Filibuster kills climate bill
Proposed legislation to cut US emissions of carbon dioxide was derailed on 6 June in the US Senate after opponents staged a filibuster, a procedural ploy to block debate through long, meaningless speeches. The Lieberman-Warner-Boxer Climate Security Act was abandoned after supporters failed to muster enough votes to continue the debate.
Volcano debate muddied
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There was an earthquake two days before the Indonesian mud volcano Lusi erupted 鈥� but it couldn鈥檛 have been the trigger. At least 22 quakes have struck in the past with no effect, says Richard Davies of the University of Durham, UK. Instead, a pressure rise caused by drillers blocking a local borehole ruptured rocks below (Earth and Planetary Science Letters, ).
Nuclear IT mishap
It鈥檚 surely among the worst places for a software glitch. An upgrade to an office network at a nuclear plant in Baxley, Georgia, forced a shutdown in March, it was revealed last week, because the reactor control system interpreted it as a safety risk.
Watching evolution
Evidence for the evolution of complex traits has been caught in action by 鈥渟crolling back鈥� through 44,000 generations of Escherichia coli bacteria grown over 20 years. Around the 31,500th generation, descendants from one of the original colonies began metabolising citrate, something natural E. coli can鈥檛 do (Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, ).
Weight for attention
It is annoying in toddlers, but a gene mutation linked with attention deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) seems to be beneficial for some people. It is associated with higher weight among Kenyan nomads called the Ariaal, report researchers at Northwestern University in Evanston, Illinois (BMC Evolutionary Biology, ).