Sea grapes leave trail of evolutionary clues

Single-cell organisms are found rolling along the ocean floor, leaving animal-like tracks that researchers had thought could be made only by complex creatures. Biologists exploring the ocean floor for new sea creatures have stumbled upon one of the largest known single-celled creatures, a bland, grape-sized distant cousin of the amoeba that may solve a thorny evolutionary question that has puzzled researchers for decades.

Begley: Bring On the ‘Reality- Based Community’

It took a while to discern the guiding ideology behind the Bush administration's poisonous science policies. The real problem wasn't tax cuts and war spending, even though the combination did strangle domestic programs so severely that scientists at the nation's premier physics lab were ordered to take unpaid leave, and the government is allocating 13 percent less to biomedical research in 2009 than it did in 2004. Nor was the culprit the sop that Bush offered the religious right in 2001 by banning the use of federal money for research on new lines of human embryonic stem cells, paralyzing the field for eight years and sending some of the nation's most promising young biologists overseas. It wasn't even Bush's refusal to take any action to reduce greenhouse gases, allowing U.S. emissions to grow by 178 million tons during his years in the White House and making the needed cuts that much deeper now. No, Obama and Congress can reverse all of that if they want to. The truly poisonous legacy of the past eight years is one that spread to much of society and will therefore be much harder to undo: the utter contempt with which those in power viewed inconvenient facts, empiricism and science in general.

Presenting science questions to John McCain and Barack Obama

A project called Science Debate 2008 asked the major party presidential nominees about the state of American science. Here are some of the candidates' answers. Science Debate 2008 -- an effort spearheaded by half a dozen voters concerned about the state of American science -- posed 14 questions to the major parties' presidential candidates, Democrat Barack Obama and Republican John McCain.

Presenting science questions to John McCain and Barack Obama

A project called Science Debate 2008 asked the major party presidential nominees about the state of American science. Here are some of the candidates' answers. Science Debate 2008 -- an effort spearheaded by a half-dozen voters concerned about the state of American science -- posed 14 questions to the major parties' presidential candidates, Democrat Barack Obama and Republican John McCain.

President Bush Discusses Conservation and the Environment

President Bush on Tuesday said, "With all these steps, we have charted the way toward a more promising era in environmental stewardship. We have pioneered a new model of cooperative conservation in which government and private citizens and environmental advocates work together to achieve common goals. And while there's a lot more work to be done, we have done our part to leave behind a cleaner and healthier and better world for those who follow us on this Earth."

How We Can Feed the World

Politicians should embrace the potential of science to create a new green revolution.