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Saturday, February 18, 2012

Flattening the World: Building a Global Knowledge Society

Read the hottest stories from the annual meeting of the American Association for the Advancement of Science, the world’s largest general scientific society, currently taking place in Vancouver, Canada. You can also listen to podcast interviews and participate in live chats with leading scientists.

Q&A: The 50th Anniversary of “The Pill”
by Tanya Lewis
We chat with an expert about the risks and benefits of oral contraception.


by Dan Ferber
Novel project plans to use region to generate three-quarters of power of the Hoover Dam.

Sea surface temperatures may be responsible for expansion of grasslands.
Storehouse. Mangrove soil is rich in carbon,
but it's released to the atmosphere if
forests are converted to shrimp farms.
Credit: Wikimedia Common

by Erin Loury
Cellular “cat scans” reveal internal machinery without slicing and dicing.
 
It's worse than you thought, if the shrimp come from farms that destroyed mangroves.

by Dan Ferber
Villagers had sophisticated understanding of acoustics.
Going deep. Drilling for natural gas
in shale formations in Pennsylvania.
Credit: Ruhrfisch, Wikimedia Commons

No evidence that hydraulic fracturing for gas contaminates groundwater, report finds, but problems exist at the surface.

You can also join live chats on the hottest topics at the AAAS annual meeting:

19 February, 3 p.m.
Chat with experts about the fate of our seas.

18 February, 3 p.m.
Talk with experts about the evolution of life in deep, dark places.

17 February
Experts answer your questions on how our most basic communication tool is changing.

Listen to podcasts of interviews of leading scientists reporting on their work at the meeting:

By Kerry Klein
What can be done to preserve dying tongues?

by Sarah Crespi
Scientists reconstruct sounds from days gone by.

by Sarah Crespi
How do microbes contribute to the global ecosystem?