Quantum computers are a sort of holy grail of information science. Their inherent computational advantage comes from their fundamental computational unit, the quantum bit ("qubit"). Unlike a digital bit in a classical computer, which can take the form of either 0 or 1, a qubit can be both zero and one simultaneously, throwing open the door to vastly more powerful computation. And although a usable computer based on qubits remains a far-flung fantasy, investigators continue to make strides toward their realization. [More]

The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) last week fined electronics recycler Jet Ocean Technology of Chino, Calif., just over $10,000 for illegally exporting cathode-ray tubes from old television sets to China. Jet Ocean is only the second electronics recycler to be penalized for shipping and deliberately mislabeling the tubes, which contain the brain-damaging metal lead. It falsely labeled the cargo as "mixed metal scrap" when it shipped it out--and as "scrap metal" when China (after being warned by Greenpeace of the true contents) refused to accept delivery and returned it. [More]

Editor's note: This story will appear in our January issue but is being posted early because of a publication in today's Nature.

Thousands of years after the last woolly mammoth lumbered across the tundra, scientists have sequenced a whopping 50 percent of the beast’s nuclear genome,  they report in a new study. Earlier attempts to sequence the DNA of these icons of the Ice Age produced only tiny quantities of code. The new work marks the first time that so much of the genetic material of an extinct creature has been retrieved. Not only has the feat provided insight into the evolutionary history of mammoths, but it is a step toward realizing the science-fiction dream of being able to resurrect a long-gone animal. [More]

The noise in the Pacific off the southern California coast has become 10 times louder over the past five decades because of the rumbling of commercial shipping vessels, the clicking of oceanographic research equipment, and the din of Navy operations and sonar systems--all of which are threatening whales that use the same frequency range to communicate. [More]

The 38 countries that pledged to restrain their emissions of climate change–inducing greenhouse gases, most notably carbon dioxide (CO2), are failing, according to new figures released today. The United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC), the body charged with overseeing global emission reduction efforts, says that, overall, greenhouse emissions--measured in terms of the most ubiquitous: carbon dioxide equivalent (CO2e)--dropped by 894 million metric tons between 1990 and 2006 (the latest year for which figures are available). [More]

As the moments tick away before tonight's scheduled launch of the space shuttle Endeavour to the International Space Station (ISS), another countdown is underway: Only a handful of launches remain before the shuttle program's scheduled retirement in 2010. When President-elect Barack Obama takes office two months from now, he and his aides will need to decide quickly whether or not to hold to that date, a determination that will have major implications for the future of U.S. space exploration. [More]

De cat came back--thought she were a goner,But de cat came back for it wouldn't stay away. [More]

When the world's governments gather in December 2009 in Copenhagen to negotiate a treaty to restrain global greenhouse gas emissions, the science on which they base their decision could be as much as four years out of date. The United Nation's Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) offered its synthesis of existing research in February 2007 and it was based on studies published in peer-reviewed scientific journals only through 2005. [More]

It is a wise father that knows his own child, but today a man can boost his paternal wisdom--or at least confirm that he's the kid's dad. All he needs to do is shell out $30 for a paternity testing kit at his local drugstore--and another $120 to get the results. [More]

Two groups of researchers searching for extrasolar planets--planets orbiting stars other than our own sun--laid claim today to an astronomy milestone: photographing extrasolar planets directly, rather than inferring their presence through effects on their parent stars. [More]

If you thought you were eating mostly grass-fed beef when you bit into a Big Mac, think again: The bulk of a fast-food hamburger from McDonald's, Burger King or Wendy's is made from cows that eat primarily corn, or so says a new study of the chemical composition of more than 480 fast-food burgers from across the nation.

And it isn't only cows that are eating corn. There is also evidence of a corn diet in chicken sandwiches, and even French fries get a good slathering of the fat that makes them so tasty from being fried in corn oil.

Nature has conjured up numerous defenses to water, imbuing duck feathers, lotus leaves and even butterfly wings with the ability to repel that ubiquitous liquid of life. But it hasn't had much time to come up with a way to protect its constituents against a newcomer like gasoline. [More]

With commercial airline traffic expected to top one billion passengers annually by 2016 (compared with the 769 million who flew in 2007), there are more aircraft than ever taxiing, taking off and landing on airport runways. All of this airfield congestion requires technology that can monitor what is happening at the dizzying pace it is occurring, and radar, a World War II–era invention, is not up to the task. [More]

If current theories prove correct, ordinary matter--all that we can see, smell and touch--makes up just a fraction, maybe 4 percent, of the universe. The rest comes from the so-called dark sector: dark matter and dark energy, a mysterious and pervasive energy that is suspected of speeding the universe's expansion. Dark matter, so known because it refuses to emit or interact with light in a way that we can see, is nearly six times as prevalent as ordinary matter. But, for all its ubiquity, it is often tagged as being fairly bland, a sort of galactic deadweight that only reveals itself through its gravitational pull. [More]

In the late ninth century a disastrous harvest precipitated by drought brought famine to China under the rule of the Tang dynasty. By A.D. 907--after nearly three centuries of rule--the dynasty fell when its emperor, Ai, was deposed, and the empire was divided. According to the atmospheric record contained in a stalagmite, one of the causes of that downfall may have been climate change. [More]

There may be an upside for migraine sufferers. New research indicates that women with a history of the blinding headaches may be as much as 30 percent less likely to develop breast cancer than their headache-free friends. One possible glitch: the data doesn't rule out that nonsteroidal anti-inflammatory drugs (NSAID) such as ibuprofin – and not the migraines – deserve the credit. [More]

In addition to electing Barack Obama president and carrying a wave of Dems to victory in Congress, voters in several states approved ballot initiatives decriminalizing marijuana, lifting limits on embryonic stem cell research, allowing doctor-assisted suicide--and nixed others that would have restricted abortions and provided rebates for fuel-efficient vehicles [More]

If astronauts hope to ever set foot on Mars, myriad technical challenges will need to be overcome, not the least of which is shielding space travelers from bombardment by energetic particles. Outside Earth's protective atmosphere and magnetic field, supersonic particles from stellar processes run amok, screaming through space and tearing through just about anything in their path--including the bodies of astronauts, where they can wreak havoc on genetic material. [More]

In the late 1980s thousands of chickens died from a cancer caused by a virus known as avian leukosis virus J because they were all descended from a few roosters susceptible to the disease. [More]

Emissions of a greenhouse gas that has 17,000 times the planet-warming capacity of carbon dioxide are at least four times higher than had been previously estimated. Nitrogen trifluoride (NF3) is used mainly by the semiconductor industry to clean the chambers in which silicon chips are made. The industry had in the past estimated that most of the gas was expended during the cleaning process and only about 2 percent escaped into the air. But the first-ever measurements of nitrogen trifluoride levels in the atmosphere, published recently in the journal Geophysical Research Letters show that emissions could be as high as 16 percent. [More]