are at greater risk of being wiped off the planet. The threats are many. The animals are collected by traders, eaten in the wild and in fine restaurants, used as pets or for traditional medicine, and sometimes simply killed. The very adaptations that once made them so successful—their long adult life span and delayed sexual maturity—has made them vulnerable as the world around them changed, mostly thanks to human beings. A 2011 report from the Turtle Conservation Coalition makes it clear: we need to act now if we&#8217;re to save the turtles and the tortoises: We are facing a turtle survival crisis unprecedented in its severity and risk. Humans are the problem, and must therefore also be the solution. Without concerted conservation action, many of the world’s turtles and tortoises will become extinct within the next few decades. It is now up to us to prevent the loss of these remarkable, unique jewels of evolution. As we mark World Turtle Day on May 23, spare a thought for these armored but endangered creatures.<img alt="" border="0" src="http://stats.wordpress.com/b.gif?host=science.time.com&#038;blog=13785469&#038;post=15417&#038;subd=timeecocentric&#038;ref=&#038;feed=1" width="1" height="1" />]]></description>
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		<slash:comments>0</slash:comments>
	<primary_category>Endangered Species</primary_category><primary_category_link>http://science.time.com/category/animals-2/endangered-species/</primary_category_link><featured_image>http://timeecocentric.files.wordpress.com/2013/05/42-18396195.jpg?w=240</featured_image>
		<media:thumbnail url="http://timeecocentric.files.wordpress.com/2013/05/42-18396195.jpg?w=240" />
		<media:content url="http://timeecocentric.files.wordpress.com/2013/05/42-18396195.jpg?w=240" medium="image">
			<media:title type="html">A worker in a zoo holds a tiny Testudo Kleinmanni hatchling. The endangered species is also known as the Egyptian tortoise, and was rescued from the suitcase of a smuggler found in Rome.</media:title>
		</media:content>

		<media:content url="http://1.gravatar.com/avatar/45aadd4bcc836917a2bee9da10316e12?s=96&amp;d=http%3A%2F%2F1.gravatar.com%2Favatar%2Fad516503a11cd5ca435acc9bb6523536%3Fs%3D96&amp;r=G" medium="image">
			<media:title type="html">bryanrwalsh</media:title>
		</media:content>
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		<title>Tornado Warning: Despite Oklahoma Alert, U.S. Weather Forecasting Service Needs Major Upgrades</title>
		<link>http://science.time.com/2013/05/21/tornado-warning-despite-oklahoma-alert-u-s-weather-forecasting-service-needs-major-upgrades/</link>
		<comments>http://science.time.com/2013/05/21/tornado-warning-despite-oklahoma-alert-u-s-weather-forecasting-service-needs-major-upgrades/#comments</comments>
		<pubDate>Tue, 21 May 2013 23:22:37 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator>Jeffrey Kluger</dc:creator>
				<category><![CDATA[Weather]]></category>

		<guid isPermaLink="false">http://science.time.com/?p=15392</guid>
		<description><![CDATA[The atmosphere never gets a moment&#8217;s privacy. It can barely stir enough to move a leaf without some piece of high-tech equipment—often many, many pieces—knowing about it. The U.S. alone has up to 30 satellites at any one moment that devote at least part of their time to monitoring global and national weather patterns; 122 Doppler radar systems scattered across the country looking up from the ground; and a web of computers that just got a massive upgrade—increasing their data-crunching capacity 30-fold—to process the information that all that other hardware gathers. It&#8217;s no surprise then that the National Weather Service was able to see a broad pattern of tornadoes coming days before they actually struck with such tragic consequences in Moore, Oklahoma on Monday. It&#8217;s no surprise either that the 16 min. warning between final alert and tornado touchdown, though brief-seeming, was twice what was possible in the past. The unpleasant surprise is that this entire weather-forecasting infrastructure is much wobblier than it seems, and without a lot of care—and a fair bit more money—the whole thing could start to come undone. (MORE: Prelude to Disaster: Inside the Oklahoma Weather Center) Running a 21st century meteorological system on the cheap is barely possible, but by federal budget standards, predicting the weather is a real bargain. Last year&#8217;s total outlay for the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, which does much of the heavy lifting when it comes to forecasting, was just shy of $5 billion—or less than 1% of  annual Defense Department expenditures and barely one-third of what even chronically budget-crunched NASA gets. The recent computer upgrade, which affected two main processing centers in Reston, Va., and Orlando, Fla., cost just $25 million, little more than milk money in a nearly $4 trillion federal budget. But while those modest expenditures may be enough, they leave very little room for error. Last October, in the run-up to Hurricane Sandy, a critical forecasting satellite known as GOES-East went briefly offline, effectively blinding NOAA&#8217;s surveillance of exactly the portion of the coastal U.S. that<img alt="" border="0" src="http://stats.wordpress.com/b.gif?host=science.time.com&#038;blog=13785469&#038;post=15392&#038;subd=timeecocentric&#038;ref=&#038;feed=1" width="1" height="1" />]]></description>
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		<slash:comments>1</slash:comments>
	<primary_category>Weather</primary_category><primary_category_link>http://science.time.com/category/weather/</primary_category_link><featured_image>http://timeecocentric.files.wordpress.com/2013/05/ap340391388321.jpg?w=240</featured_image>
		<media:thumbnail url="http://timeecocentric.files.wordpress.com/2013/05/ap340391388321.jpg?w=240" />
		<media:content url="http://timeecocentric.files.wordpress.com/2013/05/ap340391388321.jpg?w=240" medium="image">
			<media:title type="html">A tornado passes across south Oklahoma City, May 20, 2013.</media:title>
		</media:content>

		<media:content url="http://0.gravatar.com/avatar/f2cdfe953fad799c6100332224e6ecb9?s=96&amp;d=http%3A%2F%2F0.gravatar.com%2Favatar%2Fad516503a11cd5ca435acc9bb6523536%3Fs%3D96&amp;r=G" medium="image">
			<media:title type="html">jkluger</media:title>
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		<title>Tornado-Proofing Cities in the Age of Extreme Weather</title>
		<link>http://science.time.com/2013/05/21/tornado-proofing-cities-in-the-age-of-extreme-weather/</link>
		<comments>http://science.time.com/2013/05/21/tornado-proofing-cities-in-the-age-of-extreme-weather/#comments</comments>
		<pubDate>Tue, 21 May 2013 22:06:27 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator>Bryan Walsh</dc:creator>
				<category><![CDATA[Disasters]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Ecocentric]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[adaptation]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[building]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[death toll]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[disasters]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[oklahoma]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[resilience]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[tornado]]></category>

		<guid isPermaLink="false">http://science.time.com/?p=15373</guid>
		<description><![CDATA[Right now the death toll from the massive tornado that hit Moore, Oklahoma on May 20 seems—thankfully—to be less than first thought. City officials now say that 24 people have been confirmed dead, down from 51 people last night, due to double counting of some bodies in the confusion. But the new number still includes 9 children, and the toll could rise as rescuers search through the rubble. This is the second time in less than 15 years that the town of Moore, a suburb of Oklahoma City, has been hit squarely by a major tornado. That&#8217;s mostly down to bad luck—although Oklahoma City area might as well be the buckle of the tornado belt, as Alexis Madrigal points out in the Atlantic, the chances of actually being hit by a major tornado even in this danger zone remain low. Though I doubt that will provide much comfort to the grieving residents of Moore as they dig out from yet another destructive twister. But as unlikely as a major tornado remains, the hundreds of twisters that touch down in the U.S. still cause major damage—second only to hurricanes, according to the reinsurer Munich Re. Few ordinary structures can withstand a direct hit from a tornado as strong as the one that passed through Moore yesterday, which now ranks as an EF5, with winds above 200 mph. Not much could have saved the homes and businesses destroyed by the Moore twister, but is there a way to ensure that the lives of people in tornado country can be protected from extreme weather? The answer is yes—with the right policy and the right incentives. But first we have to understand how the risks from extreme weather are changing—and for the most part, increasing. (Hat tip to Andrew Revkin of Dot Earth, whose post earlier today touched on much of this material.) As I wrote yesterday, there&#8217;s no clear trend on the frequency or strength of tornadoes hitting the U.S. It had actually been a historically quiet 12 months for tornadoes until recently.<img alt="" border="0" src="http://stats.wordpress.com/b.gif?host=science.time.com&#038;blog=13785469&#038;post=15373&#038;subd=timeecocentric&#038;ref=&#038;feed=1" width="1" height="1" />]]></description>
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		<slash:comments>0</slash:comments>
	<primary_category>Disasters</primary_category><primary_category_link>http://science.time.com/category/disasters/</primary_category_link><featured_image>http://timeecocentric.files.wordpress.com/2013/05/0628876a9d694dd680f12bf81ab97b2a-0.jpg?w=240</featured_image>
		<media:thumbnail url="http://timeecocentric.files.wordpress.com/2013/05/0628876a9d694dd680f12bf81ab97b2a-0.jpg?w=240" />
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			<media:title type="html">A soldier walks past a home destroyed by the tornado that hit Moore, Okla., the day before, on May 21, 2013.</media:title>
		</media:content>

		<media:content url="http://1.gravatar.com/avatar/45aadd4bcc836917a2bee9da10316e12?s=96&amp;d=http%3A%2F%2F1.gravatar.com%2Favatar%2Fad516503a11cd5ca435acc9bb6523536%3Fs%3D96&amp;r=G" medium="image">
			<media:title type="html">bryanrwalsh</media:title>
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		<title>Prelude to Disaster: Inside the Oklahoma Weather Center</title>
		<link>http://science.time.com/2013/05/21/prelude-to-disaster-inside-the-oklahoma-weather-center/</link>
		<comments>http://science.time.com/2013/05/21/prelude-to-disaster-inside-the-oklahoma-weather-center/#comments</comments>
		<pubDate>Tue, 21 May 2013 18:22:12 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator>Jeffrey Kluger</dc:creator>
				<category><![CDATA[Weather]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[moore oklahoma]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[natural diasters]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[oklahoma]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[oklahoma tornado]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[tornado]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[weather]]></category>

		<guid isPermaLink="false">http://science.time.com/?p=15377</guid>
		<description><![CDATA[The National Weather Service forecast center in Norman, Oklahoma, is located in a five-story building on the south campus of the University of Oklahoma. It is technically on the second floor, but an auditorium  located below it  dips partly underground, so the experience is more like being on the first floor. It has a wall of windows facing west and is neither tornado-proof nor tornado-resistant. “We were conscious that we could be hit,” says Rick Smith, warning coordinator meteorologist, who was on scene Monday from 7 AM  through the time the tornado hit at 3 PM. He went home at 11 PM. “We have redundant power systems and plans in place in case we’re affected; we have a back-up center in Tulsa and we practice what we preach about seeking shelter if we have to. We were experiencing power bumps here and there but nothing that took us offline.” (PHOTOS: Tornado Flattens Oklahoma City Suburb, Kills Dozens) As soon as the day began, it was clear that there would be serious problems. Monday was the third day of a severe stretch of weather that, on Sunday, had already included one EF4 tornado and two deaths. Tornadoes can develop quickly, going from just a puffy white cloud in the sky to an on-the-ground twister in 90 minutes. Yesterday, the storm systems were in place to shrink that window to just an hour. “When I came in the office it became obvious very, very quickly that the conditions were even more volatile than Sunday,&#8221; says Smith. It wasn’t just that the weather system was the same as it had been; that would have been bad enough. It was that there also weren’t any counterbalancing atmospheric factors in place that sometimes dampen or prevent the storms. The area was without any natural meteorological defenses. Despite the turbulence it tracks, the command center is not terribly noisy. “If you were in the room you’d be impressed by the professionalism and quiet,” says Smith. “There’s no shouting, no panic. It’s like being aboard an aircraft carrier,<img alt="" border="0" src="http://stats.wordpress.com/b.gif?host=science.time.com&#038;blog=13785469&#038;post=15377&#038;subd=timeecocentric&#038;ref=&#038;feed=1" width="1" height="1" />]]></description>
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		<slash:comments>1</slash:comments>
	<primary_category>Weather</primary_category><primary_category_link>http://science.time.com/category/weather/</primary_category_link><featured_image>http://timeecocentric.files.wordpress.com/2013/05/03710403.jpg?w=240</featured_image>
		<media:thumbnail url="http://timeecocentric.files.wordpress.com/2013/05/03710403.jpg?w=240" />
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			<media:title type="html">A mangled car rest amongst leveled homes and stripped trees the day after a killer tornado hit in Moore, Okla., May 21 , 2013.</media:title>
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		<media:content url="http://0.gravatar.com/avatar/f2cdfe953fad799c6100332224e6ecb9?s=96&amp;d=http%3A%2F%2F0.gravatar.com%2Favatar%2Fad516503a11cd5ca435acc9bb6523536%3Fs%3D96&amp;r=G" medium="image">
			<media:title type="html">jkluger</media:title>
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		<title>The Oklahoma Mega-Twister Is More Weather Than Climate Change</title>
		<link>http://science.time.com/2013/05/21/tornado/</link>
		<comments>http://science.time.com/2013/05/21/tornado/#comments</comments>
		<pubDate>Tue, 21 May 2013 09:45:32 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator>Bryan Walsh</dc:creator>
				<category><![CDATA[Disasters]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Ecocentric]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Uncategorized]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[climate science]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[death toll]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[disaster gap]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[disasters]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[storm warning]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[tornado]]></category>

		<guid isPermaLink="false">http://science.time.com/?p=15351</guid>
		<description><![CDATA[When do you hope a drought will last as long as possible? When it&#8217;s a tornado drought—and a historic tornado drought is exactly what the U.S. experienced between May 2012 and April 2013. During that 12-month period the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) estimated that just 197 tornadoes hit the U.S. rated EF1 or stronger. (Tornadoes are ranked on a scale of EF0 to EF5, with sustained gusts between 65 and 85 mph for the lowest ranking and above 200 mph for the highest ranking cyclone.) Going back to 1954, which is about when decent records on tornado hits began being kept, this is the fewest number of tornadoes to hit the U.S. over a one-year period. The previous low for a 12-month consecutive period? 247, between June 1991 and May 1992, which shows just how unusual the last 12 months have been. Consider that drought over. A massive, mile-wide supercell tornado ripped through the suburbs of Oklahoma City, destroying homes, schools and other buildings. The tornado was on the ground for some 40 minutes, according to the National Weather Service (NWS), and police reported that an occupied elementary school was in the path of the cyclone. Early estimates had winds on the ground near 200 mph, which would have made the cyclone an F4 or higher. Witnesses said the damage was like something out of an atomic bomb strike, and there are at least 24 people dead, including many young children, with a toll that could eventually be far higher. Nor is the Oklahoma City cyclone the only one to strike—more tornadoes hit the area, and last week at least 10 twisters struck north-central Texas, killing at least six people and injuring dozens more. Right now rescuers are doing their best to sift through the wreckage amid hopes that Moore, Oklahoma—ground zero for the cyclones today—doesn&#8217;t become another Joplin, the Missouri town that was essentially flattened in a May 2011 tornado that killed over 150 people. But it&#8217;s impossible to avoid wondering in this year of strange weather<img alt="" border="0" src="http://stats.wordpress.com/b.gif?host=science.time.com&#038;blog=13785469&#038;post=15351&#038;subd=timeecocentric&#038;ref=&#038;feed=1" width="1" height="1" />]]></description>
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		<slash:comments>0</slash:comments>
	<primary_category>Disasters</primary_category><primary_category_link>http://science.time.com/category/disasters/</primary_category_link><featured_image>http://timeecocentric.files.wordpress.com/2013/05/oklahoma-tornado-gallery-jw-04.jpeg?w=240</featured_image>
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			<media:title type="html">Corrie Griffith stands in the driveway of her family's home after a deadly tornado struck Moore, Okla., on May 20, 2013.</media:title>
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		<media:content url="http://1.gravatar.com/avatar/45aadd4bcc836917a2bee9da10316e12?s=96&amp;d=http%3A%2F%2F1.gravatar.com%2Favatar%2Fad516503a11cd5ca435acc9bb6523536%3Fs%3D96&amp;r=G" medium="image">
			<media:title type="html">bryanrwalsh</media:title>
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		<title>Cosmic Graveyard: Looking For Life in an Unlikely Place</title>
		<link>http://science.time.com/2013/05/21/white-dwarf/</link>
		<comments>http://science.time.com/2013/05/21/white-dwarf/#comments</comments>
		<pubDate>Tue, 21 May 2013 09:45:30 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator>Michael D. Lemonick</dc:creator>
				<category><![CDATA[Space]]></category>

		<guid isPermaLink="false">http://science.time.com/?p=15337</guid>
		<description><![CDATA[When a star dies, it leaves a tiny, glowing corpse known as a white dwarf; it’s an ember that retains the mass of a star but crunched down into a  volume the size of the Earth. As the name suggests, white dwarfs start out white hot, then cool over tens of billions of years. Since the universe is only 13.8 billion years old, however, all existing white dwarfs have barely begun losing their heat. That makes them a possible, though seemingly improbable, place to look for habitable planets: a rocky, Earthlike world sufficiently near a white dwarf could actually be balmy and hospitable. And while nobody’s come close to finding a planet around a white dwarf yet, a team of astronomers has taken a big step by finding some telltale rocks — or their remnants, anyway. Using the Hubble Space Telescope, the scientists report in Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society that they’ve teased out evidence of silicon in the upper layers of two white dwarfs in the Hyades star cluster, in the constellation Taurus. Silicon, explains Jay Farihi, of the University of Cambridge, in England, lead author of the study, is a major component of the rocks that make up Earth, Mars and Venus. (MORE: Trouble in Deep Space: Wheel Malfunctions on Kepler Space Telescope) The best explanation, he says: small asteroids falling in toward the white dwarf and breaking up, then plunging into the body of the star itself. “If you threw a rock at the Sun,” he says, “it would just vaporize and mix in. You’d never know it had happened.” If an asteroid fell toward a white dwarf, by contrast, tidal forces generated by the dwarf’s high surface gravity would tear it apart by the time it got within a million miles or so. “It would form a ring, like Saturn’s,” says Farihi. Over the next million years or so, the ring of pulverized asteroid would gradually rain down onto the star and vaporize, contaminating the white dwarf&#8217;s spectrum with an extra soupçon of silicon.<img alt="" border="0" src="http://stats.wordpress.com/b.gif?host=science.time.com&#038;blog=13785469&#038;post=15337&#038;subd=timeecocentric&#038;ref=&#038;feed=1" width="1" height="1" />]]></description>
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		<slash:comments>0</slash:comments>
	<primary_category>Space</primary_category><primary_category_link>http://science.time.com/category/space-2/</primary_category_link><featured_image>http://timeecocentric.files.wordpress.com/2013/05/gallery_image_7617.jpeg?w=240</featured_image>
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			<media:title type="html">This Hubble Space Telescope image shows the "last hurrah" of a star like our sun, the outer layers of gas being cast off and leaving behind the burned out white dwarf, the white dot in the center.</media:title>
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		<media:content url="http://0.gravatar.com/avatar/f2cdfe953fad799c6100332224e6ecb9?s=96&amp;d=http%3A%2F%2F0.gravatar.com%2Favatar%2Fad516503a11cd5ca435acc9bb6523536%3Fs%3D96&amp;r=G" medium="image">
			<media:title type="html">jkluger</media:title>
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		<title>Why Summer in the City Will Get Deadlier</title>
		<link>http://science.time.com/2013/05/20/why-summer-in-the-city-will-get-more-deadly/</link>
		<comments>http://science.time.com/2013/05/20/why-summer-in-the-city-will-get-more-deadly/#comments</comments>
		<pubDate>Mon, 20 May 2013 09:45:30 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator>Bryan Walsh</dc:creator>
				<category><![CDATA[Ecocentric]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[city]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[climate change]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[health]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[heat waves]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[New York]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[summer]]></category>

		<guid isPermaLink="false">http://science.time.com/?p=15329</guid>
		<description><![CDATA[Heat kills. In 1995 five days of stifling heat led to more than 750 deaths in Chicago, as mostly elderly and sick people died in their oven-like apartments. In 2003, a record heat wave struck much of Europe, which led to as many as 70,000 additional deaths due in part to heat. France, which was unused to lingering heat in the summers and which mostly lacks air-conditioning, was hardest hit. Thousands of elderly people died during the heat wave in August of that year, so many that some bodies were left unclaimed for weeks. Undertakers in Paris ran out of space to store all the corpses. So you can imagine that researchers — and officials in big cities — are worried about the effect of killer heat waves in the future, supercharged by climate change. They have reason to fear. A new study in the journal Nature Climate Change by researchers at Columbia University&#8217;s Earth Institute and Mailman School of Public Health looked at Manhattan and found that temperature-related deaths could rise by some 20% by the 2020s and — if worst-case scenarios hold — could rise by more than 90% by the 2080s. And that&#8217;s despite the fact that rising temperatures in the winter would be expected to reduce deaths from cold. Heat in a hot and crowded world could be that deadly. Study co-author Radley Horton, a climate scientist at the Earth Institute, said in a statement: This serves as a reminder that heat events are one of the greatest hazards faced by urban populations around the globe. The Nature Climate Change study is hardly the first to try to project how rising temperatures could impact heat-wave-related deaths, but it is unusually detailed, thanks in part to the minute weather data kept in the city. Monthly average temperatures in New York&#8217;s Central Park rose 3.6ºF between 1901 and 2000 — significantly more than the global and U.S. average. That&#8217;s likely due in part to the urban-heat-island effect: the concrete of a major city holds in heat, causing temperatures to rise and stay hotter than<img alt="" border="0" src="http://stats.wordpress.com/b.gif?host=science.time.com&#038;blog=13785469&#038;post=15329&#038;subd=timeecocentric&#038;ref=&#038;feed=1" width="1" height="1" />]]></description>
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		<slash:comments>0</slash:comments>
	<primary_category>Adaptation</primary_category><primary_category_link>http://science.time.com/category/adaptation-2/</primary_category_link><featured_image>http://timeecocentric.files.wordpress.com/2013/05/10119238.jpeg?w=240</featured_image>
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			<media:title type="html">10119238</media:title>
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		<media:content url="http://1.gravatar.com/avatar/45aadd4bcc836917a2bee9da10316e12?s=96&amp;d=http%3A%2F%2F1.gravatar.com%2Favatar%2Fad516503a11cd5ca435acc9bb6523536%3Fs%3D96&amp;r=G" medium="image">
			<media:title type="html">bryanrwalsh</media:title>
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		<title>Lessons From the Singing Spaceman: What Governments Can Learn From Chris Hadfield</title>
		<link>http://science.time.com/2013/05/19/lessons-from-the-singing-spaceman-what-governments-can-learn-from-chris-hadfield/</link>
		<comments>http://science.time.com/2013/05/19/lessons-from-the-singing-spaceman-what-governments-can-learn-from-chris-hadfield/#comments</comments>
		<pubDate>Sun, 19 May 2013 13:42:52 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator>Jeffrey Kluger</dc:creator>
				<category><![CDATA[Viewpoint]]></category>

		<guid isPermaLink="false">http://science.time.com/?p=15231</guid>
		<description><![CDATA[The manned space program was once like Green Bay Packers tickets — the thing just sold itself. You&#8217;ve got the spacemen, we&#8217;ve got the eyeballs. Workplaces came to a stop, and TVs were rolled into classrooms, not just for an Al Shepard or a John Glenn but also for Pete Conrad and Dick Gordon going up aboard Gemini 11. Know about that one? Of course you don&#8217;t. But everyone did back then. Things are a little different now. Quick: How many people are currently aboard the International Space Station? Anybody? How many people even knew there was an International Space Station? Well, there is one. It&#8217;s an awfully cool machine, and thanks to Canadian astronaut Chris Hadfield, a lot more people now know just how cool. On May 13, Hadfield thumped down in Kazakhstan after a five-month stint aboard the ISS, having made a contribution to the space program that went well beyond the experiments he oversaw in orbit and the simple business of helping to keep the whole football-field-size vehicle flying. Before turning over the conn, he recorded his now viral onboard performance of David Bowie&#8217;s &#8220;Space Oddity,&#8221; which totaled 6.6 million views in the first 24 hours after he posted it on his dedicated channel, helped earn Hadfield nearly 1 million Twitter followers and won the most important thumbs-up of all, from Bowie himself: &#8220;It&#8217;s possibly the most poignant version of the song ever created,&#8221; applauded the original Major Tom on his Facebook page. Hadfield had been up to much of the same brilliantly creative stuff throughout his time in space, performing this live duet with Barenaked Ladies band member Ed Robertson and this irresistible demonstration of what happens when you wring out a wet washcloth in a zero-G environment as well as posting no shortage of stunning images of the earth from space. In the process, he and the Canadian Space Agency, which produced the video, also gave the American space program — and every other branch of any government — a good lesson in how to<img alt="" border="0" src="http://stats.wordpress.com/b.gif?host=science.time.com&#038;blog=13785469&#038;post=15231&#038;subd=timeecocentric&#038;ref=&#038;feed=1" width="1" height="1" />]]></description>
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		<slash:comments>1</slash:comments>
	<primary_category>Viewpoint</primary_category><primary_category_link>http://science.time.com/category/viewpoint/</primary_category_link><featured_image>http://timeecocentric.files.wordpress.com/2013/05/sci-chris-hadfield-130516.jpg?w=240</featured_image>
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			<media:title type="html">Canadian astronaut Chris Hadfield gestures after the Russian Soyuz space capsule landed some 150 km (90 miles) southeast of the town of Zhezkazgan, in central Kazakhstan</media:title>
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		<media:content url="http://0.gravatar.com/avatar/f2cdfe953fad799c6100332224e6ecb9?s=96&amp;d=http%3A%2F%2F0.gravatar.com%2Favatar%2Fad516503a11cd5ca435acc9bb6523536%3Fs%3D96&amp;r=G" medium="image">
			<media:title type="html">jkluger</media:title>
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		<title>Science’s Brilliant Blunders: How Oops Moments Became Eurekas</title>
		<link>http://science.time.com/2013/05/17/sciences-brilliant-blunders-how-oops-moments-became-eurekas/</link>
		<comments>http://science.time.com/2013/05/17/sciences-brilliant-blunders-how-oops-moments-became-eurekas/#comments</comments>
		<pubDate>Fri, 17 May 2013 11:10:31 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator>Michael D. Lemonick</dc:creator>
				<category><![CDATA[Books]]></category>

		<guid isPermaLink="false">http://science.time.com/?p=15280</guid>
		<description><![CDATA[In 1953, the celebrated chemist Linus Pauling, already on track for a Nobel Prize for his work on chemical bonds, solved a major biochemical mystery by figuring out the structure of DNA—but his solution was utterly wrong. Later that decade, the brilliant astrophysicist Fred Hoyle, who had played a major role in discovering how new elements are forged in the core of the Sun, came up with an explanation for the expanding universe. It was known as the “steady-state” theory, and while it was ingenious, it was wrong too. In the early 1900’s Lord Kelvin, one of the founders of thermodynamics, calculated the age of the Earth at 98 million years. He was off by a factor of 45 or so. Each of these world-class scientists made whopping mistakes — and as the astrophysicist Mario Livio shows in his deeply researched and compellingly written new book Brilliant Blunders (Simon &#38; Schuster), they weren’t alone. Darwin and Einstein, too, made significant errors. “Most people imagine that these great luminaries couldn’t possibly make mistakes,” says Livio, who holds a position at the Space Telescope Science Institute. But they did. Some of the bloopers were perfectly understandable based on what was known at the time. Darwin, for example, like many of his contemporaries, assumed that the characteristics of two parents were “blended” in their offspring, “as in the mixing of paints,” writes Livio. Fair enough, given that the existence of genes wasn’t known at the time—except that after a few generations, the contribution of a great-grandparent or a great-great would have been so diluted that none of that ancestor’s genetic material would have been detectable in the descendants. Yet natural selection was supposed to work by having beneficial characteristics reinforced, not diluted. Oops. (MORE: The Mysteries of Bubbles—and Clouds Too) Other mistakes were based on a certainty bordering on arrogance. Pauling had been so successful at explaining chemical bonds and deducing the structures of proteins that he evidently became overconfident: “His model of DNA,” says Livio, “had the wrong number of strands, and<img alt="" border="0" src="http://stats.wordpress.com/b.gif?host=science.time.com&#038;blog=13785469&#038;post=15280&#038;subd=timeecocentric&#038;ref=&#038;feed=1" width="1" height="1" />]]></description>
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		<slash:comments>0</slash:comments>
	<primary_category>Books</primary_category><primary_category_link>http://science.time.com/category/books-2/</primary_category_link><featured_image>http://timeecocentric.files.wordpress.com/2013/05/screen-shot-2013-05-16-at-7-33-41-pm.png?w=240</featured_image>
		<media:thumbnail url="http://timeecocentric.files.wordpress.com/2013/05/screen-shot-2013-05-16-at-7-33-41-pm.png?w=240" />
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			<media:title type="html">Screen Shot 2013-05-16 at 7.33.41 PM</media:title>
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		<media:content url="http://0.gravatar.com/avatar/f2cdfe953fad799c6100332224e6ecb9?s=96&amp;d=http%3A%2F%2F0.gravatar.com%2Favatar%2Fad516503a11cd5ca435acc9bb6523536%3Fs%3D96&amp;r=G" medium="image">
			<media:title type="html">jkluger</media:title>
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		<title>Why Warming Oceans Could Mean Dwindling Fish</title>
		<link>http://science.time.com/2013/05/16/why-warming-oceans-could-mean-dwindling-fish/</link>
		<comments>http://science.time.com/2013/05/16/why-warming-oceans-could-mean-dwindling-fish/#comments</comments>
		<pubDate>Thu, 16 May 2013 09:45:22 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator>Bryan Walsh</dc:creator>
				<category><![CDATA[Ecocentric]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Oceans]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[climate change]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[fish]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[fishing]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[food]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[global warming]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[oceans]]></category>

		<guid isPermaLink="false">http://science.time.com/?p=15272</guid>
		<description><![CDATA[It’s easy to forget that global warming doesn’t just refer to the rising temperature of the air. Climate change is having an enormous, if less understood, impact on the oceans, which already absorb far more carbon dioxide than the atmosphere. Like so much of what goes on in the vast depths that cover more than two-thirds of our planet’s surface, the effect of climate change on the oceans remains a black box, albeit one that scientists are working to illuminate. Here’s one way: fisheries. Wild fish remain a major source of protein for humanity — as well as a major source of reality-TV shows — and for some coastal communities, fish mean even more. Scientists aren’t clear about what effect climate change, including the warming of the oceans, will have on wild fisheries. As Mark Payne of the National Institute of Aquatic Resources writes in a new piece in Nature, ocean researchers “tend to view climate change as a dark cloud on the horizon: potentially problematic in the future, but not of immediate concern” — especially compared with the much more pressing threat of simple overfishing. But now a new study in Nature makes the case that climate change — including the warming of the oceans — is already having a direct impact on global fisheries. Researchers led by William Cheung at the University of British Columbia’s Fisheries Centre created a new model that took the known temperature preferences of different species of commercial fish and compared those figures with catch numbers from around the world. They found that species comfortable in warmer waters have been replacing fish that are more accustomed to cool temperatures. That means climate change is altering the makeup of fisheries around the world — and that could be particularly bad for the tropics, which may eventually become too hot for even for fish that tend to prefer it on the warmer side. As Cheung’s co-author Daniel Pauly put it in a statement: We’ve been talking about climate change as if it’s something that’s going to<img alt="" border="0" src="http://stats.wordpress.com/b.gif?host=science.time.com&#038;blog=13785469&#038;post=15272&#038;subd=timeecocentric&#038;ref=&#038;feed=1" width="1" height="1" />]]></description>
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		<slash:comments>0</slash:comments>
	<primary_category>Oceans</primary_category><primary_category_link>http://science.time.com/category/oceans/</primary_category_link><featured_image>http://timeecocentric.files.wordpress.com/2013/05/166638083.jpeg?w=240</featured_image>
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		<media:content url="http://1.gravatar.com/avatar/45aadd4bcc836917a2bee9da10316e12?s=96&amp;d=http%3A%2F%2F1.gravatar.com%2Favatar%2Fad516503a11cd5ca435acc9bb6523536%3Fs%3D96&amp;r=G" medium="image">
			<media:title type="html">bryanrwalsh</media:title>
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		<title>Trouble in Deep Space: Wheel Malfunction Threatens Kepler Telescope’s Future</title>
		<link>http://science.time.com/2013/05/16/trouble-in-deep-space-wheel-malfunction-threatens-kepler-telescopes-future/</link>
		<comments>http://science.time.com/2013/05/16/trouble-in-deep-space-wheel-malfunction-threatens-kepler-telescopes-future/#comments</comments>
		<pubDate>Thu, 16 May 2013 04:56:42 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator>Michael D. Lemonick</dc:creator>
				<category><![CDATA[Nasa]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Kepler Telescope]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[NASA]]></category>

		<guid isPermaLink="false">http://science.time.com/?p=15269</guid>
		<description><![CDATA[At this time last year, the scientists working on Kepler, NASA’s fantastically successful planet-hunting space telescope, were ecstatic. The probe, launched in 2009, had originally been given just three and a half years’ worth of funding, but in April, 2012, the space agency decided to extend the mission by another 3.5 years. With nearly 3,000 candidate planets in the bag already, astronomers were anticipating a boatload of even more exciting discoveries. Not so much anymore. Last Sunday, the spacecraft’s aim began to drift, sending Kepler into “safe mode” while engineers tried to figure out why. The potentially fatal diagnosis: one of the probe’s reaction wheels, crucial for holding Kepler on target, had stopped working. And if the telescope can’t stay on target, the mission is effectively over. “Unfortunately,” said John Grunsfeld, the scientist- astronaut who helped refurbish the Hubble Space Telescope during a 2009 spacewalk, during a NASA press conference, “Kepler is not in a place where I can go up and repair it.” (PHOTOS: Deep-Space Photos: Hubble’s Greatest Hits) That doesn’t mean engineers are quite ready to give up. “We’ll try the same things you’d do to unstuck a wheel on Earth,” said Charles Sobeck, Kepler’s deputy project manager. “We’ll try jiggling it, commanding it to move back and forth in both directions, forcing it through whatever might be holding it back.” They’ll also try restarting a reaction wheel that stopped working last year. “It could be,” said Sobeck, hopefully, “that if we wake it up, wheel 2 could just start spinning again.” But most of the talk at the press conference was less can-do and more has-done. “We’ve had a phenomenally successful mission,” said Bill Borucki, of the NASA Ames Research Center, who first began lobbying NASA to build Kepler more than 20 years ago. It’s hard to argue with that: Kepler’s original charter was to figure out the frequency of Earth-like planets in the Milky Way. After staring at a single representative patch of stars for four years, it’s found 280 worlds the size of Earth, or<img alt="" border="0" src="http://stats.wordpress.com/b.gif?host=science.time.com&#038;blog=13785469&#038;post=15269&#038;subd=timeecocentric&#038;ref=&#038;feed=1" width="1" height="1" />]]></description>
		<wfw:commentRss>http://science.time.com/2013/05/16/trouble-in-deep-space-wheel-malfunction-threatens-kepler-telescopes-future/feed/</wfw:commentRss>
		<slash:comments>0</slash:comments>
	<primary_category>Nasa</primary_category><primary_category_link>http://science.time.com/category/space-2/nasa-space/</primary_category_link><featured_image>http://timeecocentric.files.wordpress.com/2013/05/planet-hunter_subr.jpg?w=240</featured_image>
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			<media:title type="html">Artist's rendering of the Kepler space telescope.</media:title>
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		<media:content url="http://0.gravatar.com/avatar/f2cdfe953fad799c6100332224e6ecb9?s=96&amp;d=http%3A%2F%2F0.gravatar.com%2Favatar%2Fad516503a11cd5ca435acc9bb6523536%3Fs%3D96&amp;r=G" medium="image">
			<media:title type="html">jkluger</media:title>
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		<title>NASA’s Kepler Telescope May Have Limited Future After Equipment Failure</title>
		<link>http://science.time.com/2013/05/15/nasas-kepler-telescope-may-have-limited-future-after-equipment-failure/</link>
		<comments>http://science.time.com/2013/05/15/nasas-kepler-telescope-may-have-limited-future-after-equipment-failure/#comments</comments>
		<pubDate>Wed, 15 May 2013 20:59:33 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator>AP / Alicia Chang</dc:creator>
				<category><![CDATA[Nasa]]></category>

		<guid isPermaLink="false">http://science.time.com/?p=15264</guid>
		<description><![CDATA[(LOS ANGELES) — NASA&#8217;s planet-hunting telescope is broken. The Kepler spacecraft lost the second of four wheels that control the telescope&#8217;s orientation in space, NASA said Wednesday. If engineers can&#8217;t find a fix, the failure means Kepler won&#8217;t be able to look for exoplanets — planets outside our solar system anymore. &#8220;I wouldn&#8217;t call Kepler down-and-out just yet,&#8221; said NASA sciences chief John Grunsfeld. Kepler was launched in 2009 in search of Earth-like planets. So far, it has confirmed 132 planets and spotted more than 2,700 potential ones. While ground telescopes can hunt for exoplanets, Kepler is much more advanced. (MORE: Hopeful New Signs of Duplicate Earths) Deputy project manager Charles Sobeck said there&#8217;s a backlog of data that scientists still need to analyze even if Kepler&#8217;s planet-hunting days may be numbered. For the past four years, Kepler has focused its telescope on a patch of the Milky Way hosting more than 150,000 stars, recording slight dips in brightness — a sign of a planet passing in front of the star. Now &#8220;We can&#8217;t point where we need to point. We can&#8217;t gather data,&#8221; Sobeck told The Associated Press. Last month, astronomers announced Kepler&#8217;s discovery of two distant worlds that are the best candidates for habitable planets. The $600 million mission is managed by the NASA Ames Research Center in Northern California. MORE: Water Worlds: Has NASA Found Mirror Earths?<img alt="" border="0" src="http://stats.wordpress.com/b.gif?host=science.time.com&#038;blog=13785469&#038;post=15264&#038;subd=timeecocentric&#038;ref=&#038;feed=1" width="1" height="1" />]]></description>
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		<slash:comments>0</slash:comments>
	<primary_category>Nasa</primary_category><primary_category_link>http://science.time.com/category/space-2/nasa-space/</primary_category_link><featured_image>http://timeecocentric.files.wordpress.com/2013/05/planet-hunter_subr.jpg?w=240</featured_image>
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			<media:title type="html">Artist's rendering of the Kepler space telescope.</media:title>
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		<media:content url="http://0.gravatar.com/avatar/cbef58d71daefb9ddab6c6b20018290c?s=96&amp;d=http%3A%2F%2F0.gravatar.com%2Favatar%2Fad516503a11cd5ca435acc9bb6523536%3Fs%3D96&amp;r=G" medium="image">
			<media:title type="html">timeassociatedpress</media:title>
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		<title>The IEA Says Peak Oil Is Dead. That’s Bad News for Climate Policy</title>
		<link>http://science.time.com/2013/05/15/the-iea-says-peak-oil-is-dead-thats-bad-news-for-climate-policy/</link>
		<comments>http://science.time.com/2013/05/15/the-iea-says-peak-oil-is-dead-thats-bad-news-for-climate-policy/#comments</comments>
		<pubDate>Wed, 15 May 2013 09:45:44 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator>Bryan Walsh</dc:creator>
				<category><![CDATA[Ecocentric]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Oil]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[climate change]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[climate policy]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[extreme energy]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[IEA]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[oil]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[peak oil]]></category>

		<guid isPermaLink="false">http://science.time.com/?p=15240</guid>
		<description><![CDATA[No one—aside maybe from survivalists who&#8217;d stocked up on MREs and assault rifles—was really looking forward to a peak-oil world. Read this 2007 GQ piece by Benjamin Kunkel—while we&#8217;re discussing topics from the mid-2000s—that imagines what a world without oil would really be like. Think uncomfortable and violent. Oil is in nearly every modern product we use, and it&#8217;s still what gets us from point A to point B—especially if you need to get from A to B in a plane. If we were really to see the global oil supply peak and decline sharply, even as demand continued to go up, well, apocalyptic might not be too large a word. And for several years in the middle of the last decade, as oil prices climbed past $100 a barrel and analysts were betting it would break $200, that scenario seemed entirely plausible. But there was an upside to peak oil. Crude oil was responsible for a significant chunk of global carbon emissions, second only to coal. Only the shock of being severed from the main fuel of modernity would be enough to make us get serious about tackling climate change and shifting to an economy powered by renewable energy and efficiency. We&#8217;d have to because we&#8217;d have no other choice, save a future that might look something like Mad Max. We&#8217;d lose oil but save the world. Increasingly, though, that doesn&#8217;t seem likely to happen. New oil sources, many of them unlocked by new technology—the Canadian oil sands, tight oil in North Dakota and Texas, ultra-deepwater oil in the Atlantic—has helped keep the supply of oil growing, even as greater efficiency measures and other social shifts have helped blunt demand in rich countries like the U.S. Oil isn&#8217;t likely to be cheap—a barrel of Brent crude is $102—and getting it out of the ground isn&#8217;t going to get any easier. But it&#8217;s increasingly likely that we will have more than enough oil in the future to keep the global economy growing and stave off any Mel Gibson-esque apocalypses. Indeed, a new assessment released<img alt="" border="0" src="http://stats.wordpress.com/b.gif?host=science.time.com&#038;blog=13785469&#038;post=15240&#038;subd=timeecocentric&#038;ref=&#038;feed=1" width="1" height="1" />]]></description>
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		<slash:comments>1</slash:comments>
	<primary_category>Oil</primary_category><primary_category_link>http://science.time.com/category/energy/oil/</primary_category_link><featured_image>http://timeecocentric.files.wordpress.com/2013/05/166074732.jpg?w=240</featured_image>
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			<media:title type="html">Suncor base plant, in the Athabasca Oil Sands, near Fort McMurray, Alberta, Canada, on March 26, 2013.</media:title>
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			<media:title type="html">bryanrwalsh</media:title>
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		<title>Revealed! The Mysteries of Bubbles — and Clouds Too</title>
		<link>http://science.time.com/2013/05/14/bubbles/</link>
		<comments>http://science.time.com/2013/05/14/bubbles/#comments</comments>
		<pubDate>Tue, 14 May 2013 09:45:35 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator>Veronique Greenwood</dc:creator>
				<category><![CDATA[Math & Physics]]></category>

		<guid isPermaLink="false">http://science.time.com/?p=15180</guid>
		<description><![CDATA[It bears repeating: the world is complicated. Oh, it looks simple enough: your coffee pours from pot to cup, round things roll but square things don&#8217;t, stuff that goes up will come back down (usually). But a little physics can peel back the skin of the world and give you a glimpse of fascinating stuff going on beneath the surface, driving the simplest of processes. It can make you into the kind of person who can stand in the shower shrouded in a too friendly plastic curtain for a good 15 minutes, pondering whether the thing is drawn inward thanks to the same phenomenon that helps keep planes in the air — Bernoulli&#8217;s Principle, as you know if you&#8217;re indeed one of those people. Two new papers in the most recent Science take us to this deconstructionist place: they explore the knotty math behind bubbles and the secret lives of cirrus clouds, a pair of things that owe their existence to some very complex science even if you&#8217;ve never thought about them too hard. Bubbles are more than just individual, poppable spheres floating through the air, of course — even if those are the most pristine expressions of the delicate form. They&#8217;re also part of the foam on your cappuccino, the froth of your shampoo, and in that state, they fall into a notoriously difficult class of problems called multiphase multiphysics. Each bubble in a mound of foam is simply a tiny bit of fluid stretched around a pocket of air — air that presses out with equal pressure in all directions and thus gives the bubble its shape. Collectively, however, the bubbles operate on different scales governed by different physical rules. (MORE: Studies of the Past Show an Ice-Free Arctic Could Be in Our Future) At the smallest scale, the bubbles may look still, but the fluid in each one is in a constant state of motion, gradually draining toward the places the bubbles meet. When that flow causes the skin of an individual bubble to grow too thin, it pops. In<img alt="" border="0" src="http://stats.wordpress.com/b.gif?host=science.time.com&#038;blog=13785469&#038;post=15180&#038;subd=timeecocentric&#038;ref=&#038;feed=1" width="1" height="1" />]]></description>
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		<slash:comments>0</slash:comments>
	<primary_category>Math &amp; Physics</primary_category><primary_category_link>http://science.time.com/category/math-physics/</primary_category_link><featured_image>http://timeecocentric.files.wordpress.com/2013/05/200283403-001.jpg?w=240</featured_image>
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			<media:title type="html">Bubbles</media:title>
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		<media:content url="http://0.gravatar.com/avatar/f2cdfe953fad799c6100332224e6ecb9?s=96&amp;d=http%3A%2F%2F0.gravatar.com%2Favatar%2Fad516503a11cd5ca435acc9bb6523536%3Fs%3D96&amp;r=G" medium="image">
			<media:title type="html">jkluger</media:title>
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		<title>Modifying the Endless Debate Over Genetically Modified Crops</title>
		<link>http://science.time.com/2013/05/14/modifying-the-endless-genetically-modified-crop-debate/</link>
		<comments>http://science.time.com/2013/05/14/modifying-the-endless-genetically-modified-crop-debate/#comments</comments>
		<pubDate>Tue, 14 May 2013 09:45:11 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator>Bryan Walsh</dc:creator>
				<category><![CDATA[Food]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Going Green]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[genetically modified crops]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Gm crops]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[GM food]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[GMOs]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Monsanto]]></category>

		<guid isPermaLink="false">http://science.time.com/?p=15217</guid>
		<description><![CDATA[I&#8217;ll admit—I&#8217;ve never quite understood the obsession surrounding genetically modified (GM) crops. To environmentalist opponents, GM foods are simply evil, an understudied, possibly harmful tool used by big agribusiness to control global seed markets and crush local farmers. They argue that GM foods have never delivered on their supposed promise, that money spent on GM crops would be better funneled to organic farming and that consumers should be protected with warning labels on any products that contain genetically modified ingredients. To supporters, GM crops are a key part of the effort to sustainably provide food to meet a global population that is growing by the billions. But more than that, supporters see the knee-jerk GM opposition of many environmentalists as fundamentally anti-science, no different than the deniers on the other side of the political spectrum who question the basics of man-made climate change. For both sides, GM foods seem to act as a symbol: you&#8217;re pro-agribusiness or anti-science. But science is exactly what we need more of when it comes to GM foods, which is why I was happy to see the venerable journal Nature devote a special series of articles to the GM food controversy. You can download most of them for free here, and they&#8217;re well worth reading. The upshot: while GM crops haven&#8217;t yet realized their initial promise and have been dominated by agribusiness, there is reason to continue to use and develop them to help meet the enormous challenge of sustainably feeding a growing planet. (LIST: 6 Genetically Modified Foods That Changed the World) That doesn&#8217;t mean GM crops are perfect, or a one sizes fits all solution to global agriculture woes. Nature points out that most of the benefit of GM technology so far has indeed gone to big agribusiness, much of it in the form of herbicide-resistant crops like Monsanto&#8217;s Roundup Ready soybeans or cotton. Of course, just because something benefits Monsanto doesn&#8217;t automatically make it wrong—though clearly not everyone would believe that—and advocates say that GM crops have increased agriculture production by nearly $100 billion and prevented<img alt="" border="0" src="http://stats.wordpress.com/b.gif?host=science.time.com&#038;blog=13785469&#038;post=15217&#038;subd=timeecocentric&#038;ref=&#038;feed=1" width="1" height="1" />]]></description>
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		<slash:comments>1</slash:comments>
	<primary_category>Food</primary_category><primary_category_link>http://science.time.com/category/food/</primary_category_link><featured_image>http://timeecocentric.files.wordpress.com/2013/05/154506257.jpg?w=240</featured_image>
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			<media:title type="html">Non-GMO food products, in Los Angeles, Calif., on October 19, 2012.</media:title>
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			<media:title type="html">bryanrwalsh</media:title>
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		<title>Why a Hotter World Will Mean More Extinctions</title>
		<link>http://science.time.com/2013/05/13/why-a-hotter-world-will-mean-more-extinctions/</link>
		<comments>http://science.time.com/2013/05/13/why-a-hotter-world-will-mean-more-extinctions/#comments</comments>
		<pubDate>Mon, 13 May 2013 09:45:03 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator>Bryan Walsh</dc:creator>
				<category><![CDATA[Animals]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Ecocentric]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Endangered Species]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[animals]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[climate change]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[endangered species]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[extinction]]></category>

		<guid isPermaLink="false">http://science.time.com/?p=15191</guid>
		<description><![CDATA[The end of last week saw the carbon concentrations in the atmosphere finally pass the 400-part-per-million threshold. That means carbon levels are higher now than they&#8217;ve been for at least 800,000 years, and most likely far longer. There&#8217;s nothing special per se about 400 parts per million — other than giving all of us a change to note it in article like this one — but it&#8217;s a reminder that we are headed very fast into a very uncertain future. Parts per million and global temperature change, though, are just numbers. What matters is the effect they will have on life — ours, of course, but also everything else that lives on the planet earth. I&#8217;ve written before that while I certainly worry and fear the impact that unchecked climate change will have on humanity, I also feel relatively — relatively — confident that we will, in some ways, muddle through. Human beings have already proved that they are extremely adaptable, living — with various degrees of success — from the hottest desert to the coldest corner of the Arctic. I don&#8217;t think a future where temperatures are 4˚F or 5˚F or 6˚F warmer on average will be an optimal one for humanity, to say the least. But I don&#8217;t think it will be the end of our species either. (I&#8217;ve always favored asteroids for that.) (PHOTOS: Up in the Air: Celebrate World Migratory Bird Day) But the plants and animals that share this planet with us are a different story. Even before climate change has really kicked in, human expansion had led to the destruction of habitat on land and in the sea, as we crowd out other species. By some estimates we&#8217;re already in the midst of the sixth great extinction wave, one that&#8217;s largely human caused, with extinction rates that are 1,000 to 10,000 times higher than the background rate of species loss. So what will happen to those plants and animals if and when the climate really starts warming? According to a new study in Nature Climate Change, the answer is pretty simple: they will run out of habitable space, and many of them will die.<img alt="" border="0" src="http://stats.wordpress.com/b.gif?host=science.time.com&#038;blog=13785469&#038;post=15191&#038;subd=timeecocentric&#038;ref=&#038;feed=1" width="1" height="1" />]]></description>
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		<slash:comments>0</slash:comments>
	<primary_category>Endangered Species</primary_category><primary_category_link>http://science.time.com/category/animals-2/endangered-species/</primary_category_link><featured_image>http://timeecocentric.files.wordpress.com/2013/05/138343068.jpg?w=240</featured_image>
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			<media:title type="html">Polar Bear</media:title>
		</media:content>

		<media:content url="http://1.gravatar.com/avatar/45aadd4bcc836917a2bee9da10316e12?s=96&amp;d=http%3A%2F%2F1.gravatar.com%2Favatar%2Fad516503a11cd5ca435acc9bb6523536%3Fs%3D96&amp;r=G" medium="image">
			<media:title type="html">bryanrwalsh</media:title>
		</media:content>

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			<media:title type="html">More...</media:title>
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		<title>Spacewalking Repair Halts Station Leak – For Now</title>
		<link>http://science.time.com/2013/05/11/spacewalking-astronauts-hunt-for-big-station-leak/</link>
		<comments>http://science.time.com/2013/05/11/spacewalking-astronauts-hunt-for-big-station-leak/#comments</comments>
		<pubDate>Sat, 11 May 2013 15:32:58 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator>AP / Marcia Dunn</dc:creator>
				<category><![CDATA[Space]]></category>

		<guid isPermaLink="false">http://science.time.com/?p=15194</guid>
		<description><![CDATA[(CAPE CANAVERAL, Fla.) — Astronauts making a rare, hastily planned spacewalk replaced a pump outside the International Space Station on Saturday in hopes of plugging a serious ammonia leak. The prospects of success grew as the minutes passed and no frozen flecks of ammonia appeared. Mission Control said it appeared as though the leak may have been plugged, although additional monitoring over the coming days, if not weeks, will be needed before declaring a victory. &#8220;No evidence of any ammonia leakage whatsoever. We have an airtight system — at the moment,&#8221; Mission Control reported. Christopher Cassidy and Thomas Marshburn installed the new pump after removing the old one suspected of spewing flakes of frozen ammonia coolant two days earlier. They uncovered &#8220;no smoking guns&#8221; responsible for the leak and consequently kept a sharp lookout for any icy flecks that might appear from the massive frame that holds the solar panels on the left side. (PHOTOS: Window on Infinity: Pictures from Space) &#8220;Let us know if you see anything,&#8221; Mission Control urged as the fresh pump was cranked up. Thirty minutes later, all was still well. &#8220;No snow,&#8221; the astronauts radioed. &#8220;We have our eyes on it and haven&#8217;t seen a thing,&#8221; Marshburn said. NASA said the leak, while significant, never jeopardized crew safety. But managers wanted to deal with the trouble now, while it&#8217;s fresh and before Marshburn returns to Earth in just a few days. The space agency never before staged such a fast, impromptu spacewalk for a station crew. Even during the shuttle days, unplanned spacewalks were uncommon. The ammonia pump was the chief suspect going into Saturday&#8217;s spacewalk. So it was disheartening for NASA, at first, as Cassidy and Marshburn reported nothing amiss on or around the old pump. &#8220;All the pipes look shiny clean, no crud,&#8221; Cassidy said as he used a long, dentist-like mirror to peer into tight, deep openings. &#8220;I can&#8217;t give you any good data other than nominal, unfortunately. No smoking guns.&#8221; Engineers determined there was nothing to lose by installing a new pump, despite<img alt="" border="0" src="http://stats.wordpress.com/b.gif?host=science.time.com&#038;blog=13785469&#038;post=15194&#038;subd=timeecocentric&#038;ref=&#038;feed=1" width="1" height="1" />]]></description>
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	<primary_category>Space</primary_category><primary_category_link>http://science.time.com/category/space-2/</primary_category_link>
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		<title>NASA: Spacewalk Planned to Fix Space Station Leak</title>
		<link>http://science.time.com/2013/05/10/nasa-spacewalk-planned-to-fix-space-station-leak/</link>
		<comments>http://science.time.com/2013/05/10/nasa-spacewalk-planned-to-fix-space-station-leak/#comments</comments>
		<pubDate>Fri, 10 May 2013 20:51:26 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator>AP / Seth Borenstein</dc:creator>
				<category><![CDATA[Nasa]]></category>

		<guid isPermaLink="false">http://science.time.com/?p=15186</guid>
		<description><![CDATA[(WASHINGTON) — Two astronauts will do a spacewalk Saturday to try to fix an ammonia leak in the power system at the International Space Station. The leak forced the shutdown of one of eight solar panels. But NASA says the space station can operate fine with only seven panels providing power. NASA announced the decision to do the spacewalk at a briefing Friday afternoon. The leak is in one of the radiator lines that cool the power systems. There&#8217;s been a leak before in the same area. NASA has said the six-man station crew is not in danger. Three of them are scheduled to return to Earth on Monday, one of the reasons why they will try to fix the problem this weekend. PHOTOS: Window on Infinity: Pictures from Space<img alt="" border="0" src="http://stats.wordpress.com/b.gif?host=science.time.com&#038;blog=13785469&#038;post=15186&#038;subd=timeecocentric&#038;ref=&#038;feed=1" width="1" height="1" />]]></description>
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	<primary_category>Nasa</primary_category><primary_category_link>http://science.time.com/category/space-2/nasa-space/</primary_category_link>
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