AAAS Annual Meeting Newsroom

Public Release: 19-Feb-2010

2010 AAAS Annual Meeting
Public opinion expert Dan Yankelovich proposes new strategy for developing an informed public
How can the United States benefit from an "informed public" when policy debates revolve around scientific questions that bewilder or confuse most Americans? Daniel Yankelovich, a preeminent social scientist, sought to answer this question today as one of a diverse array of leading scientists, engineers, educators and policy-makers who presented at the American Association's Advancement of Science's 176th annual meeting in San Diego on Feb. 19, 2010.

Public Release: 19-Feb-2010

2010 AAAS Annual Meeting
Progesterone for traumatic brain injury tested in Phase III clinical trial
Researchers at 17 medical centers soon will begin using the hormone progesterone to treat patients who experience traumatic brain injury. The treatment is part of an NIH-funded, randomized, double-blind Phase III clinical trial that will enroll approximately 1,140 people beginning in March 2010. An earlier trial in 100 patients found that giving progesterone to trauma victims shortly after a brain injury appears to be safe and may reduce the risk of death and long-term disability.

National Institutes of Health

Public Release: 19-Feb-2010

2010 AAAS Annual Meeting
Computer games can teach schools some lessons
If schools adopted some of the strategies that video games use, they could educate children more effectively, according to Arizona State University professor James Gee. Gee, one of the first scholars to study the educational potential of video games, shared his expertise in a symposium at the AAAS annual meeting.

Public Release: 19-Feb-2010

2010 AAAS Annual Meeting
Strategic cooperation sets the scene for geological disposal of nuclear waste in Europe
A group of eight European radioactive waste management organisations have set up the "Implementing Geological Disposal Technology Platform" with support from the European Commission. Their vision is that "by 2025, the first geological disposal facilities for spent fuel, high-level waste and other long-lived radioactive waste will be operating safely in Europe." The world's first geological disposal facilities will start operation in Finland, Sweden and France in the period 2020-2025.

Public Release: 19-Feb-2010

2010 AAAS Annual Meeting
Dust from distant lands may affect climate and health in the Americas and Europe
Dr. Joe Prospero from the University of Miami shares new evidence that dust storms may exist in the arctic, possibly caused by receding glaciers, which may be making deposits similar to those transported from the deserts of Africa to the southern US and Caribbean.

Public Release: 19-Feb-2010

2010 AAAS Annual Meeting
Smart electricity transmission systems needed to achieve the full potential of renewable energies
A new JRC lead-authored report on transmission network planning highlights that a radical change in coordinated network planning and operation is needed to accommodate market liberalization and the increasing integration of renewable power sources. The key issues to obtain a reliable and effective European grid are integrated strategic planning and cross-border coordination. In the US, studies by the Electric Power Research Institute also highlight planning's central role to accommodate high levels of variable generation from renewable resources.

Public Release: 19-Feb-2010

2010 AAAS Annual Meeting
Engineering education must break out of 'techie' box
Facing the engineering challenges of the 21st century will demand a broadening of engineering education far beyond equipping students with technical expertise. Engineering professor Brad Allenby says today's engineering students need to learn more extensively about the social, cultural and global economic contexts in which they will be pursuing careers. They also need to understand the environmental and ethical impacts of their work.

Public Release: 19-Feb-2010

2010 AAAS Annual Meeting
Idea of restoring 'natural systems' misses mark as response to climate change challenges
Professor Brad Allenby says approaches to formulating geoengineering solutions to global environmental challenges such as climate change are often too one-dimensional. They fail to move beyond a technical framework and deal with the many societal, cultural and ethical issues that will arise in any large-scale efforts to alter or counteract atmospheric and climate conditions.

Public Release: 18-Feb-2010

2010 AAAS Annual Meeting
Dolphins could be ideal model to study human cervical cancer, UF veterinarians say
Dolphins are the only species besides humans known to harbor infections of multiple papillomavirus types, which are known to be linked with cervical cancer in women. As a result, dolphins may be the ideal model for the study of cervical cancer in women.

Public Release: 18-Feb-2010

2010 AAAS Annual Meeting
Dolphin cognitive abilities raise ethical questions, says Emory neuroscientist
Many modern dolphin brains are significantly larger than those of humans and second in mass to the human brain when corrected for body size, says an Emory scientist. Some dolphin brains exhibit features correlated with complex intelligence, including a large expanse of neocortical volume that is more convoluted than that of humans, extensive insular and cingulated regions, and highly differentiated cellular regions. This has ethical and policy considerations.

Public Release: 18-Feb-2010

2010 AAAS Annual Meeting

Science Translational Medicine
Johns Hopkins scientists develop personalized blood tests for cancer using whole genome sequencing
Scientists at the Johns Hopkins Kimmel Cancer Center have used data from the whole genome sequencing of cancer patients to develop individualized blood tests they believe can help physicians tailor patients' treatments. The genome-based blood tests, believed to be the first of their kind, may be used to monitor tumor levels after therapy and determine cancer recurrence.

National Institutes of Health, Lustgarten Foundation, National Colorectal Cancer Research Alliance, UNCF-Merck Fellowship

Public Release: 18-Feb-2010

2010 AAAS Annual Meeting
Virtualizing succession and sustainability
A critical question in how we as a society imagine our future is: what burdens we are willing to place on future generations? Visualizations of future scenarios are powerful tools for exploring sustainability science and problem-solving capacity.

Public Release: 18-Feb-2010

2010 AAAS Annual Meeting

Science Translational Medicine
Personalizing cancer: Creating biomarkers from tumor DNA
Researchers have developed a new technique for tracking cancer by identifying personalized biomarkers from tumor DNA, reports a new study in the Feb. 24, 2010, issue of the journal Science Translational Medicine, published by AAAS, the nonprofit science society. The findings show that next-generation sequencing technology is poised become an important tool in the new era of personalized management of cancer patients.

Public Release: 18-Feb-2010

2010 AAAS Annual Meeting
Nuclear verification: helping to find a needle in a hay stack
The European Commission Joint Research Centre is among the few laboratories in the world that can provide the highly specialised analytical methods and techniques needed for nuclear safeguards and forensics purposes. In Europe, the JRC's Institute for Transuranium Elements supports Euratom Safeguards. At international level, the JRC cooperates with the International Atomic Energy Agency. Soon, JRC will enhance its capabilities to find nuclear materials in aerosol particles, this will be like finding a needle in a hay stack.

Public Release: 18-Feb-2010

2010 AAAS Annual Meeting
APS physicists release nuclear downsizing report
The American Physical Society, the world's leading organization of physicists, has released a report identifying technical steps that will help the US achieve its goals to downsize the nuclear arsenal, prevent the spread of atomic bombs and keep the stockpile safe and secure.

Public Release: 18-Feb-2010

2010 AAAS Annual Meeting
Dolphins' health shed light on human and ocean health
A panel of governmental, academic and nonprofit scientists speaking today at the annual meeting of the American Association for the Advancement of Science unveiled research suggesting that diseases found in dolphins are similar to human diseases and can provide clues into how human health might be affected by exposure to contaminated coastal water or seafood.

Public Release: 18-Feb-2010

2010 AAAS Annual Meeting
Understanding global climate change through new breakthroughs in polar research
The latest findings from research on Antarctica's rich marine life are presented this week at the American Association for the Advancement of Science. Marine biologist Huw Griffiths from British Antarctic Survey is involved in a major international investigation into the distribution and abundance of Antarctica's vast marine biodiversity -- the Census of Antarctic Marine Life.

Public Release: 18-Feb-2010

2010 AAAS Annual Meeting
Electric avenue: Electric cars on a 2-way street?
Think of it as the end of cars' slacker days: no more sitting idle for hours in parking lots or garages racking up payments, but instead earning their keep by helping store power for the electricity grid. A University of Michigan professor presents Friday at AAAS about the possibilities electric cars present.

National Science Foundation

Public Release: 17-Feb-2010

2010 AAAS Annual Meeting
Caltech researchers presenting at AAAS Meeting
Seismology, space/time and solar fuels are some of the many topics being presented by Caltech-affiliated researchers at this year's AAAS meeting in San Diego.

Public Release: 16-Feb-2010

2010 AAAS Annual Meeting
Canadian ocean science in the spotlight at AAAS 2010
Canadian leadership in ocean sciences will be front and center at this week's meeting of the American Association for the Advancement of Science in San Diego, Calif. On Friday, February 19, Dalhousie University's Ron O'Dor will talk about the ambitious plans for the international Ocean Tracking Network to which Canada has committed $45 million, including up to $10 million from the Natural Sciences and Engineering Research Council of Canada.

Public Release: 18-Feb-2010

2010 AAAS Annual Meeting
2009 International Science and Engineering Visualization Challenge winners announced
"What is one of the most important issues for our planet, which needs collaboration of people from every area?" asked Sung Hoon Kang of Harvard University, discussing the concept of sustainability, the subject of his award-winning photograph. In the image, tiny plastic fingers, each with a diameter 1/500th of a human hair, cradle a tiny green sphere, bringing to mind cooperative efforts across the world to promote the sustainability of the planet.

Science, National Science Foundation

Public Release: 18-Feb-2010

2010 AAAS Annual Meeting
Images of extrasolar planets win award for most outstanding papers in Science
Two papers will share the 2009 Newcomb Cleveland Prize for outstanding papers in Science. One of these papers, whose lead author was UC Berkeley astronomer Paul Kalas, was accompanied by the first visible light image of a planet outside our solar system.

NASA, National Science Foundation

Public Release: 17-Feb-2010

2010 AAAS Annual Meeting
Laboratory research team awarded AAAS Newcomb Cleveland Prize
A Laboratory researcher's paper published in November 2008 is a co-winner of this year's American Association for the Advancement of Science Newcomb Cleveland Prize. The paper is one of two outstanding papers published in Science from June 1, 2008 through May 31, 2009.

Public Release: 15-Feb-2010

2010 AAAS Annual Meeting
2009 AAAS Lifetime Mentor Award goes to Diola Bagayoko
Diola Bagayoko of the Southern University at Baton Rouge, La., has been honored by the American Association for the Advancement of Science "for his extraordinary effort to significantly increase the number of African-American Ph.D.s in physics and chemistry."

Public Release: 15-Feb-2010

2010 AAAS Annual Meeting
2009 AAAS International Scientific Cooperation Award goes to Katepalli R. Sreenivasan
The American Association for the Advancement of Science, the world's largest general scientific society, has named Katepalli R. Sreenivasan, an extraordinary educator and mentor of next-generation scholars worldwide, to receive the 2009 AAAS International Scientific Cooperation Award.


			HOME DISCLAIMER PRIVACY POLICY TERMS & CONDITIONS CONTACT US TOP Copyright ©2013 by AAAS, the science society.