Scientists

Chris Paine is a filmmaker whose documentaries include "Who Killed the Electric Car?" ,"Charge" and "Revenge of the Electric Car. " The troubles of electric-car-maker Fisker Automotive have fueled another round of debate about whether plug-ins can live up to their promises. The California start-up, which had already halted production and laid off most of its employees, missed a federal loan payment Monday and told a congressional hearing on Wednesday that bankruptcy may be unavoidable . This is likely the end of the road...

ANCHORAGE, Alaska — Scientists monitoring Alaska's volcanoes have been forced to shut down stations that provide real-time tracking of eruptions and forgo repairs of seismic equipment amid ongoing federal budget cuts — moves that could mean delays in getting vital information to airline pilots and emergency planners. The Alaska Volcano Observatory can no longer seismically monitor five volcanoes with real-time equipment to detect imminent eruptions. Such equipment is especially important in helping...

As anyone with a television knows, shaving razors are high-tech. Men's razors have gone from one blade to six, and they feature vibrating blades, rubber fins to stretch the skin and gooey strips to reduce friction. The money involved in shaving is staggering. According to Forbes, Gillette's 35 percent profit margin is the highest of any Procter and Gamble brand, and the personal grooming market for men and women combined is worth $14 billion in annual sales. But a band of contrarians...

ANCHORAGE, Alaska — Another volcano in Alaska is heating up, with seismic instruments signaling a possible eruption, scientists said Monday. Tremors were detected at Pavlof Volcano, 625 miles southwest of Anchorage, according to the Alaska Volcano Observatory. Satellite imagery showed the mountain was "very, very hot," said John Power, the U.S. Geological Survey scientist in charge at the observatory. The aviation alert level for Pavlof was raised from "yellow" to "orange. " A...

She is described as awesome. And wonderful. And maybe a little weird. She is the world's oldest known living wild bird at age 62, and she produced a healthy chick that hatched Sunday. It's pretty amazing that Wisdom , named by scientists who stuck a tag on her ankle years ago, has lived this long. The average Laysan albatross dies at less than half her age. Scientists thought that, like other birds, albatross females became infertile late in life and carried on without producing chicks.

It's a tough world from the moment of conception for a sand tiger shark . When a female gets pregnant, it's usually with multiple offspring of several different male sharks . As soon as the fetuses are old enough, they begin a cannibalistic battle for primacy in utero, with only one surviving. Now scientists have concluded that this is not just a response to crowded conditions but represents an evolutionary strategy that allows the most aggressive male sharks to...

TEHRAN — A scientist linked to Iran's nuclear program was killed in his car by a bomb-wielding assailant on Wednesday, a bold rush-hour attack that experts say points to a further escalation in a covert campaign targeting the country's atomic officials and institutions. The precision hit in a northern Tehran neighborhood killed the 32-year-old chemical engineer employed at Iran's main uranium-enrichment facility and brought to four the number of Iranian scientists killed by bombs...

If you were told you had an ecosystem living in your belly button, it might come as a bit of shock. The Belly Button Biodiversity project has set out to catalog just what's living inside the navel. The project, overseen by scientists from North Carolina State University and the North Carolina Museum of Natural Sciences , has taken a sampling of belly button swabs from themselves as well as students, science bloggers and others. The BBB scientists want to strike...

Michelle Amaral wanted to be a brain scientist to help cure diseases. She planned a traditional academic science career: PhD, university professorship and, eventually, her own lab. But three years after earning a doctorate in neuroscience, she gave up trying to find a permanent job in her field. Dropping her dream, she took an administrative position at her university, experiencing firsthand an economic reality that, at first look, is counterintuitive: There are too many laboratory scientists for...

More than half the Environmental Protection Agency scientists who responded to an independent survey made public yesterday said that they had witnessed political interference in scientific decisions at the agency during the past five years. The claim comes from a new report by the Union of Concerned Scientists, a nonprofit advocacy group that sent questionnaires to 5,500 EPA scientists and obtained 1,586 responses. Among the scientists' complaints were that data sometimes were used selectively to justify a specific...

Pop! Unlocking the mystery of bubbles Although scientists have long understood the behavior of a single soap bubble, they have not been able to mathematically describe the behavior of clusters of bubbles, otherwise known as foams. When one bubble in a group pops, the other bubbles quickly rearrange themselves to balance out the cluster — but because the forces behind all that shape-shifting are different from the forces determining when each bubble pops, it's difficult to make a computer model...

Human influence on the Earth's atmosphere touched what climate scientists called a dire milestone Friday as concentrations of heat-trapping carbon dioxide nudged up to a level unseen in about 3 million to 5 million years — long before modern humans. A monitoring station in Hawaii recorded carbon dioxide concentrations of 400 parts per million Friday, dramatically up from the 316 parts per million recorded when the station made its first measurements in 1958. The monitor, high atop the Mauna Loa...

WASHINGTON — Worldwide levels of the chief greenhouse gas that causes global warming have hit a milestone, reaching an amount never before encountered by humans, federal scientists said Friday. Carbon dioxide was measured at 400 parts per million at the oldest monitoring station which is in Hawaii sets the global benchmark. The last time the worldwide carbon level was probably that high was about 2 million years ago, said Pieter Tans of the National...

FREDERICK, Md. — Maj. Scotty Long is no historian, but his work sometimes leads him to extract DNA from century-old mosquitoes kept by the Smithsonian Institution. Long is an epidemiologist with the U.S. Army Medical Service Corps and chief of the Walter Reed Biosystematics Unit — part of the U.S. Army Medical Research and Materiel Command at Fort Detrick. Mapping parts of a genome from mosquitoes known for transmitting malaria could lead to the development of a hand-held device to help...

JOHANNESBURG — Scientists say a disease destroying entire crops of cassava has spread out of East Africa into the heart of the continent, is attacking plants as far south as Angola and now threatens to move west into Nigeria, the world's biggest producer of the potato-like root that helps feed 500 million Africans. "The extremely devastating results are already dramatic today but could be catastrophic tomorrow" if nothing is done to halt the Cassava Brown Streak Disease, or...

SIOUX FALLS, S.D. — A new satellite hovering nearly 450 miles above the Earth appears to working flawlessly as it embarks on a 10-year mission to document the planet's surface, scientists and engineers at the U.S. Geological Survey's Earth Resources Observation and Science Center said Monday. Landsat 8 is sending more than 400 data-filled images per day back to the EROS center north of Sioux Falls, where they will be archived and made available for free download by...

Stephanie Dazio's coverage of the recent USA Science & Engineering Festival in D.C. [" Getting their geek on ," Metro, April 28] was both generous and positive, as were the accompanying photos. However, the catchy and alliterative headline, lifted from Dazio's article, was a disservice to the many children and young adults attending such an event — perhaps for the first time in their lives. Using the term "geek" certainly is more commonplace than it used to be. So what's the harm in it?

Why does the sound of a drill or fingernails on a chalkboard send shivers down your spine? Scientists have discovered that it's not your ears that object to the offensive sounds; instead, it's your brain. The amygdala (pronounced a-MIG-da-la) is the part of your brain that controls your emotions, and it seems to react very strongly to certain sounds. Your amygdala's reaction is what causes you to respond strongly to these sounds. Scientists studied the brains of volunteers while they listened to 74 sounds.

ANCHORAGE, Alaska — Alaska's Cleveland Volcano is undergoing a continuous low-level eruption following an explosion early Saturday morning, scientists from the Alaska Volcano Observatory and the U.S. Geological Survey said. Satellites and cameras suggest low-level emissions of gas, steam and ash, scientists said, and satellites detected highly elevated surface temperatures at the summit. A faint plume of ash extended eastward below 15,000 feet, but the Federal Aviation Administration said there...

It's a tough world from the moment of conception for a sand tiger shark . When a female gets pregnant, it's usually with multiple offspring of several different male sharks . As soon as the fetuses are old enough, they begin a cannibalistic battle for primacy in utero, with only one surviving. Now scientists have concluded that this is not just a response to crowded conditions but represents an evolutionary strategy that allows the most aggressive male sharks...