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Climate change is threatening U.S. landmarks from the Statue of Liberty in New York Harbor to the César Chávez National Monument in Keene, California with floods, rising sea levels and fires, scientists said on Tuesday. National Landmarks at Risk, a report published by the Union of Concerned Scientists, highlighted more than two dozen sites that potentially face serious class="mandelbrot_refrag"> natural disasters . They include Boston's historic districts, the Harriet Tubman National Monument in Maryland and an array of NASA sites including the Kennedy Space Center in Cape Canaveral, Florida. "The imminent risks to these sites and the artifacts they contain threaten to pull apart the quilt that tells the story of the nation's heritage and history," Adam Markham, director of climate impacts at the union, a non-profit organization for science advocacy in Washington D.C. and the study's co-author, said in a statement. The report is not slated fo

The U.S. Air Force is working as fast as it can to certify the ability of privately held Space Exploration Technologies, or SpaceX, to compete for work launching military and intelligence satellites into orbit, a top general said on Tuesday. General William Shelton, who heads the Air Force Space Command, said SpaceX was likely to achieve certification in December or January, but the process could not be accelerated given the complex issues that still needed to be addressed. "It's very difficult to pick up the pace on that," Shelton told reporters after a speech at a space conference hosted by the Space Foundation. In addition to certifying SpaceX's three launches, the Air Force was also looking at the firm's financial and auditing systems and manufacturing processes, he said. SpaceX last month sued the Air Force for excluding it from a multibillion-dollar 36-launch contract awarded to United Launch Alliance (ULA), a joint venture of the two biggest U.S. weapo

The human placenta, the organ that nourishes a developing baby, is not the pristine place some experts had assumed. Researchers said on Wednesday they have identified a relatively small but thriving group of microbes that inhabit the placenta alongside human cells in a finding that may point to new ways of spotting women at risk for pre-term births. There were clear differences in the makeup of placental microbes, or microbiome, in women who had premature babies compared with those who delivered full-term babies, said Dr. James Versalovic, a professor at Baylor College of Medicine and head of pathology at Texas Children's Hospital in Houston. Versalovic said this knowledge could lead to diagnostic tests to forecast which women may be at risk for pre-term birth and help obstetricians manage those pregnancies in new ways. Scientists have known that microorganisms routinely reside in large numbers in certain parts of the human body such as the gut, which is naturally awash with

A Florida scientist studying simple sea animals called comb jellies has found the road map to a new form of brain development that could lead to treatments for Parkinson's, Alzheimer's and other neurodegenerative diseases. "There is more than one way to make a brain," University of Florida researcher Leonid Moroz, who led an international research team, told Reuters. Moroz said his research, published on Wednesday in a report in the magazine Nature, also places comb jelly-like creatures on the first branch of the animal kingdom's "tree of life," replacing and bumping up sponge-like species from the bottom rung of evolutionary progression. Moroz said that finding should lead to a reclassification of the animal kingdom's "tree of life" and reshape two centuries of zoological thought. Comb jellies are different from common jellyfish. Moroz said his team found that comb jellies' molecular makeup and the way they developed was radical

A cross between a sleek cat and a wide-eyed teddy bear that lives in Andean cloud forests and an eyeless snail that lives in darkness 900-plus meters (3,000 feet) below ground in Croatia rank among the top 10 new species discovered last year, scientists announced on Thursday. The list, assembled annually since 2008, is intended to draw attention to the fact that researchers continue to discover new species. Nearly 18,000 were identified in 2013, adding to the 2 million known to science. An international committee of taxonomists and other experts, assembled by the SUNY College of Environmental Science and Forestry, selects the top 10. The list is released in time for the May 23 birthday of Carolus Linnaeus (1707-1778), the Swedish botanist considered the founder of modern taxonomy. Scientists believe nature holds another 10 million undiscovered species, from single-celled organisms to mammals, and worry that thousands are becoming extinct faster than they are being identified, said

An unmanned Atlas 5 rocket blasted off from Cape Canaveral Air Force Station in Florida on Thursday with a classified satellite for the U.S. National Reconnaissance Office. Five minutes after the 9:09 a.m. EDT/13:09 GMT launch, rocket manufacturer United Launch Alliance (ULA), a partnership of Lockheed Martin and class="mandelbrot_refrag"> Boeing , shut down its live webcast under a prearranged news blackout ordered by the U.S. military. While the mission unfolds under a veil of secrecy, the future of the Atlas 5 launcher is getting wide public view. Potential rival Space Exploration Technologies (SpaceX) filed a lawsuit last month to attempt to end ULA’s exclusive right to sell launch services to the U.S. military. In its lawsuit, SpaceX also questioned whether the Atlas rocket’s Russian-made RD-180 engine violated economic sanctions that the United States imposed to punish class="mandelbrot_refrag"> Russia for its annexation of Ukraine’s Crimea peni

NASA unveiled its "global selfie" on Thursday, a mosaic of more than 36,000 pictures uploaded to social media showing people and places around the world in commemoration of Earth Day, the U.S. space agency said. _0"> NASA asked people on April 22, Earth Day, to upload pictures tagged with #GlobalSelfie to social media sites like class="mandelbrot_refrag"> Facebook , Twitter and Instagram. Users on every continent and 113 countries or regions - including class="mandelbrot_refrag"> Antarctica , class="mandelbrot_refrag"> Yemen and class="mandelbrot_refrag"> Peru - joined in. After weeks of collecting and curating the more than 50,000 submissions, the so-called "global selfie" was released. "We were overwhelmed to see people participate from so many countries. We're very grateful that people took the time to celebrate our home planet together, and we look forward to everyone doing their par

Scientists seeking a vaccine against malaria, which kills a child every minute in Africa, have developed a promising new approach intended to imprison the disease-causing parasites inside the red blood cells they infect. The researchers said on Thursday an experimental vaccine based on this idea protected mice in five trials and will be tested on lab monkeys beginning in the next four to six weeks. Dr. Jonathan Kurtis, director of Rhode Island Hospital's Center for International Health Research, said if the monkey trials go well, a so-called Phase I clinical trial testing the vaccine in a small group of people could begin within a year and a half. Using blood samples and epidemiological data collected from hundreds of children in Tanzania, where malaria is endemic, by Drs. Patrick Duffy and Michal Fried of the U.S. National Institutes of Health, the researchers pinpointed a protein, dubbed PfSEA-1, that the parasites need in order to escape from inside red blood cells they in

They might be the odd couple of the bird world. Scientists on Thursday identified the closest relative of New Zealand's famed kiwi, a shy chicken-sized flightless bird, as the elephant bird of Madagascar, a flightless giant that was 10 feet (3 meters) tall and went extinct a few centuries ago. The surprising findings, based on DNA extracted from the bones of two elephant bird species, force a re-evaluation of the ancestry of the group of flightless birds called ratites that reside in the world's southern continents, they added. The group, which boasts some of the world's largest birds, includes emus and cassowaries in class="mandelbrot_refrag"> Australia , rheas in South America, ostriches in Africa and kiwis in New Zealand. Ratites that have disappeared in recent centuries include the moa of New Zealand and the elephant bird. The researchers compared elephant bird DNA to the other birds and saw a close genetic link to the kiwi despite obvious differenc

Earth will travel through a fresh stream of comet dust early Saturday, possibly creating a gallery of shooting stars for night-time sky-watchers, astronomers said on Friday. Predictions call for more than 200 meteors per hour hitting the planet's atmosphere during the peak hours of 2 a.m. to 4 a.m. EDT (0600 to 0800 GMT). North America will be in prime position for the celestial show, scientists said. Weather permitting, the meteors – remnants from the recently discovered Comet 209P/LINEAR – will appear to be coming from the direction of the northern constellation Camelopardalis. “We’re going right smack in the middle of these (comet) dust trails and the meteors are going to be pretty slow,” University of Arizona astronomer Carl Hergenrother said in a NASA interview. “It’s going to look almost like slow-moving fireworks, instead of the usual shooting stars,” he added. Earth will be crossing 2009P/LINEAR’s trail for the first time since the comet’s discovery in 2004

An asteroid that exploded last year over Chelyabinsk, class="mandelbrot_refrag"> Russia , leaving more than 1,000 people injured by flying glass and debris, collided with another asteroid before hitting Earth, new research by scientists shows. Analysis of a mineral called jadeite that was embedded in fragments recovered after the explosion show that the asteroid's parent body struck a larger asteroid at a relative speed of some 3,000 mph (4,800 kph). "This impact might have separated the Chelyabinsk asteroid from its parent body and delivered it to the Earth," lead researcher Shin Ozawa, with the University of Tohoku in class="mandelbrot_refrag"> Japan , wrote in a paper published this week in the journal Scientific Reports. The discovery is expected to give scientists more insight into how an asteroid may end up on a collision course with Earth. Scientists suspect the collision happened about 290 million years ago. Most of the 65-foot (2

A group of citizen scientists can take over a 36-year-old decommissioned robotic space probe that will fly by the Earth in August, the National Aeronautics and Space Administration said on Wednesday. Launched in 1978, the International Sun/Earth Explorer-3 (ISEE-3) spacecraft studied how the stream of charged particles flowing from the sun, the so-called solar wind, interacts with Earth’s magnetic field. After completing its primary mission, the probe was given a new name, the International Comet Explorer, and new targets to study, including the famed Comet Halley as it passed by Earth in March 1986. A third assignment to investigate powerful solar storms, known as coronal mass ejections, followed until 1997, when NASA deactivated the spacecraft. In August, the satellite’s graveyard orbit around the sun will bring it back by Earth, a feat of physics that caught the eye of an ad hoc group of citizen scientists. Last month, the team launched a successful crowd-funding project to r

U.S. Republicans claimed victory on Thursday after the Internal Revenue Service said it will delay and rewrite proposed rules for tax-exempt, social welfare groups that were at the heart of the agency's a political controversy last year. _0"> "This proposed rule was wrong from the start," said Republican Representative Dave Camp, chairman of the tax-writing committee in the House of Representatives. "Hopefully the IRS and the Obama Administration will think twice before ever trying to go down this path again," he said in a statement. Since the rules were introduced in November 2013, Republicans have tried to stop them from being finalized. The proposed rules would limit the political activities of social welfare groups that fall under Section 501(c)(4) of the U.S. tax code. The IRS had not been expected to finalize the rules this year. The IRS has been inundated with a historic number of demands for changes to the rules, prompting the need to over

Lawmakers in Congress headed toward a showdown over Pentagon spending on Thursday after the House and Senate advanced competing versions of the annual defense policy bill that differ on everything from spending priorities to closing Guantanamo. The House of Representatives voted 325-98 to pass a 2015 National Defense Authorization Act that rejected the Pentagon's bid to cut long-term costs by reducing military pay raises and eliminating planes, ships and bases. Hours later the Senate Armed Services Committee unveiled its version of the same legislation, approving a Pentagon proposal to offer smaller military pay hikes, lay up 11 Navy cruisers for long-term maintenance and reorganize the Army helicopter fleet. The Senate and House plans differed on how to pay for proposed changes to the Pentagon budget, with the House reducing funds for keeping the military combat-ready while the Senate panel sought to avoid that. "We didn't fund programs by cutting into readiness, as

The U.S. Senate Armed Services Committee on Thursday approved a plan that would add $100 million to the U.S. military budget to start work on a new U.S. rocket engine and eliminate reliance on a Russian-made engine used to lift big government satellites into orbit. _0"> The House Armed Services Committee included a similar provision in its defense authorization bill earlier this month. Tensions with class="mandelbrot_refrag"> Russia have sparked growing concerns about the use of Russian-made RD-180 engines by the United Launch Alliance, a joint venture of class="mandelbrot_refrag"> Boeing Co and class="mandelbrot_refrag"> Lockheed Martin Corp that is responsible for launching U.S. military and spy satellites into space.   true       ULA uses the Russian-made engines in one type of rocket, the Atlas, but not in another, the Delta. A high-ranking Russian official recently threatened to end sales of the Russian rocket engines for

The U.S. Senate on Thursday confirmed the nomination of David Barron as a federal appeals court judge following controversy over a memorandum he wrote for the Obama administration authorizing drone strikes against U.S. citizens. _0"> Barron's nomination was approved by 53-45 the day after senators cleared an important procedural hurdle and voted to limit debate on his nomination for the 1st U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals, which reviews cases from lower federal courts in Maine, Massachusetts, New Hampshire, Rhode Island and Puerto Rico. Republican Senator Rand Paul of Kentucky failed on Wednesday to get the chamber to delay votes until the Obama administration releases a memo Barron wrote in 2010 laying the groundwork for a 2011 drone attack in class="mandelbrot_refrag"> Yemen that killed Anwar al-Awlaki, a U.S. citizen who was an al Qaeda leader. The Justice Department is expected to make the memo public after classified information is redacted. White Hou

President class="mandelbrot_refrag"> Barack Obama on Thursday urged Democrats to vote in November elections, saying the chance to pass immigration reform is at risk if Republicans gain control of both houses of Congress. _0"> "We have a congenital defect to not vote in midterm elections," he said at a fundraising reception for Democratic Senate candidates. "The midterm comes and we fall asleep." Democrats hold a 55-45 seat majority in the Senate, but many analysts give the Republicans an even chance of picking up the six seats they would need to seize control of the chamber. The Republican majority in the House of Representatives is not considered to be in play. Obama was using an overnight stop in his adopted hometown to attend two fundraisers organized by the Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee. Tickets for the events, where he was joined by Illinois Senator Dick Durbin and Colorado Senator Michael Bennet, the DSCC chairman, cost b

President class="mandelbrot_refrag"> Barack Obama will shuffle his cabinet on Friday, nominating San Antonio Mayor Julian Castro as secretary of housing and urban development and naming outgoing HUD chief Shaun Donovan as his new budget director, a White House official said on Thursday night. The switch brings a high-profile Latino leader who is a rising star in Democratic politics into the Obama administration and moves a long-serving Cabinet member into the president's inner circle at the Office of Management and Budget. Obama was set to make the announcement at 3:35 p.m. ET at the White House, flanked by Castro and Donovan, the White House official said.   true       "The President is thrilled that Secretary Donovan will take on this next role and believes that Mayor Castro is the right person to build on his critical work at HUD based on his work in San Antonio," the White House official said in a statement. Donovan will take over from Sylvia Math

The top U.S. class="mandelbrot_refrag"> patent court's chief judge stepped down from his leadership role on Friday, admitting he had raised questions about his judicial ethics by sending an email praising a lawyer who appears before the court. Judge Randall Rader will remain on the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit, but he will be replaced as chief judge by Judge Sharon Prost at the end of May, the court said on its website. Rader said in an open letter posted on the court website that he had "engaged in conduct that crossed lines established for the purposes of maintaining a judicial process whose integrity must remain beyond question."   true       On Thursday, The Wall Street Journal first reported on an email Rader sent to Edward Reines, a lawyer at law firm Weil Gotshal & Manges, praising his work. Reines represents class="mandelbrot_refrag"> software company class="mandelbrot_refrag"> Microsoft Corp a

Secretary of State John Kerry has agreed to testify on June 12 before a House committee investigating the 2012 attack on the U.S. diplomatic compound in Benghazi, class="mandelbrot_refrag"> Libya , resolving a contentious dispute with Republicans in Congress. _0"> Kerry had been subpoenaed to testify on May 29, but the State Department said prior commitments would prevent his appearance. Kerry offered two other dates and the House of Representatives Oversight Committee accepted his offer to appear on June 12. In a letter to the committee, the State Department said if Kerry testifies before the Oversight panel, it should remove any need for him to appear before a House Select Committee that was formed recently to look into the Benghazi incident.   true       Four Americans, including U.S. Ambassador Christopher Stevens, were killed in the attack. House Republicans have launched multiple investigations into the Obama administration's handling of diplomatic

Republicans who hope to wrest control of the U.S. Senate from Democrats see medical care delays for veterans as a potent line of attack and are devising ways to keep the issue in the news in the months leading up to the November congressional elections. They are planning a long summer of investigations and hearings on problems at the Veterans Affairs agency to highlight what they say is a pattern of mismanagement in President class="mandelbrot_refrag"> Barack Obama's administration. Republicans have tread lightly so far to avoid appearing callous in exploiting an issue involving allegations that veterans died while waiting for VA care. But lawmakers, aides and campaign strategists in the party say they are now ready to go on the offensive, attacking Obama for his slow response to the scandal.   true       They say the VA care delays and alleged cover-ups are another blunder for Obama, equal to the botched roll out of his class="mandelbrot_refrag">

For two months last summer, Stanford Law School professor Joseph Grundfest locked himself away in his home office in California's Portola Valley. Grundfest's house overlooks the Santa Cruz Mountains, but his attention was fixed on the piles of paper - mostly U.S. Supreme Court opinions and Congressional reports from the 1930s - stacked on his desk and the surrounding floor. Grundfest researched and wrote for weeks with monastic obsessiveness, speaking to hardly anyone but his research assistants and his wife, who made sure he was eating. When he emerged in August, Grundfest - an influential former Commissioner at the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission who now sits on the board of the private equity firm KKR & Co - had in hand a 78-page paper larded with more than 400 footnotes. His aim was nothing less than to destroy securities fraud class action lawsuits by shareholders, which have been the bane of many businesses in the U.S. since the Supreme Court endorsed the c

The U.S. military is shedding European real estate including a golf course, skeet range and hotel, as well as facilities like a munitions storage facility, as it looks to save cash during a U.S. budget crunch, officials said on Friday. _0"> Rear Admiral John Kirby stressed the decisions to return the sites to host nations in class="mandelbrot_refrag"> Germany , class="mandelbrot_refrag"> Italy and elsewhere would not affect the U.S. military's ability field personnel in Europe -- a sensitive subject as the class="mandelbrot_refrag"> Ukraine crisis causes the worst stand-off between class="mandelbrot_refrag"> Russia and the West since the Cold War. "I think it's pretty self-evident that it doesn't at all change our military capability on the continent or degrade in any way our readiness to meet our security commitments there in Europe," Kirby told reporters.   true       He said the decision to

The Republican congressman overseeing a U.S. House panel investigation into delays in veterans' treatment demanded on Friday that Veteran Affairs Secretary Eric Shinseki allow patients to seek emergency private health care. _0"> The VA's Inspector General's office is also investigating allegations that long waiting times were covered up at some 26 locations across the United States, including claims by VA doctors in Phoenix that 40 veterans died while waiting months for appointments. The controversy spread as lawmakers left Washington for the Memorial Day holiday on Monday, which honors veterans. Republicans began mapping out a campaign strategy for November elections that highlights the scandal as another example of Obama administration mismanagement.   true       Representative Jeff Miller, chairman of the House Veterans Affairs Committee, asked Shinseki in a letter to allow veterans waiting more than 30 days for an appointment to seek care from private pract