In the Cerrado region of Brazil, four dogs trained to detect animal feces by scent are helping researchers monitor rare and threatened wildlife such as jaguar, tapir, giant anteater and maned wolf in and around Emas National Park, a protected area with the largest concentration of threatened species in Brazil.

The researchers analyze feces found by the dogs to learn about where and how the threatened mammals live. Data such as numbers, range, diet, hormonal stress, parasites and even genetic identity contribute to a study of how the mammals use environments inside and outside the park, especially on privately owned lands of the region.

The information helps develop conservation and development strategies that meet the needs of both the animals and local farmers. The dogs are rewarded for their good work with tennis balls to chase and chomp.

Insects have provided the inspiration for a team of European researchers seeking to improve the functionality of robots and robotic tools.

The research furthers the development of more intelligent robots, which can then be used by industry, and by emergency and security services, among others. Smarter robots would be better able to find humans buried beneath the rubble of a collapsed building, for example.

The EU-funded SPARK project set out to develop a new robot control architecture for roving robots inspired by the principles governing the behavior of living systems and based on the concept of self-organization.

Perhaps no physicist has come closer to becoming the ultimate politician as Albert Einstein, when he was asked to become the second president of Israel in 1952. He declined of course, but decades later more and more scientists are plunging into the political scene.

In March, the US House Energy and Commerce Committee launched an investigation into potential conflicts of interest in scientific panels that advise the Environmental Protection Agency on the human health effects of toxic chemicals.

The committee identified eight scientists that served as consultants or members of EPA science advisory panels while getting research support from the chemical industry to study the chemicals under review. Two scientists were actually employed by companies that made or worked with manufacturers of the chemicals under review.

Such conflicts, Chairman John Dingell (D-Mich.) noted, stand in stark contrast to the agency’s dismissal last summer of highly respected public health scientist Deborah Rice, an expert in toxicology, from a panel examining the health impacts of the flame retardant deca. The EPA fired Rice after the chemical industry’s trade group, the American Chemistry Council, complained that she could not provide an objective scientific review because she had spoken out about the health hazards posed by deca.

A University of Leicester space scientist has worked out that sending texts via mobile phones works out to be far more expensive than downloading data from the Hubble Space Telescope. Dr. Nigel Bannister’s calculations were used for the Channel 4 Dispatches program “The Mobile Phone Rip-Off.”

There exists much ethical controversy brought about by advances in biology and medicine and the relationship to religion. In a new essay in The Journal of Law, Medicine & Ethics, Laurie Zoloth takes an approach to medical ethics that draws upon Jewish texts, traditions, and philosophy to show how acting to change the world is indicative of this faith tradition.

Genetic explanations for how the natural world functions and why humans behave as we do can challenge what has historically been the moral province of religion: the questions of befalleness, suffering, healing. A question to be explored then is whether genetic enhancement of human capabilities, in addition to in their use in curing disease, is also a legitimate goal for biomedical science and technology.

Stem cells, the body's wonder tool, are extremely versatile. They can develop in 220 different ways, transforming themselves into a correspondingly diverse range of specialized body cells.

Biologists and medical scientists plan to make use of this differentiation ability to selectively harvest cardiac, skin or nerve cells for the treatment of different diseases. However, the stem cell culture techniques practiced today are not very efficient. What proportion of a mass of stem cells is transformed into which body cells? And in what conditions?

“We need devices that keep doing the same thing and thus deliver statistically reliable data,” says Professor Günter Fuhr, director of the Fraunhofer Institute for Biomedical Engineering IBMT in St. Ingbert.

Socrates (470-399 BC) may have lived centuries ago but the methods connected with him never go out of date.

Socratic methods(1) have developed independently in various countries. They all describe similar methodological steps - an opening question is answered by all participants and followed by cooperative, critical analysis. Finally, the new ideas are connected to the everyday life experience of the participants.

This formal structure helps participants to try new, bold ideas that they might otherwise not have tested. By cooperating when examining the ideas they also seem to learn a way to address problems on their own without teacher intervention.

Like video games? Want to also solve puzzles for science?

A new game, named Foldit, turns protein folding into a competitive sport. Introductory levels teach the rules, which are the same laws of physics by which protein strands curl and twist into three-dimensional shapes – key for biological mysteries ranging from Alzheimer's to vaccines.

After about 20 minutes of training, people feel like they're playing a video game but are actually mouse-clicking in the name of medical science.

Would you recognize a legislative push for Creationism if you saw one? After decades of failed legal strategies to overtly ban evolution or make equal time for Creationism in public schools, the latest tack used by the opponents of evolution is to have 'academic freedom' bills that encourage school teachers to include supposed evidence against evolution, or the presentation of 'both sides' of a controversial issue in science class. If you support the integrity of science education, you should oppose bills like this, both because they are redundant when it comes to good science (teachers already can teach both scientific sides of a legitimate scientific debate), and because the Creationist legislators pushing them are up to no good. But are we reaching a point where Creationism is defining itself out of existence? Are they creating a legal loophole too small for their anti-evolutionary propaganda to fit through?