The Chinese government is expected to spend about 200 billion yuan ($30.10 billion) on water conservation projects in 2011, a tenth more than in 2010, the state-run China Daily reported on Saturday. Priority will be given to improving irrigation to ensure grain security and projects to combat drought and floods, the newspaper said. It cited…

From overeating to exercise and alcohol, UC San Diego Health System nutritionists, trauma specialists and poison experts offer insights for a health holiday. Food for thought The holidays make it so easy to overeat. Hanukkah celebrations kick off with Auntie’s latkes. Grandma’s sweet potatoes are a Christmas tradition. And then we wash it all down…

The Obama administration has restored U.S. land managers’ powers to curb development on vast tracts of America’s back country, undoing what conservation groups called a “no more wilderness” policy put in place under President George W. Bush. U.S. Interior Secretary Ken Salazar announced on Thursday that the federal Bureau of Land Management (BLM) will again…

ScienceDaily (Dec. 22, 2010) — About 50 miles from Bethlehem, a drilling project is determining the climate and earthquake activity of the area. Scientists from eight nations are examining the ground below the Dead Sea, by placing a borehole in this deepest basin in the world.

Melanoma is one of the less common types of skin cancer, but responsible for 75 percent of skin cancer related deaths. The World Health Organization reported that 48,000 people die from malignant melanoma every year. It is more frequently found in women and particularly common among Caucasians who live in sunny climates. A new study…

Confronted with a patient suffering from pain or a chronic disease for which no drugs are effective, doctors sometimes prescribe a sugar pill or vitamin. Although these “medications” have no active ingredients, patients often feel better. It’s called the “placebo effect,” and most scientists would say that it works only if the patient doesn’t know…

Instead of one species of elephant, Africa has two, researchers said on Tuesday, confirming suspicions about the two distinctly different looking pachyderms. Using gene sequencing tools, teams from Harvard, the University of Illinois and the University of York in Britain have shown that instead of being the same species — as scientists have long believed…

250 million years ago there was a world wide extinction event where 96% of all marine species were exterminated. Most of this event is unknown. Only one in every ten species survived, and these formed the basis for the recovery of life in the subsequent time period, called the Triassic. A new fossil site –…

On the typical American roadway, it is not uncommon to see large advertising billboards. Even looking out my office window, I see two of them: one for an insurance company, and the other with a scantily clad woman (not exactly sure what that ad is for). These types of billboards have been around for a…

Campaigners urge health secretary Andrew Lansley to act to reduce air pollution, as government medical experts warn of its ‘significant’ health burden. Long-term exposure to particulate pollution, largely from road traffic, is shortening the lives of as many as 200,000 every year, according to a government advisory committee.