Is Al Gore Worthy of the Nobel Prize?

It has been a week of contrasts for Al Gore. No doubt he has spent much of it wondering if he should prepare champagne for breakfast on Friday, with rumors running wild over whether or not he should and would win the 2007 Nobel Peace Prize. On Friday, the announcement was made: the prize is his - or at least half of it. The other half goes to the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change.

Meanwhile, over in the UK, a judge criticised Al Gore’s Oscar-winning movie An Inconvenient Truth for a series of inaccuracies. The ruling concludes a case brought to the UK High Court by Stuart Dimmock, a parent of two who was concerned to find that the UK Department for Education and Skills

had distributed a copy of Gore’s film to every state secondary school in the UK.

Read an analysis of the trial, as per Catherine Brahic, NewScientist.com blogger.

Scientists unravel health benefits of garlic: study

Alternative medicine has been touting the health benefits of garlic for centuries, from its anti-bacterial and antifungal properties, to its positive effects on the cardiovascular system

Now US researchers say they have figured out precisely why the pungent clove makes such a valuable health tonic: it boosts the body’s own production of a compound that relaxes blood vessels, increases blood flow, and prevents blood clots and oxidative damage.

Read more at Physorg.com

Teachers ‘fear evolution lessons’ - BBC

The teaching of evolution is becoming increasingly difficult in UK schools because of the rise of creationism, a leading scientist is warning.

Head of science at London’s Institute of Education Professor Michael Reiss says some teachers, fearful of entering the debate, avoid the subject totally.

This could leave pupils with gaps in their scientific knowledge, he says. Prof Reiss says the rise of creationism is partly down to the large increase in Muslim pupils in UK schools.

The days have long gone when science teachers could ignore creationism when teaching about origins Professor Reiss

He said: “The number of Muslim students has grown considerably in the last 10 to 20 years and a higher proportion of Muslim families do not accept evolutionary theory compared with Christian families.

The BBC.co.uk website has more on this story.

Read more on why creationism shoud not be taught in schools.

US Scientists creates artifical life form

Controversial celebrity US scientist Craig Venter has announced he is on the verge of creating the first ever artificial life form which he hails as a potential remedy to illness and global warming. Venter told Britain’s The Guardian newspaper Saturday that he has built a synthetic chromosome using chemicals made in a laboratory, and is set to announce the discovery within weeks, possibly as early as Monday.

The breakthrough, which Venter hopes could help develop new energy sources to combat the negative effects of climate change, would be “a very important philosophical step in the history of our species,” he told the newspaper.

However the prospect of engineering artificial life forms is highly controversial and likely to arouse heated debate over the ethics and potential ramifications of such an advance.

Read more on this

Physorg.com

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