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Jim Dawson

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Community Voices

Cancún, climate change and willful ignorance

By Jim Dawson | 12/09/10
This week scientists at my workplace, an independent international research institute in Vienna, Austria, gathered their papers and headed to the climate-change meeting in Cancún, Mexico.
Scientific Agenda

Red wine, white wine, fish and science

By Jim Dawson | 10/29/09
WASHINGTON, D.C.  -- The long-standing rule of matching wine and food -- red wine with red meat and white wine with fish -- actually has a scientific explanation, according to two scientists working for the Mercian Corporation, a Japanese producer a
Scientific Agenda

Glacial melting releases long-frozen pollutants

By Jim Dawson | 10/28/09
WASHINGTON, D.C.
Scientific Agenda

Nano particles boost plant growth

By Jim Dawson | 10/27/09
WASHINGTON, D.C.
Scientific Agenda

Why fly humans into space?

By Jim Dawson | 10/26/09
WASHINGTON — When Norman Augustine presented the Review of Human Spaceflight Plans Committee's 154-page report last week, the committee chairman left no doubt that the NASA program is in trouble. "The U.S.
Scientific Agenda

Whales engage in polite conversation

By Jim Dawson | 10/21/09
Scientists are beginning to be able to identify individual whales by the unique clicks the giant ocean-going mammals make to communicate with other whales, and an extension of that research has found that whales in groups seem to vary the interval o
Scientific Agenda

Can a man talk like a woman?

By Jim Dawson | 10/20/09
When men try to imitate the voice of a woman, they typically raise their voices to a higher pitch, and in the end, sound like men imitating women.
Scientific Agenda

I said, 'How loud is your iPOD!?'

By Jim Dawson | 10/19/09
After asking a group of college students to listen to the rock song "Summer of 69" by Brian Adams on their iPods or other personal music players,  researchers at the University of Southern Mississippi in Hattiesburg checked the volume of the devices
Scientific Agenda

Solar Decathlon event: U team in the middle of heated competition

By Jim Dawson and Devin Powell | 10/15/09
WASHINGTON, D.C. — A team from the University of Minnesota is one of 20 teams to build entirely solar-powered homes on the National Mall in downtown Washington as part of the Department of Energy's 2009 Solar Decathlon competition.
Scientific Agenda

Biological clock reveals timekeeping secret

By Jim Dawson | 10/14/09
The internal clock that controls the biological rhythms that in turn control so much of our lives -- everything from determining whether we are morning or night people to what time we sag in the afternoon -- does not tick the way scientists have lon