From The Telegraph:
Mike Cipra, a desert program manager for the National Parks Conservation Association, examines a burned Joshua tree that shows signs of growth earlier this month. Scientists say the effects of global warming could make Joshuas extinct within a century. Kurt Miller / The Press-Enterprise
The patient had a stroke in the brain, which stopped neural signals from travelling through the body. The electrode bypassed these channels and sent the thought signals to an FM receiver outside the body to a speech synthesizer via a neural decoder
Predator X: As seen in one of the most popular news stories of 2009, this 45-ton pliosaur crushed its prey with 30-centimetre-long teeth. Credit: Atlantic ProductionsSYDNEY: From T. rex sized sea monsters to the risk of Africa splitting in two - here are the most read news stories of 2009.
KILOMETRE-HIGH WAVES FLOW IN SATURN'S RINGS
NASA's Cassini probe has uncovered for the first time towering vertical structures in Saturn's seemingly flat rings that are due to the gravitational effects of a small moon.
VOLCANIC ACTIVITY COULD SPLIT AFRICA
Volcanic activity may split the African continent in two, creating a new ocean, say experts. This is due to a recent geological crack which has appeared in northeastern Ethiopia.
Supernovas that come from thermonuclear explosion on white dwarfs (known as Type Ia) produce very symmetric remnants. Another type, created when a very massive star collapses, results in more asymmetrically shaped remnants. (Credit: NASA/CXC/UCSC/L. Lopez et al.)
Reindeer and caribou are two names for the same species called Rangifer tarandus, with reindeer generally referring to the domesticated variety that pull sleds. Credit: Stockxpert.
Courtesy Vcom 3D
No surprise here. Oh, and cats aren't getting you any exercise.
Is it better to walk a human or to walk a dog?
New research from the University of Missouri has found that people who walk dogs are more consistent about regular exercise and show more improvement in fitness than people who walk with a human companion. In a 12-week study of 54 older adults at an assisted living home, 35 people were assigned to a walking program for five days a week, while the remaining 19 served as a control group. Among the walkers, 23 selected a friend or spouse to serve as a regular walking partner along a trail laid out near the home. Another 12 participants took a bus daily to a local animal shelter where they were assigned a dog to walk.
Click thru to read the details. Suffice to say, dogs rule.
The VASIMR ion engine could - if powered by an onboard nuclear reactor - take astronauts to Mars in just 39 days (Illustration: Ad Astra Rocket Company)
From The BBC:
The B-2 It's bad, but the brass wants something badder. The next-generation of bombers will conduct extensive intelligence, surveillance and reconnaissance missions, as well as carry directed-energy and other non-kinetic weapons. 
UPDATE: The East coast snowstorm seen from space
An artist's representation of the burst of gravitational waves resulting from the collision of a colliding pair of black holes. (Credit: LIGO Scientific Collaboration (LSC) / NASA)
Caption: The dinosaur Sinornithosaurus (left) might have used venom delivered with its teeth to help it hunt birds. Credit: Robert DePalma.
Photo: M.I.T. MEDIA LAB'S RED BALLOON CHALLENGE: From left to right: Anmol Madan, Galen Pickard, Riley Crane, Alex ("Sandy") Pentland, Wei Pan and Manuel Cebrian.
From New Scientist:
From the BBC:
Image: Algae as biomass for biofuel are become more attractive to investors and developers.
A statue greets the 2003 winter solstice sunrise in San Juan Bautista, California. Newscom/FIle
DNA from 419-million-year-old bacteria may have belonged to the descendants of
President Obama has pledged billions to extend America's rural broadband access.
From R&D:
Image: Seismic imaging was used by University of Utah scientists to construct this 3-D picture of the Yellowstone hotspot plume of hot and molten rock that feeds the shallower magma chamber (not shown) beneath Yellowstone National Park, outlined in green at the surface, or top of the illustration. The Yellowstone caldera, or giant volcanic crater, is outlined in red. State boundaries are shown in black. The park, caldera and state boundaries also are projected to the bottom of the picture to better illustrate the plume's tilt. Researchers believe "blobs" of hot rock float off the top of the plume, then rise to recharge the magma chamber located 3.7 miles to 10 miles beneath the surface at Yellowstone. The illustration also shows a region of warm rock extending southwest from near the top of the plume. It represents the eastern Snake River Plain, where the Yellowstone hotspot triggered numerous cataclysmic caldera eruptions before the plume started feeding Yellowstone 2.05 million years ago.
From American Scientist:
Joseph Shoer is a Ph.D. candidate in aerospace engineering, studying how modular spacecraft could be assembled, and hoping that they will be the telescopes and human exploration vehicles of the future, and not for crushing the dreams of Martian colonists.
Blast: A plume of sulphur and molten lava erupts from the West Mata Volcano nearly 4,000 feet beneath the Pacific Ocean, south of Samoa
Christmas can be an anxiety-inducing experience for many (Image: Gareth Cattermole/Getty)
Overall, bourbon drinkers reported feeling worse than vodka drinkers, rating higher on scales that measure the severity of hangover malaise. Getty Images
Daily consumption of cannabis in teens can cause depression and anxiety, and have an irreversible long-term effect on the brain. (Credit: iStockphoto/Rasmus Rasmussen)
The Soyuz TMA-17 spacecraft blasts off from the Baikonur Cosmodrome in Kazakhstan
Sven Hagolani / Corbis
Changing courseNew research predicts the telltale radiation (orange) emitted by an electron as it moves along a trajectory (dotted line) through a perfect spherical cloak. Credit: B. Zhang and B.-I. Wu/PRL upcoming
This picture of the Nexus One was one of many that have
It's not their fault that they are incompetent (Image: David Seed/Taxi/Getty)
From Discovery News:
From Fabius Maximus:Summary: This is a hat trick. About effective propaganda. And climate science. And more evidence that Wikipedia cannot be relied upon as an information source regarding controversial matters — or any work of importance. (It’s always useful as a first place to look and source of links.)
Contents
Update: an email reply by Wikipedia Editor Pierre Grés to Dennis Kuzara’s complaint about bias of Wikipedia Administrator William Connolley, posted at Watts Up With That, 19 December 2009 (see the actual Wikipedia file on this here):
“In September 2009, the Wikipedia Arbitration Committee revoked Mr. Connolley’s administrator status after finding that he misused his administrative privileges while involved in a dispute unrelated to climate warming.”
We’ll learn much about Wikipedia’s honesty by what happens now to the dozens of articles seriously distorted or outright suppressed by Connolley. Is this a structural problem with Wikipedia, or just a bad apple in the barrel?
How Do The World's Most War-Torn Countries Always Seem To Have A Toyota Dealership? 
From The National Post:
The massive, young stellar grouping, called R136, is only a few million years old and resides in the 30 Doradus Nebula, a turbulent star-birth region in the Large Magellanic Cloud (LMC), a satellite galaxy of our Milky Way. (Credit: NASA, ESA, F. Paresce (INAF-IASF, Bologna, Italy), R. O'Connell (University of Virginia, Charlottesville), and the Wide Field Camera 3 Science Oversight Committee)
From Live Science:
From The Telegraph:
Learning to hear again (Image: Barnaby Hall/Photonica/Getty)
A simple illustration of the Gamburtsevs inferred from new gravity data