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Obama delivering his 2012 State of the Union address In his State of the Union address last night, President Barack Obama spent less time than in years past discussing his ambitions to reform science education. He referred to his administration’s offer to let states opt out of No Child Left Behind (” … grant schools flexibility to teach with creativity and passion; to stop teaching to the test …”)

I knew it was going to be a wonderful night when I magically found street parking on Central Park West directly across from the American Museum of Natural History. Camera in hand I entered the planetarium where I enjoyed a presentation of vintage films and movies depicting space travel and life on other planets. I was soon flying towards the dark side of the moon and out into the Milky Way during a 3D presentation of the planets that was out of this world.

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Pilot Whale wearing sound-recording tag. Credit: Daniel Ottmann; photo was taken taken as part of research conducted under permit 14241 issued by the U.S

Amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS), also known as Lou Gehrig’s disease, is a progressive neuromuscular disease that affects about 130,000 people worldwide a year. The vast majority of patients are isolated cases with no known family history of the disease.

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When Mexican tetra fish moved into dark caves long ago, they evolved to deal with the dark by becoming albino…and going blind. And new research shows that the changes various cavefish populations went through occurred repeatedly--a massive, textbook example of convergent evolution. The study is in the journal BioMed Central Evolutionary Biology

By Eric Hand of Nature magazine In astronomy, every photon counts. [More]

By Daniel Cressey of Nature magazine A class of chemicals used widely in manufacturing could be damaging the effectiveness of common vaccines. Perfluorinated compounds (PFCs) -- organic chemicals containing fluorine -- are used in food packaging and industrial manufacturing

Starting last fall and stretching through mid-2013, the U.S. has been overhauling the patent-approval process for the first time since 1952.

I just read and enjoyed Reinventing Discovery: The New Era of Networked Science , a new book by Michael Nielsen, recently reviewed by Bora Zivkovic . The book tells how science is undergoing a revolution where new global online collaborations face off against secretive old-school researchers and profit-hungry journal publishers. It urges scientists to fight for open access and open science a call to action made more poignant by recent events

Mobile app lets citizen scientists keep track of meteoroids [More]

For 33 years, Barbara Katz has enjoyed sitting with her husband and gazing into the backyard of their hilltop home, located in an area of historic houses in north Baltimore. She loves the neighborhood for its quiet charm and takes pleasure in the numerous foxes, birds and deer that roam outside her window. [More]

By Paul Hoskins and Himanshu Ojha LONDON/NEW YORK, Jan 24 (Reuters) - The very public [More]

PARIS (Reuters) - U.S. biotech firm Monsanto said on Tuesday it does not plan to sell its genetically modified maize MON810 in France this year, nor after, even though the country's highest court overturned a 3-year ban in November. "Monsanto considers that favorable conditions for the sale of the MON810 in France in 2012 and beyond are not in place," the company said in a statement, adding that it had told the French authorities about its intentions.