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Science News
for 01/27/2009

(last updated 7:30am EST 01/27/2009)

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• Rewrite The Textbooks: Transcription Is ... Rewrite The Textbooks: Transcription Is Bidirectional
01/27/2009
Researchers have now unraveled how yeast generates its transcripts and have come a step closer to understanding their function. The study redefines the concept of promoters (the start sites of transcription) contradicting the established notion that they support transcription in one direction only. ( ago)

• Mind Out Of Balance, Body Out Of Balance Mind Out Of Balance, Body Out Of Balance
01/27/2009
Many of the 40 million American adults who suffer from anxiety disorders also have problems with balance. As increasing numbers of children are diagnosed with anxiety, researchers have discovered that the link between balance and anxiety can be assessed at an early age and that something can be done about it before it becomes a problem. ( ago)

• New Tree Of Life Divides All Lower Metaz... New Tree Of Life Divides All Lower Metazoans From Higher Animals, Molecular Research Confirms
01/27/2009
New and comprehensive molecular research confirms a deep evolutionary division among animals. This new tree of life divides all so-called "lower" metazoans (Placozoa, corals, sponges, and jellyfish) from "higher" animals (all other metazoans, from flatworms to chordates). Placozoans have also passed over comb jellies and other organisms as an animal that most closely mirrors the root of this tree of life. ( ago)

• Huge Burden Of Diabetes Shown By New Sur... Huge Burden Of Diabetes Shown By New Survey
01/27/2009
In the United States, nearly 13 percent of adults age 20 and older have diabetes, but 40 percent of them have not been diagnosed, according to epidemiologists. Diabetes is especially common in the elderly: nearly one-third of those age 65 and older have the disease. ( ago)

• Risk Factors That Affected World Trade C... Risk Factors That Affected World Trade Center Evacuation Identified
01/27/2009
Researchers have identified factors that affected evacuation from the World Trade Center Towers on Sep. 11, 2001. A research methodology known as participatory action research (PAR) was used to identify individual, organizational, and structural (environmental) barriers to safe and rapid evacuation. ( ago)

• Aspirin May Prevent Liver Damage That Af... Aspirin May Prevent Liver Damage That Afflicts Millions, Study Finds
01/27/2009
Simple aspirin may prevent liver damage in millions of people suffering from side effects of common drugs, alcohol abuse, and obesity-related liver disease, a new Yale University study suggests. ( ago)

• Polish And Italian Get Advanced Language... Polish And Italian Get Advanced Language Recognition System
01/27/2009
European researchers have developed the most advanced spontaneous language understanding (SLU) system for both Polish and Italian. In fact, it is the first one. (3 h ago)

• Air Bags, Seat Belts Important In Preven... Air Bags, Seat Belts Important In Preventing Spine Fractures
01/27/2009
In 2007, there were over 6 million motor vehicle accidents in the United States, and of those, 2.5 million were injured and more than 41,000 lost their lives. Spine fractures are a significant cause of morbidity and mortality. New research provides evidence that the combination of air bags and seat belts affords the best protection against spinal fractures sustained in motor vehicle crashes. (3 h ago)

• Risk Factors For Contralateral Breast Ca... Risk Factors For Contralateral Breast Cancer Identified
01/27/2009
A preventive procedure to remove the unaffected breast in breast cancer patients with disease in one breast may only be necessary in patients who have high-risk features as assessed by examining the patient's medical history and pathology of the breast cancer. (3 h ago)

• Scientists Use Lasers To Measure Changes... Scientists Use Lasers To Measure Changes To Tropical Forests
01/27/2009
New technology deployed on airplanes is helping scientists quantify landscape-scale changes occurring to Big Island tropical forests from non-native plants and other environmental factors that affect carbon sequestration. (3 h ago)

• 12,900 Years Ago: North American Comet I... 12,900 Years Ago: North American Comet Impact Theory Disproved
01/27/2009
New data disproves the recent theory that a large comet exploded over North America 12,900 years ago, causing a shock wave that traveled across North America at hundreds of kilometers per hour and triggering continent-wide wildfires. Scientists tested the theory by examining charcoal and pollen records to assess how fire regimes in North America changed between 15 and 10,000 years ago, a time of large and rapid climate changes. (3 h ago)

• New Asthma Research Opposes Current Drug... New Asthma Research Opposes Current Drug Treatment, Study Suggests
01/27/2009
Just as the FDA is reconsidering the use of stimulants to treat asthma, a new study offers evidence to support a theory that an opposite approach to asthma treatment may be in order. Scientists are investigating whether beta-2 adrenoreceptor antagonists (beta blockers) might be a safer, more effective strategy for long-term asthma management. A new study shows the absence of asthma-like symptoms in mice lacking the key gene that produces the receptor. (3 h ago)

• Fluorescent Proteins Illuminating Biomed... Fluorescent Proteins Illuminating Biomedical Research
01/27/2009
Remarkable new tools that spotlight individual cellular molecules are transforming biomedical research. These new tools are photoactivatable fluorescent proteins (PAFPs) and other advanced fluorescent proteins (FPs). PAFPs and FPs allow scientists to noninvasively visualize the structures and processes in living cells at the molecular level. It is now possible, for example, to follow cancer cells as they seek out blood vessels and spread throughout the body or to watch how cells manage intracellular debris, preventing premature aging. (6 h ago)

• New Tactics To Tackle Bystander’s Role I... New Tactics To Tackle Bystander’s Role In Bullying
01/27/2009
A new psychodynamic approach to bullying in schools has been successfully trialled. CAPSLE (Creating a Peaceful School Learning Environment) is a groundbreaking method focused more on the bystander, including the teacher, than on the bully or the victim. The study shows that an easily implemented school-wide intervention focusing on empathy and power dynamics can reduce children’s experiences of aggression in school and improve classroom behavior. (6 h ago)

• Acute Respiratory Distress Syndrome Mort... Acute Respiratory Distress Syndrome Mortality Is Unchanged Since 1994
01/27/2009
Mortality in patients with acute respiratory distress syndrome (ARDS) has not fallen since 1994, according to a comprehensive review of major studies that assessed ARDS deaths. This disappointing finding contradicts the common wisdom that ARDS mortality has been in steady decline. (6 h ago)

• Orbiting Carbon Observatory Investigates... Orbiting Carbon Observatory Investigates Mystery Of The Missing Sinks
01/27/2009
Trees "inhale" carbon dioxide from the atmosphere, transforming that greenhouse gas into the building materials and energy it needs to grow its branches and leaves. Though scientists agree the remaining carbon dioxide is also "inhaled" by Earth, they have been unable to precisely determine where it is going, what processes are involved, and whether Earth will continue to absorb it in the future. A new NASA satellite scheduled to launch in February 2009 is poised to shed a very bright light on these "missing" sinks: the Orbiting Carbon Observatory. (6 h ago)

• Scientists Unmask Genetic Markers Associ... Scientists Unmask Genetic Markers Associated With Psoriasis
01/27/2009
Scientists have found DNA "hotspots" that may reveal how genetic differences among individuals result in psoriasis, an autoimmune disease of the skin. The findings could lead to new drug targets and tailored treatments for the disease. (6 h ago)

• Genetics Of Popularity: Genetic Influenc... Genetics Of Popularity: Genetic Influence In Social Networks Identified
01/27/2009
Our genes partly influence our place within our social network, according to new research. The researchers found that both popularity and the likelihood of friends to know one another were strongly heritable. (6 h ago)

• Frequent Sex And Masturbation In 20s And... Frequent Sex And Masturbation In 20s And 30s Linked To Higher Prostate Cancer, But Risks Diminish With Age
01/26/2009
Men who are very sexually active in their twenties and thirties are more likely to develop prostate cancer, especially if they masturbate frequently, according to a new study. (9 h ago)

• Bacteria That Increase Plant Growth Iden... Bacteria That Increase Plant Growth Identified
01/26/2009
Through work originally designed to remove contaminants from soil, scientists have identified plant-associated microbes that can improve plant growth on marginal soil. The findings may help scientists design strategies for sustainable biofuel production that do not use food crops or agricultural land. (9 h ago)

• Using PageRank to assess scientific impo... Using PageRank to assess scientific importance
01/27/2009
Every aspect of modern science revolves around publishing important and timely articles in journals where they are more likely to be noticed--in some cases, exposure can be more important than relevance. Publishing in top tier, high Impact Factor journals maximizes the chances of having others cite your work, regardless of the publication's quality. Now, researchers have compared the citation network to a publication's page rank, and come to an interesting conclusion: the two are related, but some of the outliers show a tendency to have won their authors a Nobel Prize. Nobel Intent 's own Chris Lee recently described some of the issues caused by the modern scientific publishing process and its emphasis on the top tier journals. These journals tend to attract citations of their contents, and current measures of scientific importance rely solely or heavily on these citation numbers. The net result is that papers published in journals like Science lead to better metrics for the authors, which influence hiring, raises, tenure, and other career-altering decisions, creating a snowball effect that pushes authors toward fame and fortune. Click here to read the rest of this article (4 h ago)

• A Quick Look at VirtualBox 2.1 A Quick Look at VirtualBox 2.1
01/26/2009
Over the last few months, we've reviewed two major updates to the leading Mac virtualization apps, VMware Fusion 2 and Parallels Desktop 4 . In the discussion forum threads for both reviews, we saw a lot of requests to include Sun's free virtualization program, VirtualBox, in our comparisons. The general consensus was that, while it doesn't offer all of the bells and whistles that the other commercial programs do, it was fine for many people's basic needs. Conveniently, around a day after the Parallels review was published, VirtualBox 2.1 came out with some fixes and a bunch of new features: Support for VT-x and AMD-V in OS X Support for 64-bit client OSes Experimental 3D acceleration via OpenGL for 32-bit Windows clients Full VMDK/VHD support including snapshots New NAT engine Integrated host-based networking; "no more fiddling around with network bridges" With all of these features, it seemed that the time had come to give this thing a go. Click here to read the rest of this article (10 h ago)

• Proposal to flag, approve Wikipedia revi... Proposal to flag, approve Wikipedia revisions provokes ire
01/26/2009
When the Wikipedia pages for Senators Ted Kennedy and Robert Byrd both say that the men have died (when in fact they haven't) and the changes are reverted five minutes later, is it a public relations disaster for the online encyclopedia or triumph of the communal editing model? Hardcore Wikipedians are currently working through the answer to that question, and the end result of the deliberations could be a new process for flagging revisions to contentious articles. Wikipedia is no stranger to article vandalism, and it's not as though the world isn't aware of that fact by now (see Stephen Colbert's attempt to rewrite the entry for "elephant," for instance, or last week's episode of 30 Rock ). But the edits to the Byrd and Kennedy bios attracted national attention after the Washington Post ran a piece about the five minutes of inaccuracy. Click here to read the rest of this article (11 h ago)

• Spooky memory at a distance with quantum... Spooky memory at a distance with quantum teleportation
01/26/2009
The past several years have seen a number of advances towards the goal of creating a scalable quantum computer . Because quantum objects can be in a number of states simultaneously, these computers could sample a large solution space in an instant, providing solutions to certain problems that are currently very computationally expensive. But it's not simply enough to have something that can perform quantum computations; the other parts of a traditional computer, such as memory and communication busses will also be needed. Researchers have now demonstrated the teleportation of quantum states between two ions that are a meter apart, a development that has applications in both quantum computing and communications. Teleportation, from a quantum perspective, doesn't mean the same thing as it does to everyone who immediately thinks of Star Trek's transporters. In general, it involves two entangled quantum objects, a sender and a receiver, and the quantum state of the former is sent to the latter. A measurement can be performed on the sender that, thanks to the entanglement, changes the state of the receiver. The results of the measurement of the sender can then be used to manipulate the receiver, placing it into the same state as the sender. Click here to read the rest of this article (12 h ago)

• Kanye: I'm not doing bisexual porn, I've... Kanye: I'm not doing bisexual porn, I've just been hacked!
01/26/2009
Kanye West has just learned a valuable lesson when it comes to doing things on the Internet: don't use the same password for everything. We're only half kidding, but Kanye claims that nearly every account he had across the web has been "hacked" and that those behind the hacks are spreading rumors that he has starred in not just any porn, but bisexual porn. In a gloriously all-caps blog post , Kanye said that his Twitter account, MySpace account, and personal Gmail account have all been hacked since sometime last week. He expressed extreme frustration that his fans have believed some of the claims made on these accounts, and that Rolling Stone magazine had even reprinted an allegedly fake statement made on Twitter about Steven Colbert. He even found out that he has 12 "unauthorized" Skype accounts under his name. Click here to read the rest of this article (13 h ago)

• Hands on: testing the KDE 4.2 release ca... Hands on: testing the KDE 4.2 release candidate on Windows
01/26/2009
After the official release of KDE 4 last year, I took a close look at nascent projects that aimed to port the desktop environment to other operating systems. These ports have matured significantly over the past twelve months and are beginning to approach the point where they are robust enough for general use. The open source KDE desktop environment, which is one of the two most popular Linux desktop stacks, underwent a significant transformation during the transition to version 4. Many parts of the environment were written from scratch and large parts of the underlying development infrastructure were overhauled. One of the major changes that accompanied this transition was the adoption of Qt 4, the next major version of KDE's underlying toolkit. Qt licensing changes that coincided with the launch of Qt 4 made it possible for the KDE developers to port the desktop to Windows and Mac OS X. The porting effort was also greatly simplified by KDE's adoption of the CMake build system. Click here to read the rest of this article (14 h ago)

• AMD launches new low-power Opterons, ann... AMD launches new low-power Opterons, announces design wins
01/26/2009
AMD released a group of new, low-power Opteron HE processors today, with parts immediately available from HP and, um, Rackable Systems (we discussed that company's concept of server "physicalization" recently). Dell, Sun, and "other solution providers" are expected to launch SKUs based on the new processors within the first quarter. AMD is launching three new HE (aka, low-power) flavors of the 2376, 2374, and 2372, at 2.1GHz- 2.3GHz, and one "SE." The "SE" parts are cutting-edge Opteron parts with a correspondingly higher power consumption. In this case, the new part in town is the 2386 SE, at 2.8GHz and a 105W ACP. Typically, CPUs that are classified as SE at the beginning of a launch cycle are later relaunched as standard parts with a lower ACP/TDP. Click here to read the rest of this article (17 h ago)

• Verizon launches femtocell for all comer... Verizon launches femtocell for all comers
01/26/2009
Verizon Wireless started selling its new femtocell--an in-home cellular network extension--under the Network Extender name Monday for $249.99. The service is meant to offer better coverage in homes and small offices by allowing existing cell phones to use broadband as backhaul. Up to 3 calls may be in progress at any given time. There's one small problem, however: Unlike Sprint Nextel, which allows all outside users to be barred from using its femtocell offering, Airave, Verizon has an exception in its manual . At any given time, "unregistered" users could be making a call without your permission. Click here to read the rest of this article (19 h ago)

• Create your own social issue game with n... Create your own social issue game with nonprofit's toolkit
01/26/2009
Nonprofit organization Games for Change (G4C) is continuing its march to save the world through gaming. Aided by some vicarious funding from the AMD Foundation, G4C today launched a new toolkit designed as a crash course to help non-profit organizations learn how to create "social issue digital games." The Games for Change Toolkit is primarily a Flash-based presentation containing video, reference material, and links to demonstration games that cover various aspects of game design, from the initial concept to production and distribution. While an actual SDK may not be involved, the toolkit introduces nonprofit organizations to both the broad potential and finer details of bringing an issue-conscious game into reality. Click here to read the rest of this article (20 h ago)

• UK official: ISP disconnection not part ... UK official: ISP disconnection not part of "3 strikes" plan
01/26/2009
Dealing with illicit file-sharing using "graduated response" has proved controversial across Europe (and now across the US, too), largely due to the nuclear option backed by the music industry: total disconnection of a user's Internet connection. Given the Internet's importance, critics argue that a 'Net disconnection is a grossly disproportionate response to the problem at hand. The UK Intellectual Property Minister, David Lammy, appears to agree, and disconnection may not turn out to be a feature of the UK's graduated response program after all. Click here to read the rest of this article (21 h ago)

• Super Bowl in 3-D? Super Bowl in 3-D?
01/26/2009
Science editor Alan Boyle's Weblog: The big game itself will still be in 2-D, but the commercial breaks will show off some new technologies for 3-D moviegoing and TV watching. (16 h ago)

• Study: Expect 1,000-year climate impacts Study: Expect 1,000-year climate impacts
01/26/2009
Even if the world can cap carbon dioxide emissions, expect to see droughts and sea level rise that span centuries, not just decades, according to a new report sponsored by the U.S. government. (16 h ago)

• Miss Congeniality? Thank your genes Miss Congeniality? Thank your genes
01/26/2009
Advertisers would like you to believe the right jeans can make you the life of the party, but scientists say it may be the right genes instead. (17 h ago)

• Fence could help Tasmania save its devil... Fence could help Tasmania save its devils
01/26/2009
Tasmania is trying to save the devil. The Tasmanian devil, a ferocious, snarling fox-sized marsupial, is in danger of going extinct because of a contagious facial cancer. (18 h ago)

• Hanging with Zeus meant (animal) sacrifi... Hanging with Zeus meant (animal) sacrifices
01/26/2009
Burnt animal bones, petrified lightning and a bronze male hand grasping a silver lightning bolt have all been unearthed at the mountaintop site of a Mycenaean Greek cult whose members gathered around an "open fire altar," according to University of Pennsylvania Museum archaeologists. (21 h ago)

• Pushy Yanks saved themselves on Titanic Pushy Yanks saved themselves on Titanic
01/26/2009
British passengers on board the sinking Titanic died while politely queuing to get their place on a lifeboat, while Americans pushed their way on, according to new analysis of passenger data. (23 h ago)

• Lizards' dance avoids deadly ants Lizards' dance avoids deadly ants
01/26/2009
Some lizards have developed long legs and a dance move that helps them avoid being possibly eaten alive by lethal fire ants. (23 h ago)

• 1,800-year-old figurine found in Jerusal... 1,800-year-old figurine found in Jerusalem
01/26/2009
Israeli archaeologists say they have discovered a rare 1,800-year-old figurine in a Jerusalem excavation. (1 d ago)

• Texas moves closer to new science standa... Texas moves closer to new science standards
01/24/2009
The State Board of Education moved a step closer to dropping a 20-year-old science curriculum requirement that critics say is used to undermine the theory of evolution. (2 d ago)

• Using PageRank to assess scientific impo... Using PageRank to assess scientific importance
01/27/2009
Every aspect of modern science revolves around publishing important and timely articles in journals where they are more likely to be noticed--in some cases, exposure can be more important than relevance. Publishing in top tier, high Impact Factor journals maximizes the chances of having others cite your work, regardless of the publication's quality. Now, researchers have compared the citation network to a publication's page rank, and come to an interesting conclusion: the two are related, but some of the outliers show a tendency to have won their authors a Nobel Prize. Nobel Intent 's own Chris Lee recently described some of the issues caused by the modern scientific publishing process and its emphasis on the top tier journals. These journals tend to attract citations of their contents, and current measures of scientific importance rely solely or heavily on these citation numbers. The net result is that papers published in journals like Science lead to better metrics for the authors, which influence hiring, raises, tenure, and other career-altering decisions, creating a snowball effect that pushes authors toward fame and fortune. Click here to read the rest of this article (4 h ago)

• Spooky memory at a distance with quantum... Spooky memory at a distance with quantum teleportation
01/26/2009
The past several years have seen a number of advances towards the goal of creating a scalable quantum computer . Because quantum objects can be in a number of states simultaneously, these computers could sample a large solution space in an instant, providing solutions to certain problems that are currently very computationally expensive. But it's not simply enough to have something that can perform quantum computations; the other parts of a traditional computer, such as memory and communication busses will also be needed. Researchers have now demonstrated the teleportation of quantum states between two ions that are a meter apart, a development that has applications in both quantum computing and communications. Teleportation, from a quantum perspective, doesn't mean the same thing as it does to everyone who immediately thinks of Star Trek's transporters. In general, it involves two entangled quantum objects, a sender and a receiver, and the quantum state of the former is sent to the latter. A measurement can be performed on the sender that, thanks to the entanglement, changes the state of the receiver. The results of the measurement of the sender can then be used to manipulate the receiver, placing it into the same state as the sender. Click here to read the rest of this article (12 h ago)

• Continents act as blankets for the Earth Continents act as blankets for the Earth
01/26/2009
Starting with Ur and Vaalbara--Earth's first continent and supercontinent--the world has seen supercontinents come and go. The most recent supercontinent was Pangea, which existed about 250 million years ago. Composed of all the known continents clumped together into a single, contiguous land mass, it has broken up and drifted to produce the seven continents we recognize today, continents that are expected to eventually reform into a future supercontinent. This cycle of formation and breakup of supercontinents has occurred multiple times in the Earth's history, and is nicely accounted for by plate tectonics. While the mechanism of continental drift was suspected as far back as the 1500's, the modern theory of plate tectonics wasn't confirmed until the 1960s. Plate tectonics states that the various tectonics plates, as portions of the lithosphere, drift atop the visco-elastic solid asthenosphere on geological time scales. Click here to read the rest of this article (21 h ago)

• Science Online 09: (social) network fail... Science Online 09: (social) network failure
01/26/2009
As we've mentioned in earlier coverage, ScienceOnline'09 is organised as an unconference, with sessions taking the form of moderator-led discussions more frequently than a traditional conference talk, where the speaker does the speaking and the audience does the listening. It's also a rather intimate meeting, limited to about 200 attendees and, as a result, you see the same faces repeatedly, and conversations that start in one session will carry over to the next. As Matt related in his first post , the meeting saw a name change this year, from the NC Science Blogging Conference to ScienceOnline, and the change was beneficial in several ways. It widened the pool of attendees beyond what some felt had been a slightly cliquish meetup of science bloggers, and shifted the focus more to how new media technology, platforms, and tools can be utilized by the scientific community, both internally (in video peer-reviewed journals , for example) and for outreach purposes. Click here to read the rest of this article (1 d ago)

• Week in science: green explosives, shrin... Week in science: green explosives, shrinking glaciers, getting the lead out, and fish poop
01/24/2009
This week at Nobel Intent saw the first in what is a still-growing series of reports from Matt Ford and Jonathan Gitlin, who attended the ScienceOnline'09 unconference earlier this month. The two hosted a discussion of different venues for scientific communication, discussing options like YouTube and Twitter, as well as their own experience writing under the watchful gaze of a dictatorial editorial staff here at Ars. Freed from the burden of their own presentations early in the day, they hit a lot of the other sessions at the conference, where Jonathan sat in on discussion of the use of video in peer reviewed publications. Several more reports are in the works, so if you're interested in finding out about the different ways in which scientists use new media engage each other and the public, stay tuned. Click here to read the rest of this article (2 d ago)

• ‘Star Trek’ duo destined for space ‘Star Trek’ duo destined for space
01/26/2009
The creator of "Star Trek" and his wife will spend eternity together in space. (14 h ago)

• Eclipse fans revel in ‘ring of fire’ Eclipse fans revel in ‘ring of fire’
01/26/2009
Indonesians were among the few worldwide to witness an annular eclipse of the sun Monday, some cheering and banging on drums as the moon slowly crossed its path. (14 h ago)

• Space station astronauts lose bone stren... Space station astronauts lose bone strength fast
01/26/2009
Astronauts that spend long months aboard the International Space Station lose bone strength faster than previously thought and have a higher risk of breaking their hips later in life, a new study reports. (20 h ago)

• Sharp-eyed instrument spies stellar nurs... Sharp-eyed instrument spies stellar nurseries
01/26/2009
A sharp-eyed instrument on the Very Large Telescope has given astronomers a peek at the heart of a nearby galaxy, revealing a host of young, massive and dusty stellar nurseries and a possible twin of our own Milky Way's supermassive black hole. (21 h ago)

we need more then just wind power
powersource54 :: 02/22/2009

Last night 01/19/2009 there was a lot of movement ...
Ned Flanders :: 01/20/2009

• Climate change has a firm grip Climate change has a firm grip
01/27/2009
Researchers say that even if nations can get carbon dioxide levels under control, it would take 1,000 years or longer for the climate changes already triggered to be reversed. Even if by some miracle the nations of the world could bring carbon dioxide levels back to those of the pre-industrial era, it would still take 1,000 years or longer for the climate changes already triggered to be reversed, scientists said Monday. (8 h ago)

• Sharing Fellini's dreams: a ke... Sharing Fellini's dreams: a key to understanding his films
01/27/2009
An exhibition at the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences looks into the Italian filmmaker's journals. Dreams revolving around childhood, religion, relationships and death permeated Federico Fellini's classic films, such as "La Dolce Vita," "8 1/2 " and "Amarcord." (8 h ago)

• Pediatric care shrinks across ... Pediatric care shrinks across California
01/25/2009
More than 800 beds were lost from 1998 to 2007, with roughly half of those cuts in Los Angeles County. Within two hours of Roman Rodriguez's birth in Fontana, ambulances rushed him to Childrens Hospital Los Angeles, 50 miles away. State-of-the-art equipment kept the newborn alive as doctors performed five surgeries to repair intestines that had wiggled through a hole in his diaphragm and landed on his right lung. (2 d ago)

• Study finds troubling pattern of Souther... Study finds troubling pattern of Southern California quakes
01/24/2009
The southern stretch of the San Andreas fault has had a major temblor about every 137 years, according to new research. The latest looks to be overdue. (LATimes) (2 d ago)