A recent article in the New York Times looks at the conundrum that is DNA and genes, and explores how the scientists of today are trying to understand and redefine our accepted definitions and theories.

HealthMap, dubbed as the ‘global disease alert map’, links news regarding disease outbreaks from around the world into a searchable Google Map interface. The service recently detected the salmonella outbreak in the U.S., which had sickened over 1,000 people, long before the Centre for Disease Control announced that it was happening.
HealthMap integrates outbreak data [...]

An interesting development out of Australia as students in Queensland may be forced to have their photos, interests, and aspirations profiled in a massive database meant to help educators keep track of their progress. The idea from Queensland’s Education Minister, Rod Welford, is to collect this data so that schools and teachers can track student [...]

A group of scientists claim to have new evidence that shows the Andes grew 2.5km over a 4 million year span.
Carmala Garzione of the University of Rochester in New York State, US, and colleagues say the sudden rise was caused by a huge layer of dense rock dropping off the underside of the crust that [...]

Amazon Indians from one of the world’s last uncontacted tribes have been photographed from the air, with images released showing them painted bright red and brandishing bows and arrows. The photographs, taken by Survival International near the border between Brazil and Peru, are rare evidence that such groups exist. [via Reuters]
Survival International is a group [...]

Despite all our technological advancements as a species, we still know very little about the other creatures that we share the planet with. Arizona State Universities International Institute for Species Exploration has recently published a list of their top 10 newly discovered species. Most of the additions are new genus and species (a different type [...]

Earth Knowledge is an environmental news portal that aggregates news from around the Internet and plots it on a map of the world. It sports a slick well designed layout, and provides a simple filtering system for different types of environmental news divided into the categories: Biological Diversity, Land, Water and Climate. Each of those [...]

Examples of people not thinking clearly about the consequences of their online life continue to surface in the media. A recent article in the Washington Post looks at a number of teachers who maintain websites, or have other online presences (i.e. Facebook/MySpace), and how they have no clue about the visibility of such sites, or [...]