Reefs鈥� riches
Coral reefs are worth $172 billion per year to the world economy. They attract tourists, act as sanctuaries for commercial fish species and protect coasts from storm surges. Pavan Sukhdev of the United Nations Environment Programme presented this as an argument for saving coral reefs from climate change at the biodiversity conference in Cape Town, South Africa, last week.
Newton鈥檚 heir
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Issac Newton has held it, and sohas Stephen Hawking. Now the Lucasian Chair of Mathematics at the University of Cambridge is set to pass to Michael Green. He helped trigger the 鈥渇irst superstring revolution鈥�, which showed string theory can describe elementary particles and their interactions.
Alien worlds galore
A haul of 32 new extrasolar bodies has bumped up the number of known exoplanets to more than 400. The discoveries were made by HARPS, an instrument that analyses wobbles in starlight caused by distant planets. The find increases by one-third the number of known low-mass planets 鈥� those up to roughly twice Earth鈥檚 mass.
Lay off medical users
Federal prosecutors should not investigate people who take marijuana for medical reasons 鈥� nor their legitimate suppliers 鈥� in the 14 US states that allow the medicinal use of cannabis. So says guidance from the US Department of Justice to clarify how to deal with users in these states.
鈥極ctodoc鈥� expelled
The American Society for Reproductive Medicine has expelled Michael Kamrava of Beverly Hills, California, the fertility doctor who gave Nadya Suleman IVF treatment that led to the birth of octuplets. This won鈥檛 stop him practising medicine but should send a strong message to his future patients.