Science & Technology News

STOCKHOLM (Reuters) – American-British scientist John O’Keefe and Norwegians May-Britt Moser and Edvard Moser won the 2014 Nobel Prize for medicine for discovering the brain’s “inner GPS” that makes it possible to orient ourselves in space and help understand diseases like Alzheimer’s, the award-giving body said on Monday. “The discoveries…have solved a problem that has occupied philosophers and scientists for centuries,” the Nobel Assembly at Sweden’s Karolinska Institute said in a statement when awarding the prize of 8 million Swedish crowns ($1.1 million). …

By Megan Rowling BARCELONA (Thomson Reuters Foundation) – Climate scientists hope to be able to tell the world almost in real-time whether global warming has a hand in extreme weather thanks to an initiative they plan to launch by the end of 2015. In recent years, scientists have become more adept at working out whether climate change caused by greenhouse gas emissions is exacerbating wild weather and its impacts around the world, but the task usually takes months. …

VIENNA (Reuters) – North Korea may have shut down a recently restarted reactor which can yield plutonium for bombs, possibly for renovation or partial refuelling, a U.S. security institute said, citing new satellite imagery. North Korea announced in April 2013 that it would revive its aged five-megawatt research reactor at the Yongbyon nuclear complex, saying it was seeking a deterrent capacity. The isolated East Asian state, which quit the nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty two decades ago, defends its nuclear arms programme as a “treasured sword” to counter what it sees as U.S.-led hostility. …

By Sharon Begley NEW YORK (Reuters) – People who contract Ebola in West Africa can get through airport screenings and onto a plane with a lie and a lot of ibuprofen, according to healthcare experts who believe more must be done to identify infected travelers. At the very least, they said, travelers arriving from Ebola-stricken countries should be screened for fever, which is currently done on departure from Liberia, Guinea and Sierra Leone. But such safeguards are not foolproof. …

By Will Dunham WASHINGTON (Reuters) – Cheetahs can aptly be called the race cars of the animal kingdom: sleek, graceful and supremely speedy. Scientists have now taken a bit of a look under the hood of these feline Ferraris to gauge how much energy they burn as they traverse their African habitats and to gain insight into factors that may be contributing to their precipitous population plunge. A study published on Thursday in the journal Science described how researchers tracked 19 free-roaming cheetahs for two weeks at two sites in South Africa and Botswana. …

By Bill Berkrot (Reuters) – Being unable to smell bacon frying may be far more dire than simply missing out on one of life’s pleasures. In older adults, it could be a predictor of increased risk of death within five years. In a study of more than 3,000 people aged 57 to 85, 39 percent of subjects who failed a simple smelling test died within five years, according to results published on Wednesday in the science journal PLOS ONE. That compared with a 19 percent death rate within five years for those with moderate smell loss and 10 percent for those deemed to have a healthy sense of smell. …

By Christina Farr SAN FRANCISCO (Reuters) – Twitter Inc on Wednesday gave $10 million to the Massachusetts Institute of Technology for research that would explore how people use and achieve shared goals using social networks. Over five years, the university’s researchers will organize a vast quantity of content from Twitter, Reddit and other online forums and build new communication tools that journalists, policy experts and researchers can use to uncover new patterns and trends. The new MIT lab is called the “Laboratory of Social Machines. …

Tejas RK’s inspiring tale of how he transitioned from a failure in college to a football coach par excellence is one of grit, determination, and passion.

By Paulo Prada RIO DE JANEIRO (Reuters) – In March 2003, three months into her tenure as Brazil’s environment minister, Marina Silva gathered a half-dozen aides at the modernist ministry building in Brasilia, the capital. She told them the new government of President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva was about to embark on a pharaonic infrastructure project for Brazil’s arid Northeast. The project, a still-ongoing effort to reroute water from one of Brazil’s biggest rivers, had previously been opposed by environmentalists, including Silva herself. …