http://blogs.earthsky.org/aitanavargas With news from Europe Sun, 17 Feb 2008 17:14:25 +0000 http://backend.userland.com/rss092 en More than 20 years have gone by since scientists first started to conduct research on HIV, and yet there is no vaccine against it. HIV affects some 39 million people worldwide, according to data from the World Health Organization. Speaking at the annual meeting of the American Association for the Advancement ... http://blogs.earthsky.org/aitanavargas/2008/02/17/nowhere-near-an-hiv-vaccine/ After years of work, the European Space Agency has finally released the first and most detailed 3-D images of a large part of the Martian surface. This set of topographic images is known as the Mars Express Digital Terrain Model (DTM) and was obtained using the High Resolution Stereo Camera ... http://blogs.earthsky.org/aitanavargas/2008/02/07/esa-releases-first-3d-images-of-mars/ Nothing like this had happened since 2001 when 35 male sea lions were killed in the Galapagos Islands. Back then, the animals' genitals and teeth had been removed. Now, a new attack in the exotic islands has resulted in 53 sea lions dead, including 13 pups, 25 youngsters, 9 males ... http://blogs.earthsky.org/aitanavargas/2008/01/31/sea-lions-slaugthered-in-ecuador/ Ever wonder what would happen if you were left alone in the dark for days? This is exactly what six volunteers have done for a BBC Horizon documentary. The experiment is set out to determine whether this technique, known as sensory deprivation, makes people more suggestible. For two days, psychologist ... http://blogs.earthsky.org/aitanavargas/2008/01/27/does-sensory-deprivation-make-people-more-suggestible/ On 12 December 1999 tanker Erika broke in two about 75km off the coasts of Brittany leaking 20,000 tons of heavy fuel oil into the sea. Two weeks later, the spill was spread by a storm contaminating 400 km of coastline. France's worst oil disaster killed more than 150,000 seabirds. ... http://blogs.earthsky.org/aitanavargas/2008/01/19/french-court-convicts-oil-company-for-spill/ Next time you see a celebrity giving advice about medical treatments or backing scientific research and campaigns, think twice before following his or her advice. Little scientific awareness on the part of many stars and their quite often nonsense scientific claims has led the educational charity "Sense About Science" to ... http://blogs.earthsky.org/aitanavargas/2008/01/08/celebrities-urged-to-check-scientific-claims/ The BBC has just reported that British scientists at the University of Manchester are set out to build the first machine capable of mimicking the complex interactions of the human brain. The computer, nicknamed the "brain box", will cost 1million pounds, well over $1 million. With it, researchers hope to ... http://blogs.earthsky.org/aitanavargas/2007/12/31/uk-scientists-to-mimic-human-brain/ Since the beginning of time, physicists have tried to uncover the mysteries of the Universe. Over the course of many decades a large number of laws and theories have emerged, some of which have successfully provided explanations for different physical phenomena. For instance, Einstein's work - his theories of Special ... http://blogs.earthsky.org/aitanavargas/2007/12/29/the-quest-for-a-unified-theory-of-everything/ The United Nations has finally declared 2009 the International Year of Astronomy (IYA 2009). The decision comes in the 62nd General Assembly and after years of talks between Italy and the promoters of this initiative - UNESCO and the International Astronomical Union. The IYA2009 marks the 400th anniversary of the ... http://blogs.earthsky.org/aitanavargas/2007/12/26/2009-will-celebrate-astronomy-worldwide/ After many disagreements, finally Europe's long-sought GPS service will be realized by 2013, or at least that is what the 27 European transportation Ministers have claimed. The green light to Europe's GPS comes after a long-lasting crisis prompted by the breaking down earlier this year of the private consortium in ... http://blogs.earthsky.org/aitanavargas/2007/12/13/europe-launches-gps-project/ The UN Development Program has just released the Human Development Report 2007/2008. To the title “Fighting climate change: Human solidarity in a divided world”, the 370-page document sends a clear message to the world: climate change is the 21st Century's defining human development challenge. What we now decide to ... http://blogs.earthsky.org/aitanavargas/2007/11/29/un-calls-for-human-solidarity/ 2005 was not a good year for the world's 41 most industrialized countries, according to the latest estimates by the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change. The study, which comes three days after the UN's Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change released the IV Report on global warming, speaks by itself. ... http://blogs.earthsky.org/aitanavargas/2007/11/25/spain-the-greatest-european-greenhouse-emitter/ Two weeks before initiating a round of talks in Indonesia to re-negotiate the Kyoto Protocol, delegates from 130 countries have met in Valencia (Spain) this week and developed a 20-page report summarizing the many compromises required by governments before it is too late to reverse global warming. The text, which ... http://blogs.earthsky.org/aitanavargas/2007/11/18/un-warns-climate-change-is-here/ Last week Earth & Sky's Executive Producer, Deborah Byrd, addressed in her blog a report that warned of the increased risk of cancer linked to excess weight. This week a new study published online by the British Medical Association and the BBC has reported that obesity (BMI above 29.9) and overweight ... http://blogs.earthsky.org/aitanavargas/2007/11/11/excess-weight-linked-to-cancer-in-women/ A new finding could bring scientists one step closer to a possible treatment for malaria, a disease that claims most lives in third world countries and sub-Saharan Africa. The work has been reported by a team of researchers at Edinburgh University, in the US, Mali and Kenya who studied ... http://blogs.earthsky.org/aitanavargas/2007/10/31/new-discovery-raises-hopes-for-malaria-treatment/ An international team of astronomers led by Emanuele Daddi of the Commissariat a l'Energie Atomique in France has unveiled hundreds of one of the most mysterious objects present in the Universe: black holes. The discovery was made possible using NASA's Spitzer and Chandra X-ray telescopes, which were set out to ... http://blogs.earthsky.org/aitanavargas/2007/10/28/hundreds-of-massive-black-holes-uncovered/ Spain's Pedro Alonso leads a team of experts currently working on a vaccine in the war against malaria, a disease carried by mosquitoes that kills more than a million people each year. Dr. Alonso lives and works in Mozambique, a region where Malaria is widespread. In 1996, he founded the ... http://blogs.earthsky.org/aitanavargas/2007/10/17/a-potential-malaria-vaccine-by-2010/ Since the dawn of time, humankind has looked up at the sky in awe and wonder. Also for long has there been public dispute between scientists and the Church over the role of astronomy in our society and the larger world. For the second time in seven years the Vatican ... http://blogs.earthsky.org/aitanavargas/2007/10/07/the-church-gazes-into-the-skies/ More than a decade ago, the city of Kikwit in DR Congo (Africa) was struck by a major Ebola outbreak that killed 200 people. A few weeks ago, about 400 km west of Kikwit, in the country's West Kasai province, another outbreak drew attention from several NGOs and the World ... http://blogs.earthsky.org/aitanavargas/2007/09/30/on-going-ebola-outbreak-in-congo/ One of the old-age questions is how the Universe came into existence and life developed in it. Some people believe that there could be an intelligent design behind the cosmos, but is that true? An answer to this conundrum has been provided today by a scientist at the University ... http://blogs.earthsky.org/aitanavargas/2007/09/19/is-there-intelligent-design-behind-the-universe/