Health & Science

• Tuesday, December 21st 2010 - 02:51 UTC

  In less than a year Twitter’s value has soared to 3.7 billion USD

  

  Twitter has raised 200 million US dollars of financing in a deal that value the micro-blogging company at 3.7 billion, less than a year after it began its first serious efforts to make money.

• Friday, December 17th 2010 - 22:57 UTC

  NZ obesity epidemic impacts cemeteries: larger caskets and burial plots

  

  The obesity epidemic is forcing New Zealand funeral directors to introduce larger caskets and look for larger plots for burials. Big people are creating bigger problems for funeral directors and cemeteries.

• Wednesday, December 15th 2010 - 22:32 UTC

  South Georgia shelf graveyard for mega-icebergs with huge impact on marine life

  

  The huge tabular blocks of ice that frequently break off Antarctica get swept towards the Atlantic and then ground on the shallow continental shelf that surrounds the 170km-long island of South Georgia.

• Tuesday, December 14th 2010 - 17:12 UTC

  US/Swedish expedition to explore Amundsen Sea ecology and potential ‘polynyas’

  

  In a complex example of “science diplomacy,” teams of U.S. and Swedish scientists are sailing this month aboard two research vessels to study the ecology of the Amundsen Sea, one of the least-explored and most productive bodies in Antarctic waters, and to gauge the potential effects of a changing climate on the Southern Ocean.

• Tuesday, December 14th 2010 - 02:20 UTC

  South Korea reports outbreak of FMD; officials say 147.173 livestock destroyed

  

  South Korea reported on Monday a further case of foot-and-mouth disease (FMD) in the south-eastern part of the country, according to Seoul's Ministry of Food, Agriculture, Forestry and Fisheries.

• Monday, December 13th 2010 - 01:19 UTC

  Falklands’ friends: HMS Scott to Antarctica; HMS Invincible to the scrap

  

  The future of the Royal Navy’s ice patrol vessel HMS Endurance may remain in doubt well over a year after it nearly sank in the Straits of Magellan and returned to Portsmouth on the lift ship MV Target, but there is no doubting the UK’s ongoing commitment to the Antarctic Treaty.

• Sunday, December 12th 2010 - 23:51 UTC

  Brazil successfully launches and recovers rocket to test micro-gravity experiments

  

  Brazil announced over the weekend it has successfully launched a medium sized rocket developed in the country which included several micro-gravity test instruments all of which were rescued from the sea following an 18 minutes flight.

• Friday, December 3rd 2010 - 05:45 UTC

  Arsenic loving bacteria, another form of life right here on Earth

  

  The first organism able to substitute one of the six chemical elements crucial to life has been found. The bacterium, found in a California lake, uses the usually poisonous element arsenic in place of phosphorus.

• Wednesday, December 1st 2010 - 07:01 UTC

  Paraguayan leader toasts with mineral water the end of chemotherapy treatment

  

  Paraguayan president Fernando Lugo and the team of Brazilian and Paraguayan doctors who are treating him for lymphatic cancer symbolically champagne-toasted with mineral water the last session of chemotherapy, which apparently has been successful.

• Thursday, November 25th 2010 - 04:29 UTC

  First possible suspected case of “mad cow” in humans sounds alarm bells in Brazil

  

  Brazilian health officials said this week that a suspected case of Creutzfeldt-Jakob disease, a fatal illness that destroys brain tissue, probably wasn’t caused by eating beef of an animal infected with the mad cow sickness.