bringtheruckuss

Ask any biomedical scientist whether they manage to keep on top of reading all of the publications in their field, let alone an adjacent field, and few will say yes. New publications are appearing at a double-exponential rate, as measured by MEDLINE – the US National Library of Medicine’s biomedical bibliographic database – which now lists over 19 million records and adds up to 4,000 new records daily.

For a prolific field such as cancer research, the number of publications could quickly become unmanageable and important hypothesis-generating evidence may be missed. But what if scientists could instruct a computer to help them?

WASHINGTON (AP) — The global output of heat-trapping carbon dioxide jumped by the biggest amount on record, the U.S.Department of Energy calculated, a sign of how feeble the world’s efforts are at slowing man-made global warming.

The new figures for 2010 mean that levels of greenhouse gases are higher than the worst case scenario outlined by climate experts just four years ago.

“The more we talk about the need to control emissions, the more they are growing,” said John Reilly, co-director of MIT’s Joint Program on the Science and Policy of Global Change.

The world pumped about 564 million more tons (512 million metric tons) of carbon into the air in 2010 than it did in 2009. That’s an increase of 6 percent. That amount of extra pollution eclipses the individual emissions of all but three countries — China, the United States and India, the world’s top producers of greenhouse gases.